A/N: Hey there! This story is for a competition (not challenge this time!) called '101 Ways to Say "I Love You"' by LynxMalfoy. This is the 50,000 word multi-chapter that I'd been talking about in other stories :D So, I'm not counting the words for this Author Note, nor will I for the disclaimer or any other un-related things I may write.
My prompts were
5.I can't stop thinking about you when we're apart.
10.I need you by my side.
78. You sweeten my sour days.
92. You're my perfect match.
50. You are precious
11. I need you.
99. You're the diamond in the rough
45. You are my reason for living.
54. You bring joy to my life.
13. I value you.
And my character was Hermione Granger! So, of course, I'm doing my favourite couple… Dramione 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, however I own this story (because I remember how I wrote this multi-chapter story with my own, exhausted fingers).
Please enjoy; I worked my butt off writing this and so I don't want any of you moaning that I didn't write enough.
50,000 words.
All I can say.
Well… ENJOY! (This alone is like, a page on Microsoft Word, wow…) Now introducing: I Need You by My Side
"I need you." It was probably the first time that I'd ever heard him beg. And that's what he was doing; he'd been calling me by telephone (and I curse the day I ever taught him how to do that) and asking for me to come back home, and had once even resorted to knocking frantically on my door early one morning.
But this time, I was doing something that I'd never done before. And do you know what that was? Being myself. You see, for the whole time that he had been 'courting' me, I had to be this perfect girl; this beautiful, graceful maiden – someone who made everyone else jealous. And that just really wasn't me, you see? I don't think he saw that. Maybe I should have made him look; maybe things would have been different.
I doubt that, though. As stubborn as his father, and as pertinacious as all of his ancestors, he stood: defiant. Those three words, they rounded him up pretty well: stubborn, pertinacious, and defiant. Those were the three traits I'd come across the most, anyway.
I kept kidding myself, thinking that this whole image of him that I'd concocted was real, but in truth… I didn't know him. He didn't know me. We didn't know anything about each other! We were simply… We were blinded by the simplicity of love. At least, what our idea of love was – a fairy-tale, Prince Charming, kind of love.
Perhaps that was the only love that we could happily envelope without a doubt in our minds. Perhaps the ruthless, feral claws of real love were too much for us to handle, and we just shrouded ourselves in the protective, fabricated duvet of an untrue love. And it was okay, and it was comfortable, but it wasn't real.
It wasn't real, and that's why I fled. But now that he was saying those three dreaded words…
"I need you."
It's hysterical, how much three words can mean to a person. Whether they are, "I value you," or "I love you," or "I was wrong," they all mean so much to a person, and they can be life-changing.
"I need you."
I could, like any ordinary woman, laugh those three words off, and pretend that they mean nothing – but I'm not an ordinary woman. The fact that I was renowned as the 'Brightest Witch of Her Age' even though I was Muggle-born… Just the simple thought that I had charmed a Slytherin boy into my Gryffindor clutches; it all made me so unlike all those other, ordinary woman.
So I could not just laugh them off.
I could become angry, annoyed and aggravated at how he only wanted me after I had left; I could become a devastated wreck of tears, deeper than the ocean… But I didn't.
I oppressed my jumbled emotions, and smiled through my almost-tears. I choked back the anger that was rising like bile in my throat, and I spoke clearly through the speaker of the phone:
"I need you."
As much as I hated the fact that it was wrong, and that I shouldn't need him – after all, we were on a temporary break – I couldn't help the overwhelming sense of loss that I felt whenever I heard him speak. And for once, I wasn't going to let that feeling stay unspoken. Today, I wanted to tell Draco how much I really did care.
At once, the phone blurs with electric static, and I ponder to myself what on earth had happened, when I heard the familiar bzzt of my mobile.
"Hello?" I ask, even though the frenetic breathing shortens the list of people in my mind.
"Hermione?" A husky voice asks back, the breathing still laboured and uneven. "I… I don't know what happened." I simply smile wryly, even though he can't see me, and after a short pause he continues, "Shock, I guess." From his tone, he sounds as awry as I would have imagined him to be. I guess some things never change.
"Right." I nod – even though yet again, I have remind myself, he cannot see me. "Any particular reason you decided to call me? Again?" I knew exactly the reason, but I'm going to torture him until he admits everything I want to know. One of the things being, what he was really feeling at the moment. He can't actually miss me; it's out of the question. I don't miss him, he doesn't miss me. It works, just like a formulated maths question, or an intellectual puzzle with an obvious answer. It works.
