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Draco sees her when he least expects to. Once Potter disappeared to wherever his Golden Trio friends were, that was his cue to remain by his family’s side, still unsure of what was going to happen to them.
Not that he cares about Lucius.
So, when his broken family is done huddling together to grasp onto some sort of warmth that hasn’t been there for years, his gaze snaps up, tired and weary until it pins on her.
His eyes widen and he blinks rapidly to make sense of what he’s seeing; of her dishevelled state and that . . . paleness to her that he adamantly refuses to believe is concerning him.
Her brown eyes are equally wide as his, if not for the way her mouth falls open and words refuse to come out, no matter how hard she may be trying.
Draco tenses, wondering if the haughty know-it-all is here to taunt them and throw him in Azkaban, even if a part of him tells him that Granger is nothing like that.
“What are you doing here?” he asks evenly, recoiling back when she takes a hesitant step forward. He grabs his mother’s arm and pulls her behind him, even when Lucius stares at him oddly.
“Who are you talking to, Draco?” his father demands, and he wants to ignore him so bad—what kind of question even is that?—but Granger’s shattered expression forces him to acknowledge the man’s presence.
“Granger,” he answers stiffly, his gaze darting between the two. “Can’t you see her?”
Before his father had a chance to reply, a keening scream from Potter informs him of the answer.
Granger is dead.
Hermione Granger died at the hands of Rodolphus Lestrange, the shadow of a grieving man unleashing the monster within him and killing the first witch his gaze landed on.
Only thing they knew was that Granger had seen Potter win before dying.
Uncharacteristically, Draco hopes that the fact comforts the Boy-Who-Refuses-To-Die, but then he remembers how the broken saviour had begged him to make Granger visible, even when Draco had told him that there was no way he could do that.
Granger watched on with sad eyes.
According to McGonagall, she was his soulmate.
To him, she was nothing.
“Why are you still here?” Draco demands, not bothering to look up from his clasped hands even as a number of people walk in to set his future. Strangers send him funny looks for talking to the air—he can feel them burning on the back of his head.
“I don’t know.”
She’s so quiet, and it annoys him to no end. Had she not ruined his life enough when she was alive, for her to continue doing so even in death?
Potter is there, surprisingly, and he defends Draco and his mother like his life depends on it.
He puts it down to him being the only medium between life and Granger.
“Is she—is she there?” asks Potter hesitantly, walking inside of his flat as though he owned it. No hello’s or anything - not that Draco cares for that.
Draco’s gaze sweeps over the living room and he finds her by Potter’s side, her lip quivering as she struggles to hold his arm.
“Yes.”
The Auror’s gaze holds a silent question, and as he expels a heavy sigh, Draco nods at the location of the ghost— ghost because Hermione Granger was dead —and Potter’s head immediately snaps to his side, his hands clenched tight.
“Hermione,” he calls brokenly, his hand helplessly phasing through Granger’s inhuman form. “It’s all my fault—I can’t live without you—please—“
“It’s not your fault,” Granger half-sobs, going for steady but obviously coming off weak. Draco wonders why the sound of it makes his heart clench, and he remembers the past fire in her voice every time he’d come face to face with her.
Draco delivers the boy her words, and they go on and on, putting the blame on themselves even though they should clearly know that nothing will bring her back.
Idiots.
Draco watches as his mother sips on her cup of tea, humming under the soft breeze of September. His foot stops mid-air, and he second guesses if he should join her.
She looks so . . . carefree with his father now in Azkaban and maybe, he should just leave her be in her sudden bout of freedom.
“She loves you so dearly.”
Draco can’t help but turn his head to look at her. He catches onto the wistfulness in her tone, but he scowls, instead. “Stop thinking you know everything, Granger,” he snarls, his wand raised high.
Granger rolls her eyes at his hand. “You can’t hurt me. I’m already dead,” she says in matter-of-fact tone, and his heart stops for a second because it brings him back to those times in class where he wasn’t a Death Eater and she was alive. “And whenever you tell me to ‘fuck off’, I have enough time to study your mom. I assure you - she loves you a lot.”
“I already knew that,” he mutters angrily, his brows knitted together as he looks back at his mother. The woman is now approaching him in long, elegant strides, but her gaze is fixed somewhere where Granger is supposed to be.
“Is she here, dear?” she questions as soon as she joins him, and he nods reluctantly, throwing a scowl at the small smile on Granger’s face.
Are ghosts allowed to be happy, now?
“Miss Granger, I wish you could have a cup of tea with me . . .” his mother trails off with a teary gaze, even when Draco is sure that the most she has seen of Granger was when she was being tortured by Aunt Bella.
Granger seems to be thinking something along those lines because she merely grimaces.
“Like what you see?”
Granger rolls her eyes, but a small smirk still stretches along her tinted lips. Draco idly wonders if that’s what they’d looked like during the battle.
His smile falters.
“You’re dead.”
She huffs haughtily. “Thank you for informing me,” she says sharply, but he can still see the way she flinches at the word. He almost reaches out to hold her hand because—
—because he has always hated seeing girls cry, Pansy or even his own mother, and Granger is his bloody soulmate for whatever reason—
“Did it hurt?” slips out of his mouth before he can catch the question, and he feels like bloody Weasley for lacking manners.
—For the dead.
