Stronger Chapter One

Stronger

By: Provocative Envy

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CHAPTER ONE

Her face was blindingly beautiful in the violet mist that enshrouded the Quidditch pitch at dawn; the pale milky glow of her skin was an ethereal backdrop for the sky blue majesty of her eyes. Her laugh held a scintillating tinge of seduction: the butterfly kisses I dropped across her face were tantalizingly breathtaking.

The effervescence of her teasing smile was almost heartbreaking in its innocence. Her hand was fluttering close by my neck, her fingernail catching on a loose thread of my sweater. Her lips were lusciously swollen, resembling nothing so much as red satin pillows; I captured them one last time in a caress born of desperate impatience.

She sighed into my mouth, relaxing her shoulders and allowing the cool fall breeze to wreak havoc with the thin sheet of blonde hair that was spread across the grass. I released her from my grasp, taking hold of her elbow as I heaved us to our feet.

“Haven’t you ever stopped to wonder how incredibly amazing it is that we can stand on our feet?”

Her voice, peppered with wonderment, broke through the idyllic reverie I’d lapsed into.

“What?” I asked, bewildered by her seemingly pointless question.

“Our feet. They’re so pathetically small compared to the rest of us. Yet they hold us up, keep us on the ground, take us from place to place. Don’t you find that the least bit odd?”

I gazed down at her, willing my pragmatism to abandon me for just a moment. She’d always been whimsical, her sense of romance and fantasy an underwhelming competition for the blatant insecurities she showed to everyone but me. I was used to those dreamy inquiries, used to the slow blinking that accompanied them.

“I suppose so,” I replied vaguely, unwilling to engage in a discussion of philosophical proportions.

“Oh, Draco,” she murmured, taking a step forward. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

“Nothing,” I whispered simply. “Just love me.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t even look up at me. All she did was press her head into my chest, heaving a breath and savoring my scent.

“We need to get back,” she finally mumbled, backing away and turning around.

I didn’t bother pushing her blatant disregard for my declaration: I was excruciatingly accustomed to it. Every day, it seemed, I would get more and more restless when it came to her noncommittal answers; her avoidance stemmed from a subconscious need for independence, I was sure.

She was the clingy type, always reluctant to leave my side and brave the hallways alone. She laughed at my jokes, put up with my sullen, angry moods, and was loyal to the point of obsession. Her codependency would have been pitiful had it been directed at anyone but me: I was so patently confident in my own supremacy that I viewed the kind of subservience she exhibited as nothing but my due.

Yet even I, in all my arrogant splendor, recognized that she had a tendency to be both calculating and distant; affection, despite her generous offering of it, wasn’t something she was comfortable with. The fact that I continued, night after night, to express my love for her, was proof of my devotion: I was impatient and dreadfully selfish, and her reluctance to proclaim that she felt anything for me served only to whet my appetite even further.

So strong was my craving to hear those three tiny words from her, so debilitating was her rejection, that I often wondered if that was the source of my fondness for her. I’d never been deprived anything as a child, never wanted something that couldn’t be bought. The fact that she was denying me my greatest wish didn’t escape my interest: after a particularly unpleasant day, I would cruelly suspect of her the coerciveness necessary to affect my lucidity.

But at the same time, I genuinely believed she cared for me. I knew from experience that it was impossible to fake a soft expression, a barely noticeable warmth in the tone of voice, or a burning touch that seared through the skin.

And as we trudged silently back to our dormitories, I began, once more, to ponder how I’d gotten thrown into this pit of passionate yearning.

I remembered so clearly how it had been before: she had been chasing me, hanging onto my every word, hoping that I would deign to give her just a bit more attention that I had the previous day. I’d continued to ignore her until our sixth year; then, she’d made an ingenious move in her pursuit of me.

I had begun to consider her presence to be a prerequisite to my daily life: I would get up, go to breakfast, and consistently pay no heed whatsoever to her.

But then one morning, she’d disappeared. I’d feigned disinterest as to her whereabouts, pretending that it mattered little to me where she was. Yet at the end of that day, I’d realized an important truth: I had missed her.

It had taken awhile for this to sink in, since the concept had seemed ludicrous at the time. She had no purpose other than that of unwanted lackey; that I could be anything but disdainful of someone that mindless had baffled me.

I’d accepted the quickening of my pulse and the tingling in my stomach, the uncharacteristic compassion and the remarkable selflessness. I’d finally acknowledged my fate and explained her change in status to her.

A week later, I’d fallen so hard and so fast that I was dizzy with suppressed emotion. And from then on, she’d held an inexpressible power over me.

As my head hit my pillow for the blessed two hours of sleep I’d get that night, a smile graced my features. Pansy Parkinson actually had one over on me.

The idea was almost as ridiculous as being in love with her was.

But only almost.

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