Roman Holiday

Chapter Sixty-One

And just like that, things were back to normal – it was amazing how quickly you could fall back into an everyday routine, even after a brush with death. Saturday tied up in the Lair of the Death Eaters, Sunday in the infirmary deflecting the inevitable barrage of worried questions with the mildest version of events possible – then, back to the daily round of classes and meals and books, with no one the wiser about what had happened except for a few of the professors and her inner circle of friends.

Surreal, really.

Some things had necessarily changed, of course. She was spending more time in the Gryffindor common area – playing chess with Ron and watching the Harry-Ginny flirtations become more and more overt – and less in the isolation of her bedroom. Her extra-credit Potions project was complete, so she had no valid reason to visit Snape in the dungeons. (That being the case, she stayed away – she was, truth be told, rather afraid of what would happen, if she invented one.)

And though technically she and Draco were still dating – they ate at the same table, studied together in the library, spent their customary few nights a week coexisting in the privacy of Elysium – their physical relationship had ground immediately to a halt, directly following her abduction, and showed no signs of picking up again. Part of this, Hermione admitted, was due to her own Lucius-induced squeamishness – no matter what her brain told her, her body still had trouble recognizing Draco purely as Draco, and reacted accordingly. Their chemistry had an ugly edge to it now, which made her want to avoid the issue completely.

The other part, however, had to do more with Draco than with her: ever since her showdown with Voldemort and subsequent return to Hogwarts, he’d been awkward and withdrawn – more quick-tempered, slower to laughter. Sometimes Hermione would catch him watching her, out of the corner of her eye, with a closed hooded look that she couldn’t decipher on his handsome, set face.

It was rather, she thought, as if he was waiting for something – and at the same time, he looked almost angry, deeply and silently so, like a man in an unseen battle.

Her tentative questioning got her nowhere – he closed her off, shut her out, changed the subject. Eventually, she gave up asking.

And then one night, early on in March, he abruptly threw down the book he was reading, causing Hermione to look up in puzzlement from her Transfiguration text.

“I can’t wait any more,” he said, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “I have to tell you something.”

**

He couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I have to tell you something,” he declared, as if throwing down a gauntlet, and she looked up blinking from her Transfiguration text, a quizzical, distracted look on her pretty pale face.

“What is it?” she asked, and Draco felt his stomach clench.

He’d been sitting on this news for four weeks – almost since she’d come back from the dead – and had told himself he was just waiting for the right moment to bring it up. Well, that moment hadn’t arrived, and this one wasn’t any more auspicious than any of the others; he could tell that just from the polite way she was waiting for him to go on.

Didn’t matter – he had to say it. “I got an owl back from Beauxbatons,” he said flatly. “I’ve been accepted.”

For a moment, she looked mildly surprised – then her face lit up. “For the summer program? But that’s fantastic. I didn’t know you’d really applied!”

“Well, I did.” Her face fell a bit at his defiant tone – oh, you’re not handling this well, Draco thought, but soldiered on anyway. “And not just for the summer. Based on my grades, they’ve offered me a slot in their exchange program for all of seventh year.”

He took a deep breath, willing himself not to look away. “And I’ve written back to accept it.”

There. He’d said it.

“Well, of course you have,” Hermione said, beaming, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “What a wonderful opportunity – and you’ve already got such good French. You’ll be practically native by the time you graduate. Oh, wow.” Just for good measure, she kissed him on the other cheek, ooh-la-la style, then pulled back a little and frowned when he just continued to stare at her. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you just thrilled?”

She looked so crestfallen, all her congratulatory bubbling deflated into baffled concern. And she didn’t have a fucking clue, Draco thought viciously; not a clue that this had been the Last Test.

Or that she’d just failed it.

“I rather thought,” he said – carefully, to keep the black ugly rage in his gut from boiling up and out – “that you’d be sad to see me go.”

Her brown eyes widened slightly at that, and she bit her lip. Draco could almost see the wheels turning under that pretty mop of curls: oh, dear, now I’ve hurt his feelings – how do I fix it?

You can’t, he thought with savage satisfaction. Nothing you can say. Nothing you can do. I’d like to see you try.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I will miss you. Truly. But …” She looked baffled again. “You don’t want me to hold you back, do you? You want me to be happy for you, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, hating that sneering edge in his tone that made her look so bewildered, like a puppy kicked for no good reason. “Maybe I do. And maybe I don’t. Maybe what I really want is for you to cry, and plead, and tell me you can’t live without me for a year.” He stared at her coldly. “Maybe I want you to ask me not to go. Didn’t you ever think of that?”