Granger shakes her head, her smile faint. “I was too focused on watching over Harry.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” she replies instantly, some sort of fire in her eyes that he believes only she can hold in her eyes as a ghost. “He has always been worth it.”
Draco scowls darkly.
He is petty, Draco soon comes to realize. His lift stops at the Auror Department and he has half the mind to just turn on his heel and go back home, because Potter is heading his way and it means that Granger gets to see the man who’s worth all of it.
But Granger holds such a hopeful glint in her eyes that he merely expels a heavy, defeated sigh and trudges on, his jaw locked tight. “Potter.”
“Draco,” he greets, because apparently they are now on the first name level. He isn’t sure he likes it, but the grin on Granger’s face leads him to hesitate.
She’s been making him do that a lot, lately.
“Is she—“
Draco rolls his eyes. “She never leaves my side, Potter. Or maybe, she does when I sleep, just to watch over you and Weasley,” he says tauntingly, and he watches carefully to see if Potter will leave.
The boy merely grimaces at Weasley’s mention. Granger catches on to it, and she sends him a confused look. “Ask him what happened with Ron.”
Draco frowns at the girl, before looking back at Potter. “What happened to Weasley?”
Potter glances towards Hermione - only an empty spot for the Wonder Boy, and there’s a sad sheen in his eyes that doesn’t disappear as he says, “He refuses to believe that Draco is your—err, your soulmate.”
Granger looks on pityingly. Draco scowls darkly.
What the fuck is so hard to believe?
Draco wakes up with a gasp, and he’s disoriented with the memories of his dream. He refuses to believe he dreamt about her, but even if he did . . . it’s just because she’s by his side all day.
He looks around, expecting to find her sitting on his sofa chair and acting like she can also sleep, but the spot - no, the whole room is empty and he suddenly feels his heart race.
Has it all just been a sick game of his conscience? Or worse yet, did she leave him?
To look for Weasley.
He shakes his head with a loud groan. Fuck, he hates the way his chest begins to boil over something that shouldn’t matter, at all. Not when Granger is dead and there’s no point in being—in being jealous.
He hates to admit it, but his mind is very good at throwing the harsh reality at his face.
“What are you doing up so early?”
His head snaps towards the door and he swallows a sigh of relief, frowning instead. “None of your business,” he snaps, but then he feels bad because she’s dead and only he can see her. “I had a dream.”
Granger raises a brow. “A bad one?” she asks softly, and can ghosts feel concern?
He drags his hand across his face very slowly. “A good one. That’s why I don’t like it.”
She raises an inquisitive brow, tilting her head at just the right angle as she trudges forward. “Were you . . . dreaming about me?” she asks quietly, a small smile at her lips that he forces his eyes away from, so that he can glare at her.
“Have you ever had one of me?” he asks instead of replying and luckily, Granger is distracted enough by the question.
She nods promptly. “Yes.”
His mouth falls open in surprise, and he feels something akin to happiness and sheer pride bubble beneath the scars of war and loss. “Really? When?”
She smiled wryly. “Third year, when I punched you.”
“Fuck me.” Draco groans loudly, his head in his hands once he catches a glimpse of fucking red hair. He never thought he would avoid a colour so much before this.
He refuses to look at Herm— Granger , sure that she will start pleading with him to personally walk up to Weasley, but however reformed Draco may be, he hasn’t gotten that far.
He doesn’t ever want to, he thinks morosely as he eyes the approaching redhead with a dark, uninviting scowl. The former Gryffindor either is rather oblivious, or just tactless. “Malfoy.”
“Weasel.”
“Be nice,” Granger chides from the new position she has immediately taken, swimming in Weasley’s surroundings and looking with every bit of admiration as she stares at him.
“I’d rather lick a cheese grater.”
Weasley makes a face, looking where Draco just glanced at. “Hermione . . . hey.”
Almost two years now and this is the first thing he says to his . . . what? Dead Girlfriend?
Pitiful.
Granger continues to look like Weasley has kissed the sun, and with a sigh that tells both parties of how much Draco wants to be anywhere else but there, he relays each and every word of the girl that would’ve grown to become a Head Girl and possibly Minister of Magic.
Draco smirks triumphantly when he meets Granger’s awed stare. She was watching the whole thing with wide, attentive eyes to make sure that she hadn’t messed up the instructions for the Potion, and now—
—now his arm no longer bears the Dark Mark.
He could kiss her right now, but doesn’t voice it. Salazar, he’s not stupid. He especially should remember not to get attached to a ghost, soulmate or not.
“You may still be bossy and think a little too much, but at least I benefited from it.”
“You’re welcome,” she sings with a wide smile, and her deep, brown eyes twinkle under the light. She takes one step forward, her hand hovering just over his upturned palm and then, his bare arm. “Perfect. How it was always meant to look.”
Draco tenses, his eyes feeling heavy with a sudden intensity when they sweep over Granger’s features. They are etched and mingled with too many emotions for him to focus on just one. There’s pride, joy, and . . . love.
He realizes that the intensity he was feeling is love too and suddenly, he can no longer reach for oxygen, no matter how much Granger’s voice rings in his ears and reminds him to just breathe.
Then, why isn’t she doing so?
Hermione Granger left for the light on the night of Christmas day, in the same Burrow that Draco was dragged to for her sake.
And the woman takes one last look towards her overjoyed, loved ones, says the most heartwarming and shattering words to Draco, and just leaves the deafening silence behind.
Fuck, he loved her.