The Old Apartment

Broke into the old apartment
Forty-two stairs from the street
Crooked landing, crooked landlord
Narrow laneway filled with crooks.
This is where we used to live.

Barenaked Ladies - The old apartment

Two more hours. If the Weaslette had told me the truth. I sure hope she did.

Two more hours.

That shouldn't be too bad. I can survive two more hours. I've survived the last four months without her, so two more hours should be nothing.

Except they're not. Nothing, I mean. Two hours mean 120 more minutes for me to think over my own stupidity again and again. And 120 minutes to dread her reaction when she finds me here in her (aka our) flat - the very same flat she kicked me out of four months ago after finding out about me and Pansy.

It had been nothing, really. I hadn't even had sex with her. Her sucking me off doesn't really qualify as sex, now, does it? ... Oh great, here I am, waiting for Hermione to come back home from her business trip (having broken into her, no, our apartment) and ready to do and say whatever it will take to get her back and I am still trying to talk my way out of it.

I've screwed up and I have the sinking feeling that I'm going to screw up even more badly if I don't get out of this flat soon. I might not survive another encounter with Hermione - she'd been pretty close to hexing me to hell and back (no, scratch that; probably not back) last time and God only knows how she'll react when she finds me here uninvited and, no doubt there, unwelcome.

But I don't really have a choice. It's either stay here, try to talk to her and possibly die a slow death under her wand or go back to my shabby room at the Leaky Cauldron, lie back down and die of heartbreak.

Damn, when have I become such a pussy?

She has removed most of my stuff. My Quidditch and Broom Magazines that have always been scattered around the living room table are gone. I know that I left one of my jackets here, draped over the back of the sofa. It is gone too but I can't really expect her to leave a stack of battered magazines and an old leather jacket that always smells of tobacco (bad habit, I know) lying around in the living room for four months. But... somehow I had expected her to leave everything as I'd left it.

What really gets to me though is the carpet. She has changed the fricking carpet! My light green carpet is gone, replaced by an ugly brownish scrap. I slump down onto the sofa and take a deep breath.

This is bad.

I'm sure she's moved on. It's obvious. Still...

4 years, 7 months and 3 days. The best time of my life and I've thrown it all away in a drunken night of... well, drunkenness.

No. That's not all. I can't just tell her that again and not expect her to castrade me on the spot. I'll have to be honest. Still, I just can't help thinking that the truth will make her kill me on the spot.

In exactly 102 minutes I'll have to look her in the eye and tell her that I've done it on purpose. I was drunk, all right. But I've still done it on purpose - or let Pansy do me on purpose, more like.

I have spend 4 years, 7 months and 5 days of my life trying to convince Hermione that I'm no good for her. She never believed it, always trusted me, gave me her body, soul and mind and... She gave me everything she has to give. The first couple of years it only sometimes scared me in the back of my mind. Knowing that she is far too good for me and that I always screw up sooner or later. I always knew I would leave her hanging, hurt her and destroy our relationship. I never knew when it would happen but I knew that it would happen.

Only, it never did. Everything went fine, I was happier than I have ever been in my life; certainly happier than back at Hogwarts, where I spent most of my time on the Quidditch field with my grim team mates or down in the cold dungeons, always shivering, no matter the season and trying to put on an aggressive and superior act so that my fellow Slytherins would leave me alone unless I needed one of them.

Hermione was one of the first people I ever showed the real me and every day I spent with her turned the real me into a happier and more relaxed man. And I never really screwed up.

That's when our relationship started to terrify me. I felt like if I didn't screw up soon, this would go on and on and on until I couldn't live without her anymore.

And then I would screw up. She would leave me. She would leave me and I would die.

So I screwed up on purpose before that could happen.

Only, it was too late. I can't live without her.

Pretty pathetic, huh? I somehow managed to make the most beautiful and smart witch in the whole of England fall in love with me, despite being one of those lowlifes that called her names and ridiculed her in school for her parentage, manage to make her mine and build up a seemingly strong relationship with her - and then ickle old me gets scared and ruins everything.

22 minutes. Fuck. I'm not ready yet! What exactly am I going to say, if she even listens to me?!

'I let Pansy do that because I love you so damn much and I was scared of loving you even more if I don't ruin everything soon?'

'I love you, I'm dying without you, please let me come back?'

'I'm a pathetic fool?'

She probably already knows that.

I look down at my hands gripping my thighs and see something out of the corner of my eye. A picture, stuck between the sofa cushions next to me.

It's the first picture of us, taken at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmead. We had officially been going out for about 2 months and had met up with Zacharias Smith. My parents had died during the war, so introducing her to my best friend had been as official as I could get with her. Zacharias had remembered her from school, of course and like every other wizard and witch he knew at least a bit about her role in the demise of Voldemort a couple of years before, but still, I wanted to introduce her as my girlfriend.

Zach nearly always carries a camera around with him and likes to take a picture of, well, everything. So he also made this picture of my 23-year-old self sitting next to a 19-year-old Hermione, my left arm wrapped around her shoulders, hugging her to me. Hermione's head rested on my shoulder and she winked at the camera, a toothy grin adorning her face, brown eyes shining with happiness.

Happiness because I was holding her.

Oh God.

I'm such a d-

"Marcus?"

I look up from the picture and there she is. Standing in the doorway, the bag that is slung over her right shoulder slowly glides down, falls to the floor.

"What..." She hesitates and nervously bites her lip. "What are you doing here?" Her voice shakes slightly and her eyes are shining. But not with happiness like they did years ago when the picture, that I'm still holding in my hand, was taken.

She's about to cry.

I take a deep breath and get up slowly.

Time to face the music.