Stronger Chapter Sixteen

Stronger

By: Provocative Envy

OOO

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She was gazing at me intently, and suddenly the air was crackling with an electricity that I wanted to call organic, but couldn’t, because I didn’t even know what that would mean, in the grand scheme of things, and since she had taken my silence as acquiescence, she was leaning closer, so close, and her breath was warm across my mouth, and sweet, and I remembered that she’d eaten a Sugar Quill on the way out of Charms, and then, very abruptly, I remembered nothing at all.

OOO

“Draco…”

Her voice trailed off as she regared my stony profile.

“What do you want, Parkinson? Personally delivering my invitation to a Revel, are you?” I asked cruelly, refusing to meet her searching gaze, refusing to look into the pale blue eyes I’d been so certain, at one point, would be my everything.

“I miss you,” she blurted out, and I almost winced at the hint of doubt that had crept into her pronouncement.

“Can’t make up your mind about that, either?” I returned, my pulse hammering: like a downcast destiny, I reveled in the memory of our first kiss.

“I shouldn’t have been so…I was too judgmental, Draco, and I’m sorry, but I can’t help but miss you.”

She said this in a rush, as if she couldn’t dispel her words any faster, as if they could just flow out like water and make the past, and our probable futures, disappear.

There’s something tantalizing in her delusion, I though bitterly, poetically: she was talking, her voice garbled and weedy.

“Draco, I was in the wrong before, I was so wrong, can’t you just believe me?” she pleaded.

A contradiction.

“I was so harsh, and I didn’t mean it, not really, and when you just threw it back in my face after I told you I loved you—which I meant—I lost control, I couldn’t help it,” she went on.

A lie.

“Please, Draco, can’t we go back to how we were before? All those nights out on the pitch, all those kisses, all that trust. Please,” she continued begging.

A wooden casket for her dishonesty, I thought hazily.

“Draco, say something,” she whispered.

Tonight’s the night: I looked up, straight into deception personified.

“Please,” she whimpered.

I’ll start the fire: I took a step forward, towards her.

“I still love you, Draco,” she murmured seductively.

I can’t wait for it to go up: I heard her breath hitch in her throat as the space between us grew smaller, ever smaller.

For that wooden casket to go up in flames: My lips were a fraction of an inch away from hers’.

“I hate you, Pansy,” I said into her open, waiting mouth.

I’ll watch it burn down to ashes: I shoved her away, my palms grazing her shoulders.

Because ashes always turn to dust, I thought with some satisfaction.

She called my name as I walked away; I ignored her, but only because I was certain I was still dreaming. The concept of reality seemed too impossible, too distant, too complex just then, and I had the fleeting thought that maybe my actions wouldn’t have consequences. That maybe nothing I said or did would have the kind of melodramatic repercussions I tried so hard to avoid.

That maybe I was getting a brief reprieve from Life-with-a-capital-‘L’ and should cherish my momentary indifference.

I passed a gilded mirror in the hallway and stopped.

I recalled my dismal reflection during Christmas, in the rundown house I’d been branded in both figuratively and literally: a coward and a minion, with the bad posture, the weak chin, and the Mark to prove it.

Presently, though, I stared at the boy I saw in the glass, the boy with the jaded eyes and the bleak countenance; I stared, and I felt a resurgence of the long-lost pride I’d shed the instant I’d let the Dark Lord and his slimy fingers make my shiver. I stared, and I took in the clenched jaw and thin lips, the pale skin and flared nostrils.

I stared, and tried my hardest to make an objective observation: no one could call me happy, but no one could call me weak, either. I wasn’t jubilant, but nor was I pathetic.

Without warning, I remembered kissing Granger, remembered the elation, the confusion, the unspeakable disappointment.

I remembered the feel of her lips, the taste of her mouth; I remembered the tremors in her voice, the inflections of anger and bewilderment and doubt that had permeated it.

I remembered, and I smiled.

OOO

She was sitting there, the sleeves of her sweater pulled down over her wrists. I watched from afar as her hair, thick and bushy and gloriously long, was pulled, strand by strand, into the night breeze. I leaned into the castle wall, the weatherworn stone smooth to the touch, and raised an eyebrow as she got up from the grass and traipsed to the edge of the lake.

I could imagine the expression of weary bliss etched onto her face, imagine the cold trickle of water down her wrists as her fingers delved into the damp earth.

“Shouldn’t you be studying for something, Granger?”

She didn’t bother glancing up.

“I don’t do anything productive when you’re around, Malfoy.” she shot back tiredly, drawing her knees up towards her chest.

“Oh, that’s right. When I’m around, it’s just all one big regret, right?” I sneered.

She didn’t reply.

“Why do you come out here, Granger?”

A beat of silence, and then:

“When I was little, we lived in the city. Noise and people everywhere, couldn’t look out a window without seeing a stoplight or a billboard. My parents would sometimes, on weekends especially, clear their schedules and take me to the countryside, where everything was big and open and fresh and clean.”

She paused.

“I adored it there, especially during the winter, when you could see for miles with the trees all bare and the air so crisp.”

She swallowed convulsively.

“My parents always used to argue about how late we should stay, my mother opting to go home early and rest up. But my father insisted we stay until it got dark, when the stars would come out.”

She let out a breathy laugh.

“It was so beautiful. So stunningly, refreshingly beautiful. The stars, that is.”

She shook her head.

“But once, I remember, it was cloudy, and my mother thought she’d finally won the argument, that there was no reasonable explanation for staying late when no one could even see the stars. But you know what my father said?”

Suddenly, she was looking up at me, her eyes just a touch too bright and her voice just a touch too shaky.

“He said, and I’ll always remember this, always, he said, ‘Who cares if we can’t see them? We know they’re there. And that’s all that matters.’ It was so simple to him.”

She turned towards the water again.

“When you kissed me the other day, you made me forget all my inhibitions, all my morals, all my promises. You made me feel as if dreams were infinite, as if anything could come true, anything wonderful, that is. It was sensational, and it was perfect, but it was brief.”

She stood up.

“I thought of what my father said after you kissed me. I had to remind myself that even though I couldn’t see him, the boy I’d hated for six years was still there.”

“And?” My throat was dry.

She smiled wryly.

“It was much harder than it should have been.”

She was gone before I had the chance to blink, before I had the chance to reply.

Before I had the chance to stop her.

OOO