Chapter 7
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Best friends, real ones, are as good as it gets; when you have someone you love purely for who they are and whom you relate to and who you can be crappy and faulty around. It's someone who cares about you because of who you are. Who is honestly okay with you're imperfections.
Falling in love doesn't compare, because falling in-love, so often involves the physical; gaining a best friend is everything beyond physical. Him and I had gone beyond that. We fell in love with our best friends. It was perfect. We were best friends that loved each other that were also in love. You'd think the two would conflict or overlap, but they didn't.
It was all a joke, well a half joke. We came up with intricate plans on what we'd do when we left school; the weird and secluded lives we'd lead. We'd get married and go off and not refuse to come back but be unconcerned with the idea. Really, I loved other people, I did. I loved my family and my friends and the school, my whole world; but life was okay without them and with him. I could live and function without him but he made things more than bearable. He made things better than nice he made things alive, and I made our days colorful. You think that'd be it, youd think the world would be happy that we'd done it and help us do it.
He said it a lot; not as if to reassure me that he still meant it, but to almost remide me that it was inevitable and I couldn't avoid it even.
"I'm going to marry you Weasley and put an end to this nonsense." he would say when I brought my brother up or my family. I had a knack of bringing down our fantastic dreams by having one of my brother hunt us down in a fit of rage and kill Draco.
Or he'd say: "When I marry you Weasley you're going to have to spend time with me after 8pm" those days, when night fell, we'd go back inside and as our sanctuary melted away into the distance, as did the world that allowed us to be together.
He'd say things like that and I'd sarcastically or playfully shoot down his adamant words, mostly cause I knew him and I knew if he was saying something like that, he was actually of the intention of doing them. There were a few things he wanted that he didn't get. I also, inside, wanted him to make it possible to be with each other. So bad that I didn't want to jinx it by encouraging it. I don't think it mattered to Draco. He would do it regardless of if my insides were begging him to or not.
That's how he was sincere.
One day he found me and I wasn't with my notebook, doodling idly. I was doing science homework.
"Man Weasley, those are some intense thoughts" he said standing next to me and looking down at the parchment on my lap.
"Shut it, I have homework to do." I didn't even turn my head that was the best friend beauty part, I didn't have to entertain him with frivolous kindness.
"Snape assigned this a week ago and I totally forgot about it because I was tramping around Hogsmead all afternoon on Wednesday with some schmuck." I looked up quickly and glared and then went back to my scribbling.
He raised one eyebrow and after a few moments of silence said, "Did you just call me a schmuck?"
I didn't even respond I could practically hear his eyes roll though "I thought it was worth it" he said anyways.
"Yea sure, not when Snape is glaring down my neck." I had quite the temperament. It was a good thing I didn't have to be sensitive around him.
"Want me to help?" he asked a few minuets later, apparently over being called a shmuck. I could tell he was bored but I wasn't entertaining him that day, not with all my homework.
He just sat next to me for a while, when I didn't respond, I suppose eventually the novelty of silence wore off and he moved the book I was reading so it rested on both of our laps, when it became clear I wasn't going to be responding to his offer.
Being irritated, irritable and stressed I snatched it back as faster than he could respond and gave him the dirties look I could manage in the four seconds I allotted to lift my gaze from my work.
"No! I can do this by myself" have I ever mentioned I had a thin, miniscule, oh so attractive sliver of pride?
"Pft." A sliver of pride he was quite used to.
So we sat, one scribbling furiously, the other looking out, unamused and unaffected. I was steadily writing, bent over my parchment so low that my hair made a curtain between my face and him.
"DAMNIT." After a few seconds he reached his hand over and lifted my hair up to reveal an empty ink bottle on its side and the worlds I'd been scribbling on my parchment for the last hour drowned in a sea of ink.
After letting out an intelligible shriek out, eventually, fragments of frustration came out "Stupid. God damn. Quill." Frustration did not do wonders for my vocabulary.
He removed the, now empty, ink bottle from my lap and grabbed my shoulders and rested his arms on my shoulders shaking my slightly.
