Oxford Elise

My father has been hospitalized, surgery, and is on hospice. I don’t have the mental capacity to create right now.

Apologies,

My dad is dying, and there’s no more chocolate milk.

The fridge hums.

Light spills onto the tile.

I close it. Open it again.

My dad is dying, and the laundry has been sitting too long.

It smells sour when I lift the lid.

I turn the dial all the way around.

I start it again.

My dad is dying, and I can’t find my other shoe.

I stand there with one on, one off.

I check the closet.

I check the closet.

My dad is dying, and I leave the groceries on the counter.

The ice cream softens in the carton.

A ring of milk spreads on the wood.

I stand there and watch it darken the wood.

My dad is dying, and someone is mowing the lawn.

The engine idles, then roars.

Grass clings to the walkway.

I watch the straight lines from a distance

and wish I could smell it.

My dad is dying, and I burn the toast.

Smoke curls toward the ceiling.

I scrape it black into the sink.

I leave the knife there.

My dad is dying, and there’s a stain on my shirt.

I scrub until the fabric thins.

My hands ache from the effort

but I keep going.

My dad is dying, and I think about chocolate milk.

The empty shelf.

Everything else lined up around it.

The empty space is hard to look at.

My dad is dying, and everything small

keeps happening.

Keeps happening.

Keeps happening.

My dad is dying.

Thank you to @vivianaster for this BEAUTIFUL cover art! Better Than Revenge is being retitled -> Almost, Always.

Chapter Forty-Five: Live

| FFN | AO3 |

A big turning-point chapter featuring:

✨ Draco crossing the Great Hall ✨ Harry finally apologizing ✨ Ron not apologizing ✨ Blaise Zabini taking full credit for everything ✨ and Draco Malfoy deciding he’s done hiding

Some reckonings had been a long time coming.

Previously posted as Better Than Revenge, now rebranded as Almost, Always.

Chapter 44: Vigil

| FFN | AO3 |

Chapter Forty-Two: Slash | AO3 | FFN | He was three steps from the doors when they opened. Applause broke across the Hall like a wave.

Draco stopped dead.

She stood framed in the doorway—Katie Bell—alive, unbroken, smiling as though she hadn’t spent months suspended between worlds.

For a long, impossible second, everything went quiet.

Tribulation (a Dramione fanfiction by OxfordElise)

| AO3 |

The war is over. The damage isn’t. Draco Malfoy volunteers for a post-war trauma rehabilitation program and is paired with Hermione Granger as his peer sponsor. Through shared conversations about guilt, memory, and survival, they begin to build something neither of them thought they were allowed to have: understanding. A slow-burn story about PTSD, moral injury, and recovery that isn’t linear.

SESSION TWO - Control

Chapter Forty: Pulse | AO3 | FFN |

For a moment, for this moment, they were not Slytherin or Gryffindor or traitor or martyr or doomed.

And now every time my fingers hover over that beautiful little punctuation mark, I get this gut-crunching anxiety like, oh no, are people going to think I outsourced my personality to a robot? Do I need to stop using the punctuation that best matches the way my brain actually works because ai think bots decided they, too, like em-dashes???

| AO3 | FFN |

They praise Hermione Granger for her loyalty, even as it rots her alive. When devotion becomes a leash, she must decide whether to keep guarding the grave—or leave it behind.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Align

| FFN | AO3 |