Chapter Text

Rhapsody.

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43: Variation 18. Andante cantabile
Written by: Sergei Rachmaninoff
Performed by: Daniil Trifonov, Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Hermione wakes up on her last morning at Hogwarts feeling surprisingly energetic and hopeful. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the mood in the castle is palpable; she can feel it on her skin and in the air she breathes as she walks down to breakfast. 

That morning, she dressed in her room - for the last time ever - in a smart high-necked white dress with a lace hem and applied a light layer of makeup. Her curls seem extra bouncy, wound in tight ringlets without a single bit of frizz in sight. She had a terrific sleep the night before, going on her fifth week sans nightmares and tremors - her last being at Malfoy Manor over the Easter holidays - and she’d finally done as Draco had repeatedly asked of her.

She finished the poem. 

After supper the previous evening she’d followed Draco back to his room where they’d snogged for close to an hour and petted each other with a levity she hadn’t known was possible. She was full of laughter and light as Draco trailed his fingers down her sides, dissolving into laughter at the brush against her navel and her hip bones. Draco had followed the trail with his lips, his smile pressed into her skin.

He’d walked her back to Gryffindor Tower afterwards and kissed her - for the last evening ever - just outside of the portrait of The Fat Lady. Even she had giggled! As she lay in bed that night, her mind blessedly clear of worry, she pulled out the poem and read it completely from start to finish. 

Draco was right; the poem was helpful. She wondered, just before she fell asleep, whether the poem had some sort of super power to help any and all who read its words in its entirety. She resolved herself to speak to Draco in the morning and get his personal opinion on what the poem meant to him before she shared what it meant to her.

As she walks into the Great Hall - for her last breakfast ever - her eyes flit over each table in earnest. It’s smiles and laughter abound, nary a frown in the place! Sure, there are a few whimpers and sobs, sadness at having to say goodbye to the castle that’s housed them all for the last seven years, but the sadness feels good in her gut. It feels right, like things were always meant to happen this way.

As it is, neither Ginny nor Neville are sitting at the Gryffindor table so she wanders over to Slytherin when she sees her favourite head of white-blond sitting on his own, a plate of breakfast sitting in front of him. She plops down beside him and pulls the book of poetry out of her bag, placing it on the table open to Ulysses.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Draco says, his voice light if a little bit tired sounding.

Hermione pats his hand with hers, “Good morning, Draco.”

Draco shifts to flash her a wide smile when his eyes catch the TENNYSON book and he raises his eyebrows at her in question, “Did you read it?”

“I did, I finished it last night after you walked me back.”

Draco hums and runs his finger over the last few lines of the poem, his light pink lips mouthing the words in silence, “Magical, isn’t it?”

Hermione’s eyes light up at his words; she knew it! After all her worrying that the poem wouldn’t mean something to her - not in the same way it meant something to both Draco and Lucius - it had all been for naught. The poem spoke to her in a way no book had ever spoken to her before, which was saying something. As she finished the last line, cuddled in her bed the night before, all of her worries and thoughts and questions seemed to disappear, the answers appearing in their place.

“Yes! Is it actually, though? Is there really magic in this? Because, I have to be honest Draco, it spoke to me unlike any book ever has before,” Hermione gushes, leaning in close and laying her palm over his hand.

His grin is infectious but she can see he’s laughing at her, just a little bit, “I don’t think so, Hermione. I just think that everyone is able to read it and apply it to their own life. I questioned it at first, but after that first pass through… things started to make sense.”

Hermione nods in agreement but before she can continue the conversation, Theo and Ginny sit down across from them and immediately start scooping up breakfast items, barely setting them on their plates before it's in their mouths.

“G’morning ‘Mione, Malfoy,” Ginny says brightly, gulping down a glass of pumpkin juice. “Excited? The feeling is so strange in the castle! I thought I’d be more nostalgic but I just feel… happy.”

Theo agrees with Ginny, “Feels like a spell, to be honest. Even you, Draco, are you actually smiling right now?”

The scones look too good to pass up and Hermione plucks one off the serving plate and onto her own plate, digging into the clotted cream and jam. She looks sideways at Draco and notices he does have a pleasant smile on his face, a far cry from the perpetual frown and scowl he used to wear. 

“Why wouldn’t I be happy? I’m graduating from Hogwarts with my best friend and my girlfriend,” Draco says simply, popping a strawberry into his mouth and nudging her shoulder with his own.

He’s right, of course, there’s really nothing to be unhappy about. Not today, at least. They eat quickly, each of them except for Draco having come down to the Great Hall towards the tail end of breakfast and just slightly more than an hour before their graduation ceremony is set to begin. She’s just slathering her last piece of her scone with the clotted cream when Ginny and Theo dust off their hands, wipe their mouths and take off together out of the hall.

