Author's Notes: I haven't written in an eternity but I found this short little fluff piece and polished it up a bit. Hopefully it'll get me started on a good Draco/Cho run…I miss my favorite ship! Thanks for reading and reviewing (if you do, which would make my week :D ). The quote below is from Camus.
"Love cannot accept what it is. Everywhere on earth it cries out against kindness, compassion, intelligence, everything that leads to compromise. Love demands the impossible, the absolute, the sky on fire, inexhaustible springtime, life after death, and death itself transfigured into eternal life."
If Draco Malfoy really thinks about it, he loves Cho Chang.
At least he thinks he does. He doesn't know that he loves her by society's standards, but if he believed in love (he doesn't), he would say that by his standards of his non-belief in love that he loves Cho Chang.
If he thinks about it too much it makes his head hurt. So he usually doesn't think about it or tries not to.
But times like these, when he is lying in bed and the lazy Sunday sunlight is streaming in through the windows and she's sleeping curled up against him and he's half awake, he thinks about how he loves her. Or at least feels something for her that is remarkably like love.
Love means that—no. He doesn't want to define it. He doesn't know that he could, even if he wanted to. It is far too complicated and far too simple for him to make head or tail of it.
He doesn't know why he loves, or how he loves; all he knows is the who and the what.
If he has to make a list of what he loves about Cho Chang, this would probably be it:
A LIST OF WHAT DRACO MALFOY LOVES ABOUT CHO CHANG:
1. How she makes him want peace. He'd give up fighting the world and winning glory to lie next to her and look at the stars.
(Yes, he knows this is trite and corny. Yes, he doesn't care. Yes, it is the honest-to-God truth and he might tell her that someday, if he is ever drunk or brave enough.)
2. Her smile. It comes so unexpectedly and so brilliantly that most of the time he can't help smiling back.
(Well, half-smiling back. Draco rarely really smiles, but when he does, it's usually in her presence.)
3. Her wit. Sometimes it's sharper than his.
(Okay, a lot of times it's sharper than his.)
4. How much she believes in him. It astounds him that she really does believe that he is a good person at heart. She believes in him so much that he finds himself unintentionally trying to be that person she believes him to be.
(Yes, he realizes this makes him a softie or something equally repulsive and useless. He can't do anything about it.)
5. Her optimism. He's never met anyone before who is happy just to wake up alive.
(Sometimes it rubs off on him.)
6. Her intellect. She absorbs knowledge, thirsts for it. It kind of makes him want to crack open a book and see what the fuss is all about.
(It also turns him on a little.)
7. How good at Quidditch she is.
(She makes him a better player every time she wins—which, truthfully, is fairly often.)
8. Her charm. She suits him well—together if they wanted to, they could rule the world ten times over with their combined charm.
(She doesn't exactly care for world domination but Draco doesn't think she'd ever rule out the possibility completely.)
9. Her beauty. Physically, yes, she's easy on the eyes, but her real beauty lies in how she moves as quietly as she can in the morning so she doesn't wake him up, or how her laugh bubbles up from some endless spring inside of her, or how she cares so much about the littlest, silliest things.
(God, he never thought he would be here. Never, not in a million years. But here he is, finding beauty in places where he's never thought to look.
God, he never thought he'd be here.)
10. How right it feels to love her. To be in love with her. Draco thinks it might be the most right thing he's ever done or will do.
(He's right.)
There are a million more things, of course, that make Draco Malfoy love Cho Chang, but these are the ones that first come to mind.
Someday, he might tell her these things. Someday, he might even tell her that he loves her.
If he really thinks about it, if he really thinks about it, he loves her by society's standards (he would die for her, without hesitation), as well as his own standards (however strange they may be).
No—
If he really thinks about it, no one on earth has created a word that could adequately describe what Draco Malfoy feels for Cho Chang.
Love doesn't even begin to cover it.