"Calm down Weasley." he we less than perturbed; I think he was all too familiar with my over dramatic and explosive temperament.
"This is the THIRD time this week—all over my homework!"
"Luckily Flitwick's a push over… and Trelawny couldn't give two shits about what you actually write; in fact she probably had more fun guessing!"
"Calm down," he calmly cleaned it up and then just sitting quietly next to me. He always knew right when to cut me off; not soon enough that I didn't have time to vent but before I got into the full swing of a rant. I knew his words and actions were to pacify and it irritated me but worked.
"Whatever…" I mumbled, pacified and not happy about it.
I sat grumbling for a few moments more just to prove he didn't control me but stopped eventually, just like he smugly knew I would.
I was pretty calm though and I just sat, in my after-outburst haze. He laid his head on the ground next to my knee and it would brush against me every once in a while. I think he liked to remind me of his presence, as if I could ever forget.
"Someday Weasley," it was an off hand moment, his voice and body language were off hand.
"Someday?" it was always wiser to just let him talk and not try to interrupt, he'd get into the flow of things faster. There were a couple minuets of silence. I always figured he formulated exactly what he was going to say when he was silent, because things always came out perfectly from him, he never stuttered and his words always flowed to a certain rhythm. I figured it would take him a while to start actually talking, so I started rewriting my homework on a fresh piece of parchment.
"Someday we're going to make it." He said it matter of-factly.
"Mhm, yea, sure." I nodded my head, listening but not really paying attention.
"We are." he nodded back at me.
"No more of this exploding quill nonsense?" I said distractedly, I really didn't multitask well.
"No more of this." was all he responded with, he wasn't bothered that I wasn't listening, but it certainly wasn't going to stop him from saying what was on his mind.
"Yea? What's it going to be instead then?"
Then there was another pause, I knew he would take a few moments to perfect his words and continue. Greatfull for the pause I had re-written most of what I'd lost. But instead of a few moments pause and more words. He grabbed my homework smearing his fingers through the fresh ink and throwing it, ink bottle and all, into the lake. Hurling it as far as he could, which was quite far. I could see it bobbing, floating by the empty ink bottle too far for me to ever retrive.
"Malfoy, what the hell—" I glared up at him, further irritated to see him calm and collected as if he hadn't just destroyed a couple hours of work.
Instead of responding, he got to his feet and looking around him a little, as if it were the first time he'd seen the lake and the trees. Like everyday that he sat staring at it all, he hadn't actually absorbed any of it ever. Before I could open my mouth to tell him off, he grabbed my arm and yanked me up to my feet, unwillingly I'll add.
"Malfoy—Malfoy, let go."
But instead of letting me go he just pulled me toward the forest.
"Malfoy, my essay." He didn't respond. I knew he wouldn't but it irritated me the same. With every step toward the forest he moved faster, and faster until we were running; running as fast as I possibly could and then he pulled me to go faster.
We ran, and ran, and reached the forest and then we ran faster and deeper in. My breath got shorter and shorter and my legs burned; but all of a sudden it was only important that we could run as far and as fast as we could. So I just grasped Malfoy's hand more tightly and ran right ahead. We ran for what must have been miles.
Eventually we stopped and we were somewhere towards the middle of the Forbidden Forest; far from school, far from regulation and boundaries.
My chest was burning and my face was like ice. I felt like I was floating on water and if I moved, I'd sink. We didn't talk, I don't think I could have if I had tried; I spent the next ten minuets getting my breath half way regular.
We sat by a tree; in summer and spring the forest was dark and the leaves blocked the light, but in winter there were no leaves and the white skies were seen above. We sat there, in the white, snow blanketed forest, looking at the white sky above, miles from school.
I turned to him once and he was sitting, doing what I was doing; grasping my hand, looking at the sky and catching his breath.
The more our breath came back the tighter he held my hand and the more I sagged against the tree. It didn't bring my energy back but it sapped me of it with each steadying breath instead. So I just looked up through the tree branches and rested.
