A/N: The door scene here when Malfoy comes to her was something I borrowed from The Big Love by Sarah Dunn. I really liked the idea so I did a bit of insertion.

Part 4

It would be sick to tell you that she fantasized about the day Harry would tell Ginny – wait a second, no, fantasized wasn’t the right word for it at all (because that would mean that she had invested some kind of enjoyment in it, which truly wasn’t the case), but she did something close to it. What she did was this: she played out the possible scenarios in her head. When he would do it. How. The one she imagined happening the most was a very dramatic declaration in which Ginny had just reached the altar and the minister had just finished saying the phrase, “Whoever objects to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace.” And that was when Harry would decide he could not forever hold his peace. He would bolt out of his seat beside her and do it. Declare his love for her, Ginny Weasley, in front of everyone they knew. She tried to imagine the faces of everyone around her – shock, horror, or maybe even excitement and thrill.

Elena, who was also often invited to the weddings of the people in their company, once confessed to her exactly why it was she went to weddings. “Weddings are tantamount to watching the sweaty pregnant women on airplanes,” she’d told her as they sat in hard chairs waiting for the ceremony to finally start. It had been an outside wedding, on grass, and people’s allergies were beginning to kick up. “The only reason I get my ass out of bed at nine in the morning on a Saturday and then try to squeeze my overly large ass into a dress that’s too small and wear heels that are too high – armed with a gift that is too expensive, might I add – so I can watch two people I don’t even like sell their soul to the devil is that hope, that teensy tiny prayer, that something exciting will happen.”

“It’s a wedding,” said Hermione. “The most exciting thing you’d expect to happen is that people will eat too much cake, get drunk, and cry.”

“That,” she’d whispered to her as the minister lapsed into a series of sneezes, “is not to which I am referring to. What I am referring to is that little moment after the minister asks that little open-ended question pertaining to whoever objects to the marriage. And then there’s that pause. . . and you know, you just know, that everybody is holding their breath, waiting at the edge of their seats for something to happen. It’s an incredibly vain hope, I know, but a person’s got to find light in these morbid situations somehow.”

The part she had the most difficult time imagining was the part afterwards. After Harry confessed his love and the whole frenzy of horror and shock happened. What would happen then? Would Ginny leave the altar? No matter how many times she tried to sort out the details, she could never get past the part where Harry told her, and it frustrated her because that meant that she didn’t know what to expect, and hence, pathetically attempt to prepare herself for it. It was a blank page refusing to be written on, and if there was anything Hermione simply couldn’t stand, it was that.

Her most recent conversation with Malfoy, however, had been. . . otherworldly. And she didn’t even know if it was otherworldly and strange in a good or bad way. She had a good feeling, though, that it was a mix of both. Good in the way that finally, there was someone else out there who knew – and bad in the way that, Fuck, it had to be Malfoy. But she accepted this. Because she was quite in touch with reality (despite her constant imaginings of her boyfriend confessing his love for someone else), and she knew that sometimes, you just don’t get the chance to choose. For example, she’d once seen this documentary on a cruise liner that had been shipwrecked on some deserted island – and after weeks of waiting, they were finally rescued. By pirates. Obviously they hadn’t been that specific in their prayers, but rescue was rescue, and that, in itself, made it slightly easier to digest that she’d found a sympathizing soul in Malfoy. Even though – and she could gladly recall this moment – he didn’t seem to have any more of a clue what to do in their shitty circumstance than she did.

See, somebody had just put on “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes” and from the corner of her eye she’d seen a couple get up from the bar to dance. And as she sat there, drinking her beer, watching them and feeling the somewhat eerie music tingle through her; she realized that she had never been that kind of person. The kind of person that would just get up and dance when nobody else was – even if she was in love, and the song was good, and the moment was perfect. She watched the couple dancing by the neon jukebox, completely unashamed, and found herself wishing that things could be that simple, and easy.

