When people hit rock bottom the only option for them is to give up or for them to build from the bottom up. For better or worse.
Mudblood. He couldn't believe he'd called her that. He's sitting outside in the bitter cold, looking across at the black lake, knees bunched up with his lanky long arms wrapped tightly as if to try to offer some protection from the cold.
The look in her eye had been enough, vivid green eyes looking back fiercely at him not with friendship as they once had done in fond memories of days spent just enjoying life, just being. Just escaping. Her eyes didn't even look with at him with pity as they'd come to do so in the coming months instead they were filled with anger, hostility and something else. Anger and hostility he could deal with, he was used to it.
Resignation.
She'd given up. Her hope that he would change had run out and she'd given up. Of what he couldn't understand, he was just starting to get on his feet to find his purpose besides toiling away in a dark and dank dungeon for the rest of his life over a potions that he would receive no acknowledgement for no recognition. He wanted to be someone, to never have to go back to what once was, to never have experience hardship or loneliness. Couldn't she see that this would be his making?
It didn't matter how! Just so long that it was so. Yet she would scorn him for that, when there were far worse than him, you didn't have to look to far too only see.
Potter was no saint and yet everyone acted like he was god's greatest gift. Strutting around like he owned the place and yet he was nothing but a merciless bully, him and Black . He tried to leave those thoughts because in the end they didn't matter. He would show them, he would work hard and his hard work would be rewards and then they would see and then she would see that in the end it was worth it.