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The first time she sees him, he is standing in the corner of her hospital room. She’s been asleep — or unconscious. It doesn’t matter which, but now her body and mind are rousing once more. He listens as she tries to take a deep breath, hears the resistance of her lungs as they try to unfold. He feels her bite back a cough, trying to suppress a spasm. The only other sound in the room is the steady beep of the monitor and her mother’s soft snores from the chair in which she dozes.
He’s been watching her for sometime. Longer than usual. Long enough to notice the possessions that adorn her room: a colourful quilt draped over her small form. A stack of books. Several cards and photos scattered about. He seldom pays attention to such material possessions, irrelevant as they are.
However, he’s also been watching long enough to notice things about her: the curl of her hair, the length of her eyelashes, her slender fingers, the pallor of her skin. He sees them, though her features are as unimportant as the items in the room. After all, he’s only here for one thing. Her. No matter what she looks like, what she has, what she’s done or left undone. None of it is his concern. Only her.
Young, old, rich, poor. All alone or surrounded by friends and family: none of it makes a difference. When it’s time, he comes all the same, which is what has drawn him to this particular room, though not why he stays. It’s her time, or will be soon. And yet, for some reason, he hasn’t yet approached her. Instead, he stands back and watches. If he had someone to answer to, he knows there’s no explanation, but for some reason, she feels different from the myriad of others he sees.
It’s unsettling. It’s never been difficult to maintain his focus. Day in, day out, the work is the same. After so many years, more than he cares to remember, he doesn’t know what could possibly be different about this moment, or about her. She looks utterly ordinary, if not a bit worse for wear for her ordeal, though that doesn’t bother him. He’s seen people at both ends of the spectrum, and everywhere in between.
He watches as her eyes slowly open, and she takes in the room around her. The bed in which she finds herself. The hospital gown that snaps at the shoulder. She blinks - once, twice - as the room returns to focus, and she turns her head towards the still slumbering form of her mother. But then her gaze falls on him, and her face takes on a confused, if not curious, look.
He keeps his expression neutral, though he, too, is surprised. She shouldn’t be able to see him. Not yet, when he hasn’t yet made up his mind, when he hasn’t approached her. While the trajectory to human life only flows in one direction, he still has some latitude in minutes, or moments. Perhaps her situation is more dire than he thinks. He watches as a frown forms on her face, as if trying to puzzle out what this stranger is doing in her room.
“Oh, honey. You’re awake.”
She turns her head again, this time towards the sound of her mother’s voice. There’s no way she can miss the creases of her mother’s forehead, or the worry that she carries.
Not that either of them chose this path for themselves.
He makes a split second decision, and slips out of the room, deciding to leave the two of them to their moment. There will be another time. There’s always another time.
_____
Some days later, he finds himself retracing his steps, sure that any recognition on her part must have been a fluke. Besides, there’s work to be done. Again, he steps inside her room. This time, however, she’s not sleeping, and her reaction is immediate.
“You’re back.”
Today, she’s sitting up in bed, holding a book. He can’t help but notice how more colour infuses her cheeks than the last time he was here.
He stands at the wall and remains quiet, unsure what to say to this matter-of-fact reception. He still doesn’t understand why she can see him before she is supposed to. He knows her body is weak and depleted, but there’s something else, too. She’s bold — a fighter, despite what ails her.
“I thought I must have imagined you.”
He shakes his head slowly as she takes in his appearance. Over the years, his clothes have changed. He rather likes this style: a suit nice enough to look tailored. Black as night. Black as the womb. It’s simple and yet elegant, and it speaks to who he is. His only bit of whimsy are the cufflinks he sports: silver skulls with emerald green eyes. It is a formal job, after all. Would anyone pay attention if he appeared in jeans and a t-shirt?
“Well, what’s the plan?”
“Plan?” He can’t help the tone of surprise in his voice.
“Yes, you’ve come for me?”
What a strange creature, he thinks. He’s met so many people, both those ready and those not. But rarely does he meet someone so willing to engage him head on.
“Yes,” he starts, but quickly backtracks. “I mean, no.”
The yes is the truth, but somehow, it’s the no that lingers.
“Really? The first time I thought for sure you were, though I’m doing better now. They’re nearly ready to send me home.”
He takes a step towards her with narrowed eyes, trying to ensure he’s not missing some vital detail of their encounter.
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“Should I be? After all, you are inevitable.”
