So Long, London
April 1998
My name is Draco Malfoy
I’m seventeen years old
I’m okay
He repeated the three things he knew as fact over and over and over. He couldn’t let up because if he did he knew he would crumple. He watched as Hermione Granger was pinned to the floor under his Aunt Bellatrix. She was yelling and Granger was screaming but all he could hear was ringing. He couldn’t move. His mother’s nails dug into him so tight that he thought he felt blood draw.
All he could do was stare at her. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry was all he could repeat into her head. He didn’t know if she heard it. He hoped it would be enough to protect her from Bellatrix. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry his eyes locked on hers. Molten pools of mercury meeting amber that shimmered like gold.
There was a crash and she was gone, leaving behind nothing but a pool of blood. He stood and stared and then he himself was bathing in her spilled blood, his joining hers as the Dark Lord punished his family. He couldn’t hear anything but the ringing and his own voice in his head repeating the only thing he could to hang on.
My name is Draco Malfoy
I’m seventeen years old
I’m okay
Chapter one- So Long, London
I stopped CPR, after all it's no use
The spirit was gone, we would never come to
And I'm pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free
For so long, London
Stitches undone
Two graves, one gun
I'll find someone ...
September 2004
Hermione Granger stared in shock at her boyfriend's bare arse thrusting into some bint that she knew for a fact was fake moaning. Ron’s sexual prowess was not good enough to elicit those types of sounds from any witch.
Her bag slipped from her loose grip, causing a loud thud from where she stood in the doorway. Ron turned his head and locked eyes with her. She could see the exact moment he processed what was happening. His face paled and the witch under him squealed as she grabbed the sheets to cover her naked body.
Hermione looked at the girl and a mixture of both relief and horror at the fact that she didn’t recognize her at all. Just some random woman that Ron had thrown their relationship away for. But maybe that was worse in some ways. She’d have to debate later.
“Get out!” Hermione sniped at the girl. Later she would feel bad for being so aggressive with the other woman, afterall it was Ron who was the real cheater, but she couldn’t bring herself to drop the sour attitude. She probably would’ve ripped Harry’s head off even. Her chest tightened even more at the thought. She just found out she had been cheated on, and all she could think was how much she missed her best friend.
The girl didn’t hesitate to stumble past Hermione and essentially run towards the floo. Hermione heard the chime signaling the girl's departure before she rounded on Ron. “How long?” her voice was low and steady. She wanted to yell but if she did she was afraid of her wand accidentally slipping an avada at the man in front of her.
For his part, Ron didn’t start to beg for forgiveness or even crumple to the floor. “About as long as you’ve been a frigid bitch” he slipped from the bed and pulled on a pair of trousers. His attitude was so nonchalant, like he was more put out that he didn’t get to finish than being caught ruining the foundation of their lives.
His nonanswer was just more fuel to her burning rage. “You begged me for this relationship, Ronald Weasley” it was the only thought now flooding her brain. For years they had been friends. Hermione had always thought their relationship would take off in full bloom, but it had been fledgling.
She had avoided him after their kiss in the Chamber of Secrets during the Battle of Hogwarts. She needed her own time to process and grieve, and grieve she did. But after her graduation from Hogwarts he had pushed and pushed. She had no longer felt the warm butterflies in her stomach when he was around, but she couldn’t disappoint all of the people around her. After all, this is what they had fought for.
So she accepted Ron’s advances, throwing herself into the relationship fully, even in her vulnerable state. Looking back, it had been a horrible idea. They weren’t what each other needed and over the years, their foundation of friendship had started to crack under the weight of the failing relationship.
Ron turned to her and scoffed, “Stop acting like you haven’t had one foot out the door this entire time. I’m not an idiot, Hermione”
Hermione shook her head, her curls bobbing with the movement. She had held onto this relationship with a white knuckle grip, even when she knew deep down it was dying. She could never get herself to admit she wasn’t happy, that maybe she had checked out a bit. And maybe she even held some resentment towards Ron.
“I would never have betrayed you like this! If you weren’t happy you could’ve just left me, but instead you chose to humiliate me!” Her voice croaked
Ron’s face now turned red, “Well maybe if you would’ve tried harder I wouldn’t have had to look somewhere else” He started to yell, and that was the last straw. Hermione could take a lot, but a cheating coward yelling at her, blaming her for infidelity was not something she’d put up with. She was Hermione fucking Granger and she’d be damned that she had let a man drag her this low.
“I was grieving! I lost everything! Don’t you get that! And you couldn’t be bothered to care, so I’m sorry that didn’t make me want to fucking jump your bones every hour of the day!” angry tears sprang to her eyes at the reminder of her grievances.
She had never been able to recover her parents' memories. Two years into her relationship with Ron and four years after the war she had gotten news that her parents had passed away in a car crash. All her healing had felt like it had been undone and Ron would only complain that she woke him up every night with her nightmares.