Hermione looks over to Draco, “Somewhere they needed to go?”

“I’m sure they want a last minute snog before Ginny’s entire family is here.”

He’s probably right. Ginny has yet to tell her family that she's seeing Theo, explaining to her that it's just far too soon after her breakup with Harry. Theo seems just fine being her dirty little secret, at least for right now, so she doesn't push it further than that.

Draco turns towards her, his plate finished and pushed away from him into the centre of the table, “So, magic, huh?”

She rolls her eyes at the smirk on his lips and pushes against his shoulder as he leans ever closer, “Don’t make fun of me! I was just telling you how I feel.”

“Actually, darling, you didn’t tell me how you feel, just that you thought the poem must be magic .”

Hermione tugs the side of her cheek between her teeth and shrugs her shoulders. She still wants to know what his takeaway is from the poem before she tells him her thoughts. It’s not that she thinks she’s going to get it wrong, per se, she knows that artistic works are always open to interpretation, but she could be off the deep end with her point of view.

Instead of continuing the conversation, Hermione leans in close to his face, to the point where their breaths are mingling a concoction of strawberries and cream, and stares into his glittering silver eyes as if it’s the last time. Her breath rushes out of her when Draco lifts his hand to cup her cheek, thumb brushing against her lower lip in a revenant caress.

The Great Hall is still loud, but, at that moment all the noise seems to fade into the background until it’s just the two of them. It’s the two of them - a Gryffindor and Slytherin - sitting at the same house table despite their opposite sortings when they were 11-years-old. By the time he presses his lips against hers, she can hardly breathe.

It’s soft and insistent at the same time. It’s passionate and chaste too, and she falls into the kiss the same way she’s fallen into all the rest: with an open heart and her soul bared to him. He matches her, she thinks, especially with the way his palm cups her cheek and his nose brushes against hers. 

Draco pulls back before she knows it, but keeps his forehead pressed to hers and his eyes closed, “Tell me this isn’t the last time we see each other.”

Hermione’s breath catches in her throat. It’s what she’s been waiting for, something concrete and not just along the lines of figuring it out when it comes down to it. So she whistles out a breath and nudges the tip of his nose with her own, “This isn’t the last time we see each other.”

“Come stay with me for some of the summer,” Draco says, the tone of his voice taking on something she’s never heard before: pleading. 

“I will.”

His nod is curt but meaningful and their lips meet one more time before he stands up and tugs her with him. When she looks around the Great Hall she notices that nearly everyone has headed outside to where the ceremony is to take place. They tangle fingers together and walk out and onto the grass where she can see friends and family already seated in chairs with many more empty chairs placed in front of them.

She can see Ron and Harry and the rest of the Weasleys. Her parents are there too, seated just beside Arthur and Molly. Lucius and Narcissa are seated across the aisle, their white-hair sticking out in a sea of brunettes. It makes her lungs burn to see all of the people she cares for in the same place. It’s the only thing that makes her tug on Draco’s hand until he’s turning to face her.

She brushes her fingers against the lapels of his suit jacket and licks her lips, “Will you tell me what the poem means to you?”

One corner of Draco’s lips lift in a wry smile, “Now? Right as we’re about to graduate?”

Hermione adamantly nods her head, “Yes, now. We have time. Please, I just… I need to know.”

He crosses his arms in front of his chest and at first Hermione thinks its defensive, but as he speaks she knows it’s actually protective, “It’s about wanting to live more than anything. It’s about wanting to do more than you’ve yet been able to do and wanting to live through even the harshest of conditions, if only to make even the smallest difference.”

Draco unwraps his arms from his chest and lays one on her hip and the other under her chin. Her heart is thudding at his words and she can feel the burn of tears gathering in her watering line but she blinks them back, not wanting to cry. Not right now.

“I thought you’d have been able to figure it out,” Draco mentions, his finger tapping against her lips in a short pattern.

“I didn’t say I hadn’t figured it out, I just wanted to know what you thought it meant,” Hermione says softly.

She pushes against him so he can start moving again towards the lineup of students. Their hands knock together and she feels his fingers slide through her own as Professor McGonagall sends them all to their seats with a typical black wizarding hat to wear.

Hermione waves to her parents when they lock eyes, and to Harry and Ron as well when they attempt to flag her down with wide flapping arms, but she stays close to Draco as they walk down the aisle. She knows she’s seated just in the row in front of him and is pleasantly surprised when he’s directly behind her. 

