/one shot

-supercut-

inspired by supercut by lorde

all mistakes are mine, though characters and world belong to J.K. Rowling

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Hermione let the tears flow freely. It was the one day of the year where she allowed herself to truly cry. To break. To utterly lose herself in her own sorrow.

There were a multitude of things she had allowed herself to do on this day in the past. Smash dishes, get drunk, scream, cry, dive headfirst into books and not resurface for days, eat excessively, not eat at all, curl up in a ball, and in the end she would always feel empty.

Completely empty. She felt like she had hit rock bottom, but the rock had slowly eroded into fine sand and she had slipped into emptiness. She didn't show it to anyone. She conducted herself fine.

Everyday of the year, she was Hermione Granger, war hero, activist, ministry employee, and book lover. But not today. She was not herself today. She hadn't been okay on this day for four years.

Throughout the year, she would feel the sadness but she would stomp it down. It was all in preparation for today.

But all of the rage, the sadness, and utter hopelessness that had been saved in preparation for today, all seemed to evaporate as she moved through the day.

She had started her day as normal, though she hadn't slept all night. She had spent all night tossing and turning, pacing and crying. It was as the sun crept over the horizon that she deemed it socially acceptable to leave the house and go to get coffee.

She didn't even get dressed. She decided to dress as she felt, and what matched her feelings was her pajamas. Long flannel pants that were almost too long, and she almost tripped over. A black tshirt that had been his.

Another exception. The only day she allowed herself to wear it. The scent of his cologne had long since worn off the collar, but there was something that was undeniably, him, about it.

She slipped on her white sneakers, and pulled on a jacket for good measure, her wand tucked into her pants pocket.

She could've aparatted, but instead she braved the cold. She walked all the way down the long staircase of her large house, and walked through the freezing air that seemed to cut her down to the bone, all the way down the long trail to where the wards of the surrounding gate stopped. She aparatted then, and then again walked in the freezing cold, only in muggle London now, all the way to the coffee shop she also avoided. It was somewhere she frequented with him.

She had entered the coffee shop and her nerves of being in public on such a day where she was so fragile, seemed to evaporate as she smelled the deep roast of coffee beans and almost mechanically ordered two drinks.

Her hands were warmed by the two coffees that she walked all the way back home with. She had entered her apartment and sat the two cups down onto the long table where they had eaten so many meals together.

She slid into her seat and sipped her drink. She stared at the empty seat across from her where he should've been sitting. Where his coffee waited for him.

She knew it was a waste. A waste to buy a coffee no one would drink. A waste to buy a coffee for a ghost. No, she chided herself. He is not dead.

Though her words were losing their passion. She didn't know anymore.

That was where she sat all day, the coffee long gone and her back aching from slouching in the dining chair. The sun sank and the large house darkened. The house hadn't been full of light since the day he disappeared. Since the day Harry had come banging down her door, she had stumbled out of bed expecting to see her husband finally return home from his big mission across the country. She hadn't seen him in almost two weeks at that point.

Little did she know, it would be four years. Four years since she'd seen him. Since he'd left to be the hero, she knew he was always capable of being. Since he'd gone missing, when an ambush had attacked his and Harry's camp. Since she had torn the world apart searching for him, and still continued to. It had been four years that she hadn't had those grey eyes meet her own.

She shifted her position in her chair. Tears flowed freely. They dripped down her cheeks and fell on the dark wood of the table.

Hermione ran her hands through her hair and her eyes found the other coffee cup.

Instead of feeling sorrow, she still felt that emptiness. She missed him. She needed him. She wanted him. She was broken.

She sighed and rose to her feet, her bones popping and more curls fell from her messy bun.

She found herself wandering the long halls and large rooms of the house. The house where they were supposed to grow old in. The house that they were supposed to raise children in. The house that they were supposed to be together in.

The house had glowed once. It was full of life and excitement. Friends over constantly, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw alike. It was a home.

It was now the same house, but it was haunted for her. Everything reminded her of him. It hurt.

This year she found herself thinking of all of their memories and she was upset with herself. It seemed that if she started to remember and live in memory, that she was giving up. That she believed that he was dead.

She shook her head at herself. He is alive. He is alive and he is fighting as hard as I am to come home.

Her feet were covered in fluffy socks but the cold of the hardwood beneath her seemed to seep through. She was in one of the long hallways, one she had once deemed their gallery, it was full of photographs. Photographs of them. Their friends. Their family.

At the end of the hall, hung the biggest photograph, it was framed and in it sat her favorite picture of all. Her wedding picture. In the photograph she was wearing her wedding dress, covered in lace with flowers in her hair, and he was dressed in his most ornate suit. It was not black for a change. It was a dark navy blue. She remembered how the color had complimented his eyes wonderfully.

Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed shut and her hair swung around her shoulders, laughing at something he'd said. She had strained her mind too many times trying to remember what it was. But what made the photograph her favorite, was the way he was looking at her. His arm was around her waist and his eyes were looking down at her. Nothing in his expression was guarded. There was utter vulnerability in his face. Utter love.

He had left on his mission a month later.

That was when she broke. She collapsed to her knees, hand tearing at her hair. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. She screamed but no sound came out.

It wasn't fair. They had plans. They had everything they needed to finally be at peace. They both had fought for so long, sometimes on different sides, to achieve their own happiness.

