A/N: Thanks so much to all of you reading and reviewing! You guys are rad, and I hope you guys like this chapter because it's been a long time coming! It's wrapping up so you guys can expect one last chapter after this! Enjoy!
Part 4
Draco Malfoy knew straight away that he wasn't dead. For one, being dead could not possibly hurt this much. And two, he could hear whispers. He had enough common sense to know that people didn't whisper in hell. Screaming was probably more their style.
When he opened his eyes, he became aware of the crowd of strange men huddled around his bed. They were all damp and muddy and incredibly unwelcome. Couldn't a man just recuperate from a paralyzing body-smash in peace?
"There's the hero of the hour!" Potter said, the closest seated to him to his left. His glasses were crooked and there was dried blood alongside his jaw. Draco winced, not even wanting to imagine how much worse off he looked. He was the one in the hospital bed, after all. Not to mention parts of his body were hurting that he wasn't even aware could feel pain.
"Now let's not get too carried away," Weasley muttered.
"We won the match! Can you believe it? All because you're a suicidal prat, leaping off your broom like that. And Viktor crashing into you! It looked like he'd broken every single bone in your body. It was bloody amazing, Malfoy. It was a good thing Hermione was on her game, as usual, and stopped you from hitting the ground just seconds before you would've become lunch meat." He was shaking his head in disbelief. "I've seen some stunning Quidditch matches in my time, but that was, by far, the greatest. It helps that you were the one getting the beating. But regardless!"
"Please," Draco moaned, his head pounding. "Shut up and sod off. All of you."
"Right. I imagine the pain must be excruciating," Potter said, still grinning good-naturedly. He stood up from his seat and Draco glared at him – for any reason, really. For being Potter. For simply existing. For thinking it was okay to breathe his air. "We're having a party tonight at my place to celebrate our win. You're the guest of honor. Hermione'll take you right after you're all cleaned up."
"More like the guest of dishonor," Weasley once again felt the need to correct. "Honestly, Harry. His head is already as big enough as it is. There's no need to go around inflating it."
With a few more well-wishes and inconsiderate pats on the shoulder ("Stop touching me, all of you, or I will personally murder each of you in your sleep!") the tired but satisfied mob of Quidditch players finally bustled out of the room. Draco sighed, staring up at the ceiling – that is, until he caught one last lone figure in the corner of his eye.
It was Granger, quietly sitting in one of the chairs. His view of her must have been obstructed by the bodies of sweaty, burly men because he couldn't recall seeing her when he'd first opened his eyes. The whole sight of her was laughable – damp hair slowly frizzing, clothes completely soaked, skin entirely pale – but undeniably the most welcome. He felt his heart sigh at the sight of her. It was utterly pathetic. Out of all the people he'd have guessed to ever want to see beside his hospital bed after a particularly traumatizing Quidditch match, Granger's name would have never even come up in times past. Not even a blip on his radar. Now it was the only name that could ever catch him tongue-tied.
"You look bloody terrible," she frowned, inching in closer to him.
"Me? I feel invincible," he said. His voice sounded and felt like gravel. That or as if he'd been chain-smoking since the day he was born, which wasn't entirely out of the question. Granger shook her head.
"At least you're alive," she said softly. "From where I was sitting – it looked like your neck had completely twisted backwards. I kept hoping Viktor's hit was softer than it looked, but you've got a few broken bones, Malfoy. Major ones, including a clavicle and two ribs. They're mending as we speak, but it's going to be a few painful hours of sitting utterly motionless in that bed before you're going to be able to strut around like the ponce you make yourself out to be."
"I'd be careful if I were you, Granger. You're beginning to look altogether too pleased that I lived through the horrific experience of getting crushed by the sheer, solid mass your ex-boyfriend calls a body," he said. He couldn't help the smirk. It was worth the pain to catch her blush before deflecting it with her typical rolling of the eyes.
"You're clearly delirious. Viktor must have knocked something loose in your head. I'll go call on the nurse, shall I?"
She got up from her chair, but before she could walk away, he shot out his hand and grabbed her wrist. She stopped and turned, the surprise evident on her face. He silently wondered – if he pressed his finger just a little bit firmer on her pulse point, would he feel her heart rate quickening at this very moment?
"Granger," he said. He licked his lips, looking at her. "Thanks. For saving me. Getting to your wand in time, at least. I have a feeling I would've been a lot worse off if you hadn't."
Try dead, really.
She smiled at him, really smiled, as if she'd forgotten she had spent the better part of her life wishing he'd never been born. And for a minute he thought she really did. "You're welcome, Malfoy. Though the fact that you're saying thanks really does mean I should go and get the nurse. She said to call her as soon as you were awake. She's got a few more droughts for the pain."
He let his hand linger for a second more before he let her go, watching her as she disappeared behind the curtain. He stared up at the vacant ceiling as he sighed, trying hard to remember what had happened after he'd closed his fingers in around on the Snitch. He still flinched as he remembered the brutal impact of Krum colliding against him, the painful breaks of bone and nerves splitting he felt inside his body, and his fading awareness as he was throttled down to the ground from a great height. His last thought must have been something about the suddenly heightened possibility that his privileged life was about to become a very short one. He couldn't remember if he'd even felt sad about it. It was possible he'd felt nothing at all.
