QR / Chapter 14 - On the Battlefield
Title: Quiet Revolution / Chapter 14 - On the Battlefield
Author: street scribbles
Rating: PG 13
Summary: Draco seeks Hermione out. And on this battlefield, no one wins.
A/N: I thought it'd be cool if I took less than seven years to get out the next chapter. So, this is for the girl who signed up for LJ just to read my story, the girl who gave me the most fantastic feedback on the last four chapters :), and the only girl who has been able to give me constructive criticism that I'll cherish. And for every single one of you who commented on the last chapter. There are no words. <3
Feedback = air I breathe.
Link:
Chapter 14 - On the Battlefield
And maybe I could be the one you need if you'd only show me
Show me how to live and how to bear the weight
And push into the sky - it’s easier to lie, easier to lie
And do what’s right when everything is wrong - it’s easier to run, it’s easier to lie
Never have to look you in the eye, it’s easier to lie, it’s easier to lie
Aqualung - Easier To Lie
It really, really pissed Draco off when he thought about his conditions of being a Wanderer. All the time - said moment inclusive, as he stood there in the icy chill of the night. Everything around him was still and as he began to walk, he grew angrier, colder and bitterer. Like grimy slush.
Sure, he wasn’t the nicest guy when he was alive - maybe he was even malicious. He had known very well that in his living years, he was all sorts of obnoxious and selfish and somewhat of a prat. But he never was bold enough to even muster up the slightest bit of courage to be remotely evil. He wanted to have been, he supposed. But that was a story that ended long ago. The point was, he was never that bad, right?
(And that, in itself, was really a damn shame)
If so, why did it feel like the world was giving him the crap version of everything? If edges didn’t have to be frayed, it seemed that they decided be old and worn looking anyway - just to spite him.
And Malfoys were not creatures to be spited.
But that was exactly what was happening to him in this life as he trudged through the Hogwarts grounds toward the inside of the castle. The bottoms of his trousers were soaked in the cold, muddy grass and felt heavy and clung to his shoes. He couldn’t feel the crisp coldness of the clear night air or smell the delectable aroma of fresh breakfast in the mornings, but he could feel the heavy tracks of mud that pressed thickly through his pants and dirtied his precious skin. He could feel discomfort. And he felt like a peasant.
It was a fucking lose-lose situation - his life and his afterlife.
And Malfoys hated getting the short end to things.
But while the alive Draco Malfoy would have complained about his poor conditions of being a Wanderer, this version of the present Draco Malfoy only cared about one thing - whether it was in a good way or with the wrong intentions - it was Hermione Granger.
Such irony, he thought somewhat resentfully as he climbed the narrow, worn stone steps up to her room in the tower.
Her door was left unlocked. He wondered about this for a second as he paused with his hand staying still, wrapped around the worn wood of the doorknob to her dormitory. She could have easily locked it.
But she didn’t.
All girls were the same, he thought bitterly; they were about misleading words and using manipulative ways of getting what they wanted. She had obviously left it unlocked for a reason, hadn’t she?
Wench.
Draco realised that he didn’t even stop to care or wonder whether her roommates were around before he turned the knob fiercely, almost feeling the coarse friction of the turn and her door flew open.
He was attacked blind-sighted as a heavy body seemed to propel through the air towards him
She packed a punch in his right shoulder and without even looking at him, as he let out a grunt of protest, bit her lower lip tightly so that the blood ran thin and paled them and then tried to hit him again.
This time, Draco didn’t resist and fought back. He shoved Hermione hard so that she fell against her bed, but she shot right up like a persistent rock in a slingshot and threw herself at him so that he was slammed against her door, promptly closing it shut, hard.
She let out a loud, frustrated cry and sobbed loudly as she hit him again, all inhibitions lost. He held her close for a second as she let her cries wrack into the fabric of his clothing. She sounded muffled and the sounds smothered against his chest and he held onto her tightly and fiercely until she pulled away violently and snarled at him. And then she hit him square across his jaw. He looked her incredulously, eyes sparking and shoved her again and it was when she attempted another one of her infamous slaps that he finally grabbed her wrist tightly.
