Draco
Hermione Granger was dying. I was desperate to keep her with me, I didn’t want to lose her. She was mine and mine alone. Harry and Ron abandoned her the instant she told them about us, and I swore off everything I’d ever known for her. She was all I had left.
She was my joy, my life, my only light. Antonin Dolohov had hit her in the abdomen with an unknown spell in her fifth year, and we had thought that it was nothing more than a miscast spell. She was supposed to be fine. I was heartbroken when ten years later she was told it had spread gradually throughout her body, and she was days away from death.
I wasn’t ready to lose her. I had no wealth, no friends, no family, no heir. I had nothing more than an orange cat and a frizzy haired swot. I couldn’t lose her. I started researching a way to hold on, to ensure she’d spend my life with me like she had initially promised. I had nothing without her. I wanted nothing more than her, and I was running out of time.
***
Hermione
Draco was suffocating. I wanted my last few days to be happy. I needed it to be peaceful, and he was insisting on saving me. I didn’t need to be saved. All I ever needed was him. I’d given up my friends, and my parents never recovered their memories. All I had was a blonde prat and an orange cat. I would have to leave them behind, and no one would come to my funeral.
Harry loved me, but Ginny couldn’t move past my love for Draco. Ron had always loved me, but I couldn’t have made him happy. I needed more intellectual stimulation, and he needed simplicity. My heart broke that Draco was the reason everyone had left me alone.
I’d written to Harry, and he wanted to visit me. Unfortunately, he claimed he and Ronald had to continue following a lead in Ukraine. Luna, Neville, any of the Weasleys, save George, all rejected seeing me before I died. All I wanted was time with my husband. Time he had spent hopelessly searching for a way to save me.
***
Draco
The day before she died, I had found the answer. A spell that would ensure she stayed with me as a ghost. She’d never leave the estate, and would be an ethereal presence in my life. I’d never have to lose her. Not really.
I’d never hold her again, but I’d never lose her conversation. I’d never feel her curls again, but I’d still be able to laugh with her. If her being in a spiritual limbo was the price to pay, I was willing to pay it.
Normally, we would have talked and negotiated. We would have had the time for a serious conversation. We were out of time, and the spell required she not know my intentions.
As she slept, frail and incredibly ill, I cast the spell on her. She stopped breathing, and the life inside of her faded. I heard her sob from behind me. I turned, hoping for tears of gratitude and joy. She was not happy like I had hoped.
“Draco what have you done?” She cried, “I had so much more time with you… why have you done this?”
“Hermione… it was the only way,” I pleaded with her.
“No!” She shouted, “The only way was to let me die when it was my time and move on! Now I’m stuck here! And my final moments were the man I love taking me away!”
“No! That’s not what I did!” I argued with her, “I preserved you!”
“Draco, you cannot love a specter! I’m not alive, I’m a shadow of who I was! I won’t be enough!” She screamed at me. I wanted to hold her and assure her, but she wouldn’t feel it. She wouldn’t be warm again. That was fine. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make.
“You’ll always be enough…” I assured her. She glared at me spitefully and left to another room.
***
Hermione
I was haunted by my living husband. I had died, prematurely, and at his hand. I refused to look at him. When he tried to speak to me, I’d leave him there. I had hoped he’d try to move on from me, and the ties that bound me to this horrendous existence would be released.
That was not what happened. I watched him fall to pieces from my silence, and the guilt of my murder ate away at his mind. He would beg me to look at him, but I couldn’t. I trusted him with everything and he killed me. He began to drink to cope with my silence.
The more he drank, the more upset he’d become. I was haunted by his decline. Forced to bear witness to the man I once loved harden to the world. I wasn’t positive speaking to him would fix anything. I wasn’t certain I wanted to. He had cursed me.
I was trapped on this mortal plane, unable to transcend past it. He was tethering me here. He was the one that killed me. He was the one not letting me go.
I’d catch him watching me. He’d hide and watch me move from room to room, endlessly bored. I couldn’t hold a book to read. I couldn’t pet my cat. I couldn’t do anything I loved… I was simply forced to exist in monotonous misery.
***
Draco
The years went on and I wanted to die. I wanted to be with her. She wouldn’t speak or look at me. I was haunted by her ghostly form, and didn’t want to move past her. She was beautiful, even in her misery.
It was selfish of me to keep her. I knew she’d be free if I let her go. If I accepted her passing and found a way to survive without her. It was an insurmountable idea. She’d died at my hand to exist in this ghostly state. If I were to let her go, her death would have been in vain. Simply watching her exist was enough for me.
***
Hermione
Draco died one day. How he had passed was unclear. He was alone in the manor, and had given up on people years ago. They didn’t find his body for nearly a decade. I didn’t regret holding firm in my conviction to ignore him.
I was devastated. I was cursed to haunt these halls forever. It felt unfair he had killed me, captured me, and got to transcend to another plane freely. He got to be happy, and I would be miserable for eternity.
I saw generations of people inhabit my home. Watched my books get disregarded and everything I loved destroyed or removed. I watched crookshanks die and grieved alone. Soon, almost everyone I knew must have been dead. I was in an immortal misery.
I never got to have an ending.