Outtakes Chapter 3
It was mind-numbingly infuriating.
She looked the same as she always did, right? Bushy hair in a non-descript brown colour looking as though a wildfire had consumed it and left dried twigs in its wake; slightly protruding, pursed mouth, that while no longer rabbity with her transformed teeth, still decidedly resembling some kind of small, furry animal. Add to that the constant frown that graced her features and the sprinkling of rowdy freckles across her face, and you'd be hard pressed to admit that she was a beauty.
So there was that one time (one time!) at the Yule Ball in fourth year when it seemed that Granger had managed to do something nothing short of miraculous and tamed that wild bush and slapped on some makeup that concealed her many imperfections (and Draco was willing to wager that she'd cast several glamour charms upon her person as well).
But so what? It was not as if she'd looked like that in the days after. She knew and he knew that she was never going to look that way again without any number of lengthy preparations!
So what was it that made him so obsessed?
Something whispered, seemingly, just past his ear.
But then there were her eyes.
000
They said that the eyes were the windows to a person's soul.
If that were the case than Malfoy's eyes showed the doorway to a very turbulent place indeed, a place where she'd be hard pressed to go. In fact, you'd probably have to shove her in.
It was unnerving really, as if he were trying to deconstruct her very soul, weighing up her flaws and merits in some kind of scales in that impenetrable mind of his. She had the feeling too that her flaws were probably winning that battle, tipping over the scales to rest permanently on the ground like some kind of one ton elephant.
He was constantly staring, had been for a few weeks now; in the Great Hall, in her Ancient Runes class, Advanced Potions with Snape…he'd even stopped his infernal complaining at Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class and instead now used his time more fruitfully to stare at her unwaveringly. She could feel his eyes everywhere, and every time she turned to look at him, he'd be there, staring unabashedly right back at her, issuing some kind of challenge she didn't know if she'd win.
It was like this too, in their Advanced Potions study sessions that they'd been forced to go to by that bastard Snape. Where he once derided her for her lineage and substandard looks, he now just stared at her in between his scribblings on parchment. She was so unnerved and frustrated that at times she almost screamed at him to say something, anything; to call her a mudblood, insult her hair, because one more second of this creepy silence and his staring and she'd go absolutely nutters.
If she hadn't already.
000
Her eyes were like…like Ares, a female version of Ares maybe, come to claim him, all molten fire and brimstone. Sometimes he felt they would scorch him completely, other times when they cooled, he fancied that he could see past the fire to something else, something she kept hidden from all except maybe him, and even so, only inadvertently revealing itself. But it was only for a moment, for one, sweet moment, and then it'd be lost to him as if it never were.
He craved that moment, ever since the first time he saw it. He spent all his time trying to recreate it, trying to see it again in her eyes.
But he never did. Not that he would stop trying until he did.