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He’d said goodbye to his son, then his wife and ultimately the life he’d led for the past 18 years on that platform.
Scorpius had been somber. Far too smart, too observant, he had hugged his parents a little tighter, clung just a bit longer, as if he somehow knew it was the ending of things, of the life he’d lived, the structure of his family.
The thought staggered him, that his son was nearly a man. And so he was old enough, now, to understand, sometimes things ran their course. Sometimes things had to end.
Astoria has stood silent at his side, waving with tear filled eyes and a brilliant smile that slowly faded as the train pulled away, waving until their son was long gone and they were alone.
They stood facing forward, not looking at each other, as if the metal tracks and brick walls were the most interesting of sights.
“Well I suppose that’s that.” Her composed voice rang out loud and true in the cavernous space.
That’s that. He glanced aside at her. She was still facing the forward, away from him, her eyes distant and, dare he say, hopeful. Looking to the future.
He did not have that luxury. His life, his true life, was solidly behind him, left in the past.
He felt words were necessary. It seemed important to say something. “Astoria, I…”
She held up a hand, and turned the merest of millimeters toward him, but didn’t look at him. He was her past, now. She would not look back.
“No, Draco. Don’t say anything.” She was polite, calm, yet her words were so tired. “We’ve said all that needs be said. There’s only one thing that remains.”
It was shockingly painful, but the ending of things usually were. Even when the thing you were letting go of was not for you, when you had regretted the thing from the moment you agreed to it, when you had wished for this ending for years.
“Good bye, Astoria.” The words were surprisingly hard to say.
She nodded back, curt, final. “Good bye, Draco.”
There was a small, wistful smile playing about her mouth, and she met his eyes for a second before turning and walking away. Her heeled footsteps echoed in the growing quiet, broken only by a few, dim murmurs of distant conversations.
Such an unassuming ending to such a momentous thing.
He stood there, frozen, a stoic man adrift in a turbulent sea. Remained standing there for a long time, contemplating those tracks and the walls. The last stragglers were in movement all about him as they went home to their lives, families, futures. And Draco remained, silent and still. This was his life, now, and he had absolutely no fucking clue what to do next.
It was the first time in so many years that he was truly alone. Literally. Figuratively. And being alone meant thoughts, and thoughts led straight to…
Every year, for the past 7 years, he’d stood in this place. He would arrive as late as he could manage, to Astoria’s chagrin, and would disappear as soon as the train pulled away, as quickly as propriety would allow, leaving his son none the wiser.
And every year, he had forced his eyes to remain fixed, steadfast, on his son’s face, on his wife’s hair, the ceiling, the floor. He would not, for even a second, allow his eyes to wander. It had taken every bit of strength and force of will not to search the platform.
But that was then. He was alone now.
Defeated, exhausted, he finally allowed himself to look. Furtive glances, at first, until he had ascertained that the area was finally empty. With a sigh he turned to go.
And it was then he noticed. The station wasn’t quite so empty after all.
There, further down the platform, hunched over on a bench with her face in her hands, was a woman.
He wanted to deny what he was seeing. It could be any other petite woman but that mass of curly hair was rather unmistakable. Uniquely hers, as big and full of life as her personality.
Fate could not be so cruel or, just maybe, so forgiving.
A shudder passed over her, and her shoulders shook.
An appalling part of him, deeply rooted and character ingrained, wanted to run. After all this time, it was still his default. He was just so good at that, running from things he couldn’t bear to face that before he could even acknowledge what he was doing he was in motion.
Blood fucking coward.
But this time, somehow, those steps weren’t taking him away. He hadn’t consciously realized what he was doing, which direction he’d gone, until he was within mere steps of her, standing over and looking down, down at the woman he had left behind all those years ago.
As if he’d been kicked in the stomach, the air rushed out of him, and all he could do was stand there and stare at her, her hair and her shaking shoulders, her body huddled and so small on that platform bench.
He couldn’t breathe.
Hermione.
He wasn’t sure if he said it or loud or if it was just an agonized thought. All these years. He’d done this dance for years, built his walls, averted his eyes, dropped his son at the train, waved goodbye and ran, before he could see her with her husband and her children and her happy life.