He rolls his eyes in response. Her words are far from original. But he’s surprised by her humour. Her tone is brave, even though he can hear the layers underneath of someone who has fought for such a long time.
“I’d prefer you weren’t,” he offers. It feels honest enough.
“Well, then, if you don’t mind. I’d like to finish this part.” She looks down at the book on her lap before gesturing to the empty seat beside her bed, inviting him in rather than shooing him from the room.
His eyes go wide, but he sits nonetheless.
“Have you read much C. S. Lewis?”
He shakes his head.
“Of course,” she laughs, realising the absurdity of her question. “I’m sure there’s not much time for reading in your line of work. Then I won’t worry about spoiling the plot. Now, where was I?”
What an odd creature she is. She picks up the book and begins to read out loud, and in a moment, he finds himself immersed in a world of fantasy and wonder.
“They say Aslan is on the move—perhaps has already landed.”
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realise that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.
Soothed by her voice, he takes a deep breath in. She smells of antiseptic and illness. They’re all familiar smells to him, especially in this place, and they don’t belong to her. But there’s also something more, something uniquely her. Sweet, like gardenia, but not cloyingly so. Just a hint. It’s a trace of her essence, even dampened.
At the end of the next page, she yawns wide. Even simple exertion remains a challenge. She puts her book down and lowers the head of her bed just enough so she can nestle in her blankets. Then she closes her eyes, but remembers who is sitting at her bedside. So, she lazily opens one to peer at him. “I’m going to take a nap now. Okay?”
She’s a bossy little thing, and all he can do is nod his assent.
For a while, he sits and watches even after her breathing evens out. He thinks about the story she’d read of animals who talked to children and a lion who was perhaps something more. It’s both confusing and intriguing, and he wants to know what happens next. But that is something not really meant for him.
If he wants to, he can reach over and touch her right now, as she sleeps peacefully. She’d drift away without even knowing. But just the idea makes him feel strangely hollow, so he stands and leaves the room. He drifts into three other rooms on the way to the operating theatre where Mr McTavish’s fall will turn out to be fatal. But along the way, no one else pays him any mind, as always, until he approaches the man himself. But even McTavish’s attention is elsewhere, and hasn’t noticed the surgeons working furiously to save his life, though their efforts are futile. However, anaesthesia is no match for an unhappy soul. The man is not thrilled about having tripped over his pet chihuahua — and curses up a storm the entire way.
_____
He doesn’t return to her room, at least not right away. There’s plenty to keep him busy. But when he finds himself in a familiar corridor, he decides it can’t really hurt. The room is empty, though, stripped of the possessions he’d come to see as hers. The homemade quilt. The book she’d been reading. A photo of a fat, orange cat standing in a frame. He didn’t come for her, so he knows she must be somewhere. Then he remembers what she’d said about being released. Something about this strikes him as so very right, and also wrong.
After all, as she said, he is inevitable. And their paths will cross soon enough.
But he finds he harbours a strange sense of loss within him, and without a conscious thought, he reaches out for the sound of her heartbeat, for the essence of her scent, and follows them like a trail.
They lead him to an unassuming house in a neighbourhood of unassuming houses. Yet, somehow, he knows she is inside.
And something inside him is placated by that thought.
She looks up from her book when he enters. The room is so full of light that for a moment, he’s taken aback. Standing there in the black suit he always wears, he’s out of place in a world so vibrant. He doesn’t belong. And yet her face brightens when she sees him.
“What should I call you?”
For a moment, he considers how to respond. Who he is has always been obvious to those that pay attention, though he’s not sure why he’s garnered her notice or attention.
To intuit who he is is one thing. To say it is another. He knows the way his presence lingers, and he doesn’t want to scare her, regardless of how brave she seems.
“You do have a name,” she prompts after a minute of silence as he struggles to find the right words.
He tilts his head and thinks. He had a name once, if only he could remember. No one has ever cared to ask his name, because what he brings and who he is known as have become synonymous. After all, why would a name matter when the only interactions he has are always short and to the point?
Until now.
After another moment, it comes to him.
“Draco.”
“Ahh,” she sighs in familiarity. “Like the constellation.”
“In a way,” he explains. After all, what’s in a name? Particularly one that’s never used. It feels odd to have shared it with her, though far better than other names he’s known by.
Again, he feels something shift inside him and looks away to take in her room.