I wasn't thinking, I wasn't even trying to process what we'd just done. There was no need to; there was nothing to explain, we had just had to.
After half an hour he stood up and still grasping each others hands I came up with him.
Then he grinned, really grinned, at me. His face was pinker than she'd ever seen it and his hair tossled and stuck to his face by sweat in a few places. He seemed so real just then at that moment. It was like if I reached and touched him I knew he'd be hot from running and to me, it made it so real; everything before hadn't been a dream but so dreamlike. That was real.
"How about that Weasley?" he said, like he'd won an argument. An argument that, until after miles of running and half an hour of short breathing, I finally understood we were having.
I stared at him and looked up at his smiling eyes and saw Winter. It was a beautiful, serene winter; one that wasn't cold and uninviting but sparkling and pure, like the snow and sky that surrounded us just then.
Before I had enough of staring at him and realizing how pretty his eyes were I was wondering how long we could run. It was exhilarating until it was tiring. If we ran, how long would it be before we just completely burnt out? Before I could continue or finish my thoughts he kissed me.
He didn't pull me toward him, he didn't even touch me with anything but his lips; but he bent his head and just kissed me for a long meaningful moment. When he drew back to look at me, they were with the same eyes.
The first thing I could say, the only thing I could think to say was "What about my homework."
He laughed at me and the scariness of what we'd just done stopped hitting me and I reach out and punched him on the arm.
It wasn't a real hit, it was just banter "What about my homework you ass, the lakes not just going to regurgitate that!" I had to get worked up about something, or I might realize something too big for me; or even worse, something that wasn't too big, something I just didn't want to be there.
"I know Weasley." He just smiled and now put his arms around my waist looking down at me.
"What the hell am I supposed to do, Snape hates me. He wont be giving me a break." I was getting lost in the faux-anger.
"I know." Was all he said, he was just staring at me and letting me yell at him. It one of those things that I look back at and treasure, but irritated me more than anything in the moment.
"You better have a plan ass hole." As angry as it was for loosing my homework, I didn't have a doubt that it was worth it; the F or detention I would in all likelihood get couldn't make me, not even for a second, think it wasn't.
"I know." he said again and kissed me again.
This time I was semi ready for it and kissed him back. They weren't deep lusty kisses, they were, 'I'm standing here next to you' kisses. They were, 'this is our moment' kisses.
Our kiss didn't deepen but I put my hand on his shoulder and clutched it, afraid to reach up to his neck and pull him close and afraid of drawing back, needing to hold on, hard. I was afraid of what moving would do and what would change the moment I did.
It wasn't me that moved first, he moved his hand from my waist and reached out to the open air beside him. I felt a smile form on his lips and his other hand stayed on my waist. Suddenly that hand grabbed at my side and I shrieked out in laughter. In that moment, before I came down on him for tickling me there was a flash. Before even yelling at him I looked up and in his other hand he held a camera.
"You!" and the anger was building again.
He grinned and slowly raised his arm with the camera in it, far above my reach
"You give it here!" I could see him looking wickedly down at me.
"Just for memories." he replied to my unanswered question and with the flick of my wrist I yanked his arm and the camera went off again, this time in his face alone.
He looked at me appalled, candid wasn't his way. It was okay for me to be shocked and unprepared but what if the camera caught him with a bad hair arrangement, he was, if any sin very vain.
I just scoffed at him and his expression, "I'd like one that's proper and shows your true nature." I glared referring to his smirky look of satisfaction.
He just laughed at me and we walked around the forest, not exactly heading back to school, just moving. I knew any direction we headed, eventually would take us back to school, for that day at least. It did too, two or three hours later as dusk settled in, the forest disappeared behind us and we were standing between our spot, invisible but which we knew was there, and the school. We walked to school holding hands, everyone was at dinner and they didn't see us. I almost wish they had. We walked in, smiled, said goodnight and went to our respective dormitories. As I fell asleep that night I was happy, still. Looking back I shouldn't have been happy, we should have kept running that day, we should have never stopped, but we did.
