INSPIRED

𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐒𝐨𝐨𝐧

Song;
Heart Like Yours
by Willamette Stone

~*~

CW // major character death.

~*~

She holds on to him with all her strength.

All that she has— and it's not a lot— but she does anyway.

She fears if she lets go— if it slackens in any way— she'll disappear and that'll be that. So she doesn't and she keeps him in her hand willing to let her fingers go numb.

Because Hermione Granger isn't ready to die yet.

She doesn't want to go. She doesn't want to leave him.

But as she lays on the uncomfortable hospital bed in St. Mungos, surrounded by white walls and a darkening eerie glow, she's gripping on to life. Covered in a white gown and listening to whirring sounds of the diagnostic charms working around her.

Then— to the left her— the love of her life is sitting on a small armchair, hunched over her bed and begging for her to stay without the words leaving his lips.

He's trying his hardest to hold back his tears as he holds her hand. She can see this— so clearly. His struggle, his pain— the way she knows he would do anything to have even just one more full day with her. But the Healers told them she most likely won't last the night— if that. And so their fingers squeeze and entwine with each other and the palms of their hands stick together.

There's no way they'll let go.

Not yet.

They can't.

She's clinging on to the last of her existence. She's weak, brittle, and so very fragile. As if she could break at any second— one tap and she could shatter into a million pieces. Crawling her way through each heavy breath, desperate to reach her lungs as they inflate inside their cage. Each strangled, dry cough coursing through her chest and throat— scratching its way out and echoing with the hoarse sound. She's attempting to block out the beep in her ear as she does, knowing that it's slowing down and soon will be no more. Wanting to ignore the ache she feels in her bones and soul as she silently screams in pain. Wanting to writhe on her sheets as the torture ripples through her over and over again.

And finally, as if things couldn't get any worse, there's the loss of warmth on her skin while feeling his own wrapped around her small hands.

But despite the physical agony that she's enduring— there's nothing, absolutely nothing that compares to the pain she feels, looking at him as he sits there. So much so, this could kill her alone.

It's a splinter growing to a crack more harmful than any illness. It's opening wider and she's breaking in half with it.

Because he doesn't deserve this.

Draco Malfoy doesn't deserve to watch her die when he has so much more life to live.

Sitting right there— next to her, like he always has been throughout this and just having to watch.

He's hardly left her side for the past three months, from the moment they first noticed, to this very second on the ticking countdown of a clock. And when he does leave, it's only for mere minutes at a time before he rushes back and sits in his pathetic, little armchair again. But, with each prolonged blink of her eyes— he's moving further away from her and fading into the distance. And the minutes he's gone feel longer and more like hours.