Thunk
"Not falling asleep in the middle of an assignment, are you, Granger?"
With an irritated groan, Hermione peeled her cheek off of her textbook page, vision still swimming with sleep as she glared groggily up at the cocky youth and the large tome he had tossed onto the table in front of her drowsing head.
"Well, that's attractive," Draco drawled sarcastically, the remark accompanied by his trademark sneer. "You could scare a dementor with that face."
"What are you doing here, prat?" she demanded, rubbing gingerly at her stiff neck, wincing at the pain the action elicited. Her head was aching, probably on account of being startled awake, though she preferred to think it was from the odious presence of Malfoy. Either way, it was his fault. With a commendable effort, she tried to reign in her flaring temper, which was still a bit frazzled and raw along the edges from just having woken up.
"There's no need to snarl like that—you don't need any help looking terrifying.
"What's this?" he grabbed at a book lurking near the bottom of the stack after scanning the spine. He sent the ones above it toppling over; she grabbed at them protectively as he hefted the volume in his hands, examining the brightly decorated covering. "How tacky."
"Give that back, Malfoy!" she demanded in a huff, trying to seize it from him as he drew away out her reach. Her cheeks were already stained with a blush.
"Social Psychology?" The words rolled off his tongue slowly, uncertainly, as if he was sticking his toe daintily into unfamiliar waters. Unfamiliar and disgusting, if the disdainful curl of his lips immediately following was to be any indication. "Some muggle study, I presume?" he scanned the back quizzically, then gingerly turned it over in his hands. He treated the inanimate object with more caution then he many times demonstrated towards his decidedly dangerous magical textbooks.
"For goodness sakes, it's not going to bite your hand off," Hermione muttered beneath her breath. "Mugglephobe."
Flipping it open, Draco began to read in a mockingly dramatic tone. "Research also indicates that when people experience a drop in self-esteem, they become more likely to express prejudice…" he paused, scanning the paragraph again. His lip curled in that all so familiar disdainful manner. "Prejudice, huh? So do I just need a hug, is that it? You have no place in my world, and I don't need to be sulking to rub your nose in it."
"Give it back!" she snapped, flustered and valiantly fighting to appear unembarrassed. "It's just some old college book my mum let me take."
"So you're dabbling in Psychosis studies just for kicks? Such a party girl." Draco smirked, tossing the book onto the table and sitting down across from her. "Wanna analyze me? Try to 'understand thy enemy'?"
"You're too much even for Freud," she shot back, collecting the abused tome and stuffing it into her bag. She crossed her arms across her chest.
"Has something stumped our school's irritatingly self-righteous know-it-all?"
Arrogance…
Blonde hair, a bold smirk. Easy confidence and blatant superiority. Grey eyes cold with power, charisma, cruelty, and hatred.
She glared at him, fighting the simultaneous urge to back away from the conversation, away from him, or to lose hold of the blazing temper that churned in her chest like wildfire. To spit something, some biting remark, and scoop her things up to leave. To punch in his cocky, taunting smile. Anything to push him away, to strip him of his ego. To make him feel weak, make him feel regret, shame. To cause something akin to the pain he
wrought in others.
To make him feel like her.
His presence was like nails being raked down a chalkboard, like that final straw pressing on the camels back. Pushing her over the edge and holding her there, daring her to hurtle herself off that delicate precipice of decorum.
Come on, princess…
"I don't think your head is someplace I want to be," she said through gritted teeth, folding her arms across her chest and settling into her seat. Like hell she was about to let a git like Malfoy run her off.
"That it isn't." Darkness fell across his face, his lips set in a cold, taunt line.
Deceptive, ensnaring shadows and coiling mists. Storms and treachery.
"You don't seem proud of that," she said, and for some reason she couldn't make her tone half as condescending as he could.
"It doesn't matter," he shot back, a bit too sharply, like a sudden slash of a blade in the dark, unexpected.
Neither of them knew how to back down.
"I thought you were gonna help me understand my enemy," she jeered, the white hot rage dulling her sensitivities as she lost herself to anger, loosening her tongue.
"Don't kid yourself," he spat, rage lighting across his face. It was easier, easier then the questions. Simpler just to fight, to lash out in anger, then to stop and delve into complicated webs like motive and consequence. "You're the naive little bookworm, the rational, idealistic little princess of the golden trio. How on earth could you possibly ever understand? Life is not one of your fucking fairy tales."
"You think I don't know that?" She struggled to keep the volume from rising. They were in the library, after all. "I may believe in right and wrong, but I don't believe in happily ever after. We fight for what we believe, but any war is horrific, even if there is victory."
"There is more then right and wrong. Sometimes you put those things aside to do what is required of you. You do your duty."
"Sounds like you're just making excuses to me."
"You've never been in my place, don't dare condescend."
She tossed her hair, not about to feel pity for his snotty face. "And you've never been in mine. To have to fight to prove your worth because people expect nothing from you merely because of who your parents are."
"Spare me, Granger. Don't gripe to me about your grades and your compulsion with perfection. You think I don't understand expectations?"
"Least I bother to fight against people's expectations of me. You just follow your father's ideas on genocide and fill the deatheater boots he set out for you when you were in your cradle!"