It’s much like the hospital room, just filled with more. The same quilt is now draped over this bed, and the pile of books on her bedside table is much higher. The opposite wall holds a bookshelf whose shelves sag under the weight of their load.
Her smell is stronger here, too. The gardenias — the smell he has come to associate with her — tickle his nose. She points to a chair beside the bed, and for some reason, he sits.
_____
The two of them develop a pattern, of sorts. Whenever he comes, she is nearly always waiting. Or napping, as if to conserve her energy for her visitors. He can’t begin to think that she wants these visits, though he can’t miss the way her face brightens upon his arrival.
Between the two of them, it’s an unusual detente. She enjoys his company, even though he’s a harbinger of what’s to come. And for his part, he can neither stay away, nor is he ready for her to be gone.
If it’s odd that in all his time, he’s never had an interaction like this, he doesn’t give it much thought.
Still, he’s surprised when, for once, her face is grim as he takes the chair beside her bed with a sigh. “You’ve been busy.”
He looks at her curiously, wondering what his tell might be. She’s not wrong. But then again, it’s nearly always a full day. She taps the front page of the paper that her father would have brought to her earlier, so they could discuss world events as he sips his morning coffee. Draco knows the importance of the routine to the man and how he purposefully keeps his face cheerful, though it falls as soon as he steps over the threshold. After all, his daughter’s world has become so very small, and carefully filtered. Only positivity about her prognosis. Only mentions of her recovery, even when everyone knows that is out of reach.
Maybe that’s the reason she looks for him. He brings an injection of reality to balance out the parade of levity. But then again, she, too, has brought much to his existence. He wonders about the complications of their acquaintanceship and the inevitability of their connection, and the subtle ways he has changed.
He glances down at the paper and blanches at the headline.
Lorry Blindsides Bus - Eight Dead, Thirteen Injured
When he looks up again, the look on her face is carefully neutral.
“Is it hard?”
Many are quick to make him the villain, though that’s far from what he is. Nor is he an angel. He simply is. A tool, almost. One used to shuffle people from one existence towards the next. Does the hammer give a thought to its role in driving the nail? Does it care what lies behind the wall?
No, for the hammer’s world is not the same as the nail’s and his concerns aren’t those of who he visits, until now, in the presence of a tired, wild-haired girl who makes him think about things he never has before.
Should it be hard? Should he be concerned? After all, it just is. He just is.
But then again, even those questions belie the difference between what he does and what he is doing right now, so far from anything he’s ever done before. He feels off-kilter at the way her question has stripped him bare. He mumbles an excuse and leaves, though he spends the rest of the day giving far more consideration than he ever has to the others he comes in contact with.
_____
“Knight to E5.”
She places her piece near one of his, but he’s wary. Instead of taking it, he studies the board, trying to determine her level of subterfuge. It is, he’s quickly learned, nearly always a trap.
He knows frivolity and he knows play, though he’s indulged in neither. Simply put, they are outside the bounds of what he needs to do, and so he’s never spent time on them. But, when she’s well enough, she sits him down at the chess set in her room and insists he learn the game.
“You mean to tell me you’ve never played?” Surprise lights up her face before she catches herself and nods in understanding. And after that, their repertoire of activities increases by one. She’s an excellent teacher, and he catches on quickly, though there is some level of nuance that he misses. He’s no stranger to strategy. He has to read situations and quickly decide on the best course of action. But perhaps his instincts have grown dull, being used for only one set of actions.
After he moves his piece, she grins, and he knows he’s chosen incorrectly. Or maybe he hasn’t, because the way her face lights up is worth the gloating that’s sure to come.
But she surprises him.
“That’s it! You got it.”
As she launches into her explanation, he realises her smile is praise meant for him. He’d made the right move. She does a little dance in her seat before setting her next trap. And all he can do is watch the way her slender fingers grip the pieces, as she divests him of another of his pawns. They are, after all, sacrificial creatures, nearly always destined for the side of the board. And he wonders how he, too, has come to be ensnared.
“Who are you talking to, dear?” Her mother calls out from downstairs.
Immediately, Hermione’s eyes grow wide, having been caught, and the tone of her voice changes to a picture of innocence. “No one, Mum. Just talking to myself.”
He smirks at how easily the lie falls from her mouth, though he knows there’s no other way to explain it.
She raises an eyebrow, and suddenly reaches out to swat at him faster than he thinks she is able. But he is faster — he must be to catch those who seek to elude his grip. He shifts away, retreating to stand at the foot of her bed, where she can’t follow.