Before he could truly see her again.
She hadn’t lifted her face and he was so grateful for that. He could still pretend, futile as that was, that it wasn’t really her, dozens of witches had that amount of sentient hair...
“Go away.” And then, that voice. Her voice, muffled by tears and her hands, the one he’d scoffed at in school.
And the first word he said back to her after nearly two decades was not forgive me or I love you or my life was a complete ruin without you. No, it was a baffled “What?”
It would have been comical if it wasn’t so damned tragic.
“I said go away! Go away!”
He almost obeyed her, he even took a step back and away. He’d always been a slave to her needs, to her whims, obedient to a fault.
Except for when it counted, of course. When she asked him to stay.
And now, after doing without her for all these years, he would disobey her once again. He couldn’t leave if the building was on fire.
“Hermione.” And there it was, her name on his lips. He had not spoken it in nearly twenty years. The enormity of the moment stunned him. He suddenly hated that he was looming above her, he deserved to be at her feet, so he kneeled down. “Look at me.” Gods please. Look at me.
There are moments in life, dozens, hundreds, that amount to nothing, just steps on a continuous path. But then there are others, life altering, world shifting instances that change everything, and he knew. When she looked up and met his eyes for the first time in all these many years, he knew he would not be the same on the other side.
He was suspended in time, caught between two moments, that foolish past and this bittersweet now, and all the time in between, when they’d been apart, just faded away into dust. Into nothing. None of that time meant anything. They had once been, and here they were again.
Slowly. She pushed out of her hands, and peeked at him through the curtain of her hair, and there were her wide eyes, puffy, tear filled and as golden brown and as beautiful as he’d remembered them, and he, awestruck, fell back on his heels.
She was shaking her head, her mouth opening and closing, words caught in the log jam of emotions clogging her throat, as he sat there inelegantly, gaping, on that filthy concrete floor.
How did he think he could forget her? How could he have left her, all those years ago?
The words were out of his mouth before he could even recognize he’d said them. “Why are you here alone?”
She lifted her head fully at that, pushed the hair from her face and met his eyes squarely. She studied him closely, tracking his features, and he wondered if she was noticing those things that had changed. Eighteen years was a long time. And yet…
No time at all.
He was staring in return, cataloguing the collection of features, nose, eyes, chin, mouth, ordinary things that were arranged just so, perfectly so, to create a unique Hermione. Still herself but yet so much more, her visage matured and more harshly defined. Her jaw was stronger, her high cheekbones sharper with the ever present smattering of freckles in haphazard disarray. Her amber eyes unchanged except for the finest of lines at the corners near her lashes. Her mouth still wide, plump lips in a tight line as she struggled to contain whatever was teeming in that brain and aching to be said.
There had been a time when he had been able to kiss that mouth whenever he wanted. How, how had he ever given that up?
Her eyes, open and unguarded, wide with a look of possibly fear. She was gazing at him as if she was contemplating his ghost. Which perhaps- no, in truth, he was.
She didn’t know him now, he supposed. He was merely a memory of all the things they had been, all they could have been. A shade of the man she didn’t know who occupied all the in between years, when he’d left her alone.
If only he had just been stronger and stayed, he would be solid beneath her fingers and not just a sad, empty mess of could of and might have beens. They would be here together, waving goodbye to their son. Perhaps there would be a second child, a girl with her curls and her eyes, holding tight to their hands, as they headed off home. And they would be so fucking happy…
A lone tear hung on her lash just for a second before breaking free, tracking down her cheek.
“I stay every year.” Her voice sounded deeper. “Every year.”
“But why…” He didn’t know, he’d never realized. But then he was always too busy running away.
Her gaze dropped to her hands, twisting nervously in her lap. She still did that. An old habit, an echo of an earlier time when he’d known her, truly known her, better than he’d known any other, better than he had known himself. He wanted to grab her hands and hold them tight, calm and still them as he used to do, but he knew that she wasn’t his to comfort, not anymore.