He bristled, like a snake preparing to strike, deadly and tense. The air was thick with the stifling heat of the fires, pressing uncomfortably against already flushed cheeks. "Don't you dare speak about my father, mudblood," he snarled, low and treacherous, breath hissing out between his clenched teeth. "You don't know anything about me or my family."
Hate.
Thick, vicious, consuming.
"That's the worst you can peg to me, Malfoy. Bravo," she said with a mocking smile, playing his game. Any name could fall from his lips at that moment and it wouldn't matter. It was him, and all she felt was rage. A wild heat in her veins, a maddening heartbeat, a wrenching pain in her gut. Unsteadiness ran through her hands as they clutched her skirts in fists, threw her logic into shambles. "But there's a lot worse to be said about you."
Suddenly he loomed close, bent over the table. "So say it, Granger."
Liar.
Prejudiced Bastard.
Thief.
Traitor.
Friendless except for the greedy and opportunistic.
Bully.
Manipulated.
A million terrible things rushed through her head, but her lips remained still. He laughed, a chill sound deep in his throat, thinking her incapable of coming up with a proper jeer. She stared at him suddenly, eyes filled with focus and clarity that he didn't notice. Her mouth moved to form a single word.
"Coward."
He started, the laughter choking to a pitiful death.
For all its strength, pride is such a frail thing.
Anger seethed along the lines of his face, jaw clenched and brow furrowed in hatred. He loomed over her, and she couldn't help the involuntary stiffening of her backbone. "And you? If I am the coward, then why do I see fear in your eyes?"
"Cowardice and fear are different concepts, Malfoy," she stated firmly, meeting his gaze directly, even as the muscles in her neck tensed.
So different, yet within everyone lies some common ground.
"You wanna give the class a definition of terms, Miss Granger?" he snarled, plunking back into his seat. She huffed, startled at his sudden withdrawal. Lord, but the boy was unpredictable.
"Fear is something you feel, a natural reaction to a threat. But cowardice is acting upon that fear," she stated, hating that the way he was studying her was making her nervous.
"Your ideals and romanticism have little place in reality," he informed her coldly.
"Without ideals reality is—"
"The cold, screwed up mess that it truly is?" he interrupted sharply, one brow quirking in that way that infuriated and belittled her. "People like you never want to see things as they are. Black and white, right and wrong, you paint such stark lines in your little classroom debates and theological lectures, but life is another story."
"You're more of the 'ends justifies the means' persuasion, then?" she snipped impertinently.
"What I'm saying is that the real world is about survival, about compromise. Not justice."
"There is justice."
He stopped, an unpleasantly mocking echo of thoughtfulness crossing his face. "Perhaps. Maybe you just don't like the fact that others have different views on the concept of 'justice'."
"Like spoiled self entitlement?"
"Exactly. We all fight for justice, but that means different things to different people. To you, it's seeing 'us', the enemy, all dictated to a cozy little cell in Azkaban. But you have no idea what justice is to me. Justice is seeing you and every other filthy mudblood thrown out of this world, by any and every means necessary. For the governments to stop wasting its resources on constantly having to protect the borders and ensure that the 'secret' is kept under wraps out there in your world. We have fought and bled and died for this land, and this magic is more then just a gift, it's our heritage, our birthright.
You waltz in, naïve and unaware of even the existence of our home, and act like it's suddenly your to command around with a flick of your wand. You dare talk to me of spoiled self-entitlement, of selfishness? You have no right to be here."
She sat, stunned by the conviction in his voice. But she was determined not to be impressed. "I have a right to this learning, this world, and it flows as strongly in my veins as it does in yours."
Opposites—in her was everything new and revolutionary, a blending of two worlds and a strive to prove that she belonged. He was the old blood, the ingrained traditions and superiority, taking a world that was his by right and flying on centuries of ambition.
Both fire.
The heart of the war that swirled around them.
Talking circles around an issue that could never be breached.
"Then why do you work so hard to prove your place?" he taunted.
This was going nowhere. Impulsively, she reached across the table and seized his hand. He recoiled, hissing at her to release his hand and swearing. She tightened her grip, dragging him forward. "Do I feel scaly to you, Malfoy?" she demanded quietly. "Is my skin of different composition? Am I somehow less human then you? Does my life mean less? Is the blood that flows beneath the skin of both of us not the same hue and purity? Beyond class, wealth, status, race, personality, or attractiveness, we bleed the same. We die the same."
He stared at her, and for once she could not read his expression.
Did he feel something beyond enemy?
Their hands were clasped between them, warm, her hold firm and desperate, his lax and reluctant.
Just skin.
Hermione started as a loud clap fell on her ears, her head jerking up. She bit off a sharp cry at the action, and reality blurred and twisted around her as she tried to muddle through the hazy depths that drifted around her of dream and life. A third year was looking around apologetically as he collected his book up from the ground, and she buried her face in her hands, head throbbing and neck stiff with pain. It had been nothing more then a dream.
She glanced down at the open Psychology book that she had been reading, perusing with a personal interest the sections on prejudice and racism. She groaned at the barely pieced together memories of her dream, shoving her books into her bag.
Analyze that, Miss Granger.