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English
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Bringing Back Yearning Fest
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Published:
2025-08-26
Completed:
2025-10-17
Words:
3,539
Chapters:
9/9
Comments:
129
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266
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4,210

All I Want

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Dear Granger,

I am not sure why I’ve started writing to you. Not that you’d reply. You don’t even know about this letter, and you certainly don’t know about my feelings. Perhaps this is only the fantasy of a dying man. But if I am to dream, let me begin again.

Dear Hermione,

I am dying. Perhaps that is the only reason why I finally found the courage to write. A man with little time left has nothing to lose but his silence.

I cannot tell you when it began; when loathing blurred into something far more dangerous. Perhaps it was the way you raised your hand in class, fierce and unyielding. Perhaps it was the night you laid bloodied but unbroken at Malfoy Manor. Or perhaps it was always there, buried under my cowardice, waiting for the day I would finally admit it. I only know that once it began, I was never the same.

I saw you at the Ministry gala. You wore that beautiful long dress, and I envied every person who stood close enough to draw your smile. I envied the air that touched your skin, the lace that dared to cling to your body. I even envied your glass of champagne, for it met your lips while I remained exiled in shadows. Can you see how far I have fallen, how utterly gone I am for you?

You consume me. Every thought, every hour, every faltering breath is haunted by you. And still I torture myself with questions I already know the answers to. If I had been another man - someone not carved by cruelty, not branded by a name you could never forgive - would you have loved me? If I were not Draco Malfoy, would you have looked at me without loathing?

This is my punishment: to never know what it feels like to be loved by you.

For every crime I committed, for every wrong choice, I am left with nothing but the certainty that when I leave this world, there will be no trace of me in yours. It is a shattering thought. And yet I write, because the ache refuses to be buried with me.

You are perfection, Hermione. You stood for what was right, and I despised you for it, because every time you triumphed, you held up a mirror to my failures. Hatred devoured me, but when the flames died, all that remained was longing.

Tell me, does he make you happy? Does he bring you flowers? He should. You deserve a love so strong it hurts. If you had been mine, I would have walked you through the manor gardens every morning, shown you the roses heavy with dew.

I remade this house with you in mind, though you will never walk its halls. Red and gold now line my rooms; your colours, not mine. Every night, I close my eyes and wonder if I will wake again. And yet, surrounded by your colours, the thought of another dawn without you is easier to endure.

Maybe tomorrow I will write again. Maybe tomorrow there will still be breath in me.

For now, I am so very tired.

But if sleep takes me tonight, know this: you were my first and only peace.

Sweet dreams, my muse.

Yours, Draco