The two stood, his hand wrung around her wrist and her nostrils flaring with her thick mane of hair wildly strung around her face and two pairs of dangerous eyes flashing at the other and the silence never felt more sparked. The room was buzzing with a seedy sort of tension that begged to be broken. It felt like a dirtied window; old and aged with cobwebs and the stench of the shadier part of town that needed to be hit hard with a spiked bat.
“You have some nerve!” she yelled.
Draco looked at her in disbelief before he released his grip on her wrist and tossed it violently back at her. She rubbed it and looked up at him, glaringly rudely.
“Fuck you!” Draco spat. “Don’t tell me I have some nerve. I don’t need to hear that kind of shit from some half-wit Mudblood!”
“AGH!” she yelled out and shoved him again, closing her eyes shut tightly. “You.” She hit him on his arm, “promised.” She tried stomping on his foot but he stepped away just in time, “never,” she panted, “to call me that.” She let out another scream, “again!”
He stood with his arms crossed and leaned against the door casually, smirking lightly down at her. “Keep going, Hermione,” he sneered, “I can go all night if you want.”
She breathed thickly and paused to catch her breath before looking back up at him again. “Why did you do it?” she demanded. “Tell me!”
“Do what?” he growled.
“Kiss me!” she spat out viscously.
“You want me to try to do that again?” He smirked.
She let out another loud cry. “You think this is funny?” she demanded. “Do you, Draco?!”
The smirk flew off his face and he looked at her, eyes forming thin lined slits. “Do you think I think this is funny, Hermione? Why don’t you tell me what you think I’m thinking right now, in fact, if you think you know me so well?”
She looked at him in disgust and took a step back, staring at him in repulsion as though he were an unwanted vermin that had crawled into her room. “I don’t know you at all,” she said, her voice coarse from yelling.
“And you never will.”
“Because you never seem to let me!” she cried.
“I kissed you! Trust me, Hermione. I don’t go around kissing everybody else like I kissed you so why don’t you turn on that fucking brain for old times sake and try to figure me out on that one!”
She looked at him. “You shouldn’t have kissed me! We’re… we’re working!”
“I shouldn’t have done a lot of things!” he cried out, running his hands through his hair. “Good God, I don’t know what I’m doing, okay? And I hate it; I hate this all so fucking much! Did you hear that? Some fucking truth from me! Some actual feeling! Would it kill you to just admit to your feelings, as well, for once?”
“There’s nothing to admit,” she snapped, placing a hand on her hip and looking at him with a challenging sneer.
He looked at her.
“It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?” he snarled. “You’re the only person in the world who can hear me, see me, and feel me. And the fucked up irony about that is that you’re always going to be someone who doesn’t trust me - or who won’t let their guard down. Who the fuck do you think I am?”
They stood still staring at each other on a battlefield that seemed to stretch for miles.
“The War is over, Hermione. There’s no black and white now and everything is just fucking grey, and I hate to break it to you… but we’re both grey!”
“What is that supposed to even mean?” she cried.
“It means that we have the freedom to do whatever we want! Do what you want to do! Stop acting by rules that have been burned down from the War!”
“I can’t do that!” she cried. “I can’t do that, don’t you realise that?!”
“Why not?” Draco demanded.
“Look what the War has done to us! Think of all the people who have left us! Amelia Bones, Colin Creevey’s little brother! Cedric! Sirius Black! . . . Florean Fortescue!” Her voice shook and she’d never looked so desperate.
“…the ice cream bloke?” Draco spat out, looking at her with wild, determined eyes. But she wasn’t paying him any attention. She was trying to fight back the tears that she always had to keep fighting, it seemed. Don’t cry, crying is a sign of weakness, you’re not weak. You’re not supposed to be weak.
“And both of my best friends. Ron isn’t Ron anymore. Harry is dead! Harry is dead!” she shrieked.