But as he dug further within the deep recesses of his hazy mind, he could faintly recall what had happened afterwards. That shattering impact of his body hitting the ground never came – though he wasn't sure he would have felt it anyway, seeing as how most of consciousness had webbed away by that time. But through all of white noise he'd heard one person above the rest, calling his name, and then soft damp hands on his face, sweeping aside his wet, matted hair.
"Draco. Draco. Draco, you're going to be okay, do you hear me?"
And he didn't have to ask to know. He could feel the answer deep in his bones. He could still see her now, the blurry image of her hovering above him, her hair falling like a curtain around him, telling him to stay awake. She had smelled like vanilla and honey. Was that what paradise smelled like, he wondered. For everyone or just for him?
She had been the one to reach him first.
ooo
"Potter doesn't actually expect me to believe him, does he?" Draco grumbled, as Granger helped him sit up, much to the chagrin of his attending nurse. She'd prescribed at least twelve to twenty-four hours of bed rest for his injuries to mend and had given them both a glare worthy to warrant its own deflecting spell when she was notified of Draco's required presence at a celebratory party later on that night. She would have given even Madam Pomfrey a run for her money.
"That he's actually throwing a party in my honor," he said, before wincing.
"You are the one that nearly gave your life to catch the Snitch," Granger said. "Besides, Harry was impressed with you. He was thrilled about the win. He didn't think it was going to happen."
"Well remind me to allow him the privilege of kissing upon my hand later on this evening," Draco said dryly. He was short of breath just from trying to get his legs down from the bed. "Bloody hell, Granger. I feel like I've been run over by a train. Seventy million times." When she didn't respond, he looked up at her to catch her staring at his bare chest, or rather – the gigantic purple bruises that covered it like oceans on a bare earth. He couldn't glimpse down at them himself without wincing, but he ignored that. He could never pass up a moment to mortify her. "Like what you see?"
Granger's eyes snapped back up to his face. Her brief moment of being flustered was quickly eclipsed by annoyance, then pity. "Somehow I get the feeling the train would have been a little more merciful," she said. And then she got oddly quiet, chewing on her bottom lip.
"What?" he said. "I look awful, I know. If it's any consolation, I did almost die."
"Not that, you prat," she said. "It's just. . . do you need me to help you? Get dressed."
He stared at her charmingly flaming cheeks, realizing the issue at hand. He could barely elevate his legs without having to muffle his groans of agony, but he was hardly ready for Granger to help him put on his trousers like some inept toddler. Besides, the ideal situation would have been Granger pulling off his trousers – not putting them back on him. And Draco, though still recovering from a near-death experience, was still a romantic.
"Just the shirt. The trousers I can manage," he said, trying to sound more convincing than he actually felt.
Granger obviously didn't believe him but didn't say a word, grabbing a shirt she'd snagged from his closet when she'd made a quick trip back to her flat during his nap. She unbuttoned it and carefully slipped it through one of his arms, while he managed the other – though not without biting back a whimper of pain. She stood back as he took care of the buttons and grumbled to himself.
"Just so you know, I'm not enjoying any bit of this. I've been dressing myself since I was three. This is incredibly emasculating." When he was done, he looked up at her. "Now I need you to do exactly what I say. Don't question it, all right?"
Granger nodded.
"Hand me my wand." She grabbed it off of the side table and handed it to him. "I'm going to put a silencing spell on myself, and then you're going to hand me my trousers and quickly step away and draw the curtain. You can come back in when you hear my voice."
She agreed and watched as Draco pointed his own wand to his throat and said, "Silencio." Handing him his trousers, she then promptly walked out of view and drew the white curtain behind her. Draco, taking a deep breath and grabbing hold of his trousers, braced himself. He screamed to his heart's desire while he could still see Granger's silhouette against the curtain, patiently waiting and ready to dive in at the first sign of any trouble.
When he finally undid the spell, he was panting and redfaced and near the brink of passing out. Granger swept the curtain aside, watching him carefully, albeit noting the fact that the trousers were now on him.
"Malfoy," she said, stifling a laugh. "Are those – tears? Actual tears?"
He scowled at her, before grabbing the last bottle of pain drought the nurse had left for him. Instantly he could feel it trickling through his system, giving him some temporary respite from the flashing agony. He stood himself up, fighting the urge to curl over from the pain that shot through his abdomen. Merlin, it hurt to be a man. To think he could have avoided all of this simply by telling Potter to shove his Seeker proposition up his arse! But then he looked up and caught Granger's eye and felt something dip low inside him, only to climb back up again.
"Sod off, Granger. Don't we have a party to get to?"
ooo
He should have been charmed that Potter had gone all out for their celebratory party in which Draco was rightly the guest of honor, but upon walking in with Granger he realized that it was populated with a lot of people from their years at Hogwarts he did not care to ever speak to again. They all congratulated him, inching in to clap him on the shoulder, and then promptly regretted it when Draco grumpily told them to slink off to some corner somewhere and die.