“There,” Malfoy told her, taking a drink, “is no such thing as simple.”

“Sure there is,” she said. She was a firm believer in simplicity.

“Simple is a dream. Simple is looking at something so impossibly far away that the details are invisible. Easy, however – that’s something else. It’s easy to fall in love with someone. But it’s not simple.” He looked at the couple dancing by the jukebox. “Nothing,” he lowly said to her, “is simple.”

She disagreed. She told him that she believed things could be simple, if people would just let them.

“But they’re not. And they never can be. Because people can never resist putting the magnifying glass against the anthill, Granger. We’re here where we’re at now because there was always someone out there who was all too eager to dissect something and put it back together. We,” he emphasized to her, “are taught to look closely. We’re taught not to judge things by their appearance. We’re taught to think things are more complicated than they are.”

She was slightly in awe of him at this point, and feeling a little annoyed, too – but only because she couldn’t stand that he could seemingly know so much. Nobody should ever know this much. People, she had always thought, should learn how to live without getting a lot of the answers they so desperately want. Obviously, it had taken her a long road to finally come to that conclusion. “You can’t possibly have all the answers, Malfoy,” she scoffed. Then she took a long drink. She had the idea that maybe, just possibly, if she drank more, he would make less sense and this wouldn’t scare her as much.

“You’re right. I don’t.” And then he gave her a little side-glance. And that was when she had known exactly what it was he was referring to. They sank into silence again, as she continued to watch the dancing couple out of the corner of her eye. They danced until the song ended, but she had enough mind to know that for some people, the genuinely lucky ones, the music never really ends. This was why she disagreed with Malfoy. See, with some things, it was just as simple as that.

Hermione could pinpoint the exact moment when Harry had let her know that he’d planned out his entire future with her. Not that she’d been avidly searching for hints or clues – she had actually, at that moment, hadn’t given it much serious thought. But as she thought back to it and tried to squeeze out whatever knowledge or facts she’d happened to miss due to possible complete ignorance, she realized why that moment could have possibly fucked their relationship over. See, the thing is, you should never really plan out your entire future with the one you think you’re going to end up with, in the end. You can visualize it, and you can sure as hell fantasize about it – but you should never plan it. Because that means that your future with that person had to include these specific moments for it to work – and relying on such fickle and ambiguous details such as those are always a bad idea from day one. It also means that you are trying to read cards that haven’t even reached the table yet. Which means that you will – inevitably – lose.

It was just after they had finished having sex. There was snow falling outside; there was always something about having sex while it’s snowing outside for her. For some reason, it made it feel more intimate. Maybe because when she was little, she remembered stepping outside after the first full snow, and everything seemed quieter. Muffled. As if the snow had made the town quieter, more peaceful, and everything was enveloped in white – just like in her dreams.

“I have a question,” said Harry. He’d snaked his arm around her shoulders and he was holding her close, his voice low and quiet against her hair. “But under no circumstances do I want you to freak out when I mention it.”

“Well. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, then.”

She felt him breathe softly against her hair. “Hermione, do you ever think about the future?”

She was silent then, waiting for the punch line – the part where she was supposedly supposed to freak out. It was a moment later when she realized that there was no impending punch line, that that had been it. “That’s it? That’s why you didn’t want me to freak out? Boy, do you exaggerate sometimes.”

“I was assuming you would assume that there are quite several tangents attached to the topic.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Things related to the future.”

“You mean like the weather? Or, perhaps, our failing economy?”

That was when she felt him smile against her temple. That was one of those things that she constantly worked her way towards – the smile against her temple. Because, see, the thing is, there are a lot of things about being in love that you will absolutely, one-hundred percent think is pure bullshit when you hear about it. You will think, No way, that’s just sappy shit. You will think that it is ridiculous to get excited about, that you’d probably get more excited about your first cup of coffee in the morning, or your first paycheck – and then you’ll forget about it. And then you’ll fall in love. And then you’ll feel all of that “bullshit” and realize that it’s all true – or maybe just most of them – but you won’t really remember to contradict yourself. That’s the thing about being in love. Suddenly the things you mocked and thought were stupid become unimportant, because it doesn’t matter, because you don’t care. You learn how to accept things as they are. Like the way it feels when he smoothes your hair out of your face so that he can look at you, really look at you. Or the way it feels when he smiles against your skin, and the fact that you don’t need to see it to know that it’s there.