If things had been quiet and normal and she had graduated the year prior like she was supposed to and Voldemort was no more of a real person than Ulysses himself, she may have paid more attention to her Head of House as she droned on about the first class to graduate since the Battle of Hogwarts. As it is, she had fought against Voldemort - and won - and had been a child soldier in a war she wished she hadn’t been needed in, so she tunes out, unable and unwilling to put herself through stories and recounts of the events. As her eyes glaze, her thoughts move back to the poem which, at this moment, seems like a greater sentiment for her graduation from Hogwarts.

She agrees with Draco in his thoughts around the poem. She got the same feeling of wanting to do more, but she also came away with the feeling to do what she loved. After all, didn’t Ulysses do just that? He gave up his spot on the isle to his son to do what he loved: go on an adventure. 

Perhaps adventure isn’t the most accurate word for her. She’s been on enough adventures for two lifetimes, but the feeling of being stuck and unsure because of the pressures of others has kept her from acknowledging what she actually wants to do in life. There was a reason she didn’t head to the Ministry immediately after the Battle. 

She knows what the feeling was, now, that all this time she’s tried to stamp down and push away in favour of doing the right thing. Every time she woke from a nightmare or suffered through tremors, every time she worried about what was next in her life: it was her will to live, to do something that makes her happy.

Her classmates standing up around her and the pat on her shoulder from Draco’s large palm jolt her out of her thoughts and she’s surprised that the graduation ceremony is already over. She jumps up from her seat just in time to catch Ginny’s eye from a few rows back and is right there along with everyone else to toss her hat in the hair.

Ginny, in all of her glory, climbs over the rows of seats until she’s standing just in front of Draco and pulls her into a tight and all encompassing hug, a chair still between them, “I can’t believe it, ‘Mione! We really did it!”

She shouts a watery laugh and finally lets her tears fall, kissing Ginny on the side of the head, “I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else, Gin. I love you - so much.”

A sniff comes near her ear and then a few splashes of something wet when she realizes that Ginny is also crying, “I love you too, Hermione.”

Before they can extricate themselves from each other's arms, another pair of arms wrap themselves around her shoulders and she knows it’s Theo smushing Ginny between them. He pats her shoulders and Hermione looks up just in time to see his grin, "I love you guys too!"

“Theo! Let me go!” Ginny yells, pushing back against his chest and forcing him to move, falling back into a chair with Ginny landing on top of him.

Before she can even laugh at their predicament, Draco is stepping over a chair in her row and gathering her into his arms, his lips pressing against hers in what can only be described as a kiss full of need. It makes her blood burn in her veins, bubbling up beneath the skin, and her fingers tangle into the back of his hair, tugging the blond strands until he groans into her mouth.

It surprises her, the heat that she feels in this moment, surrounded by those she’s gone to school with for seven years. It equally surprises her that no one even reacts to the spectacle. His mouth is whispering against hers then, still pushing and pressing kisses onto her between words. 

“You are the most important person to me, Hermione. I can’t explain to you how I even feel right now, with you here in my arms in front of everyone.”

As Hermione opens her eyes she sees the striking bodies of Lucius and Narcissa and, only half a dozen steps behind them, her own parents. At any other moment she might be worried about how their parents will interact with each other. It seems inevitable that both sets will reach them at nearly the same time as they stand wrapped around each other, but she can’t find it in herself to care.

She leans up, instead, and whispers in Draco’s ear, “I know what I want to do.”

He pulls back and looks at her inquisitive, “Oh? Tell me.”

Hermione takes a breath and one more look at their parents who are fighting their way against the crowd of students, “I want to write. I want to write about everything. I want to write about school subjects and research and the war. I want to write about myself and share what I’ve been through. Mostly I want to write about us, about how things change and how people change and how circumstances change. I want to write something that takes away nightmares and makes people think.”

She’s struck by the grin on Draco’s face but she continues, “I want to write because it’s what I want to do, it’s what will make me happy. The poem… Draco, it made me see t hat you can do what you’re supposed to do and follow the rules and stay within the lines, if you want to. We fought a war, Draco, a war! And it took so much from us: youth and innocence and all of the happiness that existed, but there’s still more and despite the hardships, the desire to do what makes me happy will never fade.”

She presses her index finger into his chest then, right into the middle of his green tie, “You make me happy, Draco.”

He captures her finger in his palm and pulls it up to press his lips against the tip. There’s a sparkle in his eyes, the sparkle that makes her feel warm and fuzzy inside, “You make me happy too, Hermione.”

As their parents inch forward and untangle themselves, Draco turns and wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in tight to his body. He smiles down at her and that’s the moment she knows, no matter how difficult the years have been, no matter how many times she’s wanted to quit, she wants to live.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.