Chapter 4

As soon as the sun came up the next morning, I was taking my Nimbus Two Thousand and One down to the Quidditch Pitch to do a few laps around the goalposts. Ever since I was little and my father first taught me to fly a broomstick, I had been using it as an outlet for any and every negative emotion or feeling that passed through me. If my father yelled at me for something or my guilty conscience got the best of me after a particularly mean bit of bullying, a few laps around in the air always cooled my head.

Today, my little tradition worked wonders. After about ten minutes of zooming from one end of the pitch to the other and back again, I gained a bit of confidence and started to get creative. I flipped, turned, barreled, dived, climbed, dropped, plummeted, tossed, and spun away. I soared to the end of the pitch and even further, going further than I ever had from the Quidditch pitch. I flew over Hagrid's hut, over the Forbidden Forest, turned and skidded to a standstill right above the lake.

I was only a foot above the water's surface. I leaned forward on my broom to look my reflection full in the face. There I was, slicked back white blonde hair, eyes the color of rainclouds, ivory skin. These things I saw every morning in the mirror next to my bed in the Slytherin boy's dormitory. The part that was somewhat confusing and entirely worrying, was the crease between my eyebrows, the circles under my eyes, the blank and defeated expression in my face. The lack of sleep from the night before was obvious, and even flying for hours didn't have a chance in taking away any physical proof of my exhaustion. What I really needed was a rest. Unfortunately, I was expected to be at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall for breakfast in about 20 minutes' time, and even if I could go back to bed, I wouldn't be able to do anything but toss and turn, just as I had the night before. Hermione—God, what was I saying? Granger—was constantly on my mind. How she looked, what she said to Weaselby, and how she made me feel when she thanked me last night.

I knew that the way I had been acting was a bit of a shock, as it was far from the way I usually acted around her or, honestly, anyone. But I was far from expecting any sort of genuine attitude. I had been waiting for some kind of outburst, something that I definitely would have deserved, but a thank you was nothing close to what I was prepared for.

I blinked, and focused my attention back onto my reflection. I looked a little worse for wear, but what could I do to change that? So I slowly glided back towards where I had left my things in the seats at the Quidditch pitch. Once I landed, I reached for my wand from my pocket and sent my broom back to my dormitory using a banishing spell. I then went straight for the Great Hall, heading for my usual seat near Crabbe and Goyle.

That was when I saw her. Granger was back to her bushy haired self, of course, but was at the Gryffindor table with Weasley and Potter. She looked a bit reserved, and possibly a tad quieter than usual, as was her friend the Weasel. Potter seemed to be acting as a mediator, which was typical.

As I walked past her, she glanced up and did the slightest of double-takes. Our eyes met, and she blushed.

I, of course, could never let Crabbe or Goyle or any of the other Slytherins for that matter, to think that I had lost my nerve, and I could feel their eyes on me as I looked at Granger. So, mentally punching myself as words tumbled from my lips, I said something that I could never take back.

"Alright, Granger? Potty? Weaselby? I can see your hair is back to normal, Granger, we were wondering last night, what did Weasley have to sell to get his hands on that hair product to make it look so much less—disgusting?"

Hermione's eyes widened and her eyebrows shot upward with apparent understanding as I heard a loud giggle from the Slytherin table and some chuckles from other tables. Everyone on the Gryffindor table, however, glared at me. Hermione, however, quickly regained composure and said calmly, "Why were you wondering, Malfoy? Want to know how to get a bottle of it to fix yours? I should tell you now, it can't eliminate grease and oil. Says so on the packaging."

A low chorus of "ooooh"s was let out as Ron, who had stood up in his anger with me, sat back down, glaring. "Shove off, Malfoy," he muttered, and I swept along past them, pissed that Granger had one-up-ed me but even more impressed at her insult and her composure. She was a clever little witch, I had to give it to her.

I watched Malfoy walk away with resentful eyes. I had thought that, maybe, his attitude towards us would have changed after what he said to me last night, but apparently, I was wrong. Not that it bothered me too much.