"Hermione…" His deep, rich voice sighs flatly. "You know why I called you. You know the reason to every phone call I have made to you for the last week." He says in a monotone voice, sounding rather dreary and fed up.
"Do I?" I reply, because I really want a real answer instead of the half-ones that he's trying to feed me. "Please," I state smoothly. "Do tell."
I can hear his vexed voice, exasperated and unsure of what to say. Tell me that you miss me, I find myself thinking, and I flinch at the almost… desperate, tone that rings out of my head but luckily not out of my mouth.
"Don't make this more difficult than it needs to be. I need you, Hermione." There. He's said it. I'm not sure why I'm so satisfied – maybe it's just because I knew he was going to say it at one point – but I think that, subconsciously, I just wanted to hear how he really felt.
If he's being honest, then I want to be honest too. "I need you, too," I retort sharply, "But it doesn't mean that I'll come round your house at five in the morning to wake you up."
It's strange, but it's almost as if I can hear him wince through the phone, and he sighs (which he seems to be doing a lot of in this phone call) and responds, "You wouldn't consent to me breaking down your door, so it was the next best thing."
"Break down my door? Merlin, do you know how deranged you sound?" I snap, scrunching my finely-sculpted eyebrows together into a tight knot right above my eyes.
"No more than the next dumped-without-a-reason boyfriend, I'd imagine." He comments dryly, and my victorious smirk falters slightly when I hear the defeated note in his drawl. "And for your information, I would have just blasted it open, but then you'd make me pay for it."
"You have enough money to have been able to pay for a new one." I remark with suspicion. It's true; his Malfoy inheritance was bountiful, and he obtained large amounts of Galleons when he finally become the correct age.
He lingers for a little too long before admitting, "I just didn't want another reason for you to hate me." My heart slightly melts at that, although not enough to just suddenly exclaim that I wanted him back. Because I didn't – not right now.
"You know? I could never hate you. Loathe you, dislike you… But never hate." I murmur softly. I hate it when I become this vulnerable; he seems to bring this exposed state of me out more than anyone else. "Once, I would have told you that you're my perfect match. Maybe you still are. I just need time, Draco."
"But… I just can't stop thinking about you when we're apart." He mumbles pathetically, and I almost feel sympathetic for him until I realise that I'm not meant to feel anything – especially pity – for him. It's his fault, not mine, that we're in this mess.
Or is it? Maybe it was both of us. We may have equally added to this mess… I just hate it when the blame is on me. I hate it when people glare at me as if I ruined the world – it was just our relationship, and I don't understand why people hated me so much for taking a break from him.
That was always one of the reasons I was wary, actually. Draco had so many fan-girls, so many adoring girls waiting outside our house or near his workplace. It overwhelmed me, because he received the same attention that Harry did, and he was Harry Potter. He saved the world. What has Draco done, apart from being handsome and attractive and wealthy? It was the wealth that drew them in, statistically, although the face and body were great additions to the deal. They always hated me because I had him, and they didn't. It was as simply stupid as that.
"Draco." I sigh moodily. "Please. Don't start this again." He gets so melodramatic, honestly. I bet he doesn't think about me when he's drinking milk. See? So he doesn't think about me as much as he says he does. At least, I think he doesn't think about me when he drinks milk… I hope he doesn't, actually.
"I don't just have an on and off button for our relationship, Hermione. I can't stop feeling things on command." He interjects, and while he's right on one point, on another – he could at least stop acting upon those feelings.
"I never said you needed one. All I'm saying is, you don't need to jump on every impulse you get, okay? You need to stop behaving like a child." My speech is becoming slightly muffled now, because of the bad reception I'm getting, and I'm slightly afraid that our connection could instantly become disjoint.
"I'm not behaving like a child; children don't feel this kind of love that I feel for you." He's becoming really sappy now, and it's making me uncomfortable; nevertheless, I listen to what he's about to say (I know he's going to start talking again because he's taking a deep intake of breath) and then I hear the faint click of a button before silence.
Just in case he's fooling around, I whisper, "Draco?" But there's no answer, reliving my suspicion that our phone call has been cut off.
Whimpering slightly in the sudden cold air the surrounds me, I collapse onto my nearby, leathery couch with a thud. "I guess I could take a quick nap." I stretch out quickly, settling into a snug position before shutting my eyes and blocking out the violent sunlight that is streaming in through my cream curtains.
"I need you." I pule querulously, and I gape in astonishment because those words just slipped out by accident. I frown, ashamed of my actions, and try to settle back into my favoured dream-world – the one where everyone happens the way I want it, and where Draco and I live peacefully in coexistence.
That's why it's my dream-world.
It'd never happen in real life.