"Nice to see your concussion hasn't altered your general dislike for the rest of the human population one bit," Granger said, faintly amused, as Draco took another swig of his pain drought.
"Then it wouldn't nearly be quite as much fun, would it?" Potter said, inserting himself into their conversation. He had a beer in one hand and a lipstick mark on his cheek, which Draco watched Granger's eyes land on for a split-second before taking a generous sip of her champagne. "Torturing poor Draco with our affection. Well, you earned it, mate."
"What do I have to do to unearn it?" Draco said. "Punch you in the face? Make fun of your dead parents? Make you cry in public?"
Potter only amicably patted him on the cheek. Draco would have wrestled away had his body not seemed to break out in pain spasms every time he moved. "Nice try. This is a party for you. Well, not for you per se, but for your Quidditch skills. Which are a part of you. A small part, granted, but still. So here's to celebrating a small part of you!" Potter said, raising his glass to him, before happily excusing himself and brushing past.
When he looked back at Granger, her champagne glass had already been sucked dry. "Granger—" he began, but what was he going to say? Forget about him, he's a wanker. A world-saving wanker, but still a wanker nonetheless, which is the operative word here. But as the words ribboned through his mind, he could almost imagine the scene playing out between them. She would realize just how much she was starting to mean to him. Draco felt his conscience jerk awake at that, the hypotheticals suddenly dawning on him. Why should he have to comfort her? She was Granger, wasn't she – why couldn't she have enough sense to see it herself? To control her feelings in the face of real fact (fact: Potter was not pining away for her like she was for him)? To resist being so pathetic?
And suddenly Draco went from almost relinquishing to his desire to make her feel less miserable to being utterly annoyed with her.
"You're not going to be the fun-sucking school teacher here and tell me I can't drink at my own celebratory party, are you?" he ended up saying instead, a bit harsher than he'd intended it.
She looked taken aback, but with one blink of her eyes, resumed her evident disdain for him. "No," she said icily, while Draco tried to ignore the minutest bit of hurt that flashed in her eyes. "I won't be sucking any fun out of tonight for anyone today. Not even for you, Malfoy."
With that, Granger whipped around and walked away from him, disappearing in between the mob of faceless, laughing people. Draco finished off what was left of his pain drought and set it aside, moving in the opposite direction to find himself a real drink.
This is normal. Hating each other, he thought. This is the way things should be – the natural sodding order of the world.
But as the party went on, Potter stopping by every now and then to remind him of the very reason his divinely-sculpted body had almost been broken to bloody bits, he realized that just because he'd laid down some well-needed distance between him and Granger didn't mean she was far from his thoughts. Even when some blonde chit tried chatting him up, claiming some obscure connection to him from Hogwarts, he couldn't help but think of how Granger would never conduct herself in precisely this manner – laughing at jokes that weren't funny, worn a skirt she didn't have a hope of bending down in, or acting less intelligent than the poor girl probably actually was, all for the sake of a one-night shag. He pitied her, but most of all, he pitied himself. He could not stop comparing every single female in the room to Granger, dull forgettable Granger, and it frustrated him beyond belief, because they all had the grim and uncanny misfortune of coming up short.
"Get a hold of yourself, Draco," he hissed to himself in Potter's loo, after having splashed some cold water on his face. "Granger is nobody. She's worse than nobody – she's an uptight prude that's decorated her flat with a color that makes even Lucifer's balls shrivel up his arse it's so repulsive." He glared at himself. "She's off-limits."
He affirmed this to himself even when, upon leaving the loo, a small voice in his mind wondered aloud if she really was.
When he saw her again, she was off in a corner with Potter. She didn't have a drink in her hand, at least, but something in his gut twisted like a little girl French braiding hair when she leaned in to whisper something in his ear. A few minutes later, Granger began to move through the crowd, heading towards the exit. He handed his drink off to some drunk passerby and followed after her.
He found her in the tasteless, nondescript hallway of Potter's flat building. When he called her name, she froze and then cautiously turned around.
"Well, Malfoy?" she said, her eyes narrowed at him. "Have I succeeded in not sucking the fun out of your evening? Though that would be so unlike me, wouldn't it? Being the resident fun-sucker and everything."
Draco only shook his head, wetting the dry hollow of his throat. "I didn't mean it. Well, I meant it a little, but I shouldn't have said it that way. Though you wouldn't exactly be featured on a billboard for fun, which I think is common knowledge. The sheer volume of books your flat contains is enough to disqualify you in the first round."
She raised one eyebrow at him, but at least her hostility had dialed down a few notches. This was his version of an apology. A semi-apology, at least. An apology without the actual apology, a masterful skill endowed to very few. "Unless you have a point you're getting at, Malfoy, I think it'd be best if you went back to your party." She sounded exhausted.
Draco came closer to her, and she watched him, closely. "Why did you run to me, Granger? At the Pitch, after Viktor crushed all of the feeling out of my body. You were the first one. I just," he said, his breath hot and his voice hoarse, "I have to know."