That had been when she could finally see the cracks, but she had tried to fill them. Now they had reappeared with a vengeance, shattering the last leg their relationship stood on. Her friends' next words obliterated their friendship though.
“Oh please Hermione, you weren’t the only one who lost someone. Grow up, you’re being pathetic”
The words were like a slap to the face. She knew she wasn’t the only one to be affected by the war by a long shot, but hearing it from Ron was a knife to the heart. It was also the last tie she felt to him being severed. The little boy she had become friends with in their first year was gone.
“Years! Years I devoted to you and Harry! I kept you alive more times than I can count and you tell me to ‘Get over it’! Fuck you Ronald Weasley, you little coward! You want to go fuck other witches so bad? Well now you’re free. I’m sorry I dragged you down so much” she was screeching but didn’t care. She probably looked half insane and Ron was definitely staring at her like she was, but for the first time in years she felt lighter.
“‘Mione…” Ron tried to reach for her, his voice soft, but she wasn’t falling for it.
“No!” she yelled vehemently at him, pulling back before he could make contact with her. “I want you out for the night. Go finish and remember that it will never be me beneath you again!” she brandished her wand, not sure if he would fight it or not. He was always so hot and cold with his emotions.
He stared down her wand and sighed, “I’ll see you in the morning and we can talk this out when you’ve calmed down” his lips a thin line.
She had no intention of being here when the sun rose, but she nodded anyway. She just needed him to get out of here long enough so she could pack her belongings. “I’ll see you in the morning” she lied right through her teeth and she saw him walk down the stairs. The floo chimed again and she creeped her way downstairs to make sure he was truly gone. At the confirmation, she shut down all floo travel and the wards.
Then she got to work.
xXx
As she packed her life away into her purple bag, she thought through her plan. She could go to her parents house, technically in her name now, and block all contact from Ron. But then he’d be able to find her at work. Plus she wasn’t sure she really wanted to be alone right now. The decision was entirely last minute and would catch Harry totally off-guard, but she put Crookshanks into his carrier and apparated to the nearest point closest to the train station.
The owl to Kingsley had been short and sweet. She was Hermione Granger and as much as she hated pulling the card, she needed a break. As she took her seat on the train, she thought over the past couple of years of her career. They had not gone the way she had hoped. She had tried to work her way up the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, but just like her relationship with Ron, it was fledgling.
Her ideas and legislation had been seen as too progressive and not taken seriously by almost anyone but Kings and his word wasn’t enough. She had always thought she’d make her way up to department head and maybe even one day run for Minister, but as the years wore on those dreams started to feel dashed and she became drained.
And so she found herself here. Her relationship ended, her job essentially quit, and her whole life packed away in one purple, beaded bag. A smile graced her lips for the first time in what felt like days. As the train left London at high speed, she felt like she was floating. She was saying goodbye and wasn’t entirely sure when she would be back.
Through her relief though she still felt the anger and sadness pulling at her. While she was leaving for a fresh start, she was still leaving her home. She loved London, both the magical and muggle side. And the more she thought about it, the more she was angry about all those years she wasted on Ron.
It wasn’t just the youth of her twenties she had wasted (though she wouldn’t call twenty four old), but her childhood too. He had smeared all of it, ruining it in a mere matter of seconds. And then he had blamed her for his unfaithfulness when she had tried everything in herself to make their relationship work.
She didn’t even get an answer as to if this had been the first time or not. From his attitude and his calling her a ‘frigid bitch’ she thought it was safe to say that it wasn’t. It was weird how numb she felt to it. She was devastated at the betrayal, but the loss of Ron wasn’t stinging like she had always thought it would.
She wondered if it was the quiet resentment she had started to harbor towards him. She hadn’t been lying when she said his complaints of her night terrors played a big part in their sex life. Nightmares had plagued her especially bad right after the war. She had found a way to deal with them, but that method had not been available anymore and Ron hadn’t even bothered to really try.
She’d tried to understand how irritating it was to lose sleep to her screaming and thrashing. Hermione herself wore dark circles under her eyes like they were an accessory for months. But after a few weeks of half assed attempts at comfort he would just roll over after making sure she wasn’t suffering physically.
It had grated her. The person she was supposed to share everything with, blowing her off. She had needed someone and he hadn't been it, but she had just lost her parents and she couldn’t lose someone else. Her parents death was like a killing blow to her steady recovery. It had felt like everything she had slowly built since the war didn’t matter.
Everything she had sacrificed didn’t matter because her family was dead. Her mother would never read her favorite classic novels, her father never getting to belt out his favorite sixties tunes. The Grangers had died the summer of 1997, and then the Wilkens followed half a decade later. Leaving Hermione truly alone.
She closed her eyes and let the sway of the train rock her to sleep.