At that, she swallowed hard and dropped her eyes. “No,” she said sadly to her lap. “You know me, Draco. I just don’t think that way.”

Her tone was soft, almost pleading, and at that Draco felt all his rage and resentment and frustrated hope drain away into the cesspool from which it had risen, leaving him feeling nothing but … empty. He hesitated, then looked her straight in the eyes.

“You don’t love me,” he said simply, and watched as if from a great distance, as her mouth opened to a little ‘o’, as the great jewels of her eyes went liquid.

“I …” she began, but he cut her off.

“No – don’t say it now,” he said, half-angry again. “Not if it’s just to spare my feelings, Hermione. I’d rather have the truth, and I have it. Not now, and not ever, and it’s my own fault I didn’t realise it before.”

He rose, still feeling light-headed and drained-away, like a helium-balloon version of himself. “I know I’ve been a swine for the last month,” he said tiredly, “and I’m sorry. I guess part of me knew it would come down to this, and I’ve been putting it off.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve always known, you see, that you didn’t feel for me the same things I did for you. But I thought it was still more than I deserved.”

“No,” she whispered, anguished. He ignored her.

“And now,” he said, “I realise that I didn’t ask for nearly what I’m worth. I still love you, Hermione, but what we’ve got isn’t good enough for either of us.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “It’s over.”

He was halfway to the library door when she finally spoke, in a voice thick with tears.

“Draco.” A deep, shuddery breath. “I do care about you.”

He stiffened, paused, but didn’t look back.

“I know you do,” he said. “But not enough. And not the right way.”

**

She was in her room later that night when the house-elves arrived, bearing all of the belongings that she’d left in Elysium: the neatly-packed chemistry set, her spare bedroom slippers, a just-in-case change of clothes, a meticulously-folded dressing gown.

There was a note pinned to the gown, written in Draco’s spiking angular hand. Hermione recognized the poem with a jolt:

**

**

See how they love me.

Her last secret-admirer note.

Hermione buried her head in her hands and let the tears fall.

**

The weeks passed, and gradually – though after all that snow they’d barely dared to hope for it – spring began to show its face. Hermione found herself wishing it wouldn’t; the rain, the mild air, the muddy earth, all seemed to mock the frozen rut she found herself in.

He was right to end it, she thought – smart, even; certainly smarter and more perceptive than she had been. That didn’t mean it felt good, though; nor could she even take satisfaction in the sure knowledge that he was just as miserable.

She hadn’t been lying, after all – she did care about him.

Ron and Harry noted their falling-out with interest, but backed off when she said flatly that it was a mutual decision, and that she didn’t want to talk about it. Ginny did a little more prying for details, up in the girls’ dormitories after hours, but Hermione stayed mum. In the months that they’d been together, Harry and Draco had developed the beginnings of a genuine friendship – now that it wasn’t so cold, she happened to know that they and Ron went flying together nearly every evening, after dinner.

She wasn’t such a small person that she’d break up their little Quidditch club out of spite. Besides, Hermione told herself, he needed all the friends he could get.

And if she was lonely, too? Well, then, it was mostly her own fault, now, wasn’t it?

She was packing books into her satchel one sunny Saturday morning in April, preparing for a post-breakfast trip to the library, when she heard a scratch at the glass and saw a small brown owl hovering anxiously outside her bedroom window.

Funny, Hermione thought. Why wouldn’t it wait for the morning post and come in with the rest of them?

She went over to let the owl in – it was wearing international leg bands, she noted with interest – scrounged around her room and found a not-too-stale biscuit to offer it, then watched it fly away in a long curving circle around the castle and out of sight before she sat down on her bed to unfold the letter.

It took her only a few minutes to read it, but afterwards she sat staring at the parchment for a long time. Even after it had fallen out of her hand onto the comforter, she was too dumbfounded to move.

Of all the possible solutions to her emotional dilemma, this was the one she’d least expected.

To the victor goes the spoils, she mused, then laughed out loud for the first time in weeks with the sheer absurdity of it all and scrambled to put on her shoes.

She had to see the Headmaster.

Right away.

**