'It was so hard, he just looked at me a-and said he was s-sorry that he wasn't there for me. Said h-he was sorry if he had hurt me. Said he was sorry for trying to-to hold us together when there was nothing left'
Her voice cracked as she said the words, she looked into her coffee longingly, as if she was trying to see through it to the polished wooden table. She looked into the dark brown liquid and saw her face reflected. Her eyes stared back at her as if they too, were regretting her choices.
Their opinions were distorted by the salty tears disturbing the stillness of the coffee's surface.
A comforting, familiar hand reached across the table and rested softly on top of her trembling one. Her shaking ceased as soon as their skin touched. She felt a calmness spreading through her body as soon as the hand on top of hers started caringly stroking her slender wrist.
'I'm so sorry' he said. There was an unfilled silence between them. It was still, it did not demand to be filled like others. It was happy to simply linger in the air.
'So sorry' he repeated, his voice softer than before.
'I'm sorry I did this to you. It's hard, but you did the right thing, we couldn't keep lying to him like that, it was wrong for us to-' he tried to continue but was drowned out by a sob from the girl sitting before him. He gave a her hand what he hoped was a comforting squeeze. She returned the reassuring gesture by looking up at his face and giving a small smile. Very small.
Draco Malfoy let out a sigh. A lot of emotions went into that release of breath. He felt the awkwardness of feeling like he should be there, like he was intruding on her personal thoughts. He felt hopeless that he could not stem the steady stream of tears glide down her delicate face. He felt anger, he wanted to hurt the person that had done this to her. He realised with a start that, however indirectly, that person was him.
However, deep down, he felt relieved. He was relieved because he would not have to do the thing that would hurt him the most. The thing that would rip his heart into a million tiny pieces that he doubted would ever reform. The thing that would tear him apart, completely. The thing that could cause more pain than the cruciatus curse, that made him feel less in control than the imperius curse, the thing that caused him more pain over the years than the killing curse.
It was odd, Draco thought as he stirred his coffee clumsily with his left hand, that something so simple had all the potential to destroy him. That the simple exchanging of vows could mean so much.
Yes, deep down, Draco was relieved that he would no longer be required to attend the long awaited wedding of Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger. For it is hard to attend a wedding when you are sure that the bride belongs with you. It is in fact even harder when the bride is pregnant. The only way in which the situation could possibly be any harder, is if the bride is pregnant with your baby... And you're not the groom
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