Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
A/N: I've been working on this one for a while, and I'm glad I finally finished. I'm actually really proud of this piece, unlike most of my others. I hope you enjoy this, and please read and review.
- -
"Do you think about it often?"
She turns and looks at the young man sprawled across the floor. She knows what he is talking about, but she wouldn't like to.
"What?"
He rolls his eyes, but she can tell he is tense. "The end," he says simply, playing along.
She hates these conversations with him. He likes to pretend that he knows her, when he doesn't at all. He likes to act like they both understand this, when they are living different lives. She is sick of pretending.
She doesn't want to say anything. It would either mean lying to him, or giving him a deeply personal answer. And she doesn't want to do either.
She looks down at the book in her hands. She hasn't actually been reading it, which should seem like a surprise, but it's not. It's a mask for her, something to hide behind instead of looking at him. She can't recall the plot of it.
He looks at her earnestly, probably knowing she doesn't intend to answer. The room is quiet, a peaceful place. A loft. She had always wanted a loft, no matter how impractical they were. Her parents had advised her against it, but she had wanted it anyways. And when she found one in the right neighbourhood, she had bought it. Perhaps it had been slightly impulsive, but it had been what she wanted then, and what she wanted still.
It was so open, that was why. The light came from the warehouse-like windows, and it stayed there, glowing and golden. Sunrise in this place was beautiful. It was made for an artist, and she wasn't really sure if she was one or not, but she lived here anyways.
And somehow, though she isn't quite sure how or why, he is sprawled on her floor discussing death with a cheerful smile. She is attempting to ignore him, but it isn't working very well.
"Come on, Granger."
She raises her eyebrow at him and pretends to return to her book. It doesn't help to look at the pointless ink staining the page. She didn't expect it to.
He is there suddenly, beside her on the small sofa, his face too close. He says nothing, just looks at her pointedly.
His eyes are grey. This is strange. Eyes are never really grey, just a blue-grey, and people would like them to be grey, so they call them that. But he truly does have grey eyes. They are strong as stone, but she knows they are not infallible. He is never infallible. No one is.
"No," she tells him, without considering the answer. "I don't think about it."
--
She is at an art gallery. She is not entirely sure why.
It is a museum, really. But there is an art exhibit. And she is looking at the paintings, trying to feel something. But you aren't really supposed to try to feel something are you? You just do feel something. Maybe she really isn't an artist.
There isn't anything to feel really. Some art she finds beautiful or creative, but she will never truly understand the purpose of it or the reason it was what it was. But was she even supposed to?
It is a muggle place. She can't stand wizard art. All those moving figures. She'd rather a still, smiling picture. She hates how they speak to her and judge her, just like everyone else. She prefers silence and peace.
She walks into another room and finds something different. Faces, in wild colours. Faces, ripped away, with mirrors behind them. Humanity, torn into shreds. It is sickeningly beautiful.
She stares at the way the face becomes the mirror becomes herself. There is more than people, there is possibility. Somehow, she is part of the painting, and her life is reflected back at her.
She moves again, and sees another painting by this artist. A volcano, dark and gripping. Lava spurts from it like blood. For a moment, she feels sorry for it. A volcano is a monster, she knows, terrifyingly inhuman. But it seems injured before her, in this way. And somehow, it feels human to her. It is powerful and forceful and greedy, yes. But aren't those parts of every person on this planet? It is hate and jealousy and cruelty, but these are just the darker parts of humanity. The volcano is that bit of evil in all of us, and she feels sorry that it carries this burden, and no goodness to lighten its load.
She does not realize she is feeling things now as she looks at the artwork, and moves slowly. She doesn't really realize much of anything, until she sees it.
A photograph, black and white. It sits in a simple black frame. She stares at the figure inside. A girl, a young woman, somewhere around her own age. She is laughing.
It makes her freeze for a moment, and she does not particularly know why. She sees people laugh everyday. She hears laughter every ten minutes.
But she does know. She knows it is because she herself has not laughed in a very long time. She cannot remember the last time she laughed. She cannot remember the last time she found something funny.
The girl in the photograph is smiling, too. Her hair shines and her eyes sparkle and she looks just as alive as any wizarding portrait. She is beautiful.
She is horrifying.