Something changed on her face. The way her eyes were flickering over him, like she was trying to peer inside his head. "You were hurt. It was instinct. I would have done exactly the same for Harry and Ron."
"But that's it, isn't it? I'm not them. I'm not either of them."
"No," she said, quietly. Cryptically. Agonizingly. "You're not."
"So why?" he asked, and it was funny, that question. Three letters yet it had seemed to sum up his entire experience since the Ministry had seized all of his worldly possessions. Every morning and every night, the word would be burned into his brain in all of its simplistic glory. There were a magnitude of answers but never one that could stand rightly on his own – yet all of those "why"s seemed so trivial in the shadow of this particular why. This was the why that his heart shuddered under. This was the why that made his soul ache from a suddenly realized incompleteness, not knowing the answer. It tore him from this physical moment and plunged him in a dark, terrifying place of vulnerability and unfettered impossible hopes. If this why had a name, it would be Goliath.
"Because I'm a decent person, Malfoy," she said, softly. "And as much as I hate to admit it, you're a person too. At least I think you are. If you were gravely hurt, I couldn't just stand there and watch it happen. That's not me. That's not who I am."
So what you're trying to say is, he thought, as he stood motionless in front of her, that I'm not special. That you running to me and crying out my name was nothing special. It was instinct. It was something anybody would do to anyone. It was dull and normal and meant nothing.
"Well, thanks," he said to her, although he felt the words carried nothing. His hope had been sucked out of him, leaving him with nothing but an empty social sentiment. He couldn't deny the cracks in his ego now, but Draco, never one to linger on a meaningless moment, was already back on his feet, trying to patch up the holes. Reclaiming his dignity. "Although next time I'd appreciate it if you didn't make such a fuss. I've been hit harder and I know how to take my hits. I don't need you to baby me like you do Potter and Weasley. They might enjoy your mother act but I personally find it emasculating and on par with the highest level of human mortification."
She looked stunned. But then, stepping back – away from him, away from everything, back into the shoes of an old world – something dark and familiar veiled her eyes. Her pink sassy mouth shrunk into a taut line.
"Next time," she snapped, "you can count on me cheering on the stands when you come crashing down. Just like old times. And don't you worry a single blond hair on your head – I'll be the loudest one there."
She'd turned to walk away, but then whirled back around, her hair whipping against her face.
"I knew you were a wanker, Malfoy, since the beginning. But I also made the mistake of thinking that maybe if people showed a bit of tolerance and kindness to you that you'd actually make the effort of being a decent person. So I let you stay in my flat when Harry asked. I didn't kick your inconsiderate arse out when you brought a girl home to shag. Now, even to your own admittance, I've saved your life, and yet you persist on still being the schoolyard bully version of you!" she shouted. "At what point does it end? Or do you really have no conscience?"
"There is no end, Granger," he said back to her, hearing his own voice rise. "As for this version of me that you're talking about – you're wrong. There's only one version. You're daft if you thought there was a cuddlier version of me hiding underneath all of the hostility."
Her words were gritted out through her teeth. "Why do you try so hard to not be like us, Malfoy?" Then she sighed, throwing her hands up, frustrated. "Sometimes I see these glimpses of you – a different you, like a part of you that you try to keep stowed away from everybody, and it baffles me why that is. I don't get it!"
"Because," he said. "Those glimpses you see – that's not me. You may think it is, but it's not. It's a tiny, insignificant slice of who I am compared to the rest of me, which is every bit as bad as you think it is. So don't go on romanticizing this idea you have of me. You'll only embarrass yourself."
There were rare moments in Draco's life when he genuinely surprised himself, and this was one of them. The frigidity of his voice and the venom in his words was both impressive and shameful, and the way she flinched as if every one of his words physically pelted her made something inside him shiver and then die. Here he was, trying to reclaim his dignity, trying to retrieve his emotions from her inextractible hold. Parts of him felt rightly numb. But he couldn't deny the shaking in his core when he realized the shininess of her enraged eyes. He had made her cry. He, Draco Lucius Malfoy, now officially the lowest cretin that ever stepped a foot on earth, had actually made Hermione Granger cry.
She angrily wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Go fuck yourself, Malfoy. And then afterwards," she snarled, "find yourself a bloody new place to live."
ooo
Day 90
"What the hell happened between you two?" Potter demanded, echoing Draco's precise trail of thought for the past week, as Draco let him in. He turned around as Draco closed the door behind him, his hands in his pockets and looking entirely confused.
"Every time I try to even do so much as bring up your name, she shuts down completely. At least before she used to honor your mention with a colorful string of obscenities, but now she just goes on like she'd never even heard me in the first place. She's even threatened to stop speaking to me completely if I keep trying to bring you up."
Potter threw up his hands, collapsing down into the sofa. "And neither of you will talk about it. Which means this could very well go on for-bloody-ever," he whined.
