By the Way Chapter Six

By the Way

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER SIX

I shouldn’t have cared.

I shouldn’t have watched.

I shouldn’t have done anything except quietly close the portrait hole and walk sedately back to the library, or maybe the closest girls’ room, or maybe any dark hallway corner would do: I should have run away to cry, or think, or think about crying.

But I shouldn’t have stayed rooted to the spot, my eyes unblinking, unfocused, unprepared for the sight that awaited me.

“Oh, Ron. This is like a dream,” Lavender’s voice, high-pitched and girly and sensuous, pervaded my every last nerve: I wanted to scream, to jump, to hit and choke and sob and do a million other things, except I couldn’t decide which would be more fulfilling, ultimately, or which would make the most sense, or which would inflict the most damage, or which would make it all just go away, because I’d been so good at forgetting, I’d done so well just that afternoon, I couldn’t fall back into that, could I, that wouldn’t be fair, it just wouldn’t be fair, and it shouldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen, I couldn’t let it.

Could I?

“I know,” he responded softly, smiling and holding her tight. “I’ve wanted this for…”

“So long,” she finished for him.

And then they laughed, and all I could do was marvel at my complete, abject, astonishing stupidity.

Abruptly, I didn’t want to cry.

Abruptly, I wanted to slap myself for falling, in every sense of the word, for that: fickle, average, pathetic, uninspired; he was everything I’d never wanted, and I’d let myself be caught up in all the ways he was wrong for me, told myself that he was perfect, even.

Abruptly, I wanted to shout out to Lavender that she was right, it was like a dream: because dreams, especially dreams, always come to an end.

Dreams didn’t last forever.

Dreams always always always stopped right when you got to the good part.

I didn’t know if Lavender was the type of person who remembered her dreams; I didn’t really care either way.

All that mattered, suddenly, was that I was.

I was the type of person who remembered their dreams, every last detail.

But most of all, I remembered how they ended.

OOO

“This is all your fault, you know,” Malfoy hissed into my ear the next evening, the sound of his decisive derision cutting into the ceaseless scraping of my quill across the parchment veiling the desk.

“It is, isn’t it? Since, you know, I really do argue with myself on a highly regular basis,” I returned politely, refusing to look at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Habits like that were probably what drove the Weasel away in the first place,” he remarked testily.

My fingers squeezed the quill.

Quiet, stay quiet, just let it go, he’ll stop, he has to, just stay quiet.

“Not that he really needed a host of reasons,” he continued blithely. “I mean, no one’s exactly condemning him for dropping you like that.”

My grip was so tight that I was trembling, the barely formed letters on the page before me blurry.

It isn’t true, it doesn’t matter, just let it go, let it go, stop thinking, remember who it is, it doesn’t matter, it never will, just let it go.

“What, no witty repartee, Granger? Nothing cutting and wry and devastatingly clever to say?” he demanded silkily, thinking he’d won, finally, thinking he’d rendered me silent, rendered me mute.

The quill snapped.

“I should be used to you by now, shouldn’t I?” I asked shakily. “I should be used to you devising all sorts of ways to hurt me, to make sure I know my place, to demean me again, and again, and again.”

I paused, wondering if he’d interrupt.

“For years, I’ve wanted to ask you why. Seriously. It actually, at one point, mattered to me why you hated me so very much. I couldn’t comprehend the simplicity of it, couldn’t understand how someone could be so callous and cruel and mean and not have anything other than bloodlines and association to go by.”

I smiled slightly then, a little sadly and a little triumphantly; a little disoriented and a little resolute.

“But it makes sense now. Really. You’re just…” I trailed off, uncertain how to finish.

And then I looked at him, really looked at him, and realized that I’d painted his portrait all wrong, all along, that I’d stereotyped and judged and been so subjective, so hypocritically subjective, for as long as he’d bothered to hate me.

Because when I caught his gaze, when I let my eyes drift not just onto his, but into his; when I pretended not to know him, or maybe pretended to know him too well, I couldn’t tell which and I don’t even think it mattered, not then, anyways, since when I looked at him, he wasn’t even listening, not paying the slightest bit of attention to my impassioned speech, wasn’t acknowledging my feelings or my thoughts or my words or my questions, he was just watching me, his lip curling, and I was struck by his skin, so pale and smooth and beautiful, which suddenly didn’t fit as the backdrop for his myriad, unpleasant facial expressions, not at all, and I noticed, belatedly, it seemed, that sweat was beading across his forehead, that he was nervous, that he was waiting, anxious, for something to happen, which made me wonder, all at once, if maybe he had been aware that I’d been speaking, that I’d been saying something important, something that wasn’t circumspect, or logical, or characteristic of me.

“You’re perfect,” he blurted out, breaking into my reverie. He cleared his throat. “I hate you because you’re too bloody perfect, Granger. Everything you do, you have to do well. Everything you say, you have to be articulate and intelligent and persuasive and make damn sure you get your point across. You’re brilliant and brave and sincerely good and even when legitimately awful things happen to you, you just square your shoulders and carry on as if you’re fine, just fine, and it’s appalling how easy you make that look. Appalling,” he repeated, then lapsed into silence.

He shook his head while I digested, reflected, dismissed: I must have been doing a better job than I’d thought at hiding my inner turmoil, my inadequacies, my weaknesses and insecurities and fears; I must have masked my heartbreak, my envy, my bitterness, much better than I’d given myself credit for.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a long, tense moment, and then he shrugged, drumming his fingers on the desk he was seated at.

“Because you asked,” he said, raising one eyebrow.

I wondered, then, if everything was really as simple as that.

If everything really came down to something as base as jealousy.

And if it did, if it was possible to be jealous of other people’s dreams.

Because that was what Malfoy was admitting to, essentially: I dreamed I was perfect, I dreamed I was brilliant and brave and good and strong.

But he seemed to be the only one who could vouch for it coming true.

OOO