Author's Note: This is a totally different story from Behind the Veil again, Pansy-centric, but not necessarily Pansy/Harry, if at all. I haven't decided yet. This story is completed, but I am considering a sequel for this one as well. I'll be finished posting by the the start of next week, probably.
I gasped, walking in though the front door of our house. You're on the couch, on top of Astoria Greengrass, snogging to the point of nudity. I see your shirt thrown over the back of the couch, her shoes kicked beside the hallway, one pointy stiletto sticking up from under her cardigan. Your hand is up her skirt, and she's reaching for your belt buckle. Neither of you notice as I quietly click the door shut and toe back down the path, as if I am the one in the wrong. I don't know. Maybe I am. Maybe I should have called to let you know taht I was coming home early? Maybe then I could have spared myself that scene, could have avoided this heavy, painful, jagged thudding in my chest. Avoided the warm and cold tears running their own abstract paths down my face.
Maybe.
But maybe you should have taken my trust seriously. Maybe you should have went over to her house. Maybe you shouldn't have done it at all. Maybe you should have taken my love seriously. Taken meseriously.
Maybe.
I notice that there are too many possibilities in this equation. Then I think maybe you're sneaking around because you take my love seriously, because you don't want to hurtme. You just made a mistake. You didn't expect me to be back so soon. I was supposed to be gone another ninety minutes. Maybe, just maybe, you do love me.
Gods, I sound so stupid!
I need to face it. I never had your heart. I knew that. You know that I knew, but you also know that I was desperately in love with you. and you took advantage of that. Someone who would easily be on your side, easily dependable, easily convienient for a quick shag, if need be.
Of course.
And I took it.
The more that I look at things, I feel as if I am to blame for all of it. I mean, really. What girl would be dumb enough, desperate enough, to jump at the chance to be with any guy, not just you? Even if they are in "love." Given the circumstances, given his history, who? I was there through it all, from the girl in fourth year you lead off into a vacant classroom at the Yule Ball when your date was busy searching for your in the maze that was the gardens; the seventh-year twins you pulled when we were fifteen. You acted as if you really thought they were the same person and a got away with it too; sixth-year you had a girl in each of the Hogwarts Houses, dated and snogged- possibly more- each of them for three months. You might have made it full-term, but Zabini ruined if for you. By seventh year, I quit counting after you broke up and got with the seventh girl in six weeks. The speed datinggame between you and Millicent Bullstrode sickened me. Yet I stayed fixated on you. Even now, four years after graduation, two years after we became "official," I still am. And I don't know why.
Somehow, I end up at Theo Nott's house, about three miles from ours. I don't knock, just walk in. He's not in sight, but I make myself comfortable in one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter separating the kitchen from the living room. The tears still fall, but they're slower now. The ache in the back of my head is dull, yet it somehow pounds at my temples harder than a hammer. Even through it, I manage to find a pen and a notepad laying above the sink. My plan had been predetermined, even if I didn't know it. I'll get some of my things when you go to work tomorrow- if you really work that is, you never pay for anything- and bring them here. Theo shouldn't care, not too much. You should know that I won't be back. You won't have to sneak around with Astoria any longer. I vaguely wonder if sheknows that yo're sneaking around, or simply doesn't care.
The words come out slow and large as I write them out. I feel something in my chest lift, yet at the same time, my guy clenches tight. It's a battle, one half of my heart verses the other. I've gone through this too many times for too long. You don't love me. Never did, never will.
A tight ball of paper falls to the ground.
I can't do it.
Even if it's shrinking, I've a world of chances for you. I just can't bare to let go.