She turns from the photo quickly, and leaves. She slams the driver's door of her car. If laughter is art, she doesn't think she'll make it as an artist.
--
He is in her apartment again. He is sprawled on the floor, probably because there is not much furniture and because he probably knows she will not let him sit on the sofa with her.
She is never exactly sure how he keeps walking into her peaceful loft. She isn't truly sure why she lets him in. It is routine now. It just happens.
They are not talking. She doesn't deem it necessary. He is here. She doesn't have to talk to him if he just keeps showing up.
He seems to be contemplating something or another. She hopes it isn't death, because she isn't in any mood to discuss it with him.
She will not ask him though, because that would mean she condones him just showing up randomly, or – even worse – getting in her car on the way back from work, even though she knows he doesn't trust cars. He would rather apparate or floo, but he would take her car if it meant he could come back to her loft. Which she finds extremely annoying.
But he is here, today, which is becoming an increasingly annoying pattern. He lays here on her floor considering, though considering what, she does not know. But, of course, she does not want to. It is unimportant.
But he will ask her, or tell her, or something. He always does.
And today is no different. It is serious and real and feels as personal as always. And she still hates it.
"Do you ever wonder… if it could have been…different?"
She raises her eyebrow at him again, because although she understands perfectly, and he knows she understands, and she knows he knows she understands, it is a vague enough question that she can ask for clarity in order to stall.
He bites his lip. He doesn't want to clarify. "The war."
No, she does not think it could have been different. It was meant to happen as it did, and it could never change. But she can't tell him that, because that isn't what he wants. But here, again, is the choice – lie to him or a give an impossible answer, one that would hurt him.
She looks out the window. The sky is as grey and unreadable as his eyes. What could she ever say? And why did she have to be the one he always asked?
She bites her lip. She doesn't want to tell him.
He crosses his legs. He looks at the ground. He looks so broken. He never lets his guard down like this.
A rush of sympathy swells through her for the first time since the war.
"Yes," she whispers. "It could have been different. It would have been."
She doesn't really think of it as a lie. It's more than that.
When he lifts his head and looks at her like that, like he's slipping and everything is fading, she knows it can't be a lie. It just can't be. And she doesn't remember it as one.
--
When she stares at a blank canvas, she doesn't know what to do with it.
That's probably not a good thing, to be uncertain of inspiration and ideas and possibility, but she just doesn't. She doesn't really understand art.
That, beyond all, is why she pursues it. It is not like her to not understand something, and she needs to get it. And because, strangely, it is kind of beautiful to not know something. She needs this, which is something no one understands.
They don't get it, any of them. Her friends, they look at her and try to fit it together. They act like she isn't quite real or quite sane or quite herself. There is only one person who does not ask her about it, or laugh about it, or tell her it's stupid, and that's probably why she keeps letting him into her apartment.
Others call it depression. She calls it expression. She calls it a different kind of living.
It is strangely peaceful to paint without purpose. There is no danger, no curses shooting over your shoulder. There is no camping out in tents, everyone terrified in the darkness, but too ashamed to admit it. She is so sick of fear.
They act like she hasn't recovered. They don't realize that she has already moved on. She has already chosen to forget. Her past is unimportant.
Painting is safe. She sees no battlefield, she hears no screams, she does not fear that there will be blood staining the ground. Painting is peace.
But she is still uncertain. These days, her mind is as blank as the canvas. She has no idea what she should symbolize or represent or even be.
Her mind wanders to the laughing girl in the photo. Should she attempt that? Finding and representing happiness? Or should she deal with what she knows and paint sadness? Anger? Confusion?
Too often she just sets her paintbrush back down.
--
She sees him at work. They are both at the Ministry, so she should see him. When they are at work, he is just another person, just another man in the corridor. But even then, she can feel that there is more. Of course there is more. But she knows there shouldn't be.
Her friends disapprove. They don't trust him, after everything. She knows she is the only one who ever forgave him. They needed him, so they lied to him. He needs her every day that he lays on the floor of her loft. And every time, she lies to him.
She sits at her desk and does not do the paperwork she is supposed to. She watches how he sits in his office across the hall, the way he writes, the way he rubs his fingers through his hair. It is strange that they are this way. They make no sense, and she doesn't understand. One day, soon after they got the offices across the hall from each other he walked in and apologized. He said that he understood that she would maybe never trust him even if he'd been on her side. He said he was sorry for everything, even though she knew he'd apologized before. He said she was a good person, and that she was smart and that this department needed her. He said that they were adults. He said, Can we put this behind us? And she said yes.