“But you’re not!” he yelled, grabbing her. “You’re not dead, Hermione! Can you feel that?” He grabbed her hand as she was crying softly and placed it flat against her chest. “That’s your fucking beating heart! It’s generating life in you! You’re still here. You can do anything you want still, you survived it. You won it.”
Her cries felt strangled, and her chest felt like it was running low on its air supply as she heaved up and down, fighting back tears. He waited for her and she finally stopped for a moment to look up at him.
“I can’t,” she whispered, voice raspy. “Harry is dead.”
He looked at her dead pan, her fierce breathing and bloodshot eyes of fury and anguish. “Why do you keep saying that?” he demanded coldly.
“Because he is. And you killed him.”
There was a pause before either of them spoke after that.
“That’s a big thing to accuse me of, don’t you think?” Draco asked lowly.
“Not if it’s the truth,” she said quietly.
“Is that what you really think? That I killed Potter?”
“Did you?” she demanded.
He looked at her and then began to laugh. A whipping, rambunctious roar of laughter. And then he stopped. She recoiled.
“I killed Potter, that’s right,” he snapped.
And she felt livid. He was always laughing at her. Condescending her. Telling her what was right and what was wrong, as if she had no mind of her own. And to kiss her. What was he playing at, doing something like that?
“You might as well have killed Ron too,” she said rashly. “My two best friends, the two people that I almost lived for. Was there a motive in destroying something beautiful, Draco?”
“This is incredible,” Draco whispered to himself. “Fucking incredible.” His voice grew louder.
She had lost her mind and was working with the warped version known as insanity.
“I’m always going to be a fucking evil Death Eater child to you, aren’t I?”
“That has nothing to do with it,” she snapped.
“Then why don’t you trust me?” he demanded.
“I do trust you,” she finally said quietly. “I have to. And I do. But I don’t want to.”
“Why not?” he pressed. “Why don’t you just give in to your feelings?”
“What feelings?” she demanded. “That desperation of wanting Harry and Ron back? Or the one where I always feel like hurting you?”
“Oh that’s all you’ve aimed for? To hurt me? Congrats, Granger, really . . . congrats, you’re way past that. You can just stop trying to hurt me now because you’re already killing me.”
“I’m not doing anything, Draco, oh my goodness,” she cried, feeling choked up. “What do you want from me? I’m just trying to work on this spell and ensure that--”
He let out a cry of frustration. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! Look me in the eye, Hermione. What did you feel when I kissed you?” He grabbed her by her shoulders and gripped them tightly.
“Why does that matter?” she shouted, pulling away. “Stop touching me! Why are you being like this?! You don’t know me at all, Draco! You don’t understand!”
“Yes I do!” he snarled.
“Ron and Harry--”
“Shut up about them for one fucking second! Those bridges have all been burned at this point, don’t you realise that?!”
He grabbed her wand and before she could protest, muttered a charm and a thick trail of grey smoke erupted from the tip and when that faded down, they stared at a shiny silver coin.
It was a truth coin. State anything and flip the coin. If the coin landed on heads, it meant the truth was spoken. Tails, it meant that the statement was false.
“Do it, Hermione. And prove me wrong.”
“Fine,” she snapped and grabbed the coin. “What do you want me to admit? That I felt something when you kissed me? That I have deep feelings for you? Is that it, Draco?”
He crossed his arms and looked at her coolly; a set of steely grey eyes gazed at her wordlessly.
Her hands were shaking as she placed the smooth, cool coin in the palm of her hand and looked at it.
Hermione looked down at her hands again. Hands that knew how to tilt a wand at the exact angle to master any charm Professor Flitwick assigned. Hands that expertly helped Professor Sprout with the poisonous yellow-leafed trees for her final assignment. Hands that efficiently wrote hundreds of perfectly scored essays for Professor Binns’ tests. Hands that gently caressed whatever hideous ogre of a beast Hagrid had imported from a random obscure country. Hands that had been ready to fight a War with her two best friends. Hands that she had trained her entire life not to grow weak.
