By the Way Chapter Four

By the Way

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER FOUR

Ginny,

There is nothing so magical as hearing him laugh: Throaty and breathless, warm and rich. Is it weird that I think I’ve memorized every inflection, every distortion, every tone of voice, only to be proven wrong when I see him at breakfast and he tells me something wonderful? Something that isn’t outrageously clever, or outrageous at all, but just because he’s saying it, just because he’s sharing it, it’s brilliant and witty and compounds his irresistibility so effectively I can’t think?

Is it pathetic that he can make me laugh so hard and so much that breathing becomes a chore? That he can make me shiver, make me tingle, make me ache with anticipation I don’t even understand, just with a vague comment, a mercilessly brief description?

The funny thing about it, though, is that this codependency, for all its overwhelming complexity, didn’t hit me all at once; it was gradual, and I let it happen, I let it seep into me inch by everlasting inch, oblivious to its consequences by choice or naivety—I don’t know which. With the foresight of a romantic masquerading as a cynic, I saw what would happen in I continued to be charmed, complimented, entertained.

But like something forbidden and secret, I was lured by the temptation of intrinsic, inherent, and unconditional love. I wanted his affection, I wanted his promises. I wanted his chuckle, and his irony, and his sensitivity; I wanted his past, and his present, and his future. I wanted it all…and I took it.

My fingers were frozen, clutching the paper that had fallen out of my never-used Divination textbook from third year; the letter, the stupid, stupid letter that I’d written to Ginny mere days before her brother had ruined me: the letter that I’d never given her, never sent, never looked at again.

I remembered writing it, that was the thing. I remembered choosing my words carefully, remembered trying to describe, to capture the feelings I was so sure were genuine, was so sure were real. I remembered thinking, at the time, that this was It, that this was what people spent their whole lives waiting for, that wasn’t I just so lucky to have found it this early? Wasn’t I just so fortunate to not have to be patient anymore, to not have to search and search for The One?

Wasn’t I?

My argument with Malfoy the day before seemed excessively trivial, even immature, as I reread and reread and reread my childishly confident, childishly certain, childishly secure missive.

With a shaking hand, I picked up a quill, dipped it in ink, and added something, something that seemed to sum up the last few weeks, maybe the last few months, with astonishing clarity:

And I think it was a terrible mistake.

It didn’t signify that the ink was drying a different color, or that my handwriting was jumpy, scratchy, completely unlike the obsessively neat lines above it; it didn’t matter that time had passed, that I had four heartbreakingly poignant weeks behind me.

What mattered, really, was that I’d finally realized what had been staring me in the face for who knew how long, for who knew how often: I hadn’t made any mistakes, not really.

He had been the mistake.

And I’d been terribly, terribly stupid to hold onto him.

Ten minutes later, I watched with an inscrutable sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, really, as my undated letter to Ginny was engulfed in flames.

The ashes blended in so very perfectly with the other debris.

So very, very perfectly.

OOO