Can't Stand Losing You.

Forgetting.

Disclaimer: obviously, I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters mentioned – hell, I wish I did! However, the plot is entirely a work of my own imagination.

Chapter Two – Forgetting:

Hermione thought that she knew what it felt like for time to pass at a slowly. For example, in her first year at Hogwarts, she had believed that time was passing slowly when she and Ron had waited for Harry to recover from his escapades with Professor Quirrell in his bid to find the Philosopher's Stone. In her third year, she had believed that time was passing slowly when she and Harry were forced to wait for their past selves, only being watched again through the power of Hermione's Time-Turner, to emerge from the Shrieking Shack and into the clutches of Remus Lupin at his most dangerous. In her fourth year, she had believed that time was passing slowly when her best friend had been lost in the heart of a magical, terrifying maze during the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament. And more recently, in her fifth year, she had believed that time was passing slowly when Bellatrix Lestrange and her fearsome Death Eaters had held her and her friends captive, their wands to their throats, while Harry had been drawn into a dark battle which would twist the very fabric of the wizarding world.

That was, until she had arrived back at her home on the outskirts of South London. After the usual greetings had been exchanged with her parents (throughout which Hermione had painted a smile on her face and attributed the mascara-tainted tear tracks on her cheeks to bittersweet farewells between her and her school friends), she had dragged her feet upstairs to her bedroom and locked the door. Her room had been full of painful reminders of Draco Malfoy – countless enchanted photographs of them together on the walls that moved animatedly, a magical cake on her shelf they had made together for Hermione's fifteenth birthday that replenished itself whenever a slice was eaten, a single feather from the plumage of Draco's pet eagle owl, Artemis, that had fallen onto her window ledge last summer when they had exchanged letters. She had glanced at her digital clock; the glowing red numbers told her it was three minutes to midnight. After kicking off her shoes and throwing her trunk down onto the floor, without bothering to change her clothes, she had turned off all the lights and cried, cried until she could see the sun rising again through the window, cried until she felt as though there were no more tears left in her body to possibly shed. Quivering, nauseous and exhausted, she had drifted off into an uneasy but mercifully dreamless sleep.

The next morning, Hermione's mother had entered her bedroom to find her slumped against the wall beside her desk, tears streaming down her face, her hair tousled and matted, clutching a greyscale photograph of her daughter and a silver-blonde-haired boy to her heart. Sarah Granger had grown used to seeing the subjects of the photographs Hermione brought home moving, as if by a trick of the light. Her daughter had explained that it was bymagic – the reason her only daughter was educated far away from home, the skill that caused her so much frustration because she was not allowed to practice it during the holidays, the word that always made Hermione's eyes light up when it was mentioned. In the particular photograph Hermione currently held, both her daughter and the boy were wrapped up in winter coats, hats and scarves. They stood near what appeared to be the edge of an enormous frozen lake, the magnificent castle known as Hogwarts, Hermione's school, standing in the distance. The boy's arm was draped tenderly around her shoulders, and her hand was visible peeping around his waist. Her chocolate brown eyes were on him, but his, unchanged by the colour scheme of the photograph, stared straight into the camera, full of laughter and happiness. Sarah had sat down beside her daughter and asked who the boy was, and Hermione had told her.

She had told a wonderful tale of a boy named Draco Malfoy, a boy with haunted grey eyes, an athletic build and hair of silver-blonde. After fate had drawn them together halfway through their fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – something to do with jealousy, regrets and a ball to celebrate an ancient magical tournament as well as the arrival of Christmas – the odds had been set against them. But despite what everybody had said, their relationship had remained strong, they had stayed true to one another and the pair had been nearly inseparable for eighteen months. Sarah had rolled her eyes as she listened. During the summer holidays last year when Hermione had returned home, she had noticed a change in her daughter. She had waved off the glassy-eyed daydreams, the love heart doodles and scrawled initials in her notebook and Hermione's sudden desire to wear make-up as a side-effect of her raging hormones. Now, in hindsight, it seemed very obvious. She should have known there had been a boy involved.

The end of Hermione's story, however, was not quite so wonderful. Draco Malfoy had ended their relationship the previous afternoon because, Hermione seemed to believe, he had set his sights on another girl. Sarah had hugged her daughter at this point, due to the fact that the tears had begun to fall again. After sending her downstairs to get some food into her system and lose herself in one of her beloved books, she began to take down the photographs of Hermione and Draco from the walls and packed them away into boxes, alongside birthday and Christmas cards, a strange golden-brown feather and a silver heart-shaped locket containing a single moving image of the pair dancing together on what looked like a crowded dance floor. She had locked the everlasting cake away at the back of a cupboard in the kitchen indefinitely until she figured out how to get rid of it – every time she went to throw it away, she found herself confused as to why she was holding the cake and opening up the waste bin. When Sarah had finished tidying, she had joined her daughter and husband in the sitting room.

"It'll be okay, angel," she had told Hermione soothingly, rubbing circles into the back of the slightly-shaking hand she held with her thumb. "It'll all be okay. You'll get better, you'll move on, because that's just who you are. You're my Hermione. I know you can survive anything. You'll forget all about him."

That had happened six weeks ago. Now, as September drew nearer and Sarah closed Hermione's bedroom door for the night, she realised how very wrong she had been.