Yours in Mayhem |Dramione

29 twenty one, twenty one and on

For instance Neville never acquired the habit of calling people with their last name as was accustomed. It made him feel distant to people, he'd rather call them with their birth name, chosen by someone who loved them dearly or hoped to be able to someday. It was that quality perhaps that drew his unlikely new friend to him today. "Draco, how long have you been in love with her?"

"A specific point in time?"

Neville nodded, interested in what his former classmate will reply.

"Can you be any more corny?"

Neville didn't say anything as he watched the expression on Draco's paler than usual skin-- like he was half dead, his usually slicked back hair now a tangled mess. His every evidence of self neglect crystal clear in the afternoon sun. Like a once grand castle, left alone to decay.

"That's quite possibly the most trite thing that I've ever heard. Might as well ask everyone to gather around to hear my eulogy to her, why don't you?" He was laughing hard when he said this, laughter erupting from within him, cracking the ribs beneath his velvet vest. "Not that I have one. Fuck that."

"Draco..."

Draco stood up and stepped away from the window and into the center or Neville's office. "Fucking fine, I'll humor you," he waved an arm around as if to signify that this is petty, "I'm afraid I had to say that it was love at first sight." He laughed at the connotation. "I don't know if it was that bushy owl's nest excuse for hair or those humongous beaver teeth or her eagerness to wear those god awful robes we call our uniforms or perhaps that annoying smirk she does when she knows she's right..."

Draco intended for the answer to be sarcastic but it ended up being a too enthusiastic recount of what she looked like the first time they met. Platform 9 and 3/4 back when they were both eleven years old. The smirk on his face dropped replaced by a scowl then a grimace then a heaving of breath.

It was bleak. The future suddenly looked bleak. That most eluding thing was already on his fingertips-- within his reach, why did he have to let her go? He'll never see her again. Never. No chances.

"What even is 'love', Longbottom?"

Happily married to his soulmate for twenty years now, everyone would assume that Professor Longbottom would know the answer but he merely shook his head. "My family, my wife, Hogwarts? It's people and places for me, Draco, and what they make me feel. Expressing it in words just cheapens it. Don't you think?"

"I'd rather not think," he said.

Then he laughed at his own wordplay. Even louder than the first time. Isn't this fun? Having an afternoon a roll with an old chum while recounting all the good things that happened-- that could have happened. She will always be his could have. It never happened, never.

The laughter just kept bursting out of him. They were friends. Him and her. For a while, they were. It was a friendship thirty years too late but still it was something. She said that she admires him, it will be beautiful when-- if he asked her to be more. It could be.

Why didn't he?

Is he still that sodding coward that stood only steps away while she was tortured in his own house? The very same one who almost pissed himself and can't keep food down days after?

Even after she was brave enough to look past everything and see him as just him.

What a fucking coward.

You never even got to tell her, prick.

You bought your time when you should have bought her a ring, a book-- ANYTHING! Or you should have gone with her like it was intended in the first place before you decided to play hard to get and pretended to be busy. What's wrong with you?