Hands that were now shaking, frail and unsteady, in front of her.
“I felt something when Draco kissed me,” she whispered. “And I have deep feelings for him, feelings that go beyond friendship or whatever we had when he was alive.”
And then she let the coin fall down. It hit the wooden floors slowly with a soft ping and then rolled under her bed.
She turned to look at him and saw that he was waiting for her, so she pathetically crawled down to her knees and reached under the bed to feel for it. The coin felt hot and buzzed softly in her hands as she touched it with the tip of her finger.
She pretended to look at it closely, but it was too dark to see what side it had landed on. Before she even looked at it, she knew without a doubt what side it had landed on. So then she crawled back off and got up on her feet, brushing off her knees.
“Tails,” she said hoarsely. “Are you happy now, Draco?”
He didn’t speak. In fact, she could not read his face for the life of her. But she had never been able to master that.
“How dare you,” she whispered. “How can you come barging in here to ask me to question my own feelings and emotions? And then you tell me that my bridges have all been burned? Go to hell, Draco! Because unlike you, I’m still alive, so whatever bridges that are broken for me now, I still have a chance of repairing.”
He still had nothing written on his face. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to feel the worst kind of pain. The kind of pain that took your heart and wrenched it of all logic. The kind of anguish that choked your lungs until you’d rather collapse and drown than breathe because it would hurt that bad. Because she was tired of feeling this way. Defenseless, lost. Trapped.
And then Draco laughed in her face. It was loud, clear and crisp. He roared with a thick, dark barrel of laughter and she tried to keep atop the water, she tried to find a solid lifeboat that wouldn’t sink her.
“Did you even look at the coin?” he spat out.
She didn’t answer.
“I may be dead, Hermione. But you know what? I’m still stronger than you. Potter used to be your fucking purpose for everything and now that he’s dead, he’s still your fucking purpose for this spell. Why don’t you prove yourself to be as strong as that damn façade of yours is and find a purpose for yourself?”
She still didn’t speak.
“And when you find it, come find me. I want to see your face when you realize I’m right and you’re wrong.”
He made his way to the door, back turned to her.
The silence stung so much, it was teeming with a thick, prickly sort of pain and she ached to say something. Hold him back. There was so much she wanted to say, but she didn’t even know what it was. She could literally feel everything falling apart in front of her and it was all in the motion of Draco turning his back on her and walking away.
She hesitated but finally spoke. “Where are you going?” she called softly.
He laughed bitterly and whirled around. “You care?” he asked darkly. “Oh, and have fun on your date with Blaise.”
All the hurt and sadness and confusion dissolved, sizzled away like a drop of water on a heated saucer. It was all anger, now.
She seethed. “Leave! Get out!” Her voice was hoarse and felt rough and throbbed against her throat painfully. “Go to hell!” she shouted for the second time.
“What, you mean this isn’t it?” he snarled thickly and viciously before turning his back on her.
The door slammed and Hermione wondered why she had never felt this kind of pain when Harry was angry with her for trying to interfere or when Ron snapped that he didn’t need her help in Potions even though he clearly did. Was this not the same? She was only trying to make things better. She was; she really, really was.
And as Hermione sat down gingerly on her bed, she knew things would not get better for a very long time.
She closed her eyes and buried her exhausted body, pulling up a thick blanket of discomforting warmth so that it tucked uncomfortably under her chin, it felt like she was being smothered. She fought to close her eyes and absorb the peace. No, it wasn’t peace, it was a disturbing sort of quiet - it was silence that felt static and shot through her senses.
All of Gryffindor tower was quiet that night. Exams were slowly approaching and everyone was in a frantic sort of study mode. It was that time of the school year when the mass population of Hogwarts lost most of their sleep, attempting to raise that grade for that one last paper before the period ended. And as Lavender and Parvati crawled into their beds later that night from their study group meeting for Divination, they looked over at Hermione who was lying in her bed - not a sound was heard. There was no soft, muffled crying or scraps of a sniffle or even the sound of frantic thinking that they often were able to detect from one Hermione Granger.
