Stones, A History

I wouldn't have expected this to hurt so much. After the war, I didn't expect anything else could compare. But it's been four years. I still wake up in the middle of the night, but not from nightmarish haunts involving the metallic taste of blood in my mouth or the passing ghosts of people whose faces I recognize, and I no longer cry because I'm afraid or sorry. I'll always be sorry, but I don't have dreams anymore where I stand over a dead Death Eater, a ruthless searing of pride in my eyes, only to see belatedly that I accidentally murdered Seamus Finnigan or Lee Jordan. I remember one now, as clearly as if I am standing right there on the field. My ears hammering louder and louder until I can't hear anything, I stare down at Lee's dark dreadlocks, which are becoming even darker with red blood, and I stop breathing for a minute, in shock. I woke up gasping only after Ginny scratched me, pulled my hair. Yelling at me or shaking me wouldn't work; I couldn't hear anything in my nightmares, and, in my nightmares, my body shook on its own accord as tears made white streaks on my dirty cheeks.

I know it's been hard for Ginny. She kept me alive for an entire year after the last battles, after I became a murderer. I'd have stopped breathing in my sleep, which would have been easiest, or found a way to slip past her and commit suicide behind her back, like an erratic teenager slipping away from her parents at night to drink with her friends. I was her young, depressive ward, her responsibility. I was older; she was stronger. I made her feel like she had a purpose, and all I wanted was to stop the pain. I fought with her daily, accusing her of being unfeeling and uncaring, of being sheltered and naïve. None of her brothers had died; she hadn't had to kill a dozen people. I wanted to run away from her and her strength, her calmness. She never let me go, clinging onto my arm, forcing me to stay and live. Another day she would weep, just another hour! I never noticed until later that I kept her alive just as much as she kept me. She needed company and comfort.

But this...this is the life of a woman who lived through Voldemort's reign of fear and lived through an age of persecution for being a Muggleborn. I have a good job, my family's still alive, my friends are still standing next to me. I've had boyfriends, one or two, but I've spent most of my time finding lost strength and losing myself in libraries around the world. It was so easy. There were many places to hide in the world, and I could go anywhere I wanted as easily as apparating. I smiled more easily as I came home, my arms stacked with books. Most were not in English. I selected novels by their weight, gold-edged pages, leather covers. Some I liked the text alone, the fonts the words had been printed with. Most of the time there was a unique smell to the book, one I hadn't smelled before. Later, I would look again, trying to find another book that smelled the same. It consumed my time, ate away at my loss like termites.

Now it's been four years. I won't stop grieving; that's not in my character. But I've thought about moving on. Ginny still lives with me, but she goes to work and parties and dates like anyone else. Some days we don't even run into each other, and it's nice like that. We have our own lives, whatever they may be. Our lives have changed so much--first, there was Hogwarts, then the war, then the mourning year when we couldn't move from the impact. We grew apart, we fought, we hit each other, we made up again. A roller coaster relationship or a roller coaster life. I've tried explaining that saying to her, but it's only Muggle. She won't understand.

When I met him again, I automatically turned my face away, tipped my hat lower, and tried to become invisible. That was the way I usually dealt with chance encounters like this: I'd try to pretend I never knew them, and they never knew me. Usually, the people I wanted to avoid--people from the Ministry who recognized me from the papers, kids I went to school with who only knew me as a miserable know-it-all--would play along and not notice that it was Hermione Granger who walked the same streets, going to an ordinary job just like the rest of them. They thought I should be deified or something. Some thought I ought to be given a kick in the arse for all the pain the war caused. I understood those people. They wanted someone to blame, someone who was alive and involved in the war. Voldemort was dead and unreachable. They wanted a way to vent their anger.

But he wouldn't let me be. When I moved to walk around him, looking down at my dark ballet flats, my pencil skirt, he pulled at my arm, turning me around. A small gasp moved out of my lungs and mouth and hovered in the air between us. I wanted to protest, tell him stiffly and politely he had the wrong person.

"Granger?" He peered into my face, and I unwillingly looked up at him and shook my head.

"Sorry, I'm not who you're looking for."

