WIP: Stay (T+) - Draco/Hermione
Notes: The second installment. If you've ever read the original draft, you'll eventually notice that I'm making some big and fairly significant changes.
Date: 02 August 2007
Author: vexia
Pairing(s): Draco/Hermione
Summary: You can't help the dead.
TUESDAY, 07:20
She sits on the edge of the bathtub, glaring blindly at the tiled walls, inhaling steam and jasmine from the cracked teacup balancing awkwardly on the rim of the tub. Scalding hot water continues to run from the bath tap, and the heat is damp, uncomfortable, and suffocating.
She struggles upright, stumbling and coughing in a haze of billowing black smoke. Hermione, Hermione.
And she turns her head to the left. Seamus is half-blind, half-disoriented but manages to hold her up. Helps her like he's promised truths to everyone else -
Help her. You have to help her.
He would demand it like he's desperate, like he has nothing else, and the other would wait in the background and urge him to follow. Time is running out; we have to go now.
And the first would continue to quake and clutch on to the collared shirt of the Irish boy with nothing left except his empty skin and dazed eyes. Nod. Like it would be the only thing he could do for someone -
- that wasn't dead. He holds and half-carries her to a refuge point, ignores her mumbled utterances devoid of logic.
She remembers a lot of things as her hand slips and knocks the teacup into the rising water. Her heart palpitates and skips, the rhythmic drumming loud in her ears. There's a sound from her throat, and she's clambering out, reaching the door and pounding on it. She forgets the lock and the handle and chokes on a cry. She looks at the tub and no longer sees translucence - only a luminous copper that stretches and engulfs.
He rubs his face with the base of his palms, unknowing what to do with the bones and image of a girl he no longer remembers. She's on the bed now after he sought her from the bathroom. She lies there, unmoving, neither awake nor fully asleep - only in a state of existing.
He stops somewhere at a halfway point between the Seine and his flat, at a dark alley he doesn't recognise. There is blue sky and the orange sunset, flanked by two buildings, creating silhouettes out of people, animals, and objects. His upper lip curls and he sets his sights on home, stepping forward without looking. The crash feels like an electrical jolt, a brilliant shock to wake the walking dead.
Watch where you're bloody well -
Sorry.
The voice is familiar and so is the hair, and he frowns as he observes. She's thin and trembling, reaching out for the scattered books and placing them back into her paper bag. She's dressed lightly with a thin shirt, a scarf, and a modest skirt. But she doesn't fit right and it looks wrong, but she clears her throat to distract and stumbles her way past him.
Granger, he calls out to her.
And she stops, turns back to him, and -
You look sick.
He blinks, stares at her like she's lost her mind - because she has - and scoffs.
He refuses to remember why he brought her in to his home when she only causes him grief. But, he figures, anywhere is better when there is two. He would rather die than confess this to her. In his head, it could only end badly:
I need you. Not you, but -
I don't.
And he doesn't want to deal with the consequences of honesty.
TUESDAY, 21:54
She maneouvers in his bed until she's upright, her back flush against his pillows. He's asleep now in an awkward position on his chair, hunched angles and bad direction, and he suddenly reminds her of people she's briefly locked in the back of her mind. She stretches her legs beneath the sheets and absently touches her hair. She frowns a little - a little bemused, a little worried, a little nervous about things she shouldn't be. But there's something else, and she thinks it's because she's around him, and she remembers other responsibilities and no longer likes this arrangement.
She reaches for her things folded neatly beside her and slides them on carefully. Her clothes feel less like starch and more like cotton, and she wonders what he used to wash them. She takes her scarf and wraps it snugly around her neck and looks around her for her bag of books. It crinkles and makes a sound like that of dry leaves, but Malfoy remains sound asleep. She picks up a throw blanket and tucks it around him before slipping on her shoes and departing.
WEDNESDAY, 01:03
Draco wakes up to the sound of loud bickering outside, and he silently curses the night owls. Suddenly, he groans in discomfort as he rearranges himself on the chair. He blinks once, twice, and a third time to keep the numbers odd and stares into the darkness. His vision focuses, and he glances at the bed expecting nothing. Though her sudden absense isn't a surprise, he feels slightly bitter and disappointed.
He exhales loudly and resumes his position on his bed. He contemplates his options available to him - most of which concern the daft girl and her silly hair, pale skin and thin frame.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat and tosses his notions away; they're all meaningless. He rolls on his side that faces the window and closes his eyes, forcing himself to sleep.
It is only until the moon has disappeared does he find himself scouring the town beneath a blanket of morning gold and pink.