She stands on the top floor of
the Astronomy tower, the highest point of Hogwarts. The highest point of
London, even, just topping the Ministry of Magic building by 6 feet, 8 inches.
It was the kind of thing she would know. She stares out the window at the
stars, twinkling as brightly as eyes…Dumbledore’s eyes, she thinks randomly. He
loved the stars. She wonders what he would think now, if he looked down and saw
her standing the same room as his killer, or as good as his killer, doing
nothing. He wouldn’t mind, she thought. He always saw the good in everyone. But
Merlin, how she minded. How she minded.
He hadn’t had to. She’d found
about the plan, sort of. She had known he was planning to do something, kill
someone—and still she had done nothing. All for a blond Slytherin with grey
eyes who turned out not to love her after all. He’d smiled at her, kissed her,
told her she was his and his alone, gotten absurdly jealous if she so much as
looked as another man. And after all that, he’d betrayed her. She had told him,
begged him to go to Dumbledore. He didn’t need to do this, she had said. She
could help him—Dumbledore could help him. And he’d laughed in her face. Said he
didn’t mind. Said he wanted to serve the Dark Lord. Said she was nothing but a
filthy Mudblood and he’d never, ever loved her. She was just another fuck
buddy.
But she didn’t believe him. He’d
shown it, through all the subtle little things that women catch, the look in
his eyes when he thinks she’s asleep, the way he smoothed her hair back from
her face gently when she was sick; she knew he loved her. Had loved her. So why
did he stop?
“Did you ever, really?” the words
burst from her mouth before she has a chance to reclaim them, swallow them down
like she has for so long, and she cringes, knowing how pathetic she sounds.
“Ever what?” his voice is cold,
cold as the ice he is made of.
Her voice, as quiet as the night,
barely audible. “Love me.”
A laugh wells up in his throat and
he lets it pour out of his mouth, bubbling so bitterly, ironic in its mirthful
sound, laughing because of how stupid this all is, how stupid that question is,
how—But she takes it as the sign she has been hoping, desperately hoping she
would not find, though she searched for it so avidly—because she had to know,
she had to know, she always had to know, damn her stupid know-it-all complex,
she always had to know. And now she knows.
She doesn’t slump to the floor
and start sobbing. She isn’t dramatic that way—never has been, never will be.
Too much control—too many years of living with her emotions tightly under her
control; too many years of never letting Harry and Ron see how much they hurt
her, until she can hold it back no longer, and it bursts like a dam flooding.
She just looks at him, her brown eyes mirrored in his grey ones. So much hurt
there, so much heartbreak, he mentally damns himself for causing it. Her pain
and his, joining together in a river of hurt flowing between them, her sorrow
and his heartbreak, until finally her dam does break, and a single tear rolls
down her cheek. Just one. She’s so different from the little schoolgirl who
burst out crying and hid in the girl’s bathroom in their first year. She’s
tougher now, stronger. But still so vulnerable.
She lifts her wand—her beautiful
wand, beautiful like her—and places it to her temple, not her heart, because
that’s already dead. She opens her mouth, he knows what she’s going to say a
split second before she says it, and he sees, he sees the fear in her eyes, she
never could hide anything from it, he sees how much she wants him to stop her
and he knows she’ll never let him do it anyway. And then he thinks maybe he
should try anyway because she’s worth it, worth the loss of his pride and his dignity
and his damnable Malfoy ice. But he hesitated too long and now she knows, knows
he doesn’t care whether she lives or dies, and she’s wrong, damn it, of all the
times she had to pick to be wrong, she picks now, and she’s going to say it,
she’s saying it, and he can’t do a thing to stop her.
And she didn’t even say it out
loud—or did she? He can’t tell now, past is running into present and into
future, melding into one great river of time where it doesn’t damn matter,
she’s lying on the floor, her eyes are just holes, and she’s dead, she’s dead,
she’s dead, dead, dead, and he can’t tell her what he was too stupid, too
scared, too damn proud to tell her, and the words are pouring out of his mouth
now, along with the tears that can finally finally come, but it’s too late, she
can’t hear it, she can’t hear what he’s repeating over and over and over,
chanting it like a mantra that could bring her back—
“I love you I love you I love
you, damn it, I loved you Hermione Granger, don’t you dare die on me, how could
you die, I love you.”