But they could tell that she was not asleep.
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Author: street scribbles
Rating: PG 13
Summary: Draco seeks Hermione out. And on this battlefield, no one wins.
A/N: I thought it'd be cool if I took less than seven years to get out the next chapter. So, this is for the girl who signed up for LJ just to read my story, the girl who gave me the most fantastic feedback on the last four chapters :), and the only girl who has been able to give me constructive criticism that I'll cherish. And for every single one of you who commented on the last chapter. There are no words. <3
Feedback = air I breathe.
Link:
Chapter 14 - On the Battlefield
And maybe I could be the one you need if you'd only show me
Show me how to live and how to bear the weight
And push into the sky - it’s easier to lie, easier to lie
And do what’s right when everything is wrong - it’s easier to run, it’s easier to lie
Never have to look you in the eye, it’s easier to lie, it’s easier to lie
Aqualung - Easier To Lie
It really, really pissed Draco off when he thought about his conditions of being a Wanderer. All the time - said moment inclusive, as he stood there in the icy chill of the night. Everything around him was still and as he began to walk, he grew angrier, colder and bitterer. Like grimy slush.
Sure, he wasn’t the nicest guy when he was alive - maybe he was even malicious. He had known very well that in his living years, he was all sorts of obnoxious and selfish and somewhat of a prat. But he never was bold enough to even muster up the slightest bit of courage to be remotely evil. He wanted to have been, he supposed. But that was a story that ended long ago. The point was, he was never that bad, right?
(And that, in itself, was really a damn shame)
If so, why did it feel like the world was giving him the crap version of everything? If edges didn’t have to be frayed, it seemed that they decided be old and worn looking anyway - just to spite him.
And Malfoys were not creatures to be spited.
But that was exactly what was happening to him in this life as he trudged through the Hogwarts grounds toward the inside of the castle. The bottoms of his trousers were soaked in the cold, muddy grass and felt heavy and clung to his shoes. He couldn’t feel the crisp coldness of the clear night air or smell the delectable aroma of fresh breakfast in the mornings, but he could feel the heavy tracks of mud that pressed thickly through his pants and dirtied his precious skin. He could feel discomfort. And he felt like a peasant.
It was a fucking lose-lose situation - his life and his afterlife.
And Malfoys hated getting the short end to things.
But while the alive Draco Malfoy would have complained about his poor conditions of being a Wanderer, this version of the present Draco Malfoy only cared about one thing - whether it was in a good way or with the wrong intentions - it was Hermione Granger.
Such irony, he thought somewhat resentfully as he climbed the narrow, worn stone steps up to her room in the tower.
Her door was left unlocked. He wondered about this for a second as he paused with his hand staying still, wrapped around the worn wood of the doorknob to her dormitory. She could have easily locked it.
But she didn’t.
All girls were the same, he thought bitterly; they were about misleading words and using manipulative ways of getting what they wanted. She had obviously left it unlocked for a reason, hadn’t she?
Wench.
Draco realised that he didn’t even stop to care or wonder whether her roommates were around before he turned the knob fiercely, almost feeling the coarse friction of the turn and her door flew open.
He was attacked blind-sighted as a heavy body seemed to propel through the air towards him
She packed a punch in his right shoulder and without even looking at him, as he let out a grunt of protest, bit her lower lip tightly so that the blood ran thin and paled them and then tried to hit him again.
This time, Draco didn’t resist and fought back. He shoved Hermione hard so that she fell against her bed, but she shot right up like a persistent rock in a slingshot and threw herself at him so that he was slammed against her door, promptly closing it shut, hard.
She let out a loud, frustrated cry and sobbed loudly as she hit him again, all inhibitions lost. He held her close for a second as she let her cries wrack into the fabric of his clothing. She sounded muffled and the sounds smothered against his chest and he held onto her tightly and fiercely until she pulled away violently and snarled at him. And then she hit him square across his jaw. He looked her incredulously, eyes sparking and shoved her again and it was when she attempted another one of her infamous slaps that he finally grabbed her wrist tightly.
