A/N::::: First, allow me to apologize for the absolutely HORRID wait I've put on this chapter. Second, let me apologize for the absolutely HORRID condition of this chapter. WARNING::: IT IS UNBETA-ED!!!! (Sorry Mabel!) But there was no way that I could wait the extra day or two to post this chapter, even though it is undoubtedly the shortest one yet. This was the first official mind block that I've had while writing this story, and trust me, I wrote this thing about twenty different ways before settling on this garbled version.
So, here it goes...
Chapter 14
Coping
The silence of the house is deafening as I climb the stairs to Harry's flat. I have no clue what I'm going to say to him, but I have to fix things somehow...
The first thing I notice when I reach the landing and enter his common room is that the picture of the three of us is missing from the coffee table. The mantel is also devoid of the photographs that dotted its surface. My breath quickens as I make my way to his bedroom. I open the door and turn into the room to find it-
-completely empty. The large four-poster bed in the center of the room has been stripped of its covering. The closet door on the other side of the room stands open, holding nothing but two wooden clothes hangers. His desk next to the window has been gutted, the drawers half-closed and emptied of their contents, bar a few scraps of blank parchment. All signs that someone once inhabited this room are gone.
My feet pound against the hardwood floor as I rush to the kitchen, my heartbeat quickening with a sudden rush of panic.
The kitchen looks exactly as it did when I left the house this morning. The pots and pans are all neatly put away in the glass-front cabinets; the newspaper lays on the dining room table. Sitting on the countertop, however, is a single muffin perched on a white napkin with my name scrawled in hurried handwriting in the corner along with the word `Enjoy.'
All at once, I take in the absence of a third of my life. There is no briefcase in the corner, no laughter from the next room, no humming from the bathroom after he gets out of the shower. The entire flat lacks a warmth that I didn't realize was there in the first place.
My heart drops somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach around the time that my knees give out and I collapse against the side of the refrigerator. He's gone.
I don't try to stifle the sobs that seem to erupt from deep inside my chest and fill the air with a cacophony of sound, causing me to gasp for breath between heaves. Tears blur my vision so completely that I simply close my eyes to the view of the white tile. The trails they carve down my cheeks feel like iced razorblades slicing at my skin, but the sensation doesn't hold a candle to the sorrow that grips my soul like a vise, squeezing until I feel as if I'll die from the pain.
My mind surrenders all control to emotion, and my fingernails etch lines of red on the skin of my arms as I wrap them around my body.
This is how Ron finds me at three in the morning: four and a half hours later.
*
For the past week, I've been running on autopilot. I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, and repeat the same thing the next day. Ron tells me he doesn't know where Harry is, but I know he's lying. He can never meet my eyes when he says it.
I don't even feel like myself anymore. Everyday I wake up to an empty house. Most mornings I don't eat anything, mainly because I can't bring myself to go back to his flat alone. Ron is away at all hours for various practices and publicity events for the National League, since he was chosen to start for the English team, leaving me to wallow in my misery.
Three days ago, I sent an owl to St. Mungo's and threw my name around to find out about Harry's schedule, but the receptionist informed me that he no longer makes weekly visits to the magical institution and that he is to report there only in the event of a major emergency. Trying to contact St. Vincent's is useless. The staff there may know me, but giving out the working hours of a physician is strictly forbidden, regardless of who is inquiring.
Thus, the end of the week finds me sitting at an immaculately laid out tea table across from a very pregnant Ginny Malfoy. I've just spent the last half an hour explaining my current situation from start to finish.
"You've really mucked this one up, haven't you?"
The normal Hermione would shoot the speaker of such a thing an icy glare, or launch into a tirade about how I most certainly did not muck things up. But looking back upon the last week, I know that she's putting it lightly, and I bow my head in response.
I hear her take a deep breath, as if she's about to start in on a long lecture, but her action is interrupted by a soft 'pop' from the living room.
"Mummy!" a small voice cries excitedly as Ginny and Draco's four-year-old daughter, Danielle, rushes to her mother's side from the next room. Draco's exhausted sigh punctuates the air as he leans against the back of Ginny`s chair and lays a kiss on the top of her head, loosening his tie.
"Mummy! Look what I painted today in pwe-school!"
I can't help but smile at her uncontained excitement, and neither can Ginny, who takes the picture from her daughter's hands and begins to ooh and ahh at the smear of colors. To any observer, they are the picture of a perfect family. Draco, tall, strong, and debonair. Ginny, small and glowing. And Dani, a perfect combination of the two with fine strawberry-blonde hair, the sharp Malfoy features, and a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. For a moment, a pang of longing stabs me, but the feeling is gone as soon as it comes.
"You okay Granger?" Draco's alto pulls me back.
"Of course," I reply, obviously a bit too quickly, because he eyes me suspiciously.
"Dani, you're absolutely covered in paint! Let Daddy run you a bath so Mummy can finish talking to Aunt Hermione."
"Don't worry about that, Gin," I say, now thankful for the interruption of our conversation, "I should be on my way anyhow."
"Not at all! Draco is more than capable-"
"Later, Gin," I stress. I don't feel like staying here any longer. I feel as if I'm intruding on one of those private family moments.
Ginny shoots me a glare that pointedly says that she'll hold me to my statement.
"Draco, why don't you show Hermione out?"
"Yes, dear," he answers. The man is positively whipped.
In an exaggerated gesture, he offers me his arm and escorts me to the foyer, opening one of the giant double doors.
"Thanks," I say, squeezing his arm affectionately in goodbye.
"Anytime, m'lady," he croons, and pecks me lightly on the cheek before letting me go.
*
Back at the Ministry, I enter my office to find the largest bouquet of roses I've ever seen perched in the center of my desk. Their perfume is so strong that the scent makes me gag. I've never been a big fan of roses. Only single, long-stemmed pink ones like my father always sends me on my birthday.
A tiny ivory square is nestled among the center buds, and I wrestle my way through the velvet petals to reach it. When I finally extract the card, a burgundy satin ribbon comes with it, looped around the card's crease. The paper feels heavier than it should, even with the addition of the ribbon, and the card is tented open a bit, as if something is secured inside. I slide my fingernail under the waxed seal and open the
tri-folded cream paper.
Attached to the ribbon is an all too familiar looking diamond ring. But my eyes are drawn, instead, to the black inked message written on the paper.
My offer still stands.
---Darren
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