never the two shall meet
She was waiting for him when he got there. Anxious and nervous and full of words she needed to say to him. But he didn't want to hear them tonight. He couldn't. So he kissed her before she could speak.
Is it true? Is what true, father? You and that…that mudblood.
His kiss was rough and he could feel her surprise against his mouth, but she didn't push him away. She clung to him, taking him in, giving herself to him. She knew. He didn't know how, but she knew this was different. That he was different.
I don't know what you're talking about.
He pushed her towards the bed, crawling on top of her, pulling at her clothes. Urgent. Frantic. Needy.
Don’t insult me boy. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
She was pulling at his clothes now. Up and over. Down and off. Thrown somewhere around them. Nothing else mattered. Nothing ever would again.
Did you really think you could change sides this late in the game?
He looks at her, lying here, under him. Wanting him. Needing him. Giving herself to him. She looks worried but she doesn't question him. Because she knows. And it's killing him.
If you think you can betray me for that mudblood whore…
He moves inside her, filling her. And then harder, faster. She meets him thrust for thrust. She's telling him she's there with him, whatever it is.
She's. Not. A. Whore.
She leans up to kiss him. Her kisses always make him weak. He can’t think when it’s like this. He has to be strong. He has to let go, but he can't, because she's the best thing that's ever happened to him.
You think I'm going to let you betray the Dark Lord for that filth?
She's lying under him. Trusting him. So beautiful. So pure. How can that be filth? How could he have ever thought she wasn't worthy of him. He's not worthy of her. He knows it now. He's too weak. She's the strong one. She always has been.
I'm leaving. I'm not coming back. I love her.
He closes his eyes, tries to forget everything. Tries to forget what he has to do. She lets go first and he follows behind her. She screams his name and he wishes he were someone else for the first time in a long time. He wishes he was someone worthy of her.
Fine, if you want to leave you may. But send my regards to her parents won't you. They're muggle dentists, are they not?
He falls back on the bed. Beaten.
~*~
Hermione woke up the next morning, knowing before she even opened her eyes that he wouldn't be there. She didn't want to look, she didn't want to be right, but the frantic knock on her door forced her to get up.
She had been right, Draco was nowhere in sight, but she didn't have time to process that. The knocking grew louder and she quickly put on her robe and went to get the door.
"It's starting," Ginny said, looking panicked, when she opened the door.
Hermione didn't need to be told what was starting, she had been expecting this moment for a long time.
"They're gathering the students in the Hall. Harry and Ron are with Dumbledore, they sent me to call you," Ginny told her.
Hermione was up and changed in thirty seconds and following Ginny out of the room. She didn't have a chance to look twice at her bed. If she had, she might have found the letter addressed to her that had been placed next to her pillow. If she had, things might have turned out differently.
~*~
Days all bleed into one another. Spring had started off full of hopes and dreams and love. And now the season she always loved seemed to taunt her, mocking all her dreams, mocking the plans she had made.
The battles were harsh, full of pain and torture and curses. She saw people she knew die in front of her eyes. People she had sat with in class not two weeks ago. She fought classmates she had always thought of as just slytherins, not killers.
But she didn't see him. She didn’t have time to think about where he was. To think about why he wasn't here with her like he had promised. Was he even alive? Was he fighting against her? Was he killing her people?
She wanted to ask the others if they'd seen him. Someone must have seen him. But she didn’t get a chance. There was no moment to stop and ask.
She just kept fighting, ignoring that pain that was eating away at her, that fear of losing him, that fear of knowing she had already lost him.
A month passed like that, the constant fighting, until slowly the battles ended but the war continued. Each side was recuperating, and planning their next attack. There was no time to let your guard down.
She returned to her Head Girl room by herself for the first time in over a month. She had only been in here briefly since the war started, to pack a few clothes and move to a secure location with the Order. Hogwarts, the safest place of all was no longer safe, it had been attacked a week into the war.
But she needed to come back now. Something compelled her to. She needed to see her old life, the one that didn't involve death every day.
The room was left exactly how she had last seen it. That night she had spent with him on that bed was the last time anyone slept on it.
She moved towards it, flashes of him invading her senses as she approached it. She hadn't thought about him for more than a second at a time in a long time. She hadn't let herself.
She wondered what had happened that night. Why did he have to leave? He had promised her he wouldn't. He had promised to stand by her forever. But that night she knew something was wrong, but she didn't ask, and she knew it was because part of her didn't want to know.
She used to be angry at him. She used to blame him for betraying her like this. But the war had changed her. She had been naïve before. She had never actually thought it would come to this. Even after everything she had seen, she never thought it would end like this. This kill or be killed world she now lived in. This world where nothing else mattered, where being head girl, or being the smartest didn't mean anything. All that mattered was blood.
She wasn't stupid. She didn't believe in happy endings. Not anymore. She knew the mudblood best friend of the boy who lived, and the heir of all things evil could never fall in love and live happily ever after. It didn't work that way. But somehow she still wished that he would have stayed.
She lay back on her bed, closing her eyes and trying to imagine what she would have been doing at this moment if she wasn't in the middle of a war. Suddenly she felt something under her pillow. She lifted it up and under it there was an envelope with her name on it, in handwriting she could recognize anywhere.