Ron and I were trying too hard to be nice to each other. We were maddeningly polite and I knew that Harry had noticed. He kept glancing at us, eyebrows squished together in silent frustration whenever we would obviously avoid an argument by giving up what we had been trying to say. I knew he had heard our, ahem, conversation last night, at least the end of it, which meant that he knew that I was so big headed that I thought Ron had wanted to go to the ball with me. I wondered what he thought about that.

For the next few weeks, Ron and I got along just fine. I mostly shoved aside the feelings for him that had developed only recently, and suffered only a tiny bit because of it. I spent more and more time with Viktor, and that always helped get my mind off of that unruly redhead that I was constantly thinking about, which was nice. We kissed a few more times, and got pretty close to doing more than just that; kissing. But I was only 14 years old, he was 18, and he understood when I lead his hands upward on my body rather than lower down. We never had "that" conversation, we only ever talked about "that" when it was right in the moment, and Viktor was begging to go a little further, just a little further, with either his words, or his eyes, or his hands even. Every time, I had to shake my head, take a step back, move his hand away from certain areas on my body. He got especially insistent the night after the second task, after he had "saved" me from the merpeople in the black lake, and had seen the scowl on my face as that bimbo Fleur Delacour kissed Ron on the cheek, when he did absolutely nothing. He had also invited me to visit him in Bulgaria that summer right after he "rescued" me, to which I said maybe. He apparently had been expecting a better answer than that, and continued advertising his jealousy towards Ron when he mentioned that I had stayed at Ron's house the summer before. I had to take a little break from Viktor after that, and sort of avoided him by spending all my time with Harry and Ron again. Of course, there was that ridiculous article in Witch Weekly in which Rita Skeeter made me out to be some sort of "scarlet woman," as Ron so hilariously put it. I was walking from the library back to the Common Room with my hands in bandages from the hate letters I received after that article when I saw Malfoy, alone for the first time since our unexpected conversation in the halls after the Yule Ball. He tried to walk past me without a word, but I was too mad at the world to let him get away with that.

"Malfoy, what the hell?" He stopped in his tracks and turned around to look up at me with a strangled expression on his face.

"What do you want, Granger? What happened to your hands?" his expression betrayed a small amount of pity, which frustrated me to the point of losing my composure.

"Malfoy, you don't make any sense. The night of the Yule Ball you were—and now you're—and the day after you—and ever since you've been—ugh! I'm just so annoyed with you! I thought you had apologized and then you turned around and insulted me, which frankly, I wasn't surprised about, because I knew you had to keep up your 'image' but I thought you might be—oh, I don't know why I'm even bothering. Go ahead and continue to be a complete asshole, I really don't mind."

I hung my head in defeat, having just reminded myself what a waste it was to even attempt to coerce Draco Malfoy, of all people, into being a respectful person. Why couldn't I ever keep my fat mouth shut?

I turned around and walked away from Malfoy, heading towards the Common Room again. But his voice made me stop and face him.

"Granger, when I apologized that night, I wasn't kidding. I really do know how much pain and trouble and unnecessary anguish I've caused you and your friends. You, especially." Malfoy looked at my mouth, and I knew he was remembering, just as I was, that day not so long ago that he cursed my front teeth to grow at an unexplainable rate. He continued. "I just, I didn't think you were that accepting of my apology. And I didn't think we were good, so I just continued the charade of 'hating' you."

So what was he saying, that it was just a charade? Really? My jaw dropped a centimeter or two before I regained composure and said, "I don't hate you. You can pretend to be an ass in front of your friends, that I don't mind, but don't blow me off whenever I see you in the halls. That's all I ask for. If you're serious about being nice to me, I'd like to hear your story. Sometime."

Malfoy's eyes brightened. His unusually kind, gray eyes, that I had never paid much attention to, brightened with excitement. He was, of course, not exactly one to show his emotions easily, so he controlled his expression quickly. But I didn't think I could forget that one split second of eagerness outlined easily by the crinkles near his eyelids, the ever so slight dimples in his cheeks. An air of eagerness that someone as hateful as Malfoy could never fake. And when I realized that he was thinking about me when he acquired this look of satisfaction, I was stunned into silence. His gray eyes bored into mine, and I had to look down. I was getting shy because of Malfoy. What was this?

"I'd like to tell you. Sometime."