The two stood, his hand wrung around her wrist and her nostrils flaring with her thick mane of hair wildly strung around her face and two pairs of dangerous eyes flashing at the other and the silence never felt more sparked. The room was buzzing with a seedy sort of tension that begged to be broken. It felt like a dirtied window; old and aged with cobwebs and the stench of the shadier part of town that needed to be hit hard with a spiked bat.
“You have some nerve!” she yelled.
Draco looked at her in disbelief before he released his grip on her wrist and tossed it violently back at her. She rubbed it and looked up at him, glaringly rudely.
“Fuck you!” Draco spat. “Don’t tell me I have some nerve. I don’t need to hear that kind of shit from some half-wit Mudblood!”
“AGH!” she yelled out and shoved him again, closing her eyes shut tightly. “You.” She hit him on his arm, “promised.” She tried stomping on his foot but he stepped away just in time, “never,” she panted, “to call me that.” She let out another scream, “again!”
He stood with his arms crossed and leaned against the door casually, smirking lightly down at her. “Keep going, Hermione,” he sneered, “I can go all night if you want.”
She breathed thickly and paused to catch her breath before looking back up at him again. “Why did you do it?” she demanded. “Tell me!”
“Do what?” he growled.
“Kiss me!” she spat out viscously.
“You want me to try to do that again?” He smirked.
She let out another loud cry. “You think this is funny?” she demanded. “Do you, Draco?!”
The smirk flew off his face and he looked at her, eyes forming thin lined slits. “Do you think I think this is funny, Hermione? Why don’t you tell me what you think I’m thinking right now, in fact, if you think you know me so well?”
She looked at him in disgust and took a step back, staring at him in repulsion as though he were an unwanted vermin that had crawled into her room. “I don’t know you at all,” she said, her voice coarse from yelling.
“And you never will.”
“Because you never seem to let me!” she cried.
“I kissed you! Trust me, Hermione. I don’t go around kissing everybody else like I kissed you so why don’t you turn on that fucking brain for old times sake and try to figure me out on that one!”
She looked at him. “You shouldn’t have kissed me! We’re… we’re working!”
“I shouldn’t have done a lot of things!” he cried out, running his hands through his hair. “Good God, I don’t know what I’m doing, okay? And I hate it; I hate this all so fucking much! Did you hear that? Some fucking truth from me! Some actual feeling! Would it kill you to just admit to your feelings, as well, for once?”
“There’s nothing to admit,” she snapped, placing a hand on her hip and looking at him with a challenging sneer.
He looked at her.
“It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?” he snarled. “You’re the only person in the world who can hear me, see me, and feel me. And the fucked up irony about that is that you’re always going to be someone who doesn’t trust me - or who won’t let their guard down. Who the fuck do you think I am?”
They stood still staring at each other on a battlefield that seemed to stretch for miles.
“The War is over, Hermione. There’s no black and white now and everything is just fucking grey, and I hate to break it to you… but we’re both grey!”
“What is that supposed to even mean?” she cried.
“It means that we have the freedom to do whatever we want! Do what you want to do! Stop acting by rules that have been burned down from the War!”
“I can’t do that!” she cried. “I can’t do that, don’t you realise that?!”
“Why not?” Draco demanded.
“Look what the War has done to us! Think of all the people who have left us! Amelia Bones, Colin Creevey’s little brother! Cedric! Sirius Black! . . . Florean Fortescue!” Her voice shook and she’d never looked so desperate.
“…the ice cream bloke?” Draco spat out, looking at her with wild, determined eyes. But she wasn’t paying him any attention. She was trying to fight back the tears that she always had to keep fighting, it seemed. Don’t cry, crying is a sign of weakness, you’re not weak. You’re not supposed to be weak.
“And both of my best friends. Ron isn’t Ron anymore. Harry is dead! Harry is dead!” she shrieked.