"I told you, we had an argument," Draco said. "If you're such a stickler for details, you can rummage through my things for my diary. Though it'd be a waste of your precious time, seeing as how I don't even have my diary. The Ministry seized that too."
"It just seems so sudden, that's all. You seemed to be getting along. The bickering at me stopped. Maybe I was wrong," he said, frowning in thought.
Draco poured himself some tea. "Just one question, Potter – if you'd had an unoccupied, spare flat this entire time, why'd you make me live with Granger?"
The discovery of this fact that fateful night of his fight with Granger had been enough to stun Draco backwards. And want to rip Potter's head off to feed to some wild dogs.
"Because you couldn't be trusted well enough to live on your own, could you? You were in a bad state, Malfoy. You needed someone to look after you. Hermione was the first person that came to my mind. I'd trust her with my life." He sighed, leaning back on the couch. "And now she hates us. Both of us. Mostly you than me, but I'm still hated by association."
"Please Potter. Tell me about your plight," Draco said dryly.
"Anyway, we should be hearing from the Ministry sometime soon about your estate. In the meantime, stay out of trouble – and try to get back into Hermione's good graces, will you? I don't care what you fought about. I just care that you apologize to her, because I know what an enormous git you can be. Hermione has the highest tolerance out of all of us. The fact that you riled her up enough for her to kick you out. . ." He looked disappointed in him. Draco bristled in his seat. "Let's just say it's a giant step backwards."
Draco stirred his tea. "If you care about her that much, why aren't you with her?"
Potter scoffed. "What?"
"You know what I mean, Potter. Date her. Make her feel special amongst all of the other flavors of the week you take home every night."
"Malfoy, I love Hermione, okay? Like a sister. A twin sister."
The fact that Potter had to go so far as to specify exactly what kind of sister – twin-sister, only the sisterliest sister – delighted him. "Does she know that?"
"I expect so. Why does it matter? Since when do you care about my relationship with Hermione? I can vividly recall you saying that friendships were beneath you and that you would rather eat your own hand than be even partially-responsible for someone else's happiness. Bloody hell, Malfoy," Potter suddenly said, blinking. "Are you in love with her?"
Draco was rendered speechless, but before he could open his mouth to say something incredibly unkind to deter his inquisition, Potter had broken into peals of laughter and was patting him on the shoulder, leaving Draco in an enormous state of confusion. "Sorry, I couldn't even keep a straight face. Jolly good joke, mate!" He was still laughing to himself when he let himself out. "Bloody hell, that was a doozy. Cheered me up, though. You and Hermione! Unfathomable."
Draco heard the click of the door's lock, shaking his head. If only the poor sod knew. Un-fucking-fathomable.
ooo
Day 97
He never thought Weasley would show up at his doorstep – that is, unless it was to usher in the ultimate beatdown of the Armageddon he'd been threatening to bestow since their boyhood years at Hogwarts. So when he spotted that ginger head through the peephole, he carefully considered how able-bodied he would be after their interaction if he did, in fact, open the door. The odds weren't looking very good.
"Relax, Malfoy," Weasley said, gruffly. "I'm not here to make you wear your intestines as a necklace like I promised the other night. Some other time, maybe. But not today."
"And delay me the long-awaited honor? Fuck off, Weasley." But when he knocked again, Draco hesitantly unlocked the door and opened it just a crack, sending him a scrutinizing glare.
"You do know that if I'd wanted to really hurt you, I would have done that ages ago," Weasley pointed out. "Seeing as how you've been mooching off the goodwill of my best friends, you plonker."
Draco thought about that for a second, and begrudgingly acknowledging that he was right, opened the door wider. "Like it matters. I've cast a hex on the doorway so that anybody who crosses it without my permission will get their beloved little eyebrows singed off." He paused, waiting for him to say something. "You're not really waiting for an invitation to come in for some tea, are you, Weasley? I thought we were past that."
"I would never step foot within three meters of you voluntarily, prat, much less have tea with you."
"Then get on with it. And could you make it short? The ginger might be contagious."
He glared at him for a good moment before speaking on. "Heard you weren't living with Hermione anymore," he grunted. "Finally had enough sense to throw you out. I've been telling her to toss you from day one, but when she refused, I realized I didn't have to do much goading. You were perfectly fine on your own, weren't you, Malfoy? All I had to do was wait for you to muck it all up, for your real nature of destroying yourself and everyone around you to finally rear its ugly but forthcoming head."
"Thank you for that delightful commentary. You've exposed new wonders to me, Weasley. Truly."
"I just came by to threaten you," he said, firmly. "And to let you know that I heard."
"You already said that. Tell me, is there really nothing connecting the two halves of your brain? That's assuming there's anything to connect, of course."
Weasley cursed under his breath, his face turning as red as a ripe tomato. Draco quite enjoyed this. "I meant out in the hallway, you wanker. At the party. I saw you and Hermione leave, so I went to check on her to see if she was all right, and possibly to beat the bloody pulp out of you if needed. That's when I heard you two fighting."
Draco stared at him. "Again, I'm failing to see why this is of any importance."
