A Wonderful Fortuitous Love

62. My Hero

“I have a habit of falling in love with souls who have yet to be at peace with their bodies, their minds, their weaknesses. I try to build them, to find the parts of them that are missing in me. I end up with holes in my chest.”

- Farah Gabdon

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The days became quicker as they drew nearer to the end. Calling it ‘the end’ was probably a tad bit melodramatic. It was not as though he was going to die. Well, he won’t so long as he doesn’t purposely run into Granger, but nonetheless it was the end. And it was coming fast.

Theodore’s trial happened, and Draco was somewhat successful in his attempt to get his former friend some slack. It didn’t change he would be in Azkaban for six years, but it was a heck of a lot better than a life sentence. At the trail, as Draco went to leave, Theo caught his and Blaise’s (who’d insisted to come) eye. He smiled ever so faintly; the first smile he had seen on his face in years and the only one that made him actually look like the kid he once knew, at Draco, then nodded at Blaise carefully. Blaise did not respond right away, but gradually his head tilted forward, and this left Draco with hope that one day – probably very far off – but one day in the far future, he thought maybe they could all be friends again. It would never be the same, he knew sadly. But it was the best he could hope for.

He spent more time with Ophelia and grew accustomed to their house (sometimes it would only take him twenty minutes to find someone, an improvement). Alexis started officially working with Hermione. He heard Derek quit and married Tina in America somewhere (he had a suspicion neither were sober). Pansy’s belly got bigger, and every time she visited a teary eyed Hermione would feel her stomach.

The days all flew by, and before he was even ready Draco forced himself to do something he had been trying with all his might to avoid because it made everything that much real.

Packing.

Two and a half whole days was what it took to get everything into suitcases and bags. Hermione worked with him in silence. As the fifteenth of July turned into only a matter of two days away, she went oddly silent. She helped him pick up shirts and pants and boxers off the ground or from his draws to fold them neatly in one of his many bags without one condescending comment at the messy state of his room. There was no conversation starter from her whatsoever. Draco tried a few times, if only because the silence made him think more, but his advances were met with poor results.

He hadn’t expected the packing to be so difficult. Not physically, but emotionally. It made him realise that sometime between all the arguments over whose food was whose and all the laughter over awfully made soap operas, the little flat he had once considered to be his prison had, without really meaning to, become home. The first real one he had ever known.

And now he had to leave.

They finished gathering up Draco’s stuff the night before he would leave. Granger was nowhere in sight as he did his fourteenth check of the house. He thought he’d gotten most of everything, but still had the feeling some of his belongings were jumbled with hers. He started on the fifteenth round to looking when he decided that if anything was missing, he could just get Blaise or Pansy to pick it up. But he kept circling; taking in every inch of the flat he could to savour it forever.

Although, this might also have been a way to hide from Granger. He had known it was coming all along, that he would have to say something to her. He was supposed to leave early in the morning, so there would be no time for the things that needed to be said. But… but what was he to say? How could he even tell her what he wanted her to know when he himself didn’t really understand?