Disclaimer: Not mine.

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Soft. Wet. Warm. Comforting. A hand slides around my waist, pulling me in closer, and a tongue slips into my mouth.

Perfect.

I open my eyes to a haze of red. I push Ron's hair out of his eyes, his clear blue eyes.

Red hair and blue eyes.

I shut my eyes again. I won't, I won't think about that, not now. It isn't fair to Ron.

But the thoughts come unbidden. Thoughts of silver eyes and hair. Thoughts of my Draco.

He's not mine anymore. I lost him. And I've moved on. Think of Ron. Sweet Ron, who loves me. He's loved me for longer than I can imagine. Think of him, kissing me right now. I open my eyes again; there he is, looking at me so very lovingly and slipping his hand up the back of my shirt.

I sigh mentally and focus on him, right there in front of me, cataloguing my 'Draco issue' for later thought.

Some ten minutes pass and it's time for 'later thought.' Ron, smiling from ear to ear, has to go for Quidditch practice, and I'm alone again. I should still be thinking of him, enchanted by him, but my mind is immediately back on my ex-boyfriend, who I still, at least in my head, call 'My Draco.'

Just as I have on so many nights, I replay the conversation in my head. His pained voice as he told me we couldn't be. His attempts to calm me, even though, for reasons I will never understand, I wasn't upset. Not then. I had seen it coming.

We had been together over a year. We were in love, sixteen and completely head over heels for each other. But we couldn't tell people. He was a Malfoy, and I was a mudblood. We weren't meant to be. Yet, we were anyway. For a year.

We did tell our friends. Ron and Harry were happy for me. They saw this side of Draco; still didn't really like him, but accepted him. The school in general slowly became aware and just let it slide, allowing us to slip by. Then, his parents found out.

It's not that I approve of lying to parents, but I saw the danger. The Malfoys are a pureblood wizarding family, and I am completely muggle-born. Yet, they seemed to take it well, perhaps thinking of it as one of Draco's 'phases.' I never understood what parents thought they were doing, calling everything their kids do wrong a 'phase,' but it seems to work for them, so I was Draco's 'Mudblood phase.'

We knew what they thought, but we were going to stay together regardless. Not a 'phase,' not a 'fling,' but a relationship. Love. Then that conversation, that terrible conversation.

"Hermione, love, I can't do it anymore. I can't keep seeing you knowing how much it hurts my parents. My mother, she's so special to me, and she is so upset, Hermione. What can I do? I just, can't keep this up."

I had seen it coming. He had gotten quiet since his parents found out. He hardly saw me, and we never met alone. We barely talked beyond every day pleasantries, and yet, I had held out hope that I was imagining things.

Lying on the couch in the common room, my mind drifts from the conversation to the voice and from the voice to the face. I don't see the pained look from that day, I never remember that face, only the loving face he wore every time I saw him during that year. The face I loved.

I picture that face, I remember his kisses, his hands on me, and mine on him, and I wonder. Wondering is the most futile of exercises known to mankind, but I do it regularly, always the same thing. Should I have fought?

When he said…that…I didn't. I nodded, said I understood, told him I wasn't upset. I said, "I can't come between you and your mother." I told him everything was alright, I would survive, and I gave him back his ring, his thousand year old family ring that I had worn for the entirety of that year, never taking it off, even to shower.

If I had fought, if I had piped up and said, "No, I won't let you go. Your mother will cope, it will be okay, we have each other!" Would it have worked? Would he still be mine? I will never know.

Will I ever be whole again? It has been four months since that awful day, and I still stop and wonder every night. I see his face and hear his voice, even though I avoid him entirely, too afraid to face him. Will I ever be able to move on?

And on top of these questions, questions I have struggled with for the whole of four months, are new ones. Am I being fair to Ron? Is this honest? Should I wait longer? I worry, if I wait for the hurt to go away, I will be an old maid.

I curl up on the couch, back to the fire, letting the questions spin in my head. I never get anywhere near answers. They haunt me, like ghosts, the ghosts of a lost love. Not dead like in fantastical romance stories, no, he's very much alive, but lost to me.

And the answers aren't mine to have, dancing at my fingertips, they elude me, as if playing a children's game. I drift into a fretful sleep, the only kind I get, hopefully to deepen later, as the questions are banished by dreams, dreams so often haunted by my living ghost, My Draco.