By the Way Chapter Nine

By the Way

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER NINE

“I didn’t say anything explicit, I’ll have you know,” Malfoy said upon greeting me that night at our shared detention.

“No? So you just offered a friendly suggestion, then?” I asked sweetly.

He looked away from me before deigning to answer.

“I merely solicited my opinion on the matter,” he said between gritted teeth.

“And your opinion was what, exactly?” I demanded, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

“Why don’t you guess, Granger?” he taunted, eyes flashing.

“Alright, Draco, I will,” I responded shortly. “My guess goes something like this—you teasing him about dating a Mudblood; his predictably infuriated reaction, complete with death threats and a blush; you saying something droll and witty, something akin to, oh, I don’t know, ‘It’s not like she’ll have you forever anyways’; he pales, stutters, pretends not to care as you list all the reasons I’m supposedly inferior to the lot of you; you saunter off, knowing you’ve effectively planted that niggling seed of doubt in his impressionable little brain; he then…then he—then he—he—goes and just—he just dumps me, just like that, and—and—“

I wasn’t crying, wasn’t sobbing, wasn’t even hysterical: I just couldn’t get the words out, the words that would place the blame on someone other than me. It was like now that I knew, exactly, who was indirectly responsible for my lost chance at happiness, I didn’t want to.

Know, that is.

Because it made the sordid episode that much more difficult to forget.

Oh, I didn’t think myself still in love with Ron; I knew, in that dim way that all unwanted truths present themselves, that I was better off without him. I knew that we weren’t meant to be together. I felt only the mildest twinge of discomfort whenever he was near, something I attributed to the fact that he knew me, really knew me: he knew the texture of my skin, the flare of my hips, the curve of my waist; he knew exactly how fast the pulse at the base of my neck beat, exactly how fast; he knew the turn of my calves, the feel of my breasts; he knew the precise sound of my breath as it hitched in my throat when his hands, usually so clumsy and rough, wandered and traveled and made something wonderful happen; he knew just what I looked like when that slow swirl of lightning coiled up my spine, when everything and everything and everything was engulfed in something and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t coherent, that I didn’t remember where I was, who I was, because I was with him, and the absence of common sense was that much more irrelevant.

I shut my eyes against the onslaught of memories; when I opened them again, Malfoy—no, Draco—was staring at me.

“You really don’t understand anything, do you?” he asked, his surprise evident.

“Maybe I would if you bothered to explain anything,” I retorted huffily.

“I thought you were a bloody genius, Granger. Why can’t you figure it out?” he replied, an edge to his words that immediately put me on guard.

You’re talented, and beautiful, and a bloody genius; what could I do for you? Nothing but love you—and even there, I failed.

“I wish you could just tell me it’s a coincidence,” I pleaded softly, shaking my head.

“Ah, but I’ve never wanted to cater to your wishes, have I?”

“Just tell me why, then. Why, Malfoy. Why you took it upon yourself to ruin the best thing I’d ever had. You’ve always been spiteful, but, really, are you evil, too? Seriously?”

I was trembling with—something. I couldn’t comprehend, let alone decipher, the multitude of emotions that were coursing through me; I couldn’t comprehend, let alone decipher, why they were there in the first place.

I watched, fascinated, as he clenched his jaw.

I watched, enthralled, as he spun away from me, walked a few feet, and stopped.

I watched, captivated, as he stomped back towards me, closer than he’d been before, just a few seconds before, so much closer.

I was so aware of those precious, lost inches that my head hurt.

“I hated seeing you happy,” he whispered, his eyelids slamming shut. “I hated seeing you smiling and laughing all of the time, not just when you were with him, but always, always. You were always happy.” He shrugged, and then let out a bark of harsh, desperate laughter.

“What right, may I ask, do you have to be so ludicrously happy? What makes you so very different from me? Do you deserve it more than me? Do you? And before you spin that crap about how I’m on the Dark side, let me remind you of a rather pertinent fact—I was born to it, Granger. Just as you were born to fight against it. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair, and I took it upon myself to see that you got a taste, mind you, just a taste, of what it’s like to be branded unworthy. You deserve it, after all.”

His knuckles were turning white; I hadn’t noticed that he’d balled his hands into fists.

“Well that’s terribly ironic, isn’t it?” I observed, wondering how it was that I hadn’t yet collapsed. “The very reason you discriminate is because you were—how did you phrase it? Oh, yes—born to it. Takes one to know one, Malfoy?”

“Naturally,” he ground out.

And there we were again, at a stalemate.

“You’re selfish,” I blurted out.

“And you’re a hypocrite,” he returned, almost instantaneously.

I gaped, astonished into silence.

“I’m going to surmise from your recent obsession with my involvement in the demise of your relationship with the Weasel that he tried to pin the blame on me. That’s neither here nor there. Since his…confession—or whatever you want to call it—you’ve done nothing but think of yourself, how it all pertains to you, how very much pain you’re still in. Spare me more graphic descriptions of your emotional duress, if you please.

“You haven’t thought, for a moment, of how much it had to have bothered your one true love—the Weasel. I’m going to guess that you were to busy victimizing yourself to do anything but castigate him—however inwardly—for being stupid enough to listen to me, of all people.”

“Yes, well, you’re not too far from the mark,” I hissed, angry and embarrassed and unconvinced.

“You shouldn’t think along those lines though, Granger,” he corrected me slowly.

“Oh? And why is that? Pray tell, is it because things are just a touch more…complicated than you’re letting on?” I demanded haughtily.

“Of course not. After all, look at how well you pay attention when I talk. Dare I say that you actually listen to me? Of all people?”

Silence followed his pronouncement.

An odd, fluttery feeling was starting somewhere south of my navel, a feeling that was not altogether pleasant; abruptly, the weight of his words sunk into me, and I was mortified.

Petrified, even.

“What’s wrong, Granger?” he needled. “Feeling selfish again?”

I glanced up to study his bored, eager expression.

I felt as if time had ceased to exist as I turned away and trudged to the door.

Nothing was happening, but everything was changing: I felt it in the air, the air that was suddenly thick with tension, with warning, with promise.

“By the way,” I called out when I reached the doorway, not daring to face him.

“Yes, Granger?” he intoned with relative indifference.

I tucked my hair behind my ears: my hands seemed pale, ethereal, detached.

“You’re right, Draco.”

And then I started to run.

OOO