I lied. Here's chapter 7. LUCKY YOU GUYS. Getting 3 chapters in 16 and a half hours. .

Please leave me some feedback. I'd really appreciate it. Really. DO IT NAO.

*cough* Again, this isn't really check for errors very well. I wrote it while I was in class and then typed it up when I got home. I hope you all like it.

-Kristen

. Just a side note... I edited this today (5/26/11) because I no longer liked the ending of the chapter. It wasn't right. So I fixed it, 2 years after writing it. Chapter 8 may be up shortly.

-Kristen


"What if I said I loved you?" he asked, his eyes eventually peering up at her in curiosity. He had never said anything like that to anyone before. Sure, he had said 'I love fucking with you' many times before but that was different. It was never just 'I love you.' He sat there frozen, her gaze burning into him as if whatever she looked at would just explode from the weight of it. The silence between them filled the air with a tension that was thick enough to cut out shaped and designs with a gentle swish of a wand. But he waited and waited for any kind of a response from her. She just sat there staring at him with a look of malice mixed with dumbfounded confusion.

"You…" she started. Hermione stopped herself from speaking at sat to think for a moment, ignoring the stabbing pains inside of her. What if he said he loved her? That wouldn't change the fact that he had still beaten her mercilessly. Well, she supposed it wasn't quite… merciless, per say, since he had seemed to be shocked at his own actions. But he also told her that she had woken up screaming his name and basically thanking Merlin that he was alive.

So what if he said he loved her? He probably wouldn't mean it anyway. He probably said that to every girl that he either beat up or tried to have his way with. But he looked almost scared, like he had never even thought of saying that aloud to anyone, especially her. For a minute, she weighed her options.

Option One: Admit to him that she hasn't been able to stop thinking about him since a few weeks after the school year had started. Then she would face the inevitable humiliation, teasing and regret for the rest of the year after he told her that he was only kidding.

Option Two: Smack him upside the head and get him to start thinking like himself again.

Option Three: Cry.

Option Four: Continue staring at him in confusion until he wandered away in defeat.

"You what?" she finally said, deciding to go with Option 5: What the fuck?

Draco gazed back at her incredulously stare. He found himself holding his breath and let the air out slowly in a sigh. He didn't really know how to explain what he had said. He didn't even know why he said it. He just blurted it out suddenly. He closed his eyes and rubbed them with his index fingers.

"Nothing. Just forget it," he said, standing up from the seat that he had occupied for at leas the past twelve hours. He began to walk away but he was stopped by her weak voice coming quietly from behind him.

"Why?"

Standing there, Draco stared straight ahead of himself, her short but direct question sinking in. He could feel her chocolate eyes on his back. "It's nothing," he decided to say, and then started walking.

"Draco whatever-your-middle-name-is Malfoy! You turn around this instant, get your ass over here and tell me what the fuck you're talking about!" she insisted. Her voice was slightly more forceful than she had intended. That was fine. It signified that's he meant business. But when he turned around to look at her, the rigid form of his body brought her back to the night in the Head's Dorm… right in front of the fireplace where so many wonderful and horrific things had happened.

"Hermione," he started, walking back towards her, "you have been the only person that I've opened up to in, oh, I don't know, four years? You allowed me to take all of my frustration out in rants for the past four months, even though prior to that, I had done nothing but relentlessly torture you. But you just let all of that fall by the wayside and let me go off and blow off all of my steam. Why? Fuck if I know!" He was pacing now, back and forth, along the length of her bed.

"And then I couldn't take it anymore—all of the kindness, the sympathy, the general purity around you… And when I fully and completely tried to give myself over to you without having to say those damned three words… and you shot me down. Then I snapped when you just left me lying there on your bedroom floor. I couldn't stand it anymore. I was out for blood. Then I could not fucking control myself. You were driving me up the fucking wall and I took all of my anger and my frustration and all of my sexual tension that had built up out on your face and stomach without even realizing what I was doing. Without realizing that I was hurting you. You drive me fucking insane, Hermione Granger. And I have no idea why. I…" Draco began to stumble over his words.

"Draco…" she barely whispered; her breath was caught in her throat as he spoke and she could feel the tightening sensation in her chest as she held back tears.

He shot her a look signaling that he wasn't finished yet. She had her long insulting speech, so now it was his turn to give her a long and very over-due confession. He cleared his throat and mentally prepared himself to continue with the pouring out of his heart and soul.