“But you’re not!” he yelled, grabbing her. “You’re not dead, Hermione! Can you feel that?” He grabbed her hand as she was crying softly and placed it flat against her chest. “That’s your fucking beating heart! It’s generating life in you! You’re still here. You can do anything you want still, you survived it. You won it.”
Her cries felt strangled, and her chest felt like it was running low on its air supply as she heaved up and down, fighting back tears. He waited for her and she finally stopped for a moment to look up at him.
“I can’t,” she whispered, voice raspy. “Harry is dead.”
He looked at her dead pan, her fierce breathing and bloodshot eyes of fury and anguish. “Why do you keep saying that?” he demanded coldly.
“Because he is. And you killed him.”
There was a pause before either of them spoke after that.
“That’s a big thing to accuse me of, don’t you think?” Draco asked lowly.
“Not if it’s the truth,” she said quietly.
“Is that what you really think? That I killed Potter?”
“Did you?” she demanded.
He looked at her and then began to laugh. A whipping, rambunctious roar of laughter. And then he stopped. She recoiled.
“I killed Potter, that’s right,” he snapped.
And she felt livid. He was always laughing at her. Condescending her. Telling her what was right and what was wrong, as if she had no mind of her own. And to kiss her. What was he playing at, doing something like that?
“You might as well have killed Ron too,” she said rashly. “My two best friends, the two people that I almost lived for. Was there a motive in destroying something beautiful, Draco?”
“This is incredible,” Draco whispered to himself. “Fucking incredible.” His voice grew louder.
She had lost her mind and was working with the warped version known as insanity.
“I’m always going to be a fucking evil Death Eater child to you, aren’t I?”
“That has nothing to do with it,” she snapped.
“Then why don’t you trust me?” he demanded.
“I do trust you,” she finally said quietly. “I have to. And I do. But I don’t want to.”
“Why not?” he pressed. “Why don’t you just give in to your feelings?”
“What feelings?” she demanded. “That desperation of wanting Harry and Ron back? Or the one where I always feel like hurting you?”
“Oh that’s all you’ve aimed for? To hurt me? Congrats, Granger, really . . . congrats, you’re way past that. You can just stop trying to hurt me now because you’re already killing me.”
“I’m not doing anything, Draco, oh my goodness,” she cried, feeling choked up. “What do you want from me? I’m just trying to work on this spell and ensure that--”
He let out a cry of frustration. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! Look me in the eye, Hermione. What did you feel when I kissed you?” He grabbed her by her shoulders and gripped them tightly.
“Why does that matter?” she shouted, pulling away. “Stop touching me! Why are you being like this?! You don’t know me at all, Draco! You don’t understand!”
“Yes I do!” he snarled.
“Ron and Harry--”
“Shut up about them for one fucking second! Those bridges have all been burned at this point, don’t you realise that?!”
He grabbed her wand and before she could protest, muttered a charm and a thick trail of grey smoke erupted from the tip and when that faded down, they stared at a shiny silver coin.
It was a truth coin. State anything and flip the coin. If the coin landed on heads, it meant the truth was spoken. Tails, it meant that the statement was false.
“Do it, Hermione. And prove me wrong.”
“Fine,” she snapped and grabbed the coin. “What do you want me to admit? That I felt something when you kissed me? That I have deep feelings for you? Is that it, Draco?”
He crossed his arms and looked at her coolly; a set of steely grey eyes gazed at her wordlessly.
Her hands were shaking as she placed the smooth, cool coin in the palm of her hand and looked at it.
Hermione looked down at her hands again. Hands that knew how to tilt a wand at the exact angle to master any charm Professor Flitwick assigned. Hands that expertly helped Professor Sprout with the poisonous yellow-leafed trees for her final assignment. Hands that efficiently wrote hundreds of perfectly scored essays for Professor Binns’ tests. Hands that gently caressed whatever hideous ogre of a beast Hagrid had imported from a random obscure country. Hands that had been ready to fight a War with her two best friends. Hands that she had trained her entire life not to grow weak.
Hands that were now shaking, frail and unsteady, in front of her.