I startled us both, I could tell. He looked closer, trying to recognize the teenaged girl he thought I was. Even I didn't look in the mirrors anymore, not wanted to see who I had become after the war's wounds had scarred over.

"Are you sure?"

I shook my head again. "You don't know me, I promise."

He sighed and took his hand away, although I didn't actually see. I could feel the skin on my bare arm cooling. His voice wasn't anything I remembered; his eyes weren't either. He was a defeated man, no longer arrogant or sanctimonious. Where had the boy gone, the one I was sure I remembered, the one I protected myself from even now, years later?

"If I... If I see her, do you want me to tell her something?"

He looked back at me, confused. "If you see who?"

"The girl you thought I was...the girl you thought you knew."

His laugh was humorless but kind. "You wouldn't know her. We went to school together."

"Maybe I do."

"Are you sure you're not Granger?"

I hesitated. "Maybe. I'm not sure I'm the person you went to school with."

Now he sounded really confused, almost urgent. I felt a small bit of happiness that I'd managed to reduce him to this state, this untidy blend of discontent and disorientation. "I thought you were Hermione Granger--you look like her! I haven't seen her in years. She might look different now. Are you related to her? Do you know her?"

I didn't want to speak, but my mouth curved in an O, then a soft, waspish noise came out: "Who asks?"

"Who--oh, for!" He sighed, almost angry, almost rash, and I pulled away from him slightly, shaking his hand off of where it had rested on my shoulder. He was much taller than me, taller than I thought I remembered. It had been a long time ago, almost a different life. "I'm... It's... My name is Draco Malfoy. I was a fri-- I was... I was..." I had not seen words manipulate him in such a way before. I knew what he had been about to say. It was such a common phase. Everyone said it. Most never even realized the obscene lie that was traveling through their lips.

"Were you her friend?"

"No." His shoulders slumped and for a moment, he only breathed. A woman walked past us with a baby in her arms, and a few Muggle cars drove slowly past, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Draco Malfoy. I could not see the boy he'd been.

"Did you want to become her friend?"

He looked into my face again, almost scowling in frustration. "Did I want to? At the time? Oh, I don't know! I'm not the same person I was when I went to school with her. I hardly noticed her. We didn't talk."

"I know what you mean," I told him, my voice truthful. "I am not the same as when I was in school either."

He laughed a small laugh. "You have no idea."

"I think..." I pretended to study him, look at his faded blond hair and soft gray eyes as if his appearance would tell me something about his personality. "I think you were someone who was cruel, mean, who took pleasure in the meager suffering of your classmates. You were self-centered, highly arrogant, but you didn't have any sense of what it meant to be you. You were always the kind of person someone else made you, someone like...your father, I imagine, or your mother. The kind of kid they wanted."

He stared at me, his face unreadable. A small smirk. "And you read this all in my face? You knew all this just by...guessing?"

I was sheepish. I could not tell him now who I was, could I? "I'm sorry," I muttered, not looking up at him.

His fingers smoothed over my chin, moved my eyes in line with his. "Hey," he said softly, smiling, "I knew who you were the whole time. Granger."

I pulled away, laughing unconvincingly. "I'm serious. You've got the wrong girl."

"Look, Granger, I'm not buying it. Believe me! I'm not the same guy I was when I went to Hogwarts with you. I know you're Hermione Granger. After four years, I don't think you could've changed that much."

"Well," I said, giving in, giving up, "You'd be surprised. No one else has recognized me. I go unnoticed most of the time."

He put a long, pale hand on my shoulder and I stilled suddenly, afraid to move. I didn't know what he was going to do. He was so unpredictable. I'd never felt that with him before. "Look, Granger, I'm not going to say there was never any bad blood--I mean, we've fought and we were never friends. But I'm not the same guy, I swear! I've wasted enough of my life and I have so many years ahead trying to fix the damage I did when I was younger. It's hardly worth living for. Sometimes, I just feel there's no point."

"Oh, Malfoy...," I murmured, turning to him. In that moment, I could see the fragility in him, the brokenness. He didn't believe he could ever mend everything, much less himself. "There's always time. Life is always worth it."

