Eternal Memories

She had woken up this morning, and had just known something was wrong. Even the reassuring simile he had given her during breakfast over the heads of the rest of unknowing students did not quell the uneasiness that had been stirred up in her.

Ginny could not pay attention at all to her classes and even the sidewise stares given to her by her roommates as she wandered around her room aimlessly did not make her feel any more foolish than she already felt. Even sneaking past the fat lady, an act that had always given Ginny's a mixed feeling of fear and anticipation-, as she was about to see him again, did not feel normal. Instead, she felt like she was walking towards possibly the worst moment of her life. Which was absurd really- if anything, her time with him was easily when she was her happiest.

Even before she rounded the corner of the narrow hallway of the astronomy tower, she could see his faint outline forming shadows against the stone wall. He was standing, which was unusual for him. His expression as she lightly touched his back only increased her fears.

"What's wrong?" she had asked him, and of course he had grinned at her- his snarky half smirk grin that threw her heartbeat into a frenzy. She half expected him to say "nothing" but she knew that he wouldn't. She knew this even as he drew back her hair so it lay behind her ear, at least for the time being. His hands trembled as he did this, and she knew then that her fears were not just in her head.

He may have been many things- arrogant, vain, and even malicious to those he did not know or wish to know. But never was he so full of emotion that his body reacted so. He loved her, she knew that because of the way his eyes sparked when he saw her, but for anyone else, they would have never been able to tell. It was her who felt foolish as she sometimes found herself staring at him in hallways when she knew very well that she couldn't. In fact, he had teased her about it in the beginning.

Ginny locked eyes with him, and the words he was afraid to say entered her mind as if he was willing them to her. "It's come, Ginny, and I have to go," he said to her, but he did not stop there. He was telling her things, about how he loved her, how he knew that this time would come but never had he thought that it would be so hard. And she was not listening.

She felt as if her heart had stopped the minute he had told her that he had to go. She knew what he meant of course, how many nights had they talked about what would happen? Now that she thought about it, they had never ever talked about what would happen after. She was crying now, and she tried to reach into her robes for something, anything that would wipe away her tears without him knowing. This would be their last night together-she realized that much.

Before she knew it, she had somehow found her way into his arms and he was speaking to her again, and his voice was cracking. She could feel his hands holding her tightly and she wished as much as he did that they could remain forever caught in this same embrace. His heartbeat was quick as she laid her head on his chest, and she could feel her hair tickling her ear as he bent down to whisper in her ear, "I love you."

Her heart exploded into the tiny broken pieces it had been threatening to break into since this morning. It had been almost a year since she had first began meeting him in his very hallway, and it was not long after that that she had said to him that she had loved him. When he did not reply, she was of course at first, scared witless. Did he not feel the way she so clearly felt when she was around him?

Her worries those few weeks had been unfounded of course. He did love her, she realized. He just had never said that he did. Every night since that first day, she told him that she loved him- and he always smiled that same sad smile that told her that he felt the same, but could not bring himself to say what she so desperately wanted him to.

He had said it today of course. The final time she would be able to look into those clear gray silver eyes, with love instead of fake hatred. The last time she would touch his fine, white- blond hair, playing with it as he sometimes played with her own coppery hair. The emotion that welled inside her at that moment made her say the words that she had known from the beginning she could not say- had no right to say.

"Don't go Draco," she whispered in his ear and she felt his wiry muscles tense up beneath her hands.

He pulled apart slightly and gave her a long look before finally saying what she had dreaded he would. " You know I can't."

She was slightly angry now. She knew that he had never gotten the love she gave him from his family. It was her that would miss him, and cry for him until every last one of her tears was spent. "Why not?" she said to him but at the same time she knew that it was selfish of her to be only thinking of her own pain.

Hearing her, he detached himself completely from her and turned his face away. For a second, she thought he was angry. He had been born to do this, and she had no right to judge him when the destiny he had not chosen called upon him. When he turned back, he was not angry, and she wondered if he could ever truly be, at least with her.

"Would you leave them if I asked you to?" he said in a quiet, broken voice that would have made her sink to the floor if she had not been paying attention to his words.

She had never thought about that. Leaving her brothers, her parents, Harry and Hermione, everything she had every held as noble and dear to her heart in exchange for a life with him. As much as she loved him, she knew at that moment that she couldn't, just as he couldn't for her. They could not possibly run away from what they had always been; what they were always meant to be.

She could have told him about how it was obviously unfair to say that. Voldemort was so clearly evil, while at most her brothers could be said to be blockheadly stubborn. But she didn't. He loved her, maybe more than life itself, but he could not betray the people that had raised him, had groomed him to become what he had to when the time came. When he looked back at her, he knew from her silence that she was letting him go, and he drew her once again into his arms.

For the first time, she kissed him, and in that one kiss she gave all that she had, all that she had ever had, and she felt him do the same. When it was over, she stepped back, and he placed one gentle kiss on her forehead. With her tears flowing freely from her eyes, she walked down the hallway, back to The Fat Lady and into her room. It was only then that she saw the wet spots on the back of her robe. Tears- his tears that he had cried without ever letting her know.