“Don’t do that.” His voice is firm. Something to be obeyed, but not harsh. He only intends to warn, not to scold.
But her hand lingers in the air between them.
“I- I thought-” Her voice trails off and her lip quivers with rejection, though it’s not at all what he means.
Seeing her face so filled with anguish, he nearly takes a step forward. For an instant, he wishes his reality were different, that he could go to her, comfort her. He’s never wished for such a thing before. However, this boundary is clear, and it’s one that can only be crossed once.
“You can’t touch me.” He tries to soften the tone of his voice. “Never.”
He watches the light behind her eyes change, resolve, settle.
“I- I understand,” she answers, though she curls up and turns her back to him, the chess set forgotten.
He hears her breath stutter, once, twice. And then she sighs, “I think I want to be alone now.”
The dismissal stings. Though he doesn’t want to go, he has no choice but to comply. After all, he can give her this moment, since he almost always takes from her. Her words, her time. Eventually, he’ll take her very existence. However, he lingers at her door hoping she might change her mind and call him back. He pauses again at the foot of the stairs watching Helen Granger sit quietly sobbing into a cup of tea.
When it comes down to it, she’s the one with the most to lose. The ones left behind nearly always are. And he’ll take everything from her.
_____
The next time he comes, her pallor has changed. It’s different from the hospital. The yellow undertones of a failing liver. She’s resting, though there’s music playing in the background. He’s heard it before, though he has no idea what it is. But it seems important to her, which means he’s curious. Why this choice? Why now? At a time when there are far fewer options ahead rather than behind, every decision carries meaning. Deliberation. After all, it’s not infrequently that someone mourns the choices they made to focus on that which doesn’t really matter.
Music, foods, experiences. When people know their time is short, wringing those extra few pleasures out of the last few minutes of life becomes important. Or at least they think it does. Those who he comes to often request one more meal or one more chance to see the sun. It has never made sense to him to save living for the moment of dying, not for those who’ve had an entire life to live.
It’s different for her, though. He has come to know how her life has been filled with hospitals and procedures for far too many years. And she’s edging ever closer to an event horizon she won’t be able to return from.
Her book sits unopened. He picks it up and flips through the well-worn pages, stopping to glance at phrases she’s underlined, words she’s deemed important. He finds the place where she’d last read to him; and he continues from there, enraptured at how something as simple as a combination of letters on a page can be so captivating.
Eventually, she opens one eye to see who’s turning the pages.
“No chess today?”
He’d been dismissed so abruptly last time, that she makes a joke both surprises and pleases him. He closes the book and looks at her fondly, though he’s far too serious to break a smile.
He sees forgiveness in her eyes, and perhaps a touch of contrition, and sets the book aside.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, by way of his own apology, but her brows furrow.
“Why? You were just being you.” She glances down at his hands and he knows she hasn’t forgotten. He opens and flexes them before dropping them to his lap. Not knowing what she’s thinking makes him anxious, but he can do nothing but wait until she decides to let him in.
She lifts her gaze to him and takes a deep breath. “What will it feel like?”
He doesn’t know how to answer her. Doesn’t want to lie.
After all, how would he know? He is the harbinger, not the tidings. The conductor, not the passenger. He can only tell her what he has seen, since she goes somewhere he cannot follow. There are people who beg and plead for more time, and others who readily take his hand and follow, ready to move forward.
He doesn’t want to think what it will be like for him to take her. Or what it will feel like after.
“How exactly does it work?”
At least that part is simple. This much she already knows. “I touch you.”
He cannot make sense of the relief she shows at his words. He doesn’t understand the unfamiliar twist he feels in his chest.
“So, you can touch me,” she says plainly. “You will.”
“At the last,” he replies, because he knows he has to, whether or not he wants to. Already she’s lived longer than she was meant to. Her time was up on that very first day. But for some reason, he hesitated, and he is so very glad for the reprieve. For his lack of action that has given them this time and connection.
But he’s allowed to be selfish. He’s earned at least that. He can have this one thing when his entire existence he’s done nothing but take.
The room is silent. He sees her cheeks heat and can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking. Always thinking. It’s one of the qualities about her that he likes best — her capacity to rise above the hand she’s been dealt.
“What?” he finally asks, curious about what she’s come up with.
“I think I should like it to be a kiss.”
Her words stun him. But she smiles, pleased with her cleverness.