And then he had become her friend. She was never sure how it happened exactly. They worked well together, and were often paired up on tasks. They never argued and never brought up the past. But lately, while laying there on her floor, he seemed to only bring up the past – and the future and the present. He was deeper than anyone else. She could have serious conversations with him. He asked deep, probing questions. But she never really answered them.
He probably knows that she doesn't like her past. She has kind of erased herself since the war, and she tries to forget the girl from before. But, she doesn't like her future either. Her life is dull. Her future will be dull as well. There is no point dwelling on what might be, because she knows how it will go, and she doesn't exactly like it. But there isn't much she can do, because she doesn't know how to change her life. And besides, she isn't sure she would even if she knew how.
She stares at the golden head bent over his work. She wonders if he would like to change his future.
He looks up at this point, and their eyes meet. Grey. They are very grey. Grey and deep.
And she knows, just by looking at him, the answer. Of course he would.
--
There are sometimes when she feels like she is about to disappear. It's usually on Saturday nights.
On Saturday nights, her friends insist on dragging her out to some smoky pub, because 'she doesn't get out enough anymore'. She sits there, sipping one drink all night long, pretending to have fun. She's sure they never realize she wishes she were at home. Even if he were lying on her floor, she'd rather be home.
But she goes, for their sake. It pleases them and makes them content, so she's okay with it. It's not what she wants, but oh well.
Tonight is like every one of those nights. She sits with a firewhiskey – a drink she hates, but they don't know that yet. She hates the burn it leaves as it slips down her throat. She sets it on the bar, and sits on her barstool alone.
Ginny has pulled Harry out to dance, and though he looks a little embarrassed, she knows after a couple more drinks, he'll be laughing and yelling and dancing ridiculously. She smiles to herself. It makes her happy that they're having fun.
Ron is chatting up a barmaid. She remembers Madame Rosmerta with a faint smirk, and grins as he smiles flirtatiously at the blonde girl, who bats her lashes seductively.
Everything is how it always is on every Saturday. Except today, she actually feels left out.
She would always prefer to be home, every time they drag her out. But tonight, she is aching to be home. She hates to be here. She hates sitting alone at the bar. She hates faking smiling, and pretending that she's happy and pretending to like firewhiskey.
She wants to leave.
And it shocks her, as she takes another burning drink of the alcohol she hates, that she'd much rather be back in her loft, discussing painful subjects with him, than be here with her friends at a pub on a Saturday night.
She slams her glass down and leaves without a word.
--
He is here again, and she doesn't pretend to mind.
At least, not inwardly. She pretends towards him, but in her mind, she's stopped denying it. She wants him here. He is safe.
He is lying on the floor, again. She is lying on the couch, again. They both stare at the ceiling as if there is something interesting written on it. There isn't.
"God, I hate work," he groans.
She sits up, startled, her curls falling in her face. She thought he liked his job. "What? Why?"
He continues to look at the ceiling. "They all hate me there."
She closes her mouth. She sits silently.
She doesn't know if she should deny it or not. It seems like the right thing to do, but he would see through it; they both know better. She knows it's true. Of course it is. Who cares if he switched sides? He still has ink on his arm. Ink that will never fade.
She knows that he hates it. He hates the way that they look at him. It was never his fault, but they can't understand that. Most were never in the war. They never felt the desperation that came with the battle. They didn't know what sacrifices you made. They didn't know that when you were there, when you were fighting with everything you had, there was nothing more than that. You would do anything, no matter how horrifying, in pursuit of survival. It was vicious. It had to be. It was goddamn war.
She twists her fingers, knotting them, pulling them free. She picks at her cuticles. She thinks through every response she could offer as the silence hangs between them.
Then, suddenly, she's up. She's sitting up and off the couch in seconds, and she reads the shock in his eyes at her sudden movement, but it hardly has time to register before her arms are around him in a hug. He sits, shocked into silence, as her arms remain around him.
And then, slowly, he hugs her back.
She doesn't try to tell him that they'll change their minds, or that they're idiots, or that it doesn't matter what they think. She doesn't lie, and she's proud of that fact.
