~

Thought of starting each entry with 'Dear Diary' then realized am no longer fourteen, nor a prat, so dismissed it and decided to just jump right in, as it were, to the heart of things.

I've been spending some time with Kyle McGraw after classes. We talk about his art and the future and where we see ourselves in ten years. He's always wanted to live in Scotland, to find some way to combine his mother's kind nature and his father's magic with the land they'd both loved so dearly. He hoped to open an art gallery with a back room that showcased the best of the wizarding world's answer to art, paintings that move and the like.

Kyle's got a lot of ambition and the drive to back it up. He says we (as people, in general) can do anything as long as we set our minds to it. I'd like to think he's right. I hope he's right. It's about the only chance I've got. Kyle says I'm too hard on myself, that I've got my whole life ahead of me with nothing standing in my way. He doesn't see my family's financial straits as an obstacle, because as far as he's concerned, as long as they're alive I'll have all the support I could possibly need.


Haven't mentioned Draco Malfoy to Kyle. Once or twice, he asked me why I spent so much time with "that rat" and I mumbled something about Draco being different than he thinks and then quickly changed the subject.

The thing is, I'm not so sure Draco is all that different than other people think. Maybe I've created a Draco Malfoy in my head that doesn't even exist. Maybe I just wanted to see something good in him so badly, wanted to believe he was complex and tortured, that I overlooked the most simple explanation: he's just an obnoxious, spoilt brat and my refusal to accept this glaring fact is a symptom of my wholly inappropriate attraction to him.

Which brings me back around to Kyle. He's seemingly everything I should want, everything Draco is not. Sweet, kind, considerate, concerned about my well being . . . so why aren't I crazy, knock me on my arse in love with him? Why?

~

Have figured out why I'm not in love with Kyle McGraw. Suicide is now a viable option. Will detail later once hands stop shaking

~

Several things of note happened today.

After classes, Kyle McGraw kissed me. We were sitting in the library, going over our Arithmancy homework, and he just suddenly leaned over and kissed me. It was a rather nice kiss, as kisses go (not that I'm an expert, having only been kissed before by Draco Malfoy -- know what, never mind, I don't want to think about that) -- soft and sweet, and I was certain he meant every bit of it. The only thing wrong with the kiss, really, was me:

I couldn't kiss him back.

Now let me be perfectly clear: I wanted to want to kiss him back. But I couldn't. Something inside of me totally and completely rebelled against the idea, something I can't even name. It just felt wrong to have Kyle's lips pressed against mine. Kyle's my friend, the only friend, other than Ezra, who actually likes me for me, and not because I'm Ron's kid sister. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, but I also couldn't lie to him.

The kiss ended when Kyle realized I wasn't participating to the fullest, and he looked rueful and sad at the same time.

"Guess those weren't really 'kiss me now, you big studly man' signals you were sending out, after all," he'd said with a self-deprecating grin.

"Kyle," I tried to say, but nothing would come out, beyond his name. "Kyle," I tried again, but it was no good. Every other word had been wiped from my brain. I felt awful and awkward and like the extra-filthy scum that sticks to the regular scum on the bottom of your shoe; like that slimy stuff that coats the Mandrakes when they're fully grown.

Why didn't I want him to kiss him? Why didn't he make my heart beat faster, and my knees weak, and my whole being become focused on him and his stormy gray eyes . . .

I'll tell you why: Because Kyle's eyes are GREEN and I am totally and utterly doomed.

I think I got out a few more mournful 'Kyle's before he started gathering his books together, mumbling excuses about how he'd promised to meet a friend of his who needed help in Divination.

Then he did something I will never forget for the rest of my life. Something that really should have made me love him, or at least want him a little bit, a little, tiny bit, but it didn't, which caused me to feel even more horrible than I already did. He must have seen how wretched I looked, because he smiled, a crooked, lovely smile, leaned over to me and kissed me on the temple.

"It'll all turn out right in the end," he whispered into my ear. It was like he knew, without really knowing, the source of my confusion and turmoil.

"Will it?" I asked him helplessly. It would seem at that point that my powers of speech returned to me.