After the war they were both broken. Everything had reached a fever pitch for Hermione, and it was too much. She had tried everything to escape, but everywhere she turned she'd only see darkness. It was while she was breaking down on a park bench that he had found her. They had both lost everything and when she fell into his arms sobbing, tears running down his own pale face, they found everything that they'd both been needing.

Someone to be mean to. Someone to relate to. Someone to be kind to. Someone completely opposite from them. Someone who would call the other on their mistakes. Someone to be friends with. Someone to care about. Someone who would fall into undeniable love with them.

They had healed each other. They had fought tooth and nail, and just when things finally went their way, when the universe finally decided to stop raining down hell, it was only a moment's reprieve. She'd lost it all.

She'd started to get her nightmares again. She started tearing at the mudblood scar on her arm till it would bleed, She started drinking again. She started hating the world again. The only thing that kept her going was her fight to find him. And even that had started to drift away.

Hermione started to hyperventilate, she found herself with her forehead pressed into the hardwood, as she laid bent over her knees.

She was not okay. She hadn't been for a long time. It was just scarier that right now as the hours dwindled closer to the next day where she would need to walk out the door, and be Hermione Granger, she found herself not wanting to at all. She wanted to sink into the floor.

She was sure that she was never going to rise again. She was sure that perhaps it was true that you could die from heartbreak. She was sure that perhaps you could die from loneliness.

No, she scolded herself. She started to crawl. She wasn't going to be able to stand and even if she could, she would probably collapse the second she got to the room she was going to.

It was the room that even in the four years of her one day allowance for heartbreak, she had never entered. The door had remained firmly shut.

She didn't know how long it took her to crawl all the way down the hall to the door, but when she reached it, she grabbed the handle as if it was a lifeline and she swung open the door.

Hermione practically fell into the room and the second she saw the surroundings, she fell. She laid on the hard ground, clothes twisted around her and hair sticking to her neck with sweat. The room was painted a soft gray, but that white furniture was bright against it. There was a rocking chair. There was a small changing table. There was a crib.

This was supposed to be the nursery.

Hermione closed her eyes. Memories rolled through her head like supercuts and she couldn't breathe. Him smiling at her. Him hugging her. Him resting his head in her lap while she read aloud. Him dancing with her. Him holding her hand.

The memory that stood out now, was the day when she told him she was ready for a little kid. He had been so excited that the nursery was half done, as it is now, the next day.

It had been two days before he had left. She had told him. The next day he surprised her with the paint and furniture in the room, "a going away present," he had said.

It was terrifying to think that it may have been the last present he had ever given her.

Hermione allowed herself to break. She broke. She replayed memories in her head over and over again. Him lighting a cigarette and playfully blowing the smoke in her face. His shocked expression when she allowed him to use her wand. His reaction when she had surprised him with a spell that completely ridded him of his dark mark.

She cried. She screamed. She writhed on the floor and beat her fist against the door frame. Hermione faintly felt the pain in her hand. She also half felt the blood that slowly seeped from her split knuckles.

She felt everything and everything, until finally she lay still.

She listened to her heartbeat. She listened to the silence of the house. She listened to her breathing.

She closed her eyes. It was not worth it anymore. She was not sure she could be Hermione Granger tomorrow. She was not sure she could continue to search for him. She was not sure she could do anything at all.

There was a moment of peace. The first moment she had felt in four years. It was not acceptance that he was gone. It was acceptance that she was not going to fight anymore. It was acceptance that she was not going to be okay. She was not going to put on a brave face. She was going to live her miserable life.

It was right then that a sound scared her. A sound that was too familiar. A sound that flashed her immediately back to this very day four years ago. She must have been dreaming. She had truly lost it.

But it was the voice that shocked her into running. Harry was at the door. He was yelling and pounding his fists against it. Just as he had done that night. She would've been angry but she found herself too tired to summon the energy. Her friends and family knew that today, she needed to be alone. She wasn't expecting anyone, and she had fallen too far into herself to feel the ripple of the wards that would have alerted her that someone was here.

Hermione stumbled her way down the steps and around the house until she finally reached the entry hall, where Harry's yells were amplified.

"Hermione! Come here now! I need you! I know you're in there!"

She took a deep breath and fell into the habit of putting on the brave face, but quickly dropped the act. She wasn't okay, and that was completely understandable.

She threw open the door, and there stood Harry in his auror uniform. His glasses were crooked on his nose and his chest was heaving as if he had run a long distance. His eyes traced her searching for harm, a habit both had developed from the war. She had shut off all means of communication, so if he had to tell her something, he would have to come to her front door.

She stared at him and Harry spoke the words that she had dreamed of hearing for four years, "Hermione, they found him. He's alive."

Hermione didn't remember hearing much else, other than that he was alive and that he was in St.Mungo's. She didn't remember aparatting and crashing through the hospital. She didn't remember hexing the woman at the front desk when she wouldn't let Hermione into his room.

The words that had been explained to her echoed in her head. Tortured. Tortured. Tortured.

He had been tortured. He had been taken, tortured and used for whatever sick ploys the remaining death eaters needed.

But everything fell into place when she burst into his room and he was sitting up in his hospital bed. He was covered in grime. His silver blonde hair was pointing every which way. He'd grown a beard, and his body was covered in bandages. But it was him. He was here. He was safe. He was alive.

Everything was okay when Draco still fixed her with that irritatingly perfect smirk of his and grey eyes met hers as he said, "Hey Granger."