Leaving

I'm writing this Owl and she will never see it. Writing helps get it out, and out is where I want those feelings - not festering inside me and eating away my heart and soul bit by bit. She looks at me with such contempt but I suppose I never gave her a reason not to. The son of a notorious Death Eater can't exactly be everyone's friend - especially a Mudblood's. Why did I call her that? Father uses the term so often it just doesn't have any kind of impact anymore. I remember when I called her that in our second year...I think she cried. I didn't care then, of course. To think of hurting her like that now brings me pain somewhere nondescript. The gnawing hovers in me and I can't locate it; this feeling is a phantom in my core, aching until I want to scream. Hot tears fill my eyes; the parchment disappears in a blur until the liquid pain falls from my lashes with a splash on the page. Ink connects and swims inside the salty drop and I push my quill into it and write her name with my own tears of regret and sorrow.

Hermione

She's leaving now. It's my very last chance. I go and watch her from the window as she approaches the carriage that will take her far away, never to see me again. I don't expect her to stop but she does, and turns around, like she's heard someone call. I want to open the window and shout to her, to tell her how sorry I am, that I'm not like my father and never will be - I'm not going to become a Death Eater and it's all right if she hates me forever but she just needs to know. She needs to know I don't think she's a lesser witch because of her bloodline. I lied; I played the part like a good boy. Only in this last year did my hatred have a true name: jealousy. I wanted what Potter had, what Weasley had.

Hermione

I meet her gaze and press my hand to the glass pane. I feel vulnerable hidden in this small room: safe as houses and laid bare. I should run down to her, give her this Owl, make up for these long years of abuse and pride or at least try to explain.

She traps me there at the window until her mother's voice rings out from inside the coach. My heart is slamming against my chest, my fingers curl into a fist. I wonder if my face registers the exquisite agony I am experiencing, if she can somehow see it or feel it.

Just as she's about to climb into the carriage she stops again and looks back at me. She smiles. The tears that welled in my eyes, the ones I forced not to fall where she could see them are now brimming over and streaking down my cheeks. Her hand moves over her heart and she stands for a second longer before disappearing from my view forever.

I wrote her this Owl, but she'll never see it.