New Chance || dramione || complete

Paired with him

Present

"Wait! Come back here!" Hermione heard Draco call as he ran shirtless down the hall of the Slytherin dorms into the common room. The Gryffindor witch slipped out of the portrait hole before the blond wizard was able to catch her as a group of young snakes returned from their evening meal. Thank goodness she grabbed her wand when she'd escaped his room. Quickly, she cast a Disillusionment Charm in the corridor. What the hell was she thinking? How could she have let this happen?

The Slytherin portrait hole slammed open as Malfoy stomped through it. Afraid of making a sound by running away, Hermione stood and watched him from her hidden spot, peeking from behind a tapestry. The blond wizard stared down the hall trying to catch a glimpse of her but gave up easily when he didn't see her. He slammed himself against the opposite wall and slowly slid down to the ground. The Gryffindor witch examined the way he carded his fingers through his hair and chanted, "What the fuck?" over and over again. He looked terrified as if Voldemort would rise from the dead just to punish him.

"You know, I can hear you sniffling," Draco announced after a few minutes, looking around for the source of the muffled breathing. Shite! Hermione hadn't realized she'd started crying and sucked in a breath to stop herself. The sight of Draco Malfoy without his usual mask of indifference was unsettling. Knowing he was as lonely and desperate for love as her was too much to bear. What had she done?

July 1998

"It's not like I meant to hurt you, Mione, I just don't see us as more than friends," Ron told her the day after she arrived at the Burrow after an unsuccessful trip to Australia to restore her parent's memories. His timing is impeccable, as usual, she thought bitterly. "I'm surprised you're this upset. We've hardly seen one another since you left, and when we were together, all we did was argue," he explained awkwardly, his face growing a deeper shade of red with each word he spoke. He wasn't wrong. She and Ron never would have worked as a couple. "Harry said you could stay with him at Grimmauld Place," Ron told her, not realizing that him finding another place for her to live until school began made all of this worse somehow. The Burrow would never be the safe haven it once was for her or Harry after the youngest Weasleys broke it off with both of them. A couple of weeks earlier, almost immediately after Ginny had signed with the Holyhead Harpies, she'd told the dark-haired wizard that she wanted some freedom before she settled down like her mother.

"You're right, Ronald. We would have never worked because you'd never be able to give me what I need," she said coldly, Disapparating on the spot to her latest temporary home. The last thing she saw before she disappeared was the sad look of defeat on her best friend's face, and she instantly regretted her last words to him. Why did she say that? It wasn't Ron's fault, and she shouldn't have tried to hurt him. She'd fix this one day, but right now, she needed the only person left in her life who'd never abandoned her.

Without fail, Harry was waiting for Hermione with open arms. They sat on the sofa mourning their losses until the early hours of the morning. Two orphans famed as war heroes yet utterly alone in the world. They woke up the next afternoon with puffy eyes and surrounded by balled-up tissues.

August 1998

"What do you mean you aren't returning to Hogwarts?" Hermione demanded, angry that she'd have to face that place without Harry.

"I'm sorry, Mione, but I just can't do it. Kingsley has offered me a job as an Auror without having to sit for my N.E.W.T.s, and I can't refuse it. The sooner I can start my life, the better," he explained, squeezing her hand under the breakfast table. "Do you really want me depending on you for everything and constantly distracting you during your N.E.W.T. year of all things?" he shot her his boyish smile. "Don't you wonder what Hogwarts would be like for you without having to constantly fix my blunders or edit my schoolwork?"