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Hermione had forgotten what it was like to live amongst Muggles – their streets, while equally alive with movement and color, lacked the kind of spontaneity that came with magic. There were no shops filled with enchanted books or half-kneazles and puffskeins, and the pub down the street from her new flat didn’t sell firewhiskey. No one spoke about Quidditch or Vampire Rights or any of the things that occupied the minds and dinner tables of her closest friends.
But that didn’t stop her from pouring a glass of red wine and sitting beside her window, opening it up and letting the autumn air wash over her as she stared at the happy couples and families down below. If she squinted, Hermione could pretend it was the same street she’d spent the last decade picking apart in the darkness, searching for that crop of blond hair and magnetic smile that seemed to inevitably make it to her doorstep no matter how much time had passed.
The lamp on the table beside her couch burned bright in her otherwise dark flat, casting faint shadows on the windowpane that reminded her of a love come and gone so many times she’d lost count. In Draco’s defense, she’d said that it didn’t matter how many times he left as long as he came back somehow changed for the better. Less self-deprecating, more thoughtful of others, the perfect mix of all his life experiences come together in the form of the man she loved more than her youth.
One thing this new street gave her was the chance to imagine him now – to wonder if he still read people the same way he read books, and to picture every head in the pub turning as he entered because, even in the Muggle world, he would command the attention of anyone close enough to catch a glimpse of him. Hermione spared a glance at the sky, too, looking up at the full moon as it bathed London in the same hazy-grey hue of his eyes and pictured him looking up at it too with some new perspective on life or one of the old anecdotes she once loved so much.
As Hermione sipped her wine she wished for the ache in her ribs to dissipate the same way she wished the memory of his unkept promises would fade just like the sound of him whispering I’ll grow up one day, just you wait while she slept. And, for a while, the waiting had been enough, because standing at the end of it all would be a man more than worthy of all the love she’d tried and failed to give him for over a decade.
Until trying, failing, and waiting had outweighed the rush of seeing him tilt his head toward her old window with the same purpose that the people walking by on the street ignored her now. Then she’d had no choice but to throw away her old life in favor of a new one that held no trace of the lost boy she’d prayed would return to her a found man.
“One day,” Pansy had said on more than one occasion.
“One day,” Draco had echoed, the firewhiskey in his glass making his eyes simmer the same way his gaze made her magic come to life.
“One day,” Hermione let herself whisper as she knocked back the rest of her wine and closed the window.
She remained seated for several seconds, letting the merlot do its job and the reality of it all settle in her bones. Moving had been the better choice, even if six months on she still hadn’t been able to quite kick her habit. Progress was progress, however, and what used to be entire evenings by her window had been whittled down to just one bottle, and now just one glass. One day, she might not sit down at all.
Before she could take it back, Hermione stood, stretching her arms, rolling her shoulders, and cast one last glance at the now distorted city street. Then, she turned out the light and felt her way to the stairs, the wine glass left behind for the version of herself that would wake in the morning.
It was better, she reminded herself, to live in the darkness than to exist with false hope. Even if hope had a way of making her think that things could be different if only Draco Malfoy could find it within himself to grow up.