Another tear, then another, falling unheeded into her hands. “I…I watch you, every year. You, with your beautiful wife and son. Scorpius is lovely, he’s in my Rosie’s year, you know?”
She glanced at him and he nodded. He knew that, the young curly red head had been mentioned by his son on numerous occasions to the detriment of Draco’s sanity.
Draco nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about her, actually. She’s bested him in many classes.” He still harbored a real, palpable fear of Scorpius following in his father’s footsteps and developing feelings for the next generation Granger.
She actually laughed, a soft gentle sound. It tore a piece of his heart from his chest. “Sounds familiar.”
He snorted inelegantly in return. “Yes, I recall a certain swotty gryffindor of my own.”
The words were out of his mouth before he could help it, and Hermione turned pink and ducked her head behind the curtain of her hair.
He felt his own cheeks flame. He was fumbling this. Words were failing him.
He had avoided her for years for a reason. His sanity, his marriage, his life depended on it. There was no world in which he could resist her. Whatever was between them was bigger than his ability to fight it.
From the very first moment he had seen her, tiny and frizzy haired on that train all those years before, everything about her had been so much more. His hatred of her, his torment of her, his jealousy of her, evolving over time to his admiration, his respect for her strength, her brilliance, her heart. She always loomed so large there was no way Draco was able to ignore her, or deny her.
She had been such a small thing, to become, eventually, everything.
“I watch you,” she continued softly, so much so that Draco had to lean closer to hear her. Close enough that he could smell her perfume, she still smelled the fucking same, that unique scent of vanilla and Hermione and all things good in the world. “Every year. I try to get you to look at me, but you never do.” Her eyes were overflowing when she looked up, and his own burned in response. “You never see me.”
It was that wobble, that sadness, or hurt, or whatever awful emotion that Draco had caused in her voice, it was that small thing that broke him, finally broke him, and he dropped his head onto her knees with a sob.
“I see you, Hermione.” Merlin how could she ever think he didn’t? “All I have ever seen is you.”
Her hand, gentle and tentative, rested on his head. The slight weight of her touch was just more than he could bear, the feel of her soft beneath his forehead, torturous, rapturous, a thing he’d never thought to feel again in this life.
She was stroking his hair now, carding her fingers through, just like she used to do. He’d once fallen asleep to her ministrations, in her bed or in his, listening to her soft voice, safe in her love, and for that brief time, she’d kept the nightmares away. Even now, after hurting her, abandoning her, she was still murmuring softly over his head and he deserved none of it.
“I looked forward to this day, every year. But I dreaded it too.” Her fingers in his hair. “I could never decide, did I hate seeing you more than I loved it.” A pause and a movement, she shrugged.
“I’ve watched you, all these years. You got taller. So much more handsome. Then you changed your hair, cut it short, I hated that, and then you grew it back out a bit. I like it just that bit longer.” She curled her hands, let the ends of his hair slip through. “I thought about how she could do this, touch your hair.” Her voice cracked. “And how I couldn’t do that, not anymore.”
With the weight of years and guilt and remorse he raised his head slowly. She was looking down, at the blonde strands in her fingers, a far away gaze that was looking upon a much younger man’s hair.
“It was never like that.” She glanced at him then away just as quickly. “She…Astoria…it was never like that.” Like you.
“I tried, with Ron, I really did.” She moved her hand away and he felt the loss like a physical blow. “He was so good, and he knew…knew that I couldn’t give him…gods I tried.” She breathed out.
What was she saying…
“We had Rosie and I thought it would be enough. For him, for me. And it worked for a bit but then…I saw you again. Rosie’s first year, I hadn’t known about Scorpius, and then you were there and I, I…” Her head fell back to her hands.
“Hermione…”
“I asked for a divorce. I just couldn’t, anymore. Pretend.”
All this time, he’d been avoiding seeing her happiness. And it had been crushed, yet again, by him.
Rendered speechless he could do nothing but watch her, as she finally dragged her gaze back to his. “I never wanted to come between you and your family. I just,” a breath like a sob, “wanted to see you again.”
And so they contemplated each other, the shattered remains of what they had been in the space between them.
