Shouldn’t want to spend my time with you
Well, I should try to be strong
But, baby, you’re the right kind of wrong
I should try to run, but I just can't seem to
‘Cause every time I run, you're the one I run to
LeAnn Rimes - Right Kind of Wrong
‘Hermione…’
‘I’m fine, Ron,’ Hermione said shakily, turning away to hide her tears from Ron. ‘I just…I need some time alone…’
Upon leaving Draco’s flat, they had promptly apparated back to the Burrow. At the moment, they were standing outside the Apparation shack, both uncomfortably aware that nothing between them would ever be the same again. It was an awkward feeling, especially for two childhood friends.
‘I can’t really say I’m sorry; you know that, right?’
‘I know.’ Hermione gazed at the ground where the frozen remnants of the last snowfall still remained, stubbornly refusing to melt in spite of the many rainstorms since. In truth, she didn’t even want Ron to be sorry. ‘I am, though.’
‘It – it wasn’t your fault…’
Hermione didn’t say anything. Ron had misinterpreted her comment, but there was no need to correct him.
‘C’mon, let’s go back inside…We can forget this ever happened…’
I don’t want to, a tiny voice in her head protested. I can’t just pretend that the last month didn’t exist!
‘Go ahead,’ she said out loud. ‘I need a few minutes right now.’
‘Are you sure?’ Ron asked doubtfully. It was clear that he still thought she’d choose Draco over him after everything. ‘I’ll stay with you.’
‘I don’t need you to stay,’ Hermione said almost angrily. ‘Honestly, Ron, I’ll be fine. He’s not going to come for me now. I made my choice. He accepted it.’
Ron narrowed his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he said in a low voice.
Hermione watched Ron walk away and told herself she would grow to love him unconditionally again. But even though she believed it, she couldn’t erase the traces of a different kind of love Draco had left behind in her life. Dangerous, dark, unpredictable. Just like him. He had lied to her and made her believe he was someone he wasn’t, but he had loved her – perhaps even more so than she loved him.
She realised then and there that she would never be able to forgive herself for everything she had done to Ron, to Draco, to herself.
Hermione leaned back against the rain-soaked wood of the Weasleys’ Apparation shack and let herself cry. She had to get over it. She had to move on. She would move on. But for now, the best she could do was cry and hope for the pain to ease on its own.
Two months passed before Hermione saw Draco again. When they finally did meet again, it was in Brown’s, the little tea shop across the street from the Ministry.
The first thing she thought when she saw him sitting at his usual table with his usual order was that he looked different. His hair was thinner and ragged; his normally pale skin had a wan, greyish tint to it. Some of the pride he had once carried his shoulders high with was gone, and he looked exhausted.
When Hermione approached him, he looked up with vacant, bloodshot eyes. The grey of his pupils was hardly recognisable; it was more of a washed-out shade of black. The unseeing gaze he fixed on Hermione was blank, but not in the guarded manner Hermione was accustomed to. If anything, it was more of a complete absence of emotion than a careful containment of it.
‘Draco?’ she said tentatively.
The sound of Hermione’s voice seemed to rouse Draco out of his seemingly subconscious state. He looked back down at his half-empty cup of tea.
‘Can I sit down?’
He shook his head. Hermione sat down anyway.
When Draco didn’t say anything, Hermione asked in a voice barely above a whisper, ‘How…are you all right?’
He shook his head again. Hermione’s sharp intake of breath went by unheard in the pleasant buzz of conversation pervading the room.
‘I haven’t seen you around in the Ministry,’ she tried again. His sickly demeanour was beginning to frighten her.
He swirled the contents of his teacup around, still refusing to meet her eyes. Hermione noticed that his hands were covered in scratches and shallow cuts.
Sighing, she stood up. The words ‘I’m sorry’ sat on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them. She didn’t want to dwell on something she couldn’t take back. Bringing up that day would only make the process of forgetting more difficult than it already was.
‘Bye, Draco,’ she said softly.
She turned and began walking back to the table she had been waiting for Ron at before she saw Draco. She had only taken three steps, however, when Draco spoke.
‘Hermione.’ His voice was rough, like gravel grinding against cement. She froze in her tracks. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said hastily before she could turn around. ‘This is probably the last time we’ll ever meet. I have other business to attend to from now on, so don’t ask around if you stop hearing word of me. Just…let me say one last thing.’
Hermione stood still, her back turned to Draco. Her heart was beating so quickly that she was starting to feel dizzy. Or maybe that was just because Draco was finally addressing her.
For one long, torturous moment, Draco didn’t say anything. Then, in a whisper that somehow managed to penetrate the mingled conversations in the room and reach Hermione’s ears, he said something so simple and yet so terrifying that Hermione’s rapidly beating heart suddenly slammed to a shuddering stop.
‘I love you.’
Hermione had no time to react to his words, because the moment her brain processed them, she felt the brush of his shoulder against hers as he strode past, his head bowed to avoid catching her eye. Before she could stop him, he had left the shop. The wooden door swung closed behind him, slamming against the doorframe so forcefully that Hermione almost felt the impact of it. She reeled backwards and fell onto the seat she had just vacated without thinking.
She was free. He’d let her go for good, and she was free to live the way she had before she became one with Starlight. But if she was free, why was she so irrevocably miserable?
Impulsively, Hermione touched the scar just below her right collarbone – the scar Greyback had left behind. The wound cut deep into and across her flesh, an ugly imperfection on her otherwise smooth skin. It was a sibling to the pair that marred Draco’s face. Like Draco’s, it would never completely fade away. Instead, it would forever stand as a stark reminder of the deadly consequences of crossing paths with dark magic.
Realisation dawned upon Hermione as she lightly traced the jagged curve of the scar. The answer to her question was simple, really.
The reason why they had worked so well together on the case, the reason for the aching emptiness she felt…It was because Draco had completed her. He was everything she wasn’t: reckless, passionate, daring, and willing to risk it all for something he believed in. He had been her exact complement; he had filled the gaps in her knowledge with his; he had balanced out all of her caution and logic with a frightening kind of truth she’d never known with Ron.
And now, without him, she’d never be whole again.
Take these broken wings
And learn to fly again
And learn to live so free
Clay Aiken – Broken Wings
A/N: Yes, I know, it's been a while since I last updated. I've actually had part one and part two written for a few months now, and now I'm finally posting part one as a thank you to the people in my Yahoo! group for being so kind when they requested that I update.
I hate to be repetitive, but here's the rundown again: I'm not going to post part two until I finish the alternate epilogue, which is the one I'm writing for the people who are displeased (to put it lightly) with the end of chapter 32 and demand that I bring Hermione and Draco back together in the epilogue. And I am not doing it for them - I'm doing it for myself, because I'd rather not have people pestering me about the ending of this fic three years from now.
Anyway, the alternate epilogue is still in the works (sorry, I've been so busy with school/college admissions... I haven't even had the time/motivation to write SKOM), so it might be a few weeks or even a few months before I post it and part two. I promise that both will be up eventually.
As always, thanks for reading, and I apologise for the ridiculously long author's note (which, I think, might be even longer than the chapter itself...).