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A/n: So, I'm sorry. This is super late, and fairly short, and not even that good, and I have no excuses other than school eating my life/time, and general laziness. I really am sorry though. Here's a quick chapter, I hope you enjoy, and reviews are love :)

Dissever.

- v to sever, separate; to divide into parts.

She stares at the papers, willing herself to just bloody well sign them already. Staring at them didn't make them pop into non-existence, and it didn't make them change into something more pleasant. If she wants to change this moment, she should have done something a hell of a long time ago. It just hurts to realize that now.

She bites her lip. Hesitation really isn't an option. The quill is in her hand, everything's already decided.

It's just that Hermione Granger hates the idea of giving up on anything, let alone her marriage.

Hermione Granger is independent, that's true, but she's also hard working, persevering. Giving up is not usually a phrase in her dictionary. She wants to say that that's the only reasoning for why she doesn't want this divorce. Because she doesn't like giving up on anything.

She's not a vulnerable person, and it was hard enough to originally admit that she had fallen in love with the last person she was meant to – Draco Bloody Malfoy, for Merlin's sake – and now that they were getting a divorce, a supposedly mutual decision, she's swallowed up all of her feelings again. She's decided that honesty is a lost cause when every word they pass back and forth is like barbed wire, when she's forgotten what his smile is like, when she can still taste the last "I love you" on her tongue, but she just can't manage to say it.

And then of course, there's her friends, trying not to be so entirely smug, subtly reminding her that they said all along that it wouldn't work, that Draco Malfoy has always been, is, and always will be, a bastard.

Nowadays, they pat her on the shoulder, take her out for drinks, almost like they're celebrating. They never thought the two of them could last anyway, and don't believe her when, even now, she explains that he's not a bad person, they made this decision together.

Ginny, calmly downing firewhiskey, reflected everything back at her in a way that she didn't want to consider. "If it was a mutual decision," she said, "then why the hell are you so upset about it?"

She isn't, of course. She doesn't care about him anymore. It's over.

"Miss Granger?"

Her eyes flicker up to the portly wizarding divorce minister in front of her, something stinging inside of her. Miss Granger. She'd just gotten to like being "Mrs. Malfoy" and now she was back to Miss Granger, right where she started, young, naïve, alone.

"Miss Granger, if you would please sign here. Your signature is magically binding."

She wants to get up and scream. She wants to stop. She wishes she had said these things in the past few months, even this morning, at any point in time when it wasn't way too late. But she didn't. She didn't, and now she can't.

She can't stop herself, she looks at him. He looks calm and collected, but that's a pretty mask for the Ministry officials, and she knows him better than that. The mask is broken in his eyes – they're confused, watching her, and some part of them has softened. There's that one piece which is watching her gently, with care. And she sees it. And Merlin, she can't lose those eyes.

He looks perfect beside her, but she knows he's just a mess of flaws and faults. And she loves him for it.

She loves him. Did she forget that? Did he?

It doesn't matter who forgot, she realizes, veins full of ice, it's too late. His signature is there on the page before her, and she has no choices anymore, and it's her fault.

She signs the papers. It's one of those times where you do the exact opposite of what you want to, because you think you're proving something, when really it's just your pride, standing in the way of happiness.

Neither will remarry. Neither will dare to admit they made a mistake.

The rest of the wizarding world mourns the end of the marriage that brought the side of light and the side of darkness together. The rest of the world mourns, but they don't.

They move on. They forget.

Or, at least, they try to.