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“Please, Draco. Don’t do this. It was one mistake!” The words were rushed out of his mouth as Draco rushed about the room gathering his things.
“One mistake? One? Oh, please tell me how cheating on me with Ginny for months was one mistake. Not to mention, you got the girl pregnant, Harry.” Draco held back tears, turning away from him.
“We used protection, she was supposed to be on muggle birth control as well.”
“Well obviously it didn’t work, Harry. What the bloody hell were you thinking? I can understand if you were sloshed, but multiple months? And to find out from her sending you ultrasounds? That’s just not something that we can recover over.” Draco took one more look over the flat that they had shared for a year. “Screw you, Potter. I hope you’re happy.” With a turn of his feet, Draco disapparated.
Arriving in the foyer of his childhood home, he crumpled to the floor, sobs wracking his body. The tile felt nice against his too hot skin and he tugged at the collar of the jumper he was wearing, dark green in color but it was swirling in his vision as he tried to get it off.
Heels clicking resounded around him, a woman crouching down, bushy hair tied in a bun on top of her head. “Draco?” Seeing the tears, Hermione gathered him in her arms, running her hands over his hair and rocking him while he cried in her arms. “What happened Draco?”
“Potter has been cheating on me for months.” He muttered into her neck, squeezing his eyes shut. That was the first time it had resonated with him. “He threw away everything we had, Hermione. What kind of idiot does that?”
“A bloody idiot. I’m sorry, Draco, truly. He shouldn’t of done that and I promise that if I had known I would have told you.” Hermione shifted so they were in a more comfortable position on the cold tile. “He shouldn’t of done that to you. You were so good to him.”
“I was.” Draco pulled himself out of her embrace. “But he was the best thing I’ve ever had. I don’t know who I am without him, Hermione.”
“That’s okay. We’ve all been there and I can tell you that things will get better, I promise.” Hermione reached out and grabbed his hand, smiling sadly at him.
“Why are you here, anyways? Shouldn’t you be at your flat?”
“Actually, I came here to talk to your mother but she isn’t in at the moment. I needed to ask her about something concerning wizarding language laws.” Oh yes, she was in work clothes wasn’t she.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to head up to my bedroom and think, it was lovely seeing you Hermione.” Draco got up, Hermione following right after.
“Are you sure you don’t want company tonight? You just went through a major breakup, I don’t want to leave you all by yourself.” She wrung her hands, her brow crinkling.
“I’m fine Granger. I’ve gone through worse.” Draco started up the marble staircase, turning back to wish her a good evening as he went. He waited until he heard the pop of her disapparating until he stopped on the stairs, taking a deep breath as the tears streamed silently down his cheeks. He kept up the stairs, opening the door to his room, seeing flashbacks when he opened the door. He closed his eyes to try and get rid of them, but they wouldn’t leave.
An owl flies into Draco’s open window, a fifteen year old Draco sitting at the dark desk in the corner, scribbling furiously onto the parchment with his quill scratching across the page. The bird lands on his shoulder and Draco jumps slightly, lightly reprimanding the tawny bird but taking the letter from it’s claws. He unfurled the beige parchment, his hands slightly trembling fearing that it would be from his father who was away with a woman in the states. To his surprise, it was not his fathers calculated handwriting, but sloppy and uneven writing. It was a letter. To draco, from Harry Potter asking to be allies, friends even. Draco never thought that this could happen, this had to be a joke.
But it wasn’t. The whole summer they kept in touch, Draco’s faithful owl keeping away from his father when he was home, delivering messages from Harry to him and only him. His father didn’t find out until after the war when the two boys got into a relationship.
A sixteen year old Draco sits on top of his bed, his pale left forearm outstretched, hovering over his silk bed sheets. A tub of ointment sits open on his right side, the contents of which Draco is currently trying to smear over the dark mark on his forearm, the skin around it getting more agitated and starting to burn the more he tries to soothe the red scratch marks that he’s made over the last few weeks. As he reaches down to get more ointment onto his fingers, his owl swoops in through his window and lands on his armoir. Another letter from Harry, apparently he has the best timing known to man.
Draco shook his head to get the memories out of his mind and stepped into his bedroom. It was the same as he left it, bed perfectly made and everything in its place. It hadn’t collected any dust, something he would have to thank the house elves for. He sat down on the bed, looking around at the place that was full of many memories, good and bad. Draco layed down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, thinking about his day. Harry was a bloody idiot, he never thought that this would hurt this much. Sure, he had seen friends go through breakups, but he always thought that they were just overreacting. But this hurt like hell. It felt like someone had gripped his chest and tore his heart out. I guess they weren’t overreacting after all… As Draco was thinking, he fell into a restless sleep filled with nightmarish images.
When there was a knock on his door at 5:30, he panicked. He was still part way in his nightmare, so his first instinct was to grab his wand and walk slowly towards the door. He opened it with his wand raised, expecting it to be the dementors in his dream, but it was only a bushy haired head of magical creatures. “‘Mione?” His sleep addled mind didn’t register the cutting off of the first part of her name when he spoke it.
“Do you mind if I come in?” She held a basket in one hand and her wand in the other, tucking her wand into her boot as she stood in the doorway. He nodded and she crossed the doorway into his bedroom. “You know, I’ve always kind of wondered what your bedroom must look like. Always figured that everything would be lined with solid gold or silver, since you always talked about how rich you are at school. This is actually pretty nice. I like the color scheme, very Slytherin.”
“Hermione, in the nicest way possible, what the bloody hell are you doing here?” Draco rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he listened to Hermione ramble about his color scheme.
“Oh yeah,” she gestured to the basket she was holding, “We’re having dinner in the garden.”
“Hermione, I don’t know if you know this but it’s bloody cold outside.” Draco gestured to the frost on the windows.
“I know, but I have a plan. Now go take a shower, I’ll pick out what you need to wear and I’ll be waiting by the kitchen after you get dressed. If you aren’t down in an hour I’m going to send a house elf to come get you.” She pushed Draco towards his bathroom and when he shut the door, she moved towards his closet. Not seeing much of interest, she moved towards the bag he had left on his bed. She grabbed a beige sweater, brown pants, and a coat and placed them all on the bed for him to put on, then left to the kitchens to get food.
An hour later, Draco showed up by the kitchens, and Hermione entered the door with a pink nose and windswept hair. “I’m going to freeze out there Hermione.” He complained as he put on his coat and a green scarf he had picked up along the way.
“You’ll be fine, trust me.” She grabbed the door handle with one hand and his hand with another, telling him it was so that he didn’t slip on the ice. They walked out to the gardens, Draco clutching his coat closed with one hand and holding her hand in the other. They got to the middle of the gardens and Draco audibly gasped. It was gorgeous. Lights were strung up along the hedges, and he wasn’t cold anymore. The blanket was laid down on the ground with the basket on top of it. “See? I told you that you would be fine.”
“Hermione…. This is exactly what I needed, thank you.” And for the first time that day, Draco smiled.