I don't have to avoid her eyes, she doesn't surreptitiously look at me, she doesn't feel my eyes on her, she never looks my way. Whenever my eyes stray toward the Gryffindor table Potter glowers at me and tells her and the weasel. The weasel squints nearsightedly at me. Or whatever. I don't why I keep looking over there.

After Granger's fainting spell Potter came to find me. Like I had something to do with it. "I saw you staring, what did you do, Malfoy? What did you do this time? I saw you outside the infirmary too. What are you up to? You think that," he flicked the badge on my chest, "will protect you?" It would have - but I - but I could barely think. The lies wouldn't come. I did this. I did it. I had stood behind the curtain by her bed -

"Animal, animal, animal - " She said it in her sleep.

It made me sick.

It was cheap, I got bored and I threw it away. Now I go back to who I was, who I have always - who I never stopped being.

I wish I'd slept with Pansy before Granger. Would it have been like that? Would I have been wondering what Pansy's eyes were really looking at? Would I have been wondering if she was a marionette come to life playing at sex?

It's like I have forgotten how to be. Theo said I took it too far with some second year - I don't know -- too mean, too many shoves, too tenacious? Something about a student ending up at Madam Pomfrey's, frantic parents, " - could have been expelled - " "What?" "For fuck's sake Draco, you could have been expelled - "

I am sure father took care of it.

" - can't imagine what your father must have paid to fix this - " " - without Umbridge - " " - he must be fuming mad - "

"Are you even listening, Draco? Hello? Is anyone in there?"

Theo's waving his hand in front of my face. I don't know where it comes from but I'm on my feet and I grab his shoulder, push it back and punch him. He flies back in a way that a wand may have been able to justify. I'm leaking magic like a child. Blood is pouring from his nose. The common room is dead silent. Theo is wiping his hand across his face and when it comes away bloody he looks up at me "What the fuck, Draco?"

Yes, what the fuck, Draco.

I leave the common room. I need to find her.

It's past curfew. I have no idea how to get to the Gryffindor dorms so I head toward the owlery.

It's beautiful here at night. You can see the stars above the parapet. There's the birdshit, but it's windy, it blows the smell away and makes it colder than a witch's tit.

I never fucked her up here.

Or after curfew.

Would I have known what she felt if I'd ever bothered talking to her at all? Would I have known why she checks out and makes sex into some kind of exam, looking up at me to see if she passed? Why am I still thinking about this?

I write, "Granger, we need to talk. D," on a piece of parchment and tie it to one of the owl's legs and off it flies. It occurs to me that maybe a place would have been helpful. I wrap my robes around me. Whether I said where won't matter if she doesn't reply anyway. I count stars. You can see draco to the north. One, two, three - fourteen stars - there are more than fourteen, you just can't see them -

In the common room Theo had said something about a second year drinking too much sleeping drought and a letter about hating life. I think I remember now, some girl in rags for robes and some kind stain on her cheek, some birthmark or something hideous. I'm supposed to - I'm here to be the obstacle to overcome - I'm an automaton performing in the hardship play - you're smart and I'm supposed to make you doubt yourself and in the end you survive.

"Focillo."

It'll keep me warm for a bit. Fourteen stars - I'm a defeated giant thrown onto the sky by a goddess - or maybe I used to guard golden apples - there is an apple in the pocket of my robes. I took it at dinner. Golden apples it is then. Gamma Draconis. I wouldn't mind being frozen up there.

I used to enjoy being me. It used to be fun to see what my words could do. At some point I started to have to pretend, but I could push the disorientation down with Blaise', Pansy' and Theo's laugh. If they laugh, it's funny. I know I am vain, I am afraid. And hurting, that's easy, and when Marcus laughs it means I've done alright. I am good.

I want something different and I can feel how the possibility of changing drifts further away every time I say " - my father will hear about this." The joke's on me more and more. Here I am, little pathetic me, just trying to hold on, trying to bolster my crumbling self by pushing students toward suicide and yearning desperately for the Slytherin approval which will surely restore me -

"Malfoy?"

"Why did you come?" She seems thrown by the question, which seems reasonable because I sure am.

