Eyes Open by: orphan_account

XXXVII. Acceptance.

December 17 th , 2004

She had been in remission for about a year, but went in for testing four months ago and found that it had come back. Crept into her body and spread like wildfire, eating her up from the inside out. She told no one, except for her parents. Not even Weasley.

They thought it would be okay, that they had plenty of time to figure out the best course of action. That was, until she collapsed, quite unexpectedly, two days ago.

With treatment, they guessed she had a year more. Maybe two, if she's lucky.

Without, they guessed she had a month left. Not much longer. Perhaps shorter.

She chose without.

He sits outside the room, wondering if he should go in. If it would make her feel better, or worse. He doesn't know if Weasley's in there, and if he is, how the ginger will take his unanticipated appearance.

After maybe a minute of debating, Draco decides. He's going in.

The room is empty except for her. She's propped up against an impossible amount of pillows, deathly pale, face gaunt and hair limp and matted. Her eyes are closed. For a second, Draco thinks she is sleeping, and makes to back out, but then her left eye opens ever-so-slightly, and closes so quickly he thinks it is his own eyes playing tricks on him.

A silence hangs in which neither of them can draw the words.

She begins. She always begins.

"Hello, Malfoy."

A sudden rage.

"So that's what I get," he says, unable to cage his scorn. It lashes out like an angry beast, furious with its capture. "A simple Hello Malfoy, and no explanation of why I had to learn from fucking Pansy, of all people!"

"Who heard it from Hannah, who heard it from Lavender, who heard it from Parvati, who heard it from Padma, who heard it from Susan, who heard it from Ginny, who heard it from me," Hermione says, who seems to be on the verge of chuckling. "That's quite a list."

"This isn't a joke," Draco says, trembling in his effort to rein his vehement anger. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"There was no one to tell you, not directly," she says, her voice even. Calm. "They put me in St. Mungo's as soon as they realised my time was so short. And who else was going to tell you? Ron? Ron doesn't even know I know where your flat is.

Doesn't even know she knows where his flat is.

Doesn't even know.

"So that's what I've been to you? Your dirty little secret?" he hisses, his anger uncontrollable. He knows he shouldn't be taking it out on Hermione, of all people, but he can't bottle it up. He's angry at her for something she can't control (again), and he's angry at himself because he's been so stupid, so blind, so slow. He's furious, and it leaks out of him like poison. "Good enough to befriend under the guise of work, but not even to tell your own fucking boyfriend about?"

"Come now, Draco. You should know better than that," she says, and her eyes are still closed. He wonders if the prospect of death has made her mellow. And he realises that he's angry at her for another reason, too. She didn't take the medication. She's just going to sit here, waiting for death, and she's not going to fight it at all.

He knows she's fought everything that's ever come her way. His prejudices. Wizards' expectation of her failure. The bullshit Weasley gave her when they were young. Voldemort. And now she's giving up when finally, finally, he sees that she is the one worth fighting for.

"Why haven't you accepted the treatment." He makes it a statement—harder, more persistent—and he pitches it (hard) into her lap. Her hands fold over it. Her eyes are still closed.

"I'm going to die, Draco," she says, and the words leave her lips as easily as water. His hands are trembling down where they hang beside his legs. "And I would prefer not to drag it out."

"It wouldn't be 'dragging it out' to me. You'd be giving me time."

"Time for what?"

His mouths hangs open, floundering uselessly as he tries to form words he should have said days, weeks, months ago. But he can't say them. He's never said them in his life, and he hates himself for not being able to start now.

"Exactly. It'll be easier for everyone if I just died now. Ripped off the bandage as fast as I can instead of pulling it off, inch by inch. It doesn't make any sense, giving me a room, wasting space and resources, when there's already no chance I'm going to live past twenty seven.

"How can you say that?" he says, though it comes out as a whisper. It tiredly trundles out of his mouth and dribbles down his chin. Hopeless.

"Because it's true," she replies simply. "I've accepted it, Draco."

"Why can't you just stay a little longer?" he says, and maybe he sounds a bit childish. Petulant. Like a little boy who just wants his favourite toy back. But Hermione Granger was never his toy. She was never even his in the first place.

She sighs. "Some people are blessed with a quick death. They have a quick flash of pain and then they are gone. It's not going to be like that for me. I'm going to be in pain every moment I'm alive, from now until I die. Even now, I hurt so damn badly. I don't want to stay alive like this."

Pansy's words come back to him. It's hereditary—it runs in families. A lot of treatments cause hair loss. The bald young man. Smiling, but broken. Her cousin. "That boy in the photo. Will. He wasn't just sick. He had it, too."

"Yes."

"I kept—" but he cuts himself off. A quick slice, and the sentence is decapitated, the already-said bit falling with a thud to the floor. He was going to tell her that he kept the envelope, that it's sitting in his desk drawer right now. That he's kept it for ten years, and maybe he'll even open it when he gets home. But the words get clogged in his throat. A traffic jam, stuck among everything else he wants to say. None of them can get out.

If she heard the beginnings of his sentence, she doesn't show it. She simply lies there, breathing last breaths. Eyes shut in defeat, or maybe acceptance. Either way, they are the same thing to Draco now.

"Don't visit me again," she says abruptly, and it catches him off his guard. His knees buckle a bit.

"I'm only going to look like this for so long. And I don't want you around when I start turning bad. I'll be like an apple core, Draco, left out too long on the counter. I'll start to rot. And no one deserves to see that."

"Malfoy?"

He turns around and there's Weasley, holding two mugs of tea, looking incredulous.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to say—goodbye." He chokes on the last word, because he realises that's exactly what this is. This is goodbye. This is probably the last time he will ever see Hermione Granger. Because he doesn't know if he can handle watching her die.

It's selfish, but it's the truth.

He ignores Weasley and walks around to the side of her hospital bed. There is no scent of cinnamon, not even when he leans down and places a kiss on her forehead. This is his repayment, his recompense. But it's also his love. He drops it onto her forehead and he swears she stops breathing for all seven seconds of it. Maybe she understands, maybe she doesn't. He doesn't check—he can't check. He simply stands and turns and walks away from her, away from the girl he's loved so quickly, so inexplicably, so irrationally. He walks past her boyfriend of six years. He walks out of that room with the memory tattooed onto the side of his skull. Permanent. The memory of her lying there, never even opening her eyes. He would have liked to see them one more time. Even though he has the colours memorised.