Anchor and Rose | Dramione

Thirty-Five.

What hurt most about luna's death was that it was quick.

It was common knowledge that a quick death was best. Less pain. Less fear.

But Luna had no time to say goodbye. She had no time to stop and think about her life. No time to smile over the little things she loved; like fireflies, daisies and the sun. Luna didn't have a moment to think about her family, her mother and father and all of her friends. Or how she loved to paint, how she would love to sit for hours in the upper bedroom of Grimmauld Place and paint until her hands were blistered. And how she'd have paint dripping down her nose and splattered across her apron at every hour of the day.

She had no time to tell Pansy that she loved her.

Hermione had no moment to thank her, to properly thank her. If it wasn't for Luna, she'd be dead in more ways than one. Draco would've been captured before Hermione even found him at the Wonky Hotel, Blaise too. And Pansy and Theo would have never found an escape from the Dark Lord. Pansy would have never known what love felt like.

She just died. In the blink of an eye. She fell and hit the flames and she was dead.

And that was it. Just death.

Hermione wandered into the art room, her hands shaking as she pushed open the door and walked into the warm, sunlit room. She hadn't been in the room since the day they left for the battle one month ago.

It had been a month since she had killed Voldemort. A month of sorting and fixing things. A month of explaining, of mending her lost and torn friendships due to her love for Draco. Weeks and weeks of interviews, of the Ministry tearing her limb for limb regarding her heroism for some sort of relish in the papers.

It was weeks and weeks of funerals. Hermione attended many wakes filled with tears and brittle little goodbyes to flayed bodies beneath white sheets. The last funeral Hermione attended was Narcissa Malfoy's, where she and Draco placed Narcissa's favourite flower by the sea and cast a spell to preserve it forever beside the waves.

Draco said goodbye to his mother while he held Hermione's hand, not once letting go of it. He wasn't afraid to cry anymore. He wasn't afraid of being weak or caring too much. He just cried and cried until he felt Narcissa was gone, really gone, and that he could begin to move on.

In the past two weeks, a healer had been sent to Australia and Hermione was greeted with the news that it would be possible to restore most of her parents' memories. It would be likely they wouldn't remember the small things; birthday cards Hermione had made for them, sitting down on a Saturday to watch 'Royal Family', Hermione picking out the peas from her soup or Hermione cutting her mother's hair while she slept on the sofa. But they would remember her.

It had been a month of so much aftermath that Hermione didn't have time to visit the art room. Maybe she was avoiding it, not wanting to see the dry paint stuck to the floorboards or the paintbrushes that were still lingering the cups of water waiting to be cleaned.

Hermione closed the door behind her, the loud click of the hinges echoing throughout the empty space.

In the middle of the room, cast in a mauve shadow from the sun, was the easel Luna had used to hold her paintings so many times. And on that easel was a canvas, with the dry flaked oil-paint of the half-finished self-portrait of Luna that she never had a chance to finish. She had only painted the left side of her face, her blue eyes and brown skin absolutely gleaming, half a smile evident on her face.

Hermione wanted to reach out and stroke the dry paint, to try and feel Luna one last time. But she couldn't. The pain seared across her heart, thudding into the dull cavity of her soul.