“Every year I stand here, and you’re there. I wait every year to be able to stand here with you, to be this close to you, the closest I will ever be again.” Her hand was trembling, but she reached across the distance and placed it on his cheek. “And I know this is the last time I’ll see you.”
She stood and he was forced to his feet, but somehow he was gripping her arms, and the words were spilling from his mouth, about his own divorce, and all his regrets, until he was nearly - no he was- groveling, he had dropped to his knees, I’m sorry I left you please forgive me I am so sorry I was a fool and a coward please forgive me forgive me forgive
At one time he had thought her a fool, her heart her greatest weakness, that ability to forgive and love without limit a failing. And now, now who was the fool, prostrate at her feet as she placed her hand on his head, a benediction, and once again forgave him all of his sins.
Forgave him and turned away.
She was walking away. He was letting her walk away.
And then she stumbled slightly, before she regained her footing, and he recalled how she was never steady in heels and that one small thing, that one memory broke open the flood gates and he blinked, and there she was. Every incarnation of Hermione, of his life with her.
Eleven, a girl on a train before his programming kicked in…
Thirteen, nose broken and blood leaking into his mouth, and she full of righteous anger…
Sixteen on the floor of his drawing room, screaming in pain, but never broken…
Seventeen speaking in subdued tones at his trial, fighting for him though he was so unworthy…
Eighteen. Eighteen, slipping onto the bench beside him when no one else would speak to him. Eighteen when she was stalwart in her defense of him. Eighteen and she was forgiving him though he deserved none of it. Eighteen, and they were friends, his quiet companion in the library. Eighteen, when he kissed her and she opened up her mouth and her body and heart and her life to him.
“Hermione!”
Nineteen and she was sublime in sleep, her face the embodiment of his heart. Nineteen and she was the sum total of everything he wanted in this life and he…and he…
That was the Hermione he took with him. That face, frozen in time like amber, had been the last moment he’d had with her, before he crushed those dreams and the possibilities of more incarnations of her, the ones where she stood beside him in white, or cradled their children, or walked beside him as their bodies aged but her hand was still firm in his, his constant in this life, and he’d thrown it all away.
She couldn’t go. He couldn’t bear it, he wouldn’t survive the loss of her this time.
Her steps slowed but didn’t stop and he didn’t think she would, and he’d lost her yet again when…
She stopped. She stopped and turned back to him, her face a tear tracked mirror of his own, and she looked so tremulous and hopeful and afraid that he was running to close the distance between them and
He reached for her, pulled her from the lonely tomorrow without each other, that place full of regrets and loss and could have beens, pulled her from that awful place and into his arms and found his courage finally and grabbed that different future from the universe.
They fell into each other and onto solid ground and for the first time in so many years he could actually fucking breathe.
She had curled into a ball against his chest, twisting the front of his shirt, damp with tears, and he wrapped his arms around her, enveloped her safely in this Now, the one where he stopped running and they could actually, hopefully, possibly be.
She turned her face up to him, that face, his heart. Full of wonder, she raised a hand, tentative and slow, cupped his cheek and her eyes widened. He knew her mind in that moment, as surely as if it was his own. She touched him as if he weren’t real, and she would wake to the reality that it was yet another dream and he would fade like smoke with the dawn.
He placed his hand atop hers, solid against his face, grounding her into this moment. “I’m here.” And I’m never leaving again.
And gods, that smile, that shining, brilliant smile, as she leaned into their joined hands.
He wanted to kiss her, ached to kiss her, but he couldn’t stop looking at her, his first new Hermione in so many empty years.
“In all this time,” her voice low, a secret. “I couldn’t say your name.” She shook her head. “You weren’t mine anymore.”
If only she’d known. He’d always been hers.
He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he hesitated, “if you want me to?”
She nodded, she was still smiling, and he leaned closer, as nervous as he’d been that first time, when he’d known he was undeserving of her affection but was going to take it anyway, and his fate was decided…
Her breath, sweet and familiar as a memory against his lips. Her voice, a sigh and a promise.
“Draco.”