She simply hugs him, letting him know without words that, no matter what they think, she will always be here.
--
She doesn't know what she is doing here.
Ginny showed up, unannounced, forced her into a black dress and heels, smoothed her wild hair, and yanked her out the door. Now she is sitting at an elegant Italian restaurant, facing a handsome stranger.
Damn that Ginny Weasley.
Another blind date. Ginny unfailingly sets her up with man after man in attempts that she will fall madly in love with one of them. It never happens.
It isn't that Ginny has no taste. They are great guys. But she isn't planning on falling in love. She isn't a die-hard romantic like Ginny. She doesn't think much of romance.
The man across from her is good-looking. He speaks well, and their conversation flows easily. She likes him. And, some other time, she might have fallen in love with him.
He likes art as well, and he knows some obscure literature and poetry that she loves. Ginny has found the right man. But she can't find herself caring. He is interested in her, she can tell. But she can't return that.
She admires him, maybe. He has good tastes, he is easy to talk to. He is a lot like herself, and that is hard to come by. He works at the Ministry, as well, in a different department. He is interesting. He is a good storyteller. He is a good listener.
He is exactly what she had always hoped for if she had ever wanted to fall in love.
She leaves without his phone number, and without any promise of speaking to him again. She leaves with a very final goodbye on her part.
And, for the strangest reason, she is relieved by that.
--
He is here again, lying on her floor, looking at the ceiling. She is here again, lying on the couch, pretending to read.
He is flawless in profile. His square jaw, his high cheekbones, his straight nose, his pale silver blonde hair falling in its perfect disarray. And his eyes, that rare and intriguing grey – as impulsive and destructive as a storm cloud, and as solid and familiar as a stone. His eyes are something she'll never catch, never understand. She wishes she could draw them, but she wonders if she'd even do them any justice.
It is strangely peaceful with him here. He is not like other guests – she doesn't have to entertain him, she doesn't even have to speak. It is the sheer lack of manners and formalities that makes his presence so simple and reassuring. She likes how she can be herself in the silence, and neither of them need a mask, or a face, or a façade, as they always seem to need. She doesn't even feel this open with her friends.
Of course, then things have to happen that ruin such peace and freedom. He cannot just let silence be, he ruins it with words and memories and things she would like to erase from history. Obscure facts, her undying past, which she hates to recall. And yet, he'll never let her forget it.
"Why is it that we can't face what happened?" he asks quietly.
She ignores him. She always lets his questions hang in the air, like smoke. Maybe, like smoke, they will drift away.
But he is stronger and more persistent than that, and today, he will not let her ignore him. Today, he forces her to face this.
He stops looking at the ceiling, and turns to face her. She looks down at her book. She sees random words on the page, but they do not form sentences. They form nothing. She cannot remember the title of the book. She cannot remember anything about it. All she knows is his grey eyes, locked on her.
"It's our past," he says quietly. "No one else's. It isn't some history book. We were there. And yes, it was hell. But we lived through it, and isn't that what counts? Shouldn't we be able to handle this? Why can't we just move on, like everyone else?"
She knows that he really means her, not him. It's intuition now, and everything starts making sense. He doesn't come to her loft and lay on the floor for himself. He does it for her. He asks these hateful questions for her. He wants her to remember how to breathe.
He does it differently than her friends, who tell her point blank to move on. He is careful and understanding and different. He accepts her painting and her silence and how she hates the probing questions. Maybe in the beginning, he was moving on too, when he was asking her about it. About how it could have been different when he killed his parents, about how people would never understand the sacrifices he made to help this side.
And in this moment of clarity, she hates him.
She hates the way he thinks he can help her. She hates that he thinks he's moved on. She hates the way he wants people to forgive him, because he switched sides and killed his goddamn parents. She hates how he lies there on her floor all the time, as if he has no other home. She hates his stupid deep questions about the war. And she hates his fucking unnatural grey eyes, which are looking at her desperately right now. She hates him.
"Hermione," he whispers.
But that's not enough, that's not anything, and suddenly she's standing and she's screaming at him, everything she's ever wanted to say pouring from her.
