By the Way Chapter Fifteen

By the Way

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

Author’s Note: I spent a lot of time perfecting this chapter. Much more than I usually spend. On anything. I’m very lazy, you see, and am rarely able to motivate myself to do anything I don’t want to. But something about this chapter just called for everything to be just right, for every word to count. So I tried. Really tried. And I’m not quite sure what I ended up with, to be honest. I think I like it because it helps a lot of things that preceded it make more sense, have more meaning.

OOO

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“And here I thought you were avoiding me.” His voice was sardonic, grating; his tone was casual. I glanced up from my homework, praying my blush wouldn’t surface, that my hands wouldn’t tremble.

“Why would I want to avoid you? Besides the obvious reasons,” I added thoughtfully, feigning ignorance, indifference. Inwardly, I was a maelstrom of confusion and apprehension and fear—oh, but there was so much of it, so much so that my stomach was rolling, my palms were sweaty with it.

“The obvious reasons clearly not being as obvious to those of us with lesser intellects,” he sneered, an unfamiliar emotion marring his features.

“Surely you’re not unaware of how completely unpleasant you are to be around?” I responded, incredulous.

“An interesting adjective,” he mused, circling my table until he came to a halt next to my elbow. “Tell me, Hermione, are you the type that finds any and all acts of intimacy…unpleasant?”

And then his hand closed around my jaw and he was jerking my face up, his expression so serious, so unreadable, I had to catch my breath.

“Let me go,” I swallowed, the slight movement in my throat causing his wrist to chafe against it. Abruptly, he did just as I asked.

“Gladly,” he snapped: I flinched.

“I don’t see why you feel the need to talk about it,” I hissed.

“You didn’t really think I’d let you get away with it? Just walking—no, excuse me—running away like that?” he responded, sounding amused.

“No, but I was hoping you’d do what I’ve been wanting you to do for years and leave me alone,” I answered tightly.

“No such luck,” he said with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Pity, that,” I mumbled.

“Any chance you’ll be back at the lake tonight?” he inquired casually, crossing his arms over his chest and arching a single, suggestive brow.

“No,” I ground out, masking my humiliation. “I’ll be in bed, actually.”

“Alone?” he pressed, leering.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning, Malfoy,” I said icily, setting my jaw: except I did, I did understand, and nothing could have shamed me more.

“I’m just assuming I’m not the only one who wants to make your dreams come true,” he elucidated cruelly, shrugging.

“Which would be natural,” I shot back, “if you’d even come close to doing that.”

“Oh, I came close. Closer than the Weasel, I’ll bet,” he snorted. He suddenly stood up straight, his hands balled into fists.

“That is most certainly none of your business,” I informed him coldly.

“Well it’s definitely something no one sane would ever want to contemplate. I can’t stand the sight of you as it is—there’s no need to torture myself any further,” he shuddered.

“So last night was experimental masochism for you, then?” I burst out, furious, embarrassed.

“Who’s talking about it now?” he remarked, smirking triumphantly.

“Is this a game?” I asked in disbelief.

“If it was, you wouldn’t be winning, now would you?”

“No,” I replied bluntly, “because you’d be cheating.” I got to my feet, my anger keeping me steady.

“I have news for you, Granger: I wouldn’t have to cheat to beat you at this.”

“At what, Malfoy?” I demanded.

He paused, looking for all the world as if my question had surprised him.

“It’s the same thing we’ve been doing for years, isn’t it?”

“I’m fairly sure I haven’t been sneaking off in the middle of the night to meet you for years,” I pointed out.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he said impatiently. “I meant…well, we’ve always been competing, haven’t we? Who can get the last word. Who can be cleverer, quicker, meaner. It’s always been about finding each others’ weaknesses, exploiting them. We’re just doing it in a different way. Aren’t we?”

And that was when I finally finally finally understood him, his actions, everything he’d been doing and saying and everything I’d believed and thought and felt—none of it, none of it had been real.

“So let me get this straight,” I managed to say, rage rendering me sort of speechless, sort of incoherent. “You took advantage of my emotional vulnerability to…to humiliate me?”

“It wasn’t like you weren’t trying to do the same thing,” he said defensively.

“Is that why you said it, then?” I demanded, staring at him with dawning comprehension, dawning horror.

“Said what?” he asked blankly, irritated.

“I said it was perfect. And then you…you said that no, no it was better than perfect. Except that’s not possible, everyone knows that. So you said it because you knew it couldn’t be true. But it sounded good, so good, and that was right where its appeal was, wasn’t it?”

And then I laughed—because, really, what else could I do?

He was walking away from me, though, slowly, very slowly; or maybe he was trudging, which was such a funny, apt word when you thought about it, so phonetically descriptive, so insightful: to trudge was to be defeated, dejected, which was exactly what he wasn’t, or shouldn’t be, since he’d won, finally, he’d beat me for good.

Except then he was coming back, striding towards me purposefully, angrily.

“Do you know what it’s like to not care about anyone, Granger? To wake up every morning and remember that as soon as you slip up, make a mistake, everyone who loves you…just won’t anymore?”

He was doing it again, looking at me with such an astonishing ferocity that I couldn’t have moved if I had wanted to: my heartbeat skipped, stuttered, stumbled.

“No, I don’t know what it’s like,” I replied distantly. “I don’t expect I ever will.”

And then I snapped my mouth shut, glaring at the floor, except all at once I couldn’t stay quiet, couldn’t hold it back, and my blood was rushing rushing rushing through every last artery I possessed, burning its way through my body as my adrenaline spiked. And then I was speaking:

“Why should anyone, anyone at all love someone like you, Malfoy? You’re hateful and spiteful and…and no one can even trust you! You’re callous and superficial and condescending and you lie, you lie so much, no one could ever believe anything you said. Why should anyone love that?”

He didn’t respond at first, his gaze raking my face.

“They shouldn’t, of course,” he said softly, self-deprecatingly. “But…you’d think someone, eventually, would. Not because…or maybe especially because, well, I know it wouldn’t be so terribly easy to love me.” And then he shrugged.

And that was when I thought—

No.

No, it would be quite easy to love him.

Easier, in fact, than hating him. Since I suddenly wasn’t so sure I did anymore.

Hate him, that is.

“What does this have to do with anything?” I croaked, my throat dry, my senses reeling.

“You tell me, Granger,” he said vaguely, but he was smiling, kind of, his lips turned up at the corners, and for a second, half a second, I wanted to believe everything he wasn’t saying, wanted to believe all the conclusions he was letting me draw because that smile, that smile was beautiful, but no no no Malfoy didn’t smile, not at me, not at anyone, which meant it wasn’t real, none of it, and hadn’t I learned my lesson?

Hadn’t I?

All of a sudden, I wanted to yell, scream, do something unexpected and out of control to shock him, stun him, let him know how embittered I was, was going to be; I wanted him to know I meant what I said, really meant it, and I wanted to be loud and disruptive and ostentatious, uncaring and indifferent and noisy.

“Every time you open your mouth, I wish I still hated you.”

It was exquisite, the way his face fell, the way his eyes grew round, the way his mouth dropped open: he was a study in disappointment, his dashed hopes cluttering the space that loomed large and noticeable in between us.

It almost didn’t matter that I’d whispered.

It almost didn’t matter that the ensuing silence that enveloped us, buried us, was deafening.

Almost, but not quite.

Because it did, it really did.

Matter, that is.

OOO