“I’ve never been kissed, you know.”
This he knows to not be true. “I’ve seen you be kissed.” Her parents, her relatives, all pepper her with kisses, though their visits are fewer now. Her mother, still, is resolute in that connection.
“No,” she insists. “I mean a proper kiss. I think I’m allowed to ask for that.”
He considers. In all his years, he’s never had such a request. Yet, in all his years, he’s never met someone like her, who has captivated him so fully. His gaze drops to her lips, not quite as full, slightly blue. But definitely still worth kissing, though he’s never fully considered it before. He hasn’t allowed himself to picture that part. He knows the time approaches, but his preference has been to ignore it. To pretend that she has more time than she does.
As if to remind him, a cough wracks her frame. She curls into a ball, trying to brace herself against the blows.
He’s been selfish. He knows that now. He’s avoided both who she is and what he is, but even he can’t bear to see her like this. Can’t continue to keep her here, for his own purposes.
Her mother dashes in the room and holds her, patting her back, and offering a sip of water when the fit subsides.
Meanwhile, Draco retreats to the corner of the room and considers what he’s done. And who it’s been for.
And what comes next.
_____
He sits with her as she sleeps, and returns to the book once more. Saying the words aloud won’t bother her at this point. Besides, she’s the only one who can hear him. This time, he reads to her from where her bookmark sits, but the passage that awaits catches him entirely unprepared.
As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept out onto the open hilltop. The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds. And down they both knelt in the wet grass and kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur— what was left of it—and cried till they could cry no more. And then they looked at each other and held each other’s hands for mere loneliness and cried again; and then again were silent. At last Lucy said,
“I can’t bear to look at that horrible muzzle. I wonder could we take it off?”
So they tried. And after a lot of working at it (for their fingers were cold and it was now the darkest part of the night) they succeeded. And when they saw his face without it they burst out crying again and kissed it and fondled it and wiped away the blood and the foam as well as they could. And it was all more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe.
“I wonder could we untie him as well?” said Susan presently. But the enemies, out of pure spitefulness, had drawn the cords so tight that the girls could make nothing of the knots.
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been—if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you—you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. At any rate that was how it felt to these two.
He pauses at the prescience of these words. The story of a lion and the children who love him rings so terribly true in this moment as he considers the girl on the bed and the mother who has come to perform her ablutions.
He watches Helen Granger as she dutifully turns her daughter, washes her skin with a cool cloth, massages her hands and feet. He can only imagine what this feels like. He’s watched this ritual time and time again, like a detached observer, though, instead of an active participant. Never has it felt more personal to him. At least she is at home, where she can be comfortable, surrounded by the people and things she’s most familiar with.
Her chest rises and falls less often now. And he knows he can’t stall much longer. Any delay now is because of his own selfishness. His own desire to keep her with him for as long as he can. After all, he can’t follow or go with her. His work is here. And yet, for someone who causes others to say goodbye, he finds himself utterly unprepared for his own.
The very idea fills him with a sort of hollowness, that her time should be so short. That he might never again see the flash of her smile, the sound of her laughter.
He resolves that he will give her mother one last goodbye. Give her parents one last moment with their daughter. And then he will do what he must, what he should have done long ago.
That afternoon, the home care nurse confirms what he already knows. “It won’t be long now. Maybe a few days.”
At those words, somehow, mixed in with the sorrow on her mother’s face is relief, blessed relief, that Hermione will be at peace.
What is peace? Does he know it? Does he deserve it?
It’s a concept he’s not sure he can claim, for this coming act feels like a violence, even if it stands as a mercy. And he wonders how he might possibly close the gap she’ll leave behind.
He waits as a mother sits and talks to a daughter no longer able to respond, though the same blasted music plays in the background. He can nearly recite the words at this point. But more important are the stories of the vibrant, precocious child Hermione had been. Of the way she’d crusaded to liberate an older cat from the Animal Rescue, rather than making do with a kitten and held back her tears as that same orange terror made short work of the chenille bedspread she adored. Of the way her father fell in love with her the moment he laid eyes on her. Each story is filled with both insight and emotion and makes him hungry to learn more. He wishes he could ask her about them directly, and see her reaction to these memories, though he knows that the time to do so has past.
“The hearing is the last sense to go,” her mother tells her husband in the same matter-of-fact tone that Draco has heard Hermione use with him. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, it seems. Her parents linger well into the night, but with no change in their daughter’s condition, one by one they drift back to their room.
