Time Spent In Eternal Endings

Unrequieted Contentment

Hermione woke up bright and early. She found that waking up early actually gave her more energy throughout the day rather than sleeping in and being lethargic for the rest of the day. Again, she sensed that it had something to do with waking up before the world did. The calm before the storm. 

She had some time to kill before the ball, which was at 6:00 that evening. While some girls spent their entire day getting ready right after they woke up she just couldn't find a way to justify her personally spending hours upon hours getting ready. She decided that going to Cornerstone to browse for a new book was in her best interest for the day.

The morning sun felt nice on her skin, and she decided to walk rather than apparate. The sun settled on her skin and danced on the hairs of her arm as if her body were a ball itself. It was that feeling after walking out of a cold room and stepping into the sun to feel the hairs on your arm stand, the kind of feeling that made you shiver from the warmth.  There wasn't really anyone out in the streets this early, so she found a nice serenity in the silence of the soon-to-be busy town. She always cherished the feeling of the warm sun against her skin and the way it invited the sensation of tingles after being in a room that chilled her.

She made her way through the doors as the store greeted her with the ring of a bell. A nice little "hello, welcome in" without having anyone there to say it. The front desk worker was in the back at the moment. Not that she needed any help. She knew this store and its entire layout of books like any of the libraries in town. She would say she knew it like the back of her hand, but she never really knew the back of her hand as well as other people claimed to be with their own.

She was currently reading an informational text so she wanted something fictional to balance out her interest. She took the path that held many girls' own past footsteps when they were also in search of something comforting. In other words, she walked to the back of the store where the dramas and romances were held. Her carpet-muffled footsteps were the only sound in the store other than the rustling of books that were being shelved using wandless magic.

As she browsed through the romance section a certain text she hadn't ever seen caught her eye. "Unrequited Contentment" the title read. It was about a young girl who lived her life thinking she had everything she could possibly want until a certain love interest came along and played his part as Prince Charming if you will. The plot twist was that she realized she had been living in a false sense of contentment and wanted to actually feel what it felt like to live and truly love, but the boy felt content in the way he was living his life and loving. It didn't give away the ending or whether these lovers ended up finding a middle to live within forever, in between the lines of love and contentment. It piqued her interest so she decided to check it out.

She flipped to the inside of the cover and was reading the reviews from other well-known authors with her nose down in the book. So of course with her luck, she ended up bumping into a customer by accident who was in the informational section and dropped her book from the impact.

She bent down to immediately get the book off the floor. "I'm so sorry. I should've been paying attention to where I was going." She was rambling an apology as she went to pick her book up, but the customer picked it up before her hand reached the spine. A customer with pale skin and a Slytherin ring.

"You should really watch where you're going, Granger."

Her heart stopped. She looked upwards towards the old schoolboy. Seeing Malfoy in her place of solace was something that made her heart writhe. It was like putting a Chimaera in the middle of a flower field. Extremely unnerving. 

"Like I said, I wasn't paying attention. Sorry for the inconvenience." She deadpanned. "I'll take my book now please."

That mischievous smirk she knew too well played on his lips. "Mind if I take a look? Maybe I'll check it out after you."