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The tips of her fingers danced across the keys on the piano. It wasn’t how she had anticipated spending her evening. Sitting alone in the old drawing room stabbing at each key with all the hurt that she couldn’t express, waiting for Draco to walk in the door and simultaneously hoping he wouldn't.
They were supposed to be celebrating their anniversary tonight. Though for what she wasn't sure, they lived together, she had given up her own family home to move into the manor with him when he had asked her to. She had given up her career to support him as the youngest Minister for magic their country had seen. She had taken etiquette classes, not because he had asked her to but simply because she wanted to make sure she never made a bad impression while on his arm.
She thought that it was all worth it. She thought that because she had never doubted their relationship, not once in the ten years they had been together. She had stopped expecting that he would ask her to marry him, choosing instead to believe that it's just not what he wanted out of life at all but because she had never doubted them, it didn't bother her.
The French doors leading to the gardens at the back of the manor were open to allow the warm summer breeze to float through. It brought Hermione comfort, the soft white curtains blowing in the draft, the sting of each note carrying through the air that smelt of roses like a march toward their doom.
She had never doubted them, not once in the ten years they had been together until tonight. Until the sight of Astoria pressed up against him in the darkness of an alcove, batting her lashes up at him like an innocent deer. Hermione hadn’t expected him to make a scene, they were at a ministry event and decorum was required when in the public eye. Something she knew only too well. She had been practising exactly that the majority of her life it seemed but she hadn't expected to see him bend down and whisper some secret in her ear and delight as she beamed at him with those big round eyes while patting her hand on his chest.
Draco had frozen and paled when he had seen her watching them. She knew her place as the partner of the minister was public responsibility first and foremost so she had simply turned away, smiling and expressing gratitude to everyone in attendance as she made her way toward the exits in a timely manner and left. He had promised them a trip away, they were supposed to be leaving after the gala. He had insisted on it being a surprise, claiming that they had very little spontaneity in their relationship since his election but he could give her this.
Hermione hadn’t wanted to hear his justifications for it, hadn’t wanted to further the humiliating realisation that perhaps he had simply never asked her to marry him because she was blind and had not seen that she was never going to be that person to him. Perhaps the beautiful and blonde pureblooded Astoria was better suited to that title.
Perhaps their relationship had always been a part of some bigger plan and she had been so blindly in love with him that she had never realised? Potentially.
She would like to think that she knew better than that, that she wasn't really that ignorant.
Each note both soothed an ache in her soul for tears she refused to give him and struck at her like tiny individual blows.
The piano had been something she had known how to play since before she could remember. One of her earliest memories was her mother sitting in a brown and red floral dress, her wild hair pulled back into a clip. Hermione remembered watching in awe as her mother’s fingers had glided across the ivory and had been as captivated as when her father had read aloud his collections of Shakespeare.
It was by far her favourite thing in the manor. Draco had spent hours listening to her play over the years, watching her with the same enthrallment that he would an opera, or perhaps even that she had watched her mother with. There was no faking that surely?
His footsteps against the marble sounded down the hall and she purposely timed her notes to hit with the singular purpose of suffocating the sound of them. She did not want to see him or speak to him right now.
She was an intelligent girl. She knew how this went. They would separate their belongings, and they would keep it out of the public eye for a while, especially if anyone had noted her absence throughout the remainder of the party, or if anyone else had spotted the suspicious meeting of the two blondes in that alcove. When enough time had passed they would issue a statement, wishing each other all the best and claiming they had ended on good terms while she crawled into some deep dark hole and died from a broken heart.
Each striking note was bitter with what he expected of her now, that she would have to remain brave while facing the most devastating thing to ever happen to her, including a freaking war. Didn't she deserve his devotion the way she had been devoted to him? She let her eyes flutter closed, blocking out his approaching figure. “Hermione.” He stated, his voice which always sent shivers down her spine, was cool and demanding, as if he had the audacity to be frustrated with her.