Another thing about being in love is that things get quieter inside your head. That’s why it becomes so livable, why people so willingly bind themselves to that state. It’s such a pure distraction and that niggling voice inside your head is instantly silenced because what you’re feeling right now is something that it knows it can’t fight.

“Bigger than the weather, Hermione.” He paused for a minute. “It scares me to think that some things can be so easy. Everything else is. . .” he trailed off, knowing that he didn’t have to explain. She knew what he meant.

“Maybe it’s compensation,” she told him. “Maybe life feels guilty. Maybe it’s cutting you some well-deserved slack.” She thought about it. “You’re always ready to lose something, Harry. It shouldn’t be that way.”

“Please don’t analyze me, Hermione,” he whispered, laughing quietly. “We were talking about the future. I just. . . wanted you to know. I can live with this. For a really long time.”

“This?”

“This. This easiness. You.”

“Well, hello there, Granger. How goes things?” he asked, putting down his glass. “Still in love with a man that loves somebody else?”

When you come across certain people, it is sometimes easy to tell right off the bat why you two won’t hit it off. She found this skill to be a very valuable necessity in dating – or in life in general. And usually, when she came across cases when there was a definite clash of personalities, she generally had no problem with it because, see, she had come to accept a very long time ago that there are certain types of people that are dispensable and some that are not. Having said this, this was a perfect example of why she and Malfoy could never be friends. One: he was a cruel bastard. And two: he wasn’t funny.

“You,” she told him, somewhat wishing his dick would shrivel up and fall off before their honeymoon, “are getting married in two weeks. I highly suggest you use this time to clean up your act. You’re going to need every bit of it, trust me.”

“Granger, it’s a wedding, not the initiation of a totalitarian dictatorship.”

“I beg to differ.” She opened up her planner, and lo and behold, there it was. The circled date of their wedding, just a little over two weeks away. To be completely honest, she tried her best to jump right past it. Because no matter how many times she’d happened to see it as she flipped through her planner to check her next doctor’s appointment, the way her body reacted upon seeing the bolded red print never seemed to lose any of its vigor. It always made it a little harder to breathe. It also instilled a bit of panic in her that she then tried to hide away, even from herself. It was stupid. It was silly. She should’ve gotten used to it by now. After all, she’d been planning their wedding this entire time! It just didn’t make any sense.

They were down to the last hectic seconds, and it showed. “You look so focused,” Elena had said to her one day, when she’d been making calls during her lunch break. “I almost believe that you actually expect this wedding to go through.”

“So. Any progress?”

“Progress?” she scoffed. “I just planned your entire wedding. Everything is now set in stone, unless either one of you dies.” Or backs out.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

There were several possible consequences to actually answering his question – but despite herself, she told him. Maybe because she’d been engulfed by the logic of – what the hell, he already knew what kind of shit she was buried in, anyway. What was the point of hiding things from the one person who actually knew?

In a way it soothed the burn in her chest, but it was painful to admit out loud. It made her throat ache with dryness, so she chugged down her water afterwards. The pain dulled, but now there was pressure in her lungs.

“What are you waiting for, Granger?” he asked her, a bit snottily. Then he leaned in closer to her. “You have to be waiting for something. You’re in the same place you started. Keep in mind, Granger,” he said, putting his flask back into his coat pocket, “that you are the only one in control of this situation. And you are the only one who can possibly change it.”

