Stronger Chapter Seventeen

Stronger

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Some things are meant to be bittersweet, I think. I want to hold on as tight as I can, never want to let go, hang the consequences; but then I remember that I have no claim, no right to be superciliously selfish.

I stopped writing and looked out the window towards the lake. My heart had settled somewhere beneath my navel and I could pinpoint the cause.

She wasn’t ever mine and never will be.

I wrote the words, thought the words, forced myself to digest them: but I didn’t believe them.

It’s not my place to snatch her up, to press closer and closer until she can’t think straight enough to deny me. It’s not my place to flirt outrageously, to hold complete conversations using just the tilt of my head, the curve of my lips; it’s not my place to take advantage of hormones, to confuse sex with love.

Love was such a nauseatingly overrated concept.

It’s not my place. But oh, how I want it to be.

And there it was. I wanted her. I wanted her just as much as I’d wanted the Mark, just as much as I’d wanted Pansy.

I want her skin against mine, pushing me deeper against a mattress. I want her face buried into my shoulder, her breath ragged and moist. I want her hands on me, anywhere and everywhere. I want my name to leave her mouth a desperate caress, want her world to spiral into chaos with every flick of my tongue, every thrust of my hips.

My hands were shaking, my face was flushed. Why was I torturing myself?

Bravery takes on new meaning when I realize how close I’ve come to self-destruction: Inhale deeply, exhale slowly. Don’t get faint. It’s a mantra, my mantra, being drummed into my head by too much experience: unwanted, unnecessary, unwelcome experience.

Something was sliding into place inside me; something was beginning to make sense, but my senses were too foggy, too dull, to comprehend it.

Experience that branded me a cynic, robbed me of my optimism.

I blinked at my parchment.

Experience she shouldn’t have, but invariably will.

My quill fell onto the table. I sat utterly, perfectly still, my eyes open, unblinking, unseeing.

So why shouldn’t I be the one to give it to her?

My fingers itched to put it on paper; I couldn’t bring myself to. Wouldn’t that make it true? Wouldn’t that make me want it to be true?

“Draco.”

Her voice, soft and commanding, startled me into consciousness.

“What do you want?” I snapped, immediately regretting my harsh tone when her concerned expression morphed into stony indifference.

“You looked pensive enough to hurl yourself out the window. I was merely going to make an effort to dissuade you from that particular course of action,” she bit out.

“Clearly you were misguided,” I snorted, wondering all the while why I was being so contrary, so petty.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that there would have been such a mess; I didn’t want to trouble Filch with it,” she informed me icily.

“Ever so thoughtful of you Hermione,” I said pointedly, cruelly; she would never have guessed what it cost me to utter her name, to lace those precious syllables with a rancor I wasn’t even close to feeling.

But apparently I hadn’t done a very good job of being derisive and condescending, because she was regarding me curiously, a finely arched eyebrow raised, her lips pursed in wonderment.

And I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that I’d made a mistake.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

“Doing what?” I asked mildly, hoping she couldn’t see me swallow painfully.

“You know,” she answered simply, meeting my wild gaze with a self-assuredness I found supremely debilitating.

“I was thinking about what you said last night,” I finally responded, glaring at my hands.

“Oh,” she said, then cleared her throat. “And?”

“I understand what you mean,” I replied distantly.

“What?”

“I understand. It’s hard, I think, to want to hate someone. Harder, probably, than wanting to love them.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. Both can be undeserved, can’t they? You can hate someone for no reason, just as easily as you can love someone for no reason. It’s the littlest things that can trigger the biggest emotions.”

“Either way, you can’t force it.”

She was quiet. “No, I don’t suppose you can. It’s a pity.”

“Why’s that?”

“If it was as easy as that, just looking at someone and deciding whether or not to like them, the world would be a much more peaceful place, don’t you think?”

“Sometimes first impressions can be deceiving, though,” I argued. “If you made determined your feelings like that they couldn’t possibly be accurate.”

“No, I don’t think they could. How ironic,” she commented dryly.

“Eleven year olds make mistakes, Hermione,” I burst out, unable to contain myself.

“That doesn’t render them incapable of rectifying aforementioned mistakes,” she countered coldly.

“What do you think I’m doing, if not trying to rectify it?” I demanded.

She didn’t say anything.

I let my eyelids drift shut for a split-second, savoring the microscopic privacy: but in that snatch of loneliness, in that brief glimpse of blissful vacuity, my thoughts and my feelings and my desires all clicked, connected on a level I couldn’t comprehend.

A grimace of feigned distaste: I licked my lips, for they’d suddenly gone dry.

“Hermione,” I began quietly.

Lowered lashes mask our intimacy: I was going to stutter, stammer, and stumble my way through her preconceived notions.

“I think I messed up,” I continued blithely.

Something’s stirring: A step forward, in the right direction, was all I needed.

“I think I’ve been messing up for awhile,” I confessed.

Something’s making tonight: Our eyes were locked in a deadly embrace.

“When I kissed you…” I let myself trail off.

Come on, come on, come on: We were close enough to touch, close enough to share a breath.

“All I could think about afterwards…”

Sway, so sway: My fingertips trailed down the line of her jaw.

“Was doing it again,” I finished softly.

You know you taste so good: I pulled her face up to mine, felt her tremble against me.

Relax, relax: I could pinpoint the exact moment she was swept away, could hear her heartbeat as surely as she could hear mine.

We give it all: I push her against the edge of the table, force her back down onto the smooth, even surface.

We fade away: By the time I heard his footsteps, by the time I understood that she hadn’t been the one to gasp, it was too late.

I was too far gone to notice, too far gone to worry.

Too far gone to realize that Harry Potter was standing next to us, watching.

Too far gone to care.

OOO