"See, Malfoy, I don't trust you. That's why I've been watching you. And what I've seen deeply disturbs me." He paused, his shiny blue eyes thinning into what was supposed to be menacing look on his face. "I've seen the way you look at her. Hermione."
"You mean with utter indifference and barely hidden disdain?"
Silently, he wondered how it was possible Weasley could have picked it up within just two days of being around him while Potter was still laughing it off as if it was the biggest joke to ever hit wizarding London. Had the world begun to rotate backwards? Could it be possible he, in fact, never woke from his injuries from the Quidditch match and this was an alternate universe in which the reverse of everything happened? Weasley, actually a porous observer of minute details? Should Draco be checking if he had now been transformed into a hooker with a heart of gold (another Muggle movie he'd had the pleasure of sitting through at Granger's)?
Weasley didn't budge. "If you want her, you colossal tosser, you have to deserve her. Harry and I will make sure of that."
"Even if what you were accusing me of were true, I think we all know Granger does what she wants." Leave it to Weasley to think she'd ever do whatever they said.
Weasley pointed his finger in his face. "So do we, Malfoy. So I'm warning you. Don't fuck about, or it'll be the last thing you'll ever do. With your intestines in their proper place, anyway."
Then Weasley, with an affirming scowl, began to walk back down the hallway, his Sasquatchean feet thudding heavily against the carpet.
"Your sudden interest with my intestines is more flattering than it is threatening, Weasley!" he called out at his back. "Just so you fucking know!"
ooo
Day 110
He could see up his mother's imaginary nose as she hovered above his head, inspecting him. "Depression does run in our bloodline, Draco, but at least they bothered to hide it with extramarital affairs and expensive alcohol."
Draco watched her as she came around to sit down on the sofa, lighting up her cigarette. He closed his eyes. "I'm not depressed. And you're not real."
"Son, I find that personally offensive," she said, moving her cigarette away from her lips. "I'm a loving memory. I'm here to guide you through the murky afterthought that is your life after your father and I passed on. Though I'm not doing such a good job, am I? Look at you. You haven't moved from that spot since last week. A Muggle would have finished an oil painting of you by now, and then have had it framed from three towns over by horse. Draco, I know you. This isn't you. You're a flamboyant rooster, not a wallflower sulker. You're a Malfoy."
Draco opened his eyes again, staring up at the blank ceiling, wondering how on earth this had all happened. Back at Hogwarts they had hated each other's guts with a passion that he often fantasized about hexing all of her hair off and then making her a stuffed animal out of it just for extra kicks. Even just a few months ago, he had thought her to be the most uninteresting person on the planet. Even the sound of her name would send him into a deep stupor. But now. . . now what? He stares up at the ceiling thinking about how her hair had smelled when he'd caught a whiff of it at the Pitch, like a pubescent boy who's just had his first look at breasts. It was another feeling entirely. It was agony. It was yearning. It was pathetic. It was totally, utterly human.
"There's got to be a cure for this," he said, unsure of whom he was talking to: himself or his imaginary mum. "This isn't who I bloody am. This isn't who I was meant to play – not some lovelorn idiot pining over someone so infuriating and unattainable. Not over someone like Granger."
She let out another puff of smoke. "There is one thing I've learned from dying, son, and it's that we all have these preconceptions of how our lives are supposed to play out. We think we know our destinies. We think we know a lot of things. The truth is that we don't. Listen to me, Draco, and listen close. This doesn't have to be as hard as you make it. It's simple: you find someone you love and you just have to have enough sense to never let them go. That's it. The secret to life."
Draco looked up at her, the ghost of his mum, the actualized loving memory of her – whatever the hell she was. "When did you get to be so sentimental?" he asked, baffled.
Narcissa smiled. "No, Draco," she said. "The question is: when did you?"
ooo
Day 139
The news that the Ministry was finally releasing the Manor and the possessions they hadn't seized to make up for the years his shameless father did not file taxes came as a great wave of relief for Draco. Finally, he could cut himself out of this mess. He no longer had to live in this never-ending soap opera. If he organized the rest of his life in a strategic manner, he would never even have to see or think about Granger again. That gave him hope.
Potter, however, was a different story as always. He wanted to celebrate the end of Draco's homelessness in a rambunctious fashion and dragged him to the nearest bar, as well as having invited the rest of his friends, including Weasley, who came only because "Harry told me you're buying everyone's drinks, seeing as how you've got your shit back and all. Just because I loathe every cell on your body doesn't mean I won't drink your booze." And then, of course, Weasley punched him in the chest.
"Look at that," Potter said to Draco, as he was still rubbing his chest and cursing under his breath. "I think he likes you."
"What, because he didn't shatter my ribcage?"
"Yes, exactly," Potter said. "Because he could have. He really could have. I was at the Burrow once and we were both reaching for the same bread roll during dinner. He nearly dislocated my shoulder."
Draco took a large gulp of his drink, scanning the crowd. "What a mesmerizing story, Potter. Care to tell it again? My ears weren't finished bleeding."