She thought long and hard about this – about what he’d told her. For an entire week, in fact. She thought about it the nights she couldn’t sleep. She thought about it during the fifteen minutes it took to make her coffee. She even thought about it when she watched the news, with Harry’s note forgotten beside her palm, drinking her wine. She even thought about it as Harry stood right there in front of her. Back then, when Harry was there – physically at least, if not emotionally – she would focus all of her attention on him, and more. She would analyze him. She would watch the heaviness of his shoulders and the dullness of his eyes. She would try her damndest to try to figure out how to make him better. Her thoughts would scamper to compose what could be the winning sentence that would make him look at her again, the way he used to. Now – now it was different. Not drastically so, but it was a mild settling in her bones, something that bound her to her chair. When she looked at him, she saw the man she loved that didn’t love her back, in black and white. And she was starting to see, finally, that this was the end.

It was, however, a slow acceptance. You shouldn’t be surprised to know that it takes quite a while to un-attach yourself, part by part, from a person. Because, in a way, there will always be a little part of yourself that wants to hold on, just because it needs to, just because it’s gotten so used to it. But there is a difference between not being able to live without a person and committing to live with them for a very, very long time. Of course, she doesn’t know what it is. But at least she knows that there is one.

A week and a half flew by without so much as a conscious effort. Before she knew it, she was at her final meeting with Ginny and Malfoy to finalize the wedding plans. She did her best to avoid any one-on-one encounters with Malfoy – just because. And, for once, that reason sufficed. It didn’t help that she still felt uneasy whenever she felt his gaze on her – they were always intensely focused, and she knew that this was because he was just waiting for her to crack. That was Malfoy, and she never did forget it. He was always waiting for her to crack first. There he was, sitting, going over their wedding plans, as if unperturbed by their common knowledge that something was bubbling underneath the surface of their own relationships. . . and he was so infuriatingly good at it. At not being fazed. What was that? Did some people just have this uncanny skill to be able to completely mask themselves from the outside world? But she knew better than to envy it too much. She knew better than to think that it always worked in their favor – because, when you really think about it, not very many things actually do.

She had various reasons why this wasn’t the end of the world. For one: they were young. Two: it wasn’t like they were married, or had even really talked about it. Three: he didn’t love her, so she had nothing to lose. And four: she was resilient. If anything, she was resilient. And finally, five: because she wasn’t going to let it be. Because she was sure, she was absolutely sure, that things would pick up right where she left off, with or without certain parts of her internal anatomy. She was confident that the fact that she had let it drag on for so long would reassure her that she’d done enough waiting. And, in a way, it had prepared her to receive what was possibly, surely coming.

She didn’t know how she felt at first, but now she was starting to feel what was beginning to look like relief that he’d listened to her. That, at least, for a moment that could actually matter in his life – he’d listened to her. She looked at herself in the mirror and rubbed the part of her forehead that he’d kissed before he’d left, and it burned. It was red, just like the padding of her finger that she rubbed it with.

She’d never seen this side of the story before. Not on TV, not in movies, not in books. This must be what it feels like, she thought to herself, staring at the red blotch on her forehead, to be the one that doesn’t get the declaration of love – the one that gets left behind. And isn’t it just absolutely fucked up to the highest degree that they never do tell you about the one the protagonist leaves behind to be with the one he loves? Not that she was bitter. She wasn’t bitter. Okay, maybe she was, a little bit. But she got the sense that people generally do not care about the people who unknowingly stand in the way of true love. Even the bad people get more love than the faceless “other lovers” do. And that was what she was. The faceless “other lover” that, for a very long time, perhaps, stood in the way of true love, if there was such a thing. If this were a movie, you would not care about her. You could feel sorry for her – but that drop of sympathy you could have you could not possibly retain, because you’d be too busy being happy for the people who do happen to get together, in the end. The ones the story revolves around. For some reason, it felt like – even in her own life, in her own shoes – her own story never seemed to revolve around her. And it was utterly, utterly sad. And it left her feeling a little. . . confused, angry, and at a loss.