"Don't even tell me how to feel or what to feel! For fuck's sakes Malfoy, you aren't me and you have no idea what it was like, you have no goddamn idea! That fucking curse was on me for five fucking days straight, you jackass! You have no goddamn idea what that was like! The fucking Cruciatus from goddamn Voldemort himself. And don't even pretend to be all self-righteous and shit when you haven't moved on either, Draco Malfoy! Don't tell me how to live my life or what to feel or who I am! I hate you, I fucking hate you! You think that people should care just because you switched to the winning side, you expect all this forgiveness, but you're sitting there on your pompous ass, sticking your nose into everyone's lives and everyone's problems. God damn it, I fucking hate—"
He cuts her off by fiercely pressing his lips to hers.
And she freezes, for a moment, because this is the last thing she had ever expected from him. But her reaction time is good, and she forcefully shoves him away from her in seconds.
She can't look at him. She doesn't know what he feels, and she doesn't think she wants to. She knows, somehow, that shoving him away hurt him more than any of the words she screamed at him before.
"Just go," she whispers.
There is a pause, still and silent and dangerous.
She winces as the door slams shut.
--
It seems that he is everywhere, and yet nowhere.
She sees him at work. He doesn't look at her. They sit in their offices, facing each other, pretending that they don't see one another. Pretending they aren't both thinking about what happened.
It seems like wherever she goes at work, he is there. Whenever she is talking to her boss, he is two steps away, looking in the other direction, mouth twisted into a grimace.
But, when she leaves work, he is nowhere. She has forgotten what her life was like without him. Her loft is empty and silent.
Her friends try to get her to go out, unsure of what is wrong, just understanding that she seems silent and regretful. She blows them off. They can't help her.
She doesn't know what is wrong with her. She's not friends with him, or anything. It doesn't matter if they aren't talking. She doesn't need to fix anything. What is there to fix, anyway?
Besides, she did the right thing. It's a good thing that she pushed him away. She knows it is. After all, she wouldn't want to lead him on. She doesn't care about him. They have nothing together. Nothing.
And she doesn't miss him. Not one bit.
She lays down on the sofa, and opens her book to the first page, using it as a mask again.
--
Her friends come over a week later.
She is uncomfortable with them here. They don't normally come to her place. They usually go out.
They wear their happy, fake smiles. She can tell that they're worried about her.
They talk to her, stiffly, uncertainly. Trying to cheer her up. They don't even know what's wrong.
And they are good people, good friends. But they don't know. They're blind. And that's okay. There are worse faults.
But all she wants now is to be left alone.
Because, for an unexplainable reason, it nearly makes her cry that they sit primly on the furniture, instead of lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling as if there's something interesting written on it.
--
She doesn't consciously know why she has returned. But, somehow, she does.
She moves quickly through the art exhibit, not searching for feelings or messages from the artwork. She has too much feeling already.
She passes the faces and the volcano. She doesn't look at them.
And then, she reaches it. And stops.
The sad, simple photograph. The girl is still laughing.
She stands there for a long time before she feels the first tear on her cheek. She stands there, and she just breathes.
And somehow, she knows.
She knows what he feels, and she knows what she feels, and she knows what she threw away. And beyond all, she knows how to fix it.
She looks at the photograph through her tears, and remembers what she thought when she saw it before. She hadn't laughed in a very long time. She couldn't remember the last time she laughed. She couldn't remember the last time she found something funny.
Standing there in the exhibit, staring at the photograph, crying, she laughs out loud.
--
She is a Gryffindor, she reminds herself. She should be courageous.
It takes incredible strength to put her face in the green fire. It takes more strength to say, determinedly, his address.
It takes everything to look at him once she's flooed him. He doesn't look surprised, exactly, but she can tell that he is, a little bit. His face is unreadable and expressionless.
But she can read it in those grey eyes. Something neither would dare to express aloud. Hope.
She doesn't pause to admire the irony as she asks him if he would like to come to her loft.
He doesn't laugh or smirk or toy with her.
He just looks at her, like he's slipping and everything is fading.
And says yes.
--
When she sets up the easel, she doesn't ask him to pose or anything. It wouldn't be right.
He looks at her, and he knows. They both know.
He just lays down on the floor, and looks up at the ceiling.
But then, he turns, and looks at her.
And, she looks into his grey eyes, and then down at the blank canvas, and she smiles. She knows exactly what to do with it.
She lifts her paintbrush.