A Little Piece of Sincerity
By: Provocative Envy
OOO
Draco had never considered himself to be particularly vindictive. He was degrading, malicious, and offensive; but never ruthlessly bitter.
He’d managed to surprise himself with the vehemence of his angry reaction to her prodding. He’d meant every rancorous word, yet wanted to take them all back as soon as he’d seen her spluttering with rage.
It seemed he was inextricably caught in a web of insecurity and confusion; he was playing the parts of two completely different people and had no idea who was writing his lines.
One moment he would want nothing more than to see her bleeding and broken in a heap of despondency at his feet; the next, he’d be restless with remorse, pacing through the halls and searching for a way to comfort her, protect her from himself. His erratic behavior was doing nothing but entangling him even more in a conspiracy of his own creation: he was taking them both on dangerous rides through the extremes of human emotion.
He’d broken her heart more times than he could count. He should have been satisfied after the first, albeit incongruous, time; but he’d been greedy, so intent on ruining her that he hadn’t stopped to consider the consequences of his own involvement. Somewhere between instilling a shameless sense of faith in her and annihilating that hope, all in the same day, he’d lost himself.
He was no longer content with hurting her; no, it seemed his discomfiture merely trebled in size after he fired insult after insult at her. His iniquitous tendencies were forced and it was this compulsory feel of his dissipation that made him that much more determined to harm her.
His desire to go back to normal was opposed by his even stronger need to shelter her. He wanted to ensure her safety, shield her from the horrible effronteries he himself had tossed in her direction for going on six years. It was a backwards and unexpected and utterly perplexing instinct, but he’d realized it as soon as he’d watched her hold back the tears that had threatened her dignity.
He knew that a week earlier he would have reveled in her show of weakness, would have crowed with triumph at her near surrender; but he hadn’t and that fact had infuriated him so much that he’d lashed out at the one person he wanted to be left unscathed.
He was almost imminently aware, however, that he couldn’t give in to his strange new impulses. There was literally no reason to personify a cliché and turn himself into a blonder version of Potter.
Fate was offering him an alternate route, handing him the excitement of embarking on a journey to the unknown; he to be just as strong as Granger, though. He had to go back to being hateful and intolerable…whether he liked it or not.
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Hermione was silent as she regarded Harry and Ron.
They’d confronted her in the Common Room, their concern so genuine, so awkwardly sincere, that she immediately melted.
“Hermione, we’ve just been so worried about you lately,” Harry was saying, his gentle voice eroding the barriers she’d erected around her heart since the escapade with Malfoy in the Astronomy Tower.
“Oh, Harry. I’ve been worried about myself lately,” she confessed, allowing Ron’s arms to encase her in a tender hug as she sobbed out the whole sordid story.
“I fell for it, Harry. I let him see me at my worst, when I was vulnerable and disgraced and stupid,” she cried into his shoulder, her eyes closed and unable to see the menacing glare shared between the two boys.
“It’ll all turn out alright, Hermione. We promise,” Ron told her, rubbing her shoulder with his hand.
“Yeah. If he comes near you ever again…well, let’s just say I won’t hold back Ron anymore,” Harry continued.
“No, Harry! I can’t let you both get in trouble over something as silly as this,” she argued, sniffing a bit as she looked at them. “I…Just…Just don’t leave me alone for awhile, okay? Please. I just don’t want…I don’t want to…I never want to see him again.”
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Draco strode out of Potions, his robes billowing behind him as his eyelids gracelessly drifted shut and he turned the corner. He wasn’t watching where he was going, and his elbow hit her, accidentally.
“Hey! Malfoy! What was that for?” Potter yelled after him, ignoring Granger’s plea to remain quiet.
“Potter, surely with glasses that thick you can see an accident for what it is?” Draco responded without glancing back, continuing his walk.
“Why can’t you just leave her alone, Malfoy?” Ron shouted, grabbing Hermione and hooking his arm around her waist.
Draco turned around slowly, willing himself to remain calm. He noted Granger’s cowering stance, her face turned down as she let Weasley be her champion. It was so unlike her, so astonishingly uncharacteristic, that he nearly commented on it.
He wanted to ask her why she was letting someone so unworthy protect her; why she wasn’t fighting her own battles, why she wasn’t being as brave as he knew she could be. He wanted to pry Weasley’s fingers from her body, replacing them with his own and proving his ability to defend her.
He could do it so much better than either of the Wonder Twins, if only she’d let him.
Shaking his head at the three of them, he sauntered away, paying no heed to their loud protests and pointless indignation at being snubbed.
He didn’t trust himself around her anymore: and it was the most frightening thought he’d ever had.
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Hermione stared after him, her heart beating too fast and her lips remaining parted too long.
She’d never been more conscious of physical contact as Ron’s skin rubbed intimately against hers. It was supposed to be comforting.
Yet rather than providing a heady reassurance of friendship, it made her nauseous.
She’d turned into one of those simpering females that required a dramatic rescue every time she was assaulted by even the most mundane danger. She was letting Harry and Ron be her saviors, and it had never felt so wrong.
Trust Malfoy to point it out to me, she thought dismally.
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