So there she was, at her sink, as Harry Potter chased after the woman he loved, a day before her wedding. What was it with the climactic, dramatic timings of confessions that were always the least convenient for all parties concerned?

She got out of her bathroom, heading towards the living room to watch the news. That was when she heard a knock on her door. She muted the news, wondering if it had taken Harry that quick to tell Ginny that he loved her. Maybe he’d changed his mind on his way there and had decided to come back. Or – maybe he’d abruptly died, and this was a policeman coming to tell her the tragic news.

But when she looked through the little peephole of her door, she realized that it wasn’t Harry. It, in fact, was someone entirely different.

“I just thought you should know,” she heard Malfoy say through the door, “that your boyfriend is confessing his love to my fiancé.”

She stared at him for a second, her eye to the peephole. She hesitated, leaning back on the balls of her feet away from the hole, before leaning forward to look again. She had a very hard time believing his distorted image through the glass, his blond head looking larger than usual, his expensive leather shoes on the faded green carpet of her apartment hallway. “Shit,” she muttered, before she finally decided to open the door. Whatever conversation they were going to have – it was bad enough that her neighbors had probably heard the first thing he’d said – it was probably best to have indoors.

“I know,” she said to him. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be over there, kicking his ass in front of your woman so you can show her who’s a better man?” Wasn’t that the normal male reaction to this sort of thing? “Get away from my woman, I’ll hand you your balls on a plate”? Because, if so, she genuinely had no fucking idea why Malfoy was here, on her doorstep, instead of defending his position as the groom-to-be, or at least as the other man who claimed to love Ginny. She then thought of the fact that maybe he had come over here to ask for back up.

He looked amused. “You,” he told her, “have a strange comprehension of men.” He paused. “But no, you’re right.” Yet he came in, settling his eyes on the muted television set. They were showing a dog food commercial. A golden retriever was running across a green meadow with a silky, shiny coat.

“To be clear,” she said to him, “I’m still really confused as to why you’re here.”

“So am I.”

“Well, at least we’re on the same page.” She paused, remembering what he’d told her about being on the same page, not too long ago. “Together.”

They both stood there, watching the next commercial that happened to come on. It was one about anti-depressants, which was oddly sort of relevant to their situation. Hermione had her fair share of awkward silences in her life – she was, after all twenty-three – but this had to be one for the top of the list. There was no possible way that she could have seen this as an event stemming from Harry going off to chase Ginny – that Malfoy would be here with her now, watching muted commercials on her television.

His voice was oddly quiet and low when he spoke. “Granger, did you know that one in five adults come to the realization that they very possibly married the wrong person?”

It then occurred to her that this could possibly be the start of a very serious and soul-revealing conversation. It was true to her knowledge that nobody brings up marriage statistics unless they are a) bitter, b) want to have a completely soul-bearing conversation, or c) all of the above.

She knew a person in doubt when she saw one. She recognized the look very well. She always compared it to the look her friend Liz’s daughter had when her mother had sat her down on Santa’s lap in the department store and he proceeded to ask her what she wanted for Christmas. It was – more or less – the same look, with a few subtle alterations. But as she looked at Malfoy, the incredibly smooth skin of his face, and the way it seemed emotionless – not blank, just emotionless. Or maybe unreadable was more the word. And what was even stranger was that in all of this confusion and weirdness was that she found it very hard to hate him. That’s the thing. It’s really hard to hate assholes when they aren’t being assholes, even though you know for a fact that it’s who they are.

She realized that she had gotten so used to being able to read Harry all the time that it mildly frustrated her that she couldn’t read him.

“You should be over there, you know that? Not here. But over there. With Ginny. And, quite possibly, giving Harry a good ass-kicking.”

They lapsed into another awkward silence. The news was back on, showing a brutal car accident.