"It has to, doesn't it?" Kyle reasoned in his pleasant, comforting brogue as he slid away from the table. "Everyone's rooting for that redheaded girl."

And then he was gone, before I could thank him for being so decent when he really wasn't obligated to. I sat in the library with my chin propped in my hand for maybe a minute before I felt someone sit down beside me again.

"What have you done to all of my sweaters?"

I knew it was him, too. Damnedest thing, really, but I knew before he even opened his mouth. No one walks into a room like Draco does. He doesn't make a show of himself, he's silent really, like some sort of lean jungle cat stalking its prey. Yet the very minute he arrives, you can tell he's there. Maybe the air shifts for him. Maybe it's a Malfoy family secret.

"You said you wanted them monogrammed," I pointed out, feeling something spark to life inside of me. How strange, that it was almost like getting a second wind whenever Draco spoke to me.

"Yes, with my name," Draco seethed.

"I've heard loads of people call you every one of those names before," I insisted with a little grin.

He was quiet for a moment and so was I, going over my Potions homework. I've tried to work out just what it is that Draco does to me, seemingly to my entire nervous system, and this is the closest I can come:

It's as though he consumes me so totally just by sitting near me, by making it so I'm breathing in the same air that he is, that every part of me is aware of him, hyper aware, even, to the point that I can concentrate completely on something else, while still giving Draco's presence my full attention.

I don't understand it and I have no idea what it means. Or at least, I didn't use to know what it means. Oh, God.

Then he said, "Was that young Kyle I saw leaving?"

My cheeks had reddened a little. How long had Draco been there? Had he seen Kyle kiss me? My hair falling around my face, I took a chance and looked at Draco out of the corner of my eye. He appeared calm and in control, but when I glanced down at his leg, I noticed his foot was tapping ever so slightly; a sure sign of impatience. Then I looked up at his face and noticed something interesting: his face wasn't moving. Not a tick, not a blink, not the crook of a sadistic sneer.


That sort of stillness just wasn't natural, and when I got a look at his eyes, just as still as the rest of him, I realized something:

Draco Malfoy was furious. Not just furious, either; livid.

With me.

Perhaps I went too far with the monogram that proclaimed him 'Obtuse Prig.'

"He's not that young," I said, trying to focus on the conversation. "In fact, he's a month older than I am."

"Well, if he's a month older," Draco had said nastily.

"Have you got a point?" I wondered, "or are you just here on an errand of general nastiness?"

"My point," he hissed, leaning in so that his face was pressed against my hair, his mouth near my ear, "is that you've ruined dozens of my sweaters with your pathetic, childish prank."

"I'll fix them," I whispered, unsettled by his nearness, by his anger, by how much I should fear him and how much I just didn't.

That in itself was reason enough to be terrified.

"I don't want you to fix them," he muttered, his hand moving to my knee. He parted my robe so that his palm rested against bare skin, then stroked just so. God. I really don't want to think about how it felt, how his hand on me always feels. "I want you to make it up to me," he continued right next to my ear.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn't even say 'Draco' the way I'd said 'Kyle,' for fear that I'd say his name too loudly, or make some embarrassing noise because then, his fingers began drawing little patterns against the inside of my knee and it tickled and I wanted to giggle and hide my face in his chest and it wouldn't have been at all appropriate for me to do either of those things.

"How?" was what I finally managed to choke out.

"Haven't decided yet," he said casually, as though his fingers weren't at that very moment moving higher and higher up my thigh. "Any suggestions?"

"Uh . . . I could bake you a nice cake?"

I realize that was possibly the most inane thing I could have said, but I was extremely distracted and trying not to show it even though I'm almost positive he could tell.

"No, I don't fancy you slipping arsenic into the icing," he said in a dismissive voice. "Don't worry about it. I'll think of something." Then, he took his hand out from under my robe, placed his fingers around my chin and turned my head toward him.

Though I tried to play it cool, I know I tried to pull away, nervously glancing around the library to see if anyone could see.

