Stronger Chapter Fifteen

Stronger

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She was like decadence and grandeur, piquancy and spiciness; she was a capricious fantasy, a whimsical impulse. Everything about her embrace, about her taste, about her, was overstated, overwhelming, and exaggerated. She was everything I’d ever wanted and everything I’d ever despised, all at once: she was superlative, unrivaled, and utterly unexceptional. I was terrified that if I let her go for a fraction of a second, she’d bolt and be gone forever; I was even more afraid that it would matter to me, even a tiny bit, if she did.

And so when I finally pulled away from her, my knuckles were white against the black of her robes: a stark contrast, a burst of consequence for the reality I was dreaming in vivid, bright, everlasting color.

“I…” My voice trailed off in the musty silence of the library, bookshelves and their paper-thin counterparts pressing in on me in a claustrophobic wave of realization.

She was Hermione Granger.

I wanted to throw up, I wanted to run, I wanted to scream; I wanted to sweep her up all over again and let myself forget, let myself drown in her kiss and the slightly tangy flavor of her mouth.

“I can’t decide who I hate more,” she whispered into my chest.

“What do you mean?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“I can’t decide,” she repeated, looking up into my eyes and appearing for all the world like a helpless little girl, “who I hate more.”

She paused, her gaze wavering on a loose thread in my sweater.

“You or myself.”

Then she quirked a smile, a sad smile, nothing more than a brief tilt of her lips, and pushed me away, her fingernail catching on that same loose thread. I watched her yank harder, watched that miniscule square centimeter of wool unravel, and I understood.

“No matter what you do right now, you’ll regret me,” I murmured softly, rubbing my left forearm and wincing.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she snapped abruptly, glaring through me with her brows furrowed in frustration.

“I don’t…” I reached forward again, thoughtlessly, pointlessly.

“Get off!” she said through gritted teeth.

I felt my face alight with shame at her excruciatingly palpable rejection.

“A few more minutes and I would have,” I retorted crudely.

“You really take the concept of effrontery to new heights,” she remarked icily. “Or should I say new lows?”

“Well, Granger, you just seem to bring out the best in me.”

“Don’t even tell me that was your best,” she snorted, eyeing me with poorly concealed disdain; eyeing me like she hadn’t just allowed me to hold her close and hold her gently.

“It’d be hard for you to judge, wouldn’t it? It isn’t like you’ve got much to compare me with,” I returned harshly, clenching my fists and willing back my heartache.

“Oh! And what does your past entail, Malfoy? Parkinson? Since she’s just such a prize!” she seethed.

“At least she didn’t pant after me like that sorry ass Weasley did you!”

“Ron never panted after me! Nor,” she added forcefully, “did he ever grab me in broad daylight and attempt to…attempt to ravish me!”

“Ravish you?” I blinked in disbelief.

“Yes, well, it’s not like I was entirely willing,” she said defensively, her blatant lie cutting through my chest as effectively as a knife.

“Oh, of course not. I must have forced you to mold yourself against me like that, I must have forced you to press up and make that delightful sound in the back of your throat, sort of like a--”

“Stop it,” she hissed, embarrassment and fury lending her tone a quality of desperation.

“Stop what, Granger? I was merely recounting your version of the past few minutes,” I replied genially, sarcasm and cynicism blending together and creating a weapon I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to wield: not against her.

“You’ll be glad to know I’ve made up my mind,” she said loudly, locking her eyes with mine.

“Oh? How fascinating,” I drawled.

“Yes. You’ll be glad to know that…you’ll be glad to know that…” She stopped, biting back her words.

“My, my, look what I’ve reduced you to. You can’t even speak in complete sentences anymore.”

“You’ll be glad to know that I hate myself far more than I hate you,” she finally managed.

And then she turned away, and her shoulders slumped pathetically, and she laughed, or that’s what I thought was happening since her body was shaking, and she was emitting pitiful choking noises that sounded eerily like sobs, but they couldn’t be, she wouldn’t cry, she was simply…

Oh, no.

“Granger, come on, don’t...”

“Don’t what, Malfoy? Don’t cry?” she demanded, wiping a solitary tear away with an impatient flick of her wrist.

“Too late. Don’t lose control?”

She snatched up some parchment off the table and tore it into pieces.

“Too late. Don’t regret you?”

She regarded me steadily before sniffing.

“Too late for that, too.”

She tried to stumble past me and leave, but I grabbed her elbow, shoving her backwards.

“Tell me you still hate me. Tell me.”

She didn’t reply for a moment.

“People say that there’s a thin line between love and hate,” she began shakily, while optimism made me reckless and I pulled her by her arm ever closer to me. “They say that all passion’s the same, even if it’s negative. That switching from one to the other is an eventual certainty.”

“And?” I prompted her to continue, not taking the risk of breathing.

“I think those people are liars.”

Her comment hung between us, bleeding us both dry with its stark honesty and its illogical betrayal.

“How fitting we share that sentiment,” I ground out, refusing to let her see me tremble; she couldn’t know I was dying inside, so inexplicably and so slowly it was barely noticeable.

She moved to leave again; I didn’t try to stop her.

And when I happened to catch sight of the torn-up paper on the ground, I saw that seemingly long-ago entreaty of selfishness.

I thought it was prophetic that the word real was ripped right down the center.

OOO