“I’m going to be completely honest with you now, Granger,” he said, and she didn’t know why – after all, how could she possibly – but she felt her heart skip a beat at that. She looked at him, intrigued and alarmed and curious. “It’s very likely that by the end of tonight, the wedding will be off.”

That was when she asked him how he could seem so calm about all of this. So unfazed. He had just announced that his wedding was not going to go through, and he was not ready to rip throw pillows into shreds, nor was he ready to beat the shit out of the man that was the reason for all of this – which, she kept pointing out, was still an option. The man was a boulder. He was immovable. It was extraordinary. It was scary.

“You don’t love her.” Her voice was dull. A little devastated, but also a little snotty.

What she didn't understand was the simple fact that some people could go on for years under some kind of impression that they love someone -- and then, one day, realize that they aren't. As if overnight they had some kind of epiphany, or something had changed. Maybe they decided they wanted a blond. Or a redhead. Or they wanted someone who would take them out to candlelit dinners and make them feel special -- or someone who maybe cared a little less. Or cared a little more. There were just so many variables but none of them, not one, answered her question. Maybe falling out of love with someone is just something that takes place in the human subconscious -- behind the scenes, as it were, and you are only aware of the changes once the curtain opens, and you are in the audience, helpless as can be. Maybe the only substantial, trustworthy fact is the fact that you have no control of it, none whatsoever -- that you are just the leaf riding the wind.

He had a systematic response to this. “There are various forms of love, Granger. Mine just happened to be the wrong kind.”

“The wrong kind?”

This might be a common misconception. To straighten things out, there is no such thing as a “wrong kind” of love. There are many types of love – but there is no category labeled “wrong.” The two words simply don’t go together – they weren’t made to – and this was where Malfoy had made his colossal mistake. It’s either love or it’s not. There is no derivative, or substitution, or dilution of love. It is simply Love, As Is. And so she told him all of this, trying to make him see the error of his ways. And he just listened along, watching the news, until she finally finished and he turned his head to look at her.

“You’re right. Maybe,” he told her, “I didn’t love her after all.”

It didn’t make her feel any better. It didn’t even make her feel a little bit better that he’d seen the logic in her lecture and retracted his original comment. All she could think about, really, was Ginny, who had lived these past few months under the misconception that she was getting married to a man who loved her – when, really, there was a man who loved her, but it wasn’t the one she was marrying. She wondered whether Ginny had even the smallest inkling about Malfoy’s feelings. After all, that was what women did. They felt things, especially bad things, before they happened.

“That’s unforgivable. It absolutely is.”

His eyebrows rose to his forehead. “I didn’t know that not loving somebody was a sin.”

“It isn’t,” she said, feeling a flash of hurt, deep inside her, “but it should be.”

He looked at her then. Really looked at her. It’s hard to explain just what differentiates a regular look and a look that really drills into you and really just tries to inhale you, in a sense – but just trust in the fact that when it happens you’ll know it without question – but that’s what he did. And it scared her. And that was when the first inkling began to blossom, and when that blossom turned into something a little bit bigger than a blossom – right until it was a full-fledged realization that seemed to shake her right down to her bones.

Anybody can tell you that nobody will ever give you that look if they were just coming over to tell you your boyfriend was confessing his love for their fiancé. It’s unsummonable until the moment – the right moment – that it suddenly is. It’s a secret look securely reserved for one special purpose. She knew this.

The thing with thinking you know someone is that you get a good feel of what’s unique and what’s not.

He looked back towards the TV.

“That’s the thing,” said Malfoy. “It’s just universally impossible. You can’t choose who to love. It goes against nature, and it goes against the most basic standard of living things – and mostly: against the humanity of humankind. Because if we could, we’d all just choose the person we thought would never hurt us.” She remembered that a man once told her that without pain, there would be no art. “And we,” the man had then added, “wouldn’t be half as alive as we are now.”

She took all of this into careful consideration.

“I,” she finally said, letting out a shaky breath of air, “need a drink.”

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