“I felt something when Draco kissed me,” she whispered. “And I have deep feelings for him, feelings that go beyond friendship or whatever we had when he was alive.”
And then she let the coin fall down. It hit the wooden floors slowly with a soft ping and then rolled under her bed.
She turned to look at him and saw that he was waiting for her, so she pathetically crawled down to her knees and reached under the bed to feel for it. The coin felt hot and buzzed softly in her hands as she touched it with the tip of her finger.
She pretended to look at it closely, but it was too dark to see what side it had landed on. Before she even looked at it, she knew without a doubt what side it had landed on. So then she crawled back off and got up on her feet, brushing off her knees.
“Tails,” she said hoarsely. “Are you happy now, Draco?”
He didn’t speak. In fact, she could not read his face for the life of her. But she had never been able to master that.
“How dare you,” she whispered. “How can you come barging in here to ask me to question my own feelings and emotions? And then you tell me that my bridges have all been burned? Go to hell, Draco! Because unlike you, I’m still alive, so whatever bridges that are broken for me now, I still have a chance of repairing.”
He still had nothing written on his face. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to feel the worst kind of pain. The kind of pain that took your heart and wrenched it of all logic. The kind of anguish that choked your lungs until you’d rather collapse and drown than breathe because it would hurt that bad. Because she was tired of feeling this way. Defenseless, lost. Trapped.
And then Draco laughed in her face. It was loud, clear and crisp. He roared with a thick, dark barrel of laughter and she tried to keep atop the water, she tried to find a solid lifeboat that wouldn’t sink her.
“Did you even look at the coin?” he spat out.
She didn’t answer.
“I may be dead, Hermione. But you know what? I’m still stronger than you. Potter used to be your fucking purpose for everything and now that he’s dead, he’s still your fucking purpose for this spell. Why don’t you prove yourself to be as strong as that damn façade of yours is and find a purpose for yourself?”
She still didn’t speak.
“And when you find it, come find me. I want to see your face when you realize I’m right and you’re wrong.”
He made his way to the door, back turned to her.
The silence stung so much, it was teeming with a thick, prickly sort of pain and she ached to say something. Hold him back. There was so much she wanted to say, but she didn’t even know what it was. She could literally feel everything falling apart in front of her and it was all in the motion of Draco turning his back on her and walking away.
She hesitated but finally spoke. “Where are you going?” she called softly.
He laughed bitterly and whirled around. “You care?” he asked darkly. “Oh, and have fun on your date with Blaise.”
All the hurt and sadness and confusion dissolved, sizzled away like a drop of water on a heated saucer. It was all anger, now.
She seethed. “Leave! Get out!” Her voice was hoarse and felt rough and throbbed against her throat painfully. “Go to hell!” she shouted for the second time.
“What, you mean this isn’t it?” he snarled thickly and viciously before turning his back on her.
The door slammed and Hermione wondered why she had never felt this kind of pain when Harry was angry with her for trying to interfere or when Ron snapped that he didn’t need her help in Potions even though he clearly did. Was this not the same? She was only trying to make things better. She was; she really, really was.
And as Hermione sat down gingerly on her bed, she knew things would not get better for a very long time.
She closed her eyes and buried her exhausted body, pulling up a thick blanket of discomforting warmth so that it tucked uncomfortably under her chin, it felt like she was being smothered. She fought to close her eyes and absorb the peace. No, it wasn’t peace, it was a disturbing sort of quiet - it was silence that felt static and shot through her senses.
All of Gryffindor tower was quiet that night. Exams were slowly approaching and everyone was in a frantic sort of study mode. It was that time of the school year when the mass population of Hogwarts lost most of their sleep, attempting to raise that grade for that one last paper before the period ended. And as Lavender and Parvati crawled into their beds later that night from their study group meeting for Divination, they looked over at Hermione who was lying in her bed - not a sound was heard. There was no soft, muffled crying or scraps of a sniffle or even the sound of frantic thinking that they often were able to detect from one Hermione Granger.
But they could tell that she was not asleep.
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