"I'm not done yet." He stopped pacing and sat down on the bed opposite from hers. "I think it all started back in our third year… when you punched me." His hand subconsciously went to his cheek as he realized that he had hit her in the same place the she had punched him that day. "I'd never seen that fierce side of you. It obsessed me, but I didn't let anyone know. I always watched you, given the chance… in classes, during Quidditch games, at breakfast, lunch, dinner, assemblies, the Yule Ball…" He almost laughed at himself. "Hell, I almost asked you to the Yule Ball but that damned Krum got to you before I could. Everyone would've thought that I had gone mad, including you, and myself.

"But I decided not to let you get to me. I just stopped thinking about you. It was like I flipped the switch from 'on' to 'off.' But every time that I saw you, I was just filled with hatred and I wanted you to feel it, to know it. But you never let it get to you. And that just made everything worse. I had no way to get to you. I promised myself that I would do so, one way or another. It just looks like I chose to take the least expected path and then took a horribly wrong turn." He stopped again, collecting his thoughts and emotions.

"Basically, what I'm trying to say… is… is that…" Draco hesitated for a moment, allowing his crystal blue eyes to catch her cautious stare. "I guess… I think…" His tongue was stumbling over itself again and his mouth seemed to get drier and drier as the seconds passed between his words.

"Yes?" she asked; her voice was so soft, so quiet, that he wasn't even sure she had said anything at all.

Draco couldn't bring himself to say those words again, so he sighed and stood up, making his way over to her. To his surprised, she didn't flinch, hit him, hex him, curse him, or bite him or anything when he sat down beside her. "If you were ever in trouble and all of my limbs were broken and my toes were all in pieces, do you know what I would do?" he asked. Hermione just stared at him, hanging on his every word at that point. "I would drag myself 200 miles—or however many it would take to get to you—with just my fingernails."

She couldn't peel her shocked eyes away from him. She couldn't even make the attempt. Had he really just said all of that? Just admitted to all of that? To her? She felt her heart sink when she thought of all of the things that she had said and done to him in the past three and a half years when all that time, he had been fretting over her. "Draco, I… I had no idea that you felt like that… for so long. Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"Would you have taken me seriously?" he asked, looking away from her.

"Probably not," she admitted. "So why did you ask me that question earlier?" she added after a moment of silence.

He sat there for a minute, thinking, actually thinking, hard about how to answer her. Finally, he gave in to her emotions and looked towards her, his eyes betraying his collected attitude, the sign that he would break soon, and showed her a look of the more open and pure sincerity that even he had doubted he was capable of. "Because I think I do."

"You think you… what?" She refused to believe it until the words actually came out of his mouth. And not as a question.

"That I love you! I love you, Hermione Granger!" he said, standing up from his seat beside her and flailing his arms out to his sides as he proclaimed that his crazy obsession had turned into love. "Satisfied?" he asked, turning around again to look at her, his arms spread out to her, almost in a welcoming fashion.

She was staring at him with a small smirk on her lips until he had turned around like that. A memory, a painful one, shot through her mind, making her draw in a gasp as she watched him.

He frowned, but left his arms out just in case. She had her bloody confession, now where was his half-running, half-limping embrace? "Hermione?"

She let her captive breath free and blinked a few times and the image was gone. She tried to remember it, but she couldn't, not matter how hard she tried. She smiled up at him, ignoring her irritating subconscious. "Do you really mean it?" she asked warily.

He nodded, a smile creeping across his perfect lips. He watched her as she moved slowly to get off of the bed, but rushed to her side in order to avoid her looks of pain flashing across her face. She stared up at him as he held his arms out. "Well, hurry up," he said, motioning his hands slightly to encourage her into his embrace.

Hermione froze again, but only for a second. She had blinked too soon and the image that flashed behind her eyes and the memory of it were gone instantaneously. She fell gently into his arms and rested her cheek against his chest for a second before he looked down at her. He tenderly held her chin between his index finger and his thumb. Another memory. He pulled her lips to hers sweetly, gently. Another flash. What was going on?


I just changed the last 2 paragraphs because I decided that I really didn't like them. Too fluffy. She was all "OH YAY! *hobble*" and it was too cheesy. And this ending at least gives me a little bit more room to work with. At least the way I'm seeing it. Hopefully, I'll be able to get an 8th chapter up here for you guys. In less than 2 years time. .