He considers it a kindness, rather than a fib, to let them do so. One last night of being a family of three. One last night before each of their hearts breaks in a pattern that ensures they’ll never be fully whole again. Having made up his mind, however, he’s impatient to be on his own with her, and has been for hours. To him, the departure of her parents means the two of them will finally be free of interruptions, so he can fulfil the only request she’s ever made of him.
When the house falls silent, he sits on the edge of her bed. He doesn’t need to be wary of sudden movements now. Instead, he watches her stuttering breaths and listens to the rattle that means he’s let this go on far too long. Her mouth is slightly open.
All the better to receive a kiss, he thinks.
He never told her that it would be his first, too. After all, even those who look for death, who yearn for its embrace, seek what lies beyond him. He is only a means to an end. A conduit. A gatekeeper.
He bends down to breathe in the scent of her, wanting to memorise it, though careful to not yet touch her. Then he sits up and considers his own existence. The lives he has seen. The loss he has witnessed.
He’s never felt alone before, but he thinks without her, he might be lonely. Even so, he is powerless to deny her the reprieve she’s earned. Not really. Not even he can ignore her soul’s cry for peace, though it means being without this point of light that has formed in his world of endings.
He wishes their first kiss was not their last. He wishes she were alert, instead of already straddling the line between this world and the next.
He decides to bundle up all of his wishes and thoughts for her and his churning feelings. As if maybe they might somehow set her free.
It seems strange, and inconsequential, and not enough.
And it’s only in the moment that his lips meet hers that he finds a name for it all.
Love.
He loves her. This girl whose life he’s come to know and hates to take. In a way, he’s become hers just as much as he now claims her, granting her the pardon she so desperately deserves.
For him, one touch isn’t enough. And so he kisses her thoroughly, following his own instincts to grant her the one thing she sought. The one thing she asked of him. Even though he knows she’s no longer here, he hopes that somewhere, somehow, she might know how he feels — for he feels for her, in a way he’s never allowed himself to feel before.
His hand reaches up to stroke her hair, her cheek, all the places he was unable to touch her before, overcome with emotions he’s never laid claim to.
The moment is bittersweet. And even after, he’s reluctant to leave, and so he waits, holding her hand as the warmth slowly leaches, leaving her as cold as him. He waits as her mother rushes in and falls to her knees. And then her father arrives to confirm what he suspected from the howls of his wife. And he joins her in heartbreak.
And then he knows he needs to leave, and stumbles from the room. That this time and this place are not for him, yet he’s unsure what lies ahead, and unable to make sense of what has just transpired.
He hasn’t asked to know this. And he’s not sure what to do with it. The world around him seems brighter for the knowledge he’s stolen, even as it mocks him with its vibrancy, its vitality and life.
He remembers opening his eyes and seeing her sitting beside him for the first time.
“There you are.”
For a long moment, he is confused, disoriented to be the one in repose. Meanwhile, Hermione has a smile on her face, and she looks more radiant than he’s ever seen. He takes a deep breath and the smell of gardenias fills his nose.
“What-” he begins to ask, but she places a finger over her lips.
“Rest. There will be time enough later.”
He glances down to find his suit gone. In its place, an old t-shirt stretches across his chest, far too faded and well-worn to be the color in which he has long cloaked himself.
He doesn’t understand, and it all seems so surreal. He feels something bubbling up inside his chest and wonders if it might turn into laughter, if he were to let it escape. But instead, he turns his attention to the room around him. To details that are at least unexpected, if not entirely unknown.
The room is warm. He is warm. A homemade quilt, riotous in its colour, covers much of him. The walls are a rich warm brown, much like her eyes.
A chess set sits on a side table. And books. There are so many books for them to read to each other. He strains to make out the titles, but he can’t quite do so. And a window that looks out onto trees and green beyond. Things she had been denied in her short, stunted life. He has many questions about where he is. When he is. So he turns his eyes back to find hers crinkling in amusement.
She bends down close, and it takes him a moment to figure out what she is trying to do.
When he does, he desperately tries to move away, to prevent their touch, not knowing what is going on. He doesn’t know what might happen in these circumstances, but instinctively he knows what had.
However, she reaches out a hand and turns his face towards hers, and then their lips touch. And it’s as if his entire world is reborn.
A kiss.
Their second.
And if he has anything to say about it, it won’t possibly be their last.