"Don't pep-talk me. Don't think I don't know!" he said angrily, his eyes on fire. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to him, pressed it against his body. I stared, silenced by surprise, at the place where his hand held mine to his chest.

"Malfoy...," I tried again, my voice frightened into shaking.

"Granger! Feel my heart! Feel it!" he whispered, pressing my fingers tightly. I gasped and threw my head up to stare at him. I couldn't understand what he was saying; I only saw that his lips were moving and moving, in circles and shapes and letters.

"What do you mean?" I cried, frightened. "I can't feel your damn heart because you don't have one! You never did! All those years..." I tried to pull my hand away from his, but he wove his fingers into mine insistently, pinning them together. "I don't understand," I whimpered.

"You think the war broke you?" he said, his voice low, slow. "You think you lost your will to live? Did you ever think you couldn't go on?"

I wanted to shake my head, and I did, but he could see through my lies as if they were transparent, as if they were ghosts. "Granger, everyone was hurt. You cried, didn't you? You completely broke down and wept, didn't you?" he snarled, angry again.

I shook my head again, eyes shutting him out. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of it! "Go away, Malfoy!" I said forcefully, wrenching my hand away, tucking it into my pocket as I stood before him. He made no attempt to keep me with him; I could not leave him. We stayed silent as I hovered next to him, confused, waiting for him to grab at me again. I grew impatient; I grew curious.

"Why are you doing this?" he finally asked.

"I don't know what you mean," I muttered. "Lying? Pretending I wasn't Hermione Granger? Saying I didn't feel like suicide? Not playing along with you? Not understanding--"

"Granger!" he shouted, snaking his arm around my wrist and jerking it once, hard, unexpectedly. "Stop! That's not what I meant!"

I sighed, my resistance slipping. I was tired. "Malfoy, then what did you mean? Just--just tell me."

"Why are you resisting me?"

I choked, staring up at him with surprised eyes. "What? Resisting you?"

He closed his eyes, frustrated, and didn't elaborate.

"Tell me," I demanded, angry. "Why are you even talking to me? Why did you stop me on the street? Why'd you recognize me? Were you looking for me? Tell me!" I couldn't stop. I'd held it all down, all this emotion for him, all this suppressed anger.

Suddenly, his other arm wrapped around my waist and smashed my rigid body into his. I stared into his face, unable to ignore the sudden warmth that rushed into me wherever he touched me. He let go of my wrist and my hand dropped down to hang by my side, confused, as if it wasn't sure what had happened. With his free hand, he touched my hair, ran his fingers down the side of my face, felt the curves of my neck and shoulders. I shivered, trying to read his face. I couldn't. I still didn't understand.

He didn't speak and didn't explain his actions, but as his second hand fell around my waist like the first, I saw passion and pain in his eyes like I'd never seen before. We were frozen, neither wanted to move, neither wanting to break the silent connection our eyes had formed. The wind blew around us, and I know I didn't hear or see anything but him. When my hair covered my face for a second, I saw him behind my eyelids, watching me, watching for a reaction.

One of us had to destroy the silence. I did. "Malfoy," I whispered, my voice hoarse, "Do something."

He kissed me slowly, applying pressure, backing away, returning. I clung to him with my lips, my fingers walking up his arms to rest behind his neck. When he kissed, he closed his eyes, finding beauty and longing in touch and taste alone. I kept my eyes open. I wanted my soul to escape and bond with his. I wanted to watch his face to see if he was making this up, to see if I could feel something.

And I felt emotion like I hadn't wanted to again. Pain. If he left me now, I would be bewildered and melancholy, alternating between crying and breaking things. Passion. If he stayed with me, I wouldn't ever have to feel lonely again.

My heart--my heart of stone, my infatuation, protected mystery--burned to life under his touch and attention.

He looked at me in his arms, and smiled at my tears. "Life has no meaning for me alone."

"I know," I agreed quietly, wanting him to know I felt the same sadness as he. "Stay with me, then. Stay. We won't be lonely together. I promise. I promise, promise, promise," I whispered, kissing him chastely for each promise, like a faerie wish.

I know what I wished for that day. I didn't want to feel pain again like before. I wished for some bursting revival for my shredded emotions. I didn't want to be lonely.