She knew this tune by feeling alone, she hadn’t needed to look at the keys that now bore the brunt of her emotions in years. “Hermione. Look at me.”
In that moment she cursed her body for its willingness to listen and respond to him. Her eyes opened and she glared at him through her lashes with her mouth firmly closed. She didn’t want to run the risk of saying anything because if she said something then this delicate balance would tumble and she wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction of seeing this break her so she channelled it all into her fingertips, each tone striking true to her feelings anyhow.
His face softened under her glare in understanding. “You have entirely misjudged the situation, my love.”
She didn't dare speak because as much as she wanted to tell him that she wasn't the type of idiot to buy into such weak excuses the hope flamed in her belly, begging for that to be the case, for her to have it all wrong. Perhaps she was that naive after all and that was a reality she couldn't face right now.
“Hermione, please would you just stop playing for a moment my love and listen to me? I didn’t need Moonlight Sonata to know you were upset, I know you Hermione, which is why I'm confident in my guess that you’re now sitting here questioning our entire relationship, for the first time ever might I add, having already decided that I am having an affair with Astoria of all people.”
“Astoria now is it.” She mumbled to herself, regretting it instantly the moment he chuckled because of course, he would have heard her. He could hear a pin drop three rooms over, an unfortunate byproduct of his time playing roommates to the Dark Lord. He had to learn to listen and listen carefully, learned to recognize whose footsteps belonged to who, how far away a death eater was and the best ways to sneak away undetected.
Really it should come as no surprise that he had gotten away with an affair for however long it had been going on. She continued to glower at him, her ire rising with every moment that he failed to convince her without a doubt that she had indeed been foolish to let her emotions get the better of her.
“She has been Astoria to both of us for years now if you would recall.” He stepped slowly towards her, his large hands gripping along the edge of the case surrounding the soundboard within. Hermione shrugged and resumed her approach of keeping her mouth shut. “Hermione just for…” Draco strolled forward and around to slide onto the edge of the bench beside her. The sight of the grand piano had been one of the largest selling points for her when she moved in here nine years prior.
One of his hands reached out, she anticipated him covering her hand in an effort to get her to stop playing and hear him out but it continued to move toward the empty music shelf, she hadn’t needed to read sheet music since before she had sent her parents into hiding. His fingers uncurled and left in its place something finally shocking enough that her hands stilled mid-ostinato.
Gleaming back up at her was a brilliant white diamond oval framed delicately by small green emeralds. “I was informing Astoria of my plan to propose tonight once we got to Paris. I was telling her because she lent me the Greengrass jet and had organised all the paperwork with the Muggle airport. I don't know the first thing about planes but I know you haven't been able to stomach the portkeys lately long distance and I wanted it to be more romantic than a side-along. What you saw was her sneaking me our passports.” This time his hand did cover hers. “I panicked because sometimes I forget that not everyone can overhear conversations from twenty feet away. I thought my surprise had been ruined. It took me five minutes to find out you had left, and two seconds after arriving home to figure out what you thought was going on.”
Blush flooded her cheeks. How could she have been so stupid? Not once in ten years had she doubted him, not even for a second and the moment she did, she didn’t even wait to hear him out.
“I have waited too long to ask you to do me the honour of allowing me to become your husband but honestly my love, I've been waiting for you to realise that I could never deserve you, in this lifetime or the next. Beethoven said it best when he described music, but it's how I feel about you, Hermione. Your love is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend. I am simply content to exist in your afterglow, trailing the beauty you leave behind you everywhere you go. I could never cheat on you, not for my life because you are my life. Everything I am is to try and earn some token of your affection because when you smile at me… the world could stop and I wouldn't care in the least.”
“Yes” Hermione whispered, at some stage while he had been speaking, the tears had begun streaming freely. “Yes I will marry you, of course I will marry you..” She turned to him and flung herself at him so hard that they both crashed to the floor below.