Her heart started beating and all thoughts about not caring about him leaving and not believing in happy endings seemed a million miles away. The answers to all the questions she had been asking herself for the past month were in her hands.
She turned the envelope over, and with trembling hands took out the note he had written.
"Hermione!" She scrunched the paper up in her hand at the sound of Ginny's voice.
"Gin, what are you doing here?"
"Quick. There was another attack on Hogsmeade. I heard Voldermort was there. This might be the one."
Hermione dropped the letter and ran out of the room without thinking, once again leaving behind her chance to change her future.
~*~
Draco had watched a lot of bad stuff in his young life. He had grown up in Malfoy manor, so it came with the territory. But he had never really known true evil. Not like he had in the past month. Murder, rape, torture, just a few of the many acts that were expected of a Death Eater. He wondered why it had taken him so many years to realize these things really happened. Power came at a price and this was it. And he didn't want it. He didn't want this power.
But he couldn't back down. He couldn't leave. Because the minute he did, she would lose everything and he couldn't do that to her.
So, he fought, and cursed and prayed he didn't have to kill anyone. But this was a kill or be killed war and he had almost lost his life a few times. But he wouldn't kill, because the moment he did that he lost any chance of getting her back. She would never forgive him.
He didn't believe in the war. It was stupid and crazy and he wished Potter would do everyone a favor and be the hero already.
He had seen her a few times during the past month. She hadn't seen him. He never stuck around long enough to see him. He didn't want to force her to fight him. He knew she would. She'd stand by her side and do anything to protect their cause.
And he couldn't do it. He couldn't stand opposite her and be strong. He couldn't hurt her, physically or otherwise. He had already done it enough.
So, he was particularly surprised when she suddenly apparated in front of him. He was stationed on the outskirts of the main battle, and there was no one else around.
"Malfoy," she said, noticing him there. Her wand was ready, pointing at him. He didn't lift his.
"Granger," he replied, using her last name for the first time in a long time. "Fancy meeting you here. I guess it's kind of poetic. Us, ending up here like this."
"What are you doing here?" she asked, trying to ignore the pounding in her chest, the urge to go to him and forget he was the enemy. "I would have thought you'd be closer up, killing all the muggles in your path."
"Do you really believe that?" he asked.
"Maybe."
"Well then maybe that's where I should be."
"But you're not."
"Someone has to guard the perimeter. Can't have your side calling back up to the front stage."
"My side?" she repeated.
"It's always been like that, hasn't it? My side and your side. Never the two shall meet."
"Yet you haven't lifted your wand," she pointed out.
"Because you're not going to use yours," he said confidently.
"I'm not?"
"No. You can't hurt me. Especially if I don’t hurt you first."
"You hurt me already."
"I know," he whispered.
They stood there like that for what seemed like hours, yet it was mere minutes. The sounds of the battle raging behind them could be heard in the distance but neither was ready to leave yet.
"I should go," Hermione said, finally realizing what she was doing. Her friends needed her and she was standing here with Malfoy unable to let go.
She turned to leave when his voice stopped her.
"I miss you!" he blurted out, without thinking. She turned to him, knowing just by looking in his eyes that he was telling her the truth, yet she also knew it didn't mean anything. "I meant everything I said in the letter." She was going to tell him she didn't read it, but something stopped her. "I'll be seeing you, Hermione."
She nodded her head, and turned to leave again, her heart breaking a little more with every step she took.
~*~
That battle lasted five days, and by the end of it the war was over. The boy who lived had triumphed once again and Voldermort was dead. Harry was left half dead and in a coma, Ron had a few broken bones and was resting. Hermione was left with a broken heart, all her other injuries meant nothing.
Draco had been killed on the final day by a curse he hadn't seen coming. He hadn't done anything to anyone, his wand had not produced a single unforgivable, yet he had to die, because he was there, and he was fighting to live.
It was two weeks later that Hermione was let out of hospital. She returned to Hogwarts, to her old room to find the letter he had written her still lying on the floor in a ball.
Her steps towards it were slow and full of dread. She wanted to know why he had done it. Why he had really left her, but her heart was so broken she didn't think she could handle anything else.
But she opened the letter anyway and she read.
Hermione.
I love you. I wish I was strong enough to tell you this to your face, but I'm not. Today will be the start of something that's going to change our lives forever. We knew this day would come, yet we thought we could get through it. We thought our love mattered. But it doesn't. To people like my father love is nothing. Family. Honour. Blood. These things matter. Not to me, but in the world we live in they matter.
If I choose love over these things it's not me who will suffer, it's you. I know you think you will protect yourself from him, but you can't. He will find a way to hurt you, and your family, more than this war will. I can't let myself be the cause of all your pain.
I know you. I know you're strong. You can live without me. You'll be better off without me. But you will die without them, your parents, your friends, the people you love.
If one day this war ends and we survive, know that I will find you and we will be together. But if I die on that battlefield, know that I loved you, and I will always love you. And if the war claims your life, know that there won't be anything in this world left for me to live for either.
Forever yours.
Draco.
And then she cried, because this was worse than a betrayal. This was worse than him wanting to fight against her. This meant he loved her. This meant he died for her. And she didn't know how she could live without him. So she didn't.