By the Way Chapter Ten

By the Way

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER TEN

I ran so far and so fast that everything, including time, ceased to be real: everything was a blur, a deliciously fatalistic blur. I ignored the telltale signs of exhaustion—my lungs were on fire, my muscles were burning, and my entire body seemed swollen with suppressed heat.

None of that mattered, though: I was still abominably cold.

I felt frozen, numb; I felt inadequate, impotent, as if no matter how hard I sprinted I could never escape. Which made a desperate, sick sort of sense, since, really, I was trying to get away from myself, from all my prissy, irritating inhibitions, all my supercilious, ostentatious ideals. And that was just impossible, wasn’t it?

But maybe that wasn’t what I was trying to do. Maybe I was running from something different altogether. Maybe I was grasping at what I considered to be my last chance, my last resort—if I pushed just a little bit harder, if I was just a little bit faster, I could elude him and his arrestingly accurate accusations. I could never have to come to terms with the self-deprecating knowledge that Malfoy—Malfoy, of all people—had just taught me a lesson.

Malfoy—Malfoy, of all people—had gone and pointed out my hypocrisy, my own agonizingly obvious character flaws, my moral failings, even; and he’d done it so easily, as if he’d just been biding his time, waiting until I was at my most pretentious before letting me in on the dirty little secret everyone but me was in on: I wasn’t perfect, wasn’t even close to perfect, and had wasted so much time striving to be, so much time trying to be.

I blinked back tears at the thought, knowing knowing knowing that I couldn’t even blame Malfoy for this. What, when all he’d done was state a fact? When all he’d done was tell the truth?

Fate was cruel, I decided then. Allowing him to strike the ultimate blow like that—allowing him to objective, for once, but still be so, so hurtful.

I’d reached an inevitable conclusion by the time I realized that overexertion wouldn’t solve my problems: There was nothing complicated about honesty, after all.

OOO

“Granger. Feels like it’s been days, doesn’t it?” he called to me the next morning, his voice carrying through the otherwise empty hall.

“Miss me, Malfoy?” I asked caustically, not meeting his probing gray gaze: I was afraid, so afraid, that if I did, he could see how haunted, hunted, humble I was.

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” he returned enthusiastically, smirking.

“So you’ve taken to lying before you’ve even had your breakfast, then?” I inquired politely, gritting my teeth.

“How do you know I’m lying?” he replied, the harsh, tactless levity that was usually between us all but gone; it had been replaced, I noticed, by something deeper, less trivial, more intense.

Something more derogatory, something more cautious.

Something far more permanent.

“Your lips are moving, aren’t they?” I countered, finally tossing a fleeting, distasteful glare in his direction.

He flinched.

“Ah, of course. How unlucky for you that, on occasion, I can be so brutally candid,” he commented dryly, leaning sideways against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest.

I realized, with no small measure of irritation, with no small measure of panic, that I had no ready retort; so instead of speaking, I turned to look out the window at the end of the hall.

The bleak, desolate skyline promised rain.

“No? Nothing? Damn, but you’ve been disappointing lately,” he murmured, shaking his head.

“Disappointing?” I repeated, knowing what he would say but needing to hear it from him, needing to hear him reaffirm all my suspicions, all my unpleasant realities.

“Yes! You’ve been crying and interrogating and getting all defensive and it’s really just a pity, since you used to be such fun,” he explained regretfully.

“I had no idea you were so appreciative of my…singular personality,” I intoned, my throat dry, my eyes dry, my feelings: dry.

“I still have some secrets left, Granger. Don’t worry.”

And then he smiled, sort of, as if to reassure me that yes, he was still as enigmatic, as mysterious, as inscrutable as I’d never thought him to be; that yes, he was still cold and unfeeling and brittle, so brittle, as if one well-timed, well-executed insult could break him, shatter him into a million tiny little pieces, fragments, really, except, no no no that wasn’t him who was fragile, was it, at least I didn’t remember it being him, but maybe I was just confused, maybe it really was him who was so delicate, so frail, maybe he was more complex than I’d ever given him credit for, or maybe I was wrong, all wrong, and things weren’t anything like I’d imagined, they were just—complicated?

“I never worry about you,” I heard myself say as if from a great distance.

“Now who’s the liar?” he immediately rejoined.

“What are you even talking about?” I demanded, exasperated.

“I wonder when you’ll stop feigning indifference,” he pondered whimsically, tapping his fingers against his forearms.

“Oddly enough, I’m not feigning anything.”

“No, you’re not the type, are you?”

“Well I wasn’t sorted into Slytherin, now was I?”

“No, thank God,” came a new voice, a familiar voice—Ron’s voice—from behind us. Malfoy and I both glanced backwards, him with surprise, me with vindication.

“Oh. Hello, Ron,” I said uneasily, uncertain why I was suddenly nervous.

“Hey, Hermione. Is he bothering you again?” Ron didn’t mice words.

“I think she can handle me just fine without your clumsy attempts at chivalry, Weasley,” Malfoy drawled. “And shouldn’t you, oh, I don’t know, be somewhere with your girlfriend?”

And then it happened.

Ron, with a strangled, incomprehensible shout, launched himself at Malfoy, tumbling them both to the ground, their legs entwined and kicking and their fists colliding with everything, everything, everything: air and faces and bodies and stone. It was an unintelligible melee of adolescent rage, adolescent immaturity; I watched, fascinated and distressed, as Ron’s punches repeatedly made contact with Malfoy’s increasingly bloodied face.

“Stop it, both of you!” I yelled, belatedly recognizing that I should do something to stop them, something to save him. I saw Ron pause, saw my opening, and lunged forward to grab Malfoy’s sleeve. I yanked him to my side, away from Ron, but Ron was already walking away, and it was then that I heard another voice—Lavender’s—calling his name from the other end of the hallway, wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was talking to, and since it wouldn’t be prudent to be caught within a five mile radius of me, he was deserting me, leaving me with Malfoy, leaving me to clean up his mess.

Some things, I reflected, would probably never change.

“Get away from me, Granger,” Malfoy snarled at me, shoving at my arm and stumbling backwards. “I don’t need your help.”

I cringed at his violent tone, taking a step of my own away from him.

“You’re welcome, Malfoy,” I said firmly, holding my head up and meeting his gaze with a quiet sort of dignity.

He studied me, my posture, my features, my demeanor: and then, just when I began to grow weary of it, horror slowly dawned on his pale, crimson-smattered face. All at once, he looked stricken, sick with himself.

And then he walked away.

OOO