Potter grinned and gave him a manly pat on the back. Draco had enough sense not to recoil. After all, how much longer did he have to put up with Potter and his sanctimonious muppets? After tonight, he'd be home sodding free. So tonight. Draco could bloody well put up with tonight.
"You almost sounded like you meant it. Maybe there's hope for you yet, Malfoy. Just think of what that could mean for wankers everywhere."
That's when he saw her. She had just walked in through the door, scanning her eyes over the crowd. She said hello to a few people. Draco wondered if she knew what she was here for – or if Potter (this was, undoubtedly, the work of Potter and Potter alone) had led her here under some false pretense, like, say, that he'd died in a freak accident and this was his wake.
She grabbed a drink from the bar before she saw them. Her eyes landed on Harry first, her face relaxing into a smile, before spotting Draco. The change in sentiment was instantaneous. Her facial muscles froze and her eyes hardened, but she slowly made her way over anyway. Draco watched her closely, pretending she was squeezing through the people to get to him, and him alone – a fact he was prepared to take with him to his grave. He took a very long drink.
"Hermione!" Potter greeted cheerily. "We're happy to see you've made it. Aren't we, Draco?"
Draco pretended not to feel Potter's pointy little elbow jam into his side. "Granger," he nodded coolly. Acting cool and detached, Draco had realized at the start of this stupid party, was his only defense to this situation with Granger. He couldn't let on that she affected him like she did. That was simply not the Malfoy way.
"Luna's over by the bar waving me over. So I'll leave you two children to kiss and make up, hm?" he said, giving them both an expectant Let's-try-and-be-mature-adults-about-this look. He could tell Granger refrained from every bodily urge to roll her eyes at him as he then brushed past, leaving them in the crowd alone to fester in the tension by themselves.
"I didn't think you'd come. Thought you'd be too busy accumulating more beige-colored items for your soulless flat," he drawled, though it was without the edge he usually reserved for his Granger-motivated insults.
"I wasn't going to. In fact, I was adamant about not going. But Harry refused to leave my office until I swore to him that I would come to your party tonight, and he was distracting my coworkers with his glorious Quidditch stories." She paused for a second, watching his face. "Ah, and look. Greeted by a familiar look of privileged nonchalance and ungratefulness. You do never cease to surprise me, Malfoy."
He scoffed. "What? And start being decent and amicable? Then what would we fight about?"
"Don't get ahead of yourself," she said. "You and me, Malfoy – we'll always have something to fight about. We're too different. We're like oil and water." Her voice got just a decibel quieter, something pulling over her face that he couldn't read – a look he wasn't quite used to getting from Granger. He felt a dip in his chest. "Things like that never change."
He intently stared at her. "Is that a promise?"
She pressed her lips together. "It's a fact. We've proven it, haven't we? That even with the war done and the halls of Hogwarts far away, there are just some bridges that can't be rebuilt. Maybe because there just wasn't a bridge to build in the first place." She shook her head. "I've wasted a lot of energy trying to figure that out." She straightened herself up. "I just wanted to let you know that. I'm glad you have your Manor back. It means it won't be very likely we'll be running into each other anymore."
He felt a sting that continued to throb even long after she'd turned away and started heading back out, weaving through the people, leaving his party. And then, finishing off the rest of his drink with one toss back, he set it aside and followed after her.
The streets were damp and shiny when he walked out of the bar, the air still heavy with moisture from the afternoon's downpour. The cacophony from the crowded bar became faint background noise to the frigid stillness and silence of the outside world. He spotted her as she was walking down the street, and he walked after her.
"You know what I can't stand about you, Granger?" he called out at her back, his voice sharp and loud against the quiet, and she froze. "That you think you fucking know everything, about everyone. But you don't, do you? So you pretend so you can write them off as a bloody loose end finally tied, all neat and impeccable just the way you like, and you can slumber peacefully at night in the little self-righteous bed you've eagerly made for yourself. You do it for one reason, and one reason only: so you, out of all the other miserable souls out here, can feel good about yourself."
She whipped around, her eyes flashing. "You think this was a party for me, Malfoy? Having to look after you while you behaved like an ungrateful, whiny, spiteful little dog? Open your fucking eyes! Nothing about this has ever felt good! Nothing about being around you has ever made me sleep well at night!"
"And you think it was any different for me?" he yelled back at her, his words rough like sandpaper against his tongue. "I'm in fucking agony, Granger! Every time I'm around you, I can feel my skin crawling, like it isn't even mine anymore! You come around and it's like I don't even know up from down! And you think that's a fucking festival for me?"
Confusion fled across her face, chasing away the anger. "Malfoy, what—"
"I'm in love with you," he finally said, his throat tight and throbbing. "And it's all your fault. So own up to it. Take responsibility for something so unsacred, because I know I can't."
The moments crawled by painfully, like a needle dragging across his skin. He could feel his blood roaring in his ears, blanketing the tense silence that bore heavily on his chest. He could see the revolving shock on her face, and he felt angry at it. Don't you know everything? Didn't you know this was going to happen? So take that stunned, innocent victim look off of your face, Granger. I don't buy it for one sodding second.