I can't talk. I can't jerk off. I can't talk. I am helpless. I hope she'll wait until I can sort my brain out. "Because you sent an owl," she says at last.

Unable to hold her eye I stare at my feet. "Did you do something to me?" Silence.

"Other than fuck you?" The word hits me and I stagger. I am supposed to say that, because that's what I feel, she's supposed to - I don't want her to think of it like that -

I'm not a fucking idiot. Blustering to myself, keeping up appearances in my head is pointless once you've figured out that's what you're doing. I can admit to myself that I don't want it to be nothing to her. Is it nothing to me? I honestly don't know. Standing in a freezing owlery in the middle of the night staring at my feet like an abashed child would suggest otherwise. I make myself look her into the eyes.

"Yes, other than fuck me."

The fuck comes out so reluctabtky. I wonder if it was the thrill, was it the thrill of the bad boy. Did she want to lure and control the one who'd been hurting her? "Did you want to show me that making you cry was nothing compared to what you could do to me?" Was that why it had become more and more clear that I was the only person in the room, because she wanted to prove something? Would she have slept with me if I hadn't made fun of her teeth?

There is something in her eyes, and I must have said some of that out loud, but I don't know which part. Maybe all of it? I almost hex her. I want to yell gotcha, and follow it up with something plausibly mean. I'm supposed to hex her, that's who I am supposed be. I am supposed to hurt her so she can win in the end. But I can't, I'm just standing here trembling in the cold, waiting.

"You have plenty of power, Malfoy, mine certainly didn't prevent you from pushing me down the stairs." It's very hard to keep looking into her eyes. The only thing that makes it possible is the thought that maybe she'll never let me again.

"Is that why - " and I don't know what to do with that sentence, is that why you did it, so I'd stop wanting to, to make me care and make me look like a fool - Gryffindor ? What's going on with you, Draco? A mudblood? I don't know who you are anymore.

"I don't understand. We had sex. You didn't seem particularly invested beyond sex and you put an end to it."

"Did you want to - the sex - " She seems taken aback.

"Yes."

"Did you enjoy it?" This time she's more than taken aback. There's something in -

"Please tell me, Granger." I don't know where this is coming from. I am afraid she'll say no. I'll lose the grip on myself if she says no, maybe I'll fall, maybe it'll hurt.

"I - " she's struggling, I don't know what with. The way she touched me, moved over me, how it had felt to be inside her washes over me. I have to brace myself against the wall.

"I don't think you did," I say. And I can hear how raw my voice is. She steps back. She thinks it's because I'm angry and she's raising her defenses. Maybe she's preparing to say "it's me, not you." I want to move, but my feet are rooted to the floor, my hand to the wall, my eyes are fixed on hers.

I have made her cry again, and I don't know how. I remember what she smells like, how soft her skin is, how she wouldn't let me -

I don't know what do -

"What do you want from me?"

"Nothing."

She nods and I can hear feet against the stone steps, they grow fainter until the restless owls fill the night with shifting wings and claws scraping and soft hooting. I never used to regret things, but I am afraid I will always regret that nothing.

I run.

"Granger -"

"Hermione," there is a pressure in my chest, I'm so fucking afraid, that she won't stop, that she will, and if then what? Do I hold her, do I convince her I want something, that I want her to feel something, that I want her to want me? Can I love you in secret so I don't have to face the scorn -

She stops and turns to me and I wonder if I called those things after her. And I think maybe it wouldn't be so bad because it holds all the fear and all the need and she'd know.

"I want to see you." She comes toward me, there's something calculating in her eyes, and she touches me experimentally.

And it hurts so much I double over as if she's punched me."No - not like that - " I almost fall against the wall.

"I want to see you. I want you to - " What is this desperation? I want to run away, I want to press her against me, I want to -

"I want to see you until you want me for real, until you care enough to let me give back."

"I need, I need - " I am gasping and I don't know where all the feelings are coming from.

She is holding me and the way in which I will ruin this, the things I will do tomorrow or the next day when I turn this need, her generosity, this, this, beginning of something that's maybe love - tomorrow or the day after I will turn this into deception, a cruel joke, it makes my face wet.

"Hermione, please, please help me - let me - "