Anchor and Rose | Dramione

Sixteen.

Draco hadn't left a sketch for Hermione in what felt like weeks.

She had almost forgotten that he even tended to leave her drawings that filled her heart with a feeling of mortal peril.

Yet today, she woke with a sketch placed on-top the coffee table. Just sitting there. Taunting her. Compelling her to grasp it in her fingers.

This time-Hermione couldn't deny that it was absolutely beautifully drawn.

It was one of the most stunning drawings she had ever seen in her life. It almost made her forget it was drawn by such a putrid being as Draco Malfoy.

It was an arrangement of Roses, they were almost flying from the ground, swirling and tumbling around a hand that held a wand. She assumed it to be her own from the jewel pressed against the palm of the hand.

At first, Hermione did not think it was anything surrounding the notion of death, which confused her. Not until she squinted and saw multiple bodies lying in the snow behind the roses. Dead. None of the faces were drawn. Then she noticed the small lines in charcoal pencil on her fingers that almost gave it the effect that her skin was decaying.

Beneath it, the familiar handwriting.

Rose Waterlily, Hermione Granger, Mudblood, killed by the power within Regulus Black's creation.

-

Hermione spent the entire morning sitting by the fireplace with her head in her hands.

The warmth of the fire engulfed her as she wrecked her brain with thoughts she constantly told herself not to think about.

She had told herself multiple times to not get into this state. The horrid state of overthinking and thinking about everything and everyone to the point she became dizzy and was nearing the edge of going insane.

Ginny's face sat in her mind for about twenty minutes. Hermione wondered if she had royally fucked up her friendship with the youngest Weasley sibling by leaving her to her own devices back at Hogwarts. Guilt ran through her veins even though she desperately tried to not let it-But how could she not feel guilty? Hermione had attempted to kill herself and then ran away the next day without leaving a trace of her soul in the dormitory. She wondered how the others had reacted to her departure as well; Seamus, Dean, Neville. They probably all hated her.

She wondered what would, will, happen when they discovered she had been filling her disappearance with the company of Draco Malfoy.

Because they hated The Malfoy's almost as much as they hated Voldemort himself.

But every-time she even thought about returning to Hogwarts to free her friends from the grip of the Carrow's and the pain of looming war-all Hermione could taste was the bitter water from the Black Lake that had engulfed her skin when she tried to drown herself.

She knew she could not return. Not yet.

Then Hermione's mind ran to other students she would have never thought herself to be worrying about. The Slytherin's.

She sat for another twenty minutes trying to work out the events and reasons that possessed Blaise Zabini to have killed Narcissa Malfoy. Maybe it was a freak accident during a battle, maybe it was an accident in the Manor. Maybe Blaise was set to kill Narcissa by Voldemort, meaning he would have no choice. Just like how Draco was set to kill Dumbledore-but unlike Draco, Blaise had been successful. It was a promising scenario. But Hermione could not assume it to be the truth until she was certain.

Because what could Narcissa Malfoy have done for Voldemort to set out for her demise?

Blaise had not been there the two times Hermione and Draco had crossed paths with Theo and Pansy. The other Death-Eaters that accompanied them we're definitely not Blaise Zabini although she could not recognise them completely.