"Malfoy. . ." she said, her voice barely a tremble in the air. "I don't know what to say."
That you don't love me. That you can't wait for me to leave so you can laugh hysterically. That you hate me. That you can't even think of me without throwing up just a little bit.
It made his stomach acid churn uncomfortably and in a way that made something bile rise up his throat. "Then don't," is what he said. "That's the beautiful thing about living in this country, isn't it, Granger? You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."
The truth is that he had prepared himself for any lukewarm response of confusion and trepidation. Even so, that didn't mean it stung any less when it did come to pass. It still felt like she had peeled back his ribs and punched him right in the heart.
He went on, his voice low and strainingly measured.
"I know you're in love with Potter. I'm not stupid. Anybody with eyes and a bit of common sense can see that – but Potter can't. What does that say about Potter? Not that I'm badmouthing him. I owe him a lot. He actually likes me, which is more than I can probably say about you. But I have to be honest with you, Granger. He takes you for granted. I hate him for that, but I hate you, too – for letting him. For letting him walk all over you, day after day, and letting yourself shoot him those hopeful, pining looks when he's too blind to even notice them. I notice them, and it's taken me every ounce of strength and pathetically minimal self-control from giving you a fucking good shake to make you see that he's not worth it. Not worth the energy, the yearning, the waiting. Because I know that even if I did, it wouldn't matter. Because that's your decision – who to spend your precious time on. All I'm saying is that he doesn't get it. How special you are – because you are. In this incredibly annoying, infuriating way that makes me question every single fucking meaningless thing in this stupidly unjust world. And you shouldn't have to waste any more time doubting that."
He couldn't believe it. That he had just gone right out and said all of that. His pulse was on the fritz and maybe his head was on fire but he had meant every single word, which didn't exactly deter the fear that he knew he would soon feel creeping over him. The vulnerability. He had never confessed real feelings to anyone before, so the silence that greeted him afterwards was too overwhelming for him to handle. So he did what any real man would do: he left, and she didn't stop him, didn't even utter a sound. He knew that every single second of silence that he left tick by between them would only slowly strip him of his dignity, which was barely hanging in the balance even now.
He stumbled back into the bar, grateful for the senseless noise that swept over him. He ordered another drink and tossed that back – then ordered one after it, and tossed that back, too. He had half a mind to leave now and return to his Manor, where he could be alone, and far, far away from these idiotic, happy people that had absolutely nothing in common with him, aside from their unfortunate existence in the same senseless world.
"Tell me you apologized to her," Potter said, suddenly appearing next to him. "Tell me I didn't spend all that time in her office just so she could leave here in a huff hating your guts even worse than before."
"Fuck off, Potter," Draco said to the last man on earth he wanted to see right now. Really. He couldn't stand Potter before, fighting off evil while snarking off in their Potions classes like a glorified hero orphan, but now he just really wanted to forget he existed. He loved the girl that loved him. Wasn't that sad enough?
"Malfoy, honestly. I brought her here so that you two can finally let bygones be bygones, maybe even take a tequila shot or two together—"
"Potter, I'm really not in the mood to listen to your social project involving your childhood enemy and your boring best friend. Go gab about it to the ginger. Either one of them – or both, if your stars are smiling down on you."
"My second childhood enemy. My first childhood enemy was Voldemort. Don't flatter yourself," he said. "But listen. I think she's still outside, so maybe if I pretend to have gotten seriously injured—"
Draco couldn't stand his blabbing on anymore. He'd be a saint this far, honestly, putting up with Potter meddling in his business, trying to force them together like a little girl and her dolls. So he punched him. Not brutally hard, just enough to shut him up, and perhaps to restore a little bit of the balance in the world and get out a bit of his pent-up aggression. Right in the face. And it felt heavens-parting-the-clouds brilliant.
It was the surprise, more than anything, that knocked Potter down. Even though his glasses were slightly askew and his jaw was turning an alarming shade of red. But he didn't have time to register anything else more, because the crowd had stopped to look on, and before he could explain that he just needed Potter to shut up tonight about Granger, he caught a glimpse of ginger hair and Weasley's iron knuckles were suddenly burrowing themselves in his jaw, sending him backwards with the force of a small explosion.
On the floor he clutched his jaw, feeling the reverberations of his punch buzzing painfully in his nerve endings. His eyes actually did water a little from the excruciating blow, and no, he would never tell a soul that his punch made his stomach careen in his body. He still had his dignity to think of, after all. The shambles left of it, anyway.
"What the living fuck, Weasley?" he spat, blood spotting the floor under him.
He wished significant moments of pain (such as these) came with warnings. Who would've thought that falling in love would end up causing him so much trouble? It was beyond ridiculous. In fact, he was convinced it was so ridiculous that there wasn't even a word created to grasp its full ridiculousness in the English language just yet. And there were what – more than a billion words in it alone?
Wait a minute. Here was a word: Pathetic.
Weasley shook out his hand, towering above him. "Well, that felt good." He looked around at the stunned crowd. "Drinks, anyone?"
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