"No one's watching," he whispered, stroking my jaw the same way he'd been stroking the inside of my knee earlier. "Nice day outside, who'd be in here if they didn't have to be?" My eyes were closed, but I felt him smile, I swear, I did. "Unless, of course, they had something -- or someone -- much more interesting to do."

I opened my mouth to protest such a lewd (and, honestly, lame) innuendo, but that's when he apparently got it into his head to kiss me and I couldn't think straight when he was doing that, really couldn't think much at all, and I think I might have even sighed in relief, because while I hadn't wanted to admit it, I'd been wanting him to kiss me since he sat down.

Draco was right; the library had been deserted, except for Kyle and me earlier, and Madam Pince was at her desk and couldn't see us where we were, shadowed by stacks and stacks of books. There was a loud scraping sound and I realized it was Draco dragging my chair against his so that he could pull me against him. I was barely in my chair at all, instead sitting sideways between his legs, because of course, Draco Malfoy couldn't sit in his chair properly, no, he always had to sit sideways, all the better to drive a girl out of her mind with his breath on the side of her face . . .

One of his hands were in my hair, angling my head this way and that while he kissed me; the other rested over my stomach, my robes once again parted, his hand beneath the light blouse I'd been wearing beneath them, stroking my belly in these tiny little circles. I fisted one of my hands in his hair at some point and it was like we were mauling each other right there in the library, and I swear, I couldn't get enough of him. My free hand decided that if he could put his hands down my robes, I was perfectly within my rights to return the favor, and let me tell you this: the skin on his chest is so smooth and soft I wanted to rip all his clothes off and rub my face against it, even though, in retrospect, I'm a little disturbed that it felt the same against my hand in reality as it had in my dream.

It was just so intense. He was everywhere, I was breathing him and tasting him and feeling him and I felt like I never wanted to be anywhere else, doing anything else but surrounding myself in Everything Draco. I'm almost embarrassed to realize where things were heading. He felt so angry to me, and while that terrible stillness had left him, there remained such tension in him, tension I was genuinely sorry my infantile temperament had caused. I wanted to ease that tension away, to take the pain and anger that clung to him before I ever got there with it, but I didn't know how, or if he'd let me, or if he even wanted me to.

The hand that had been on my stomach made acquaintance with my left breast, which was quite easy to find in the position we were in, and I moaned into his mouth as he cupped it, pressed myself closer to him.

I'm fairly certain of what would have happened if someone hadn't cleared their throat.

We both froze, eyes shut tightly, sure that we'd been caught doing illicit things around her books by Madam Pince. There was nothing she hated more than students doing illicit things around her books, with the possible exception of loud giggling in the library.

But it wasn't Madame Pince; it was so much worse than Madame Pince. It was the one person who'd be inside the library when she didn't have to be when it was such a lovely day outside: Hermione.

One of her eyebrows were raised and her mouth was opened in a small 'o' of surprise. I jumped away from Draco as if he'd burned me, then felt cold when I wasn't touching him anymore. I felt even colder when I got a look at his eyes again. If anything, he looked angrier than he had before. I felt guilty and awful and confused and . . . well . . . really turned on.

"Mr. Malfoy," Hermione said in this crisp, scary tone I knew would cause future generations of Granger/Potter children to cringe in terror, "would you be so kind as to give us a moment alone?"

"Girl talk, right, Granger?" Draco sneered. He tried to catch my eye, but I refused to look at him; had no idea what I'd do or say if I was forced to look into the serpent's eyes. "When, exactly, did you turn into a girl? Was it that week I was in the infirmary last year?"

Hermione's lips had thinned and she narrowed her eyes at Draco. "You mean when Harry threw you off balance and you fell a hundred feet off your broom, and only didn't die because he managed to save you?" Hermione said sweetly.

So last year, Draco and Harry's sixth, Slytherin and Gryffindor were once again competing for the Quidditch Cup. Draco and Harry both kept spotting the Snitch at the same time, diving for it, and having to pull out to keep from slamming into one another. They were getting really into it, and not just in the usual 'I hate you, Potter,' 'Yeah, I hate you, too, Malfoy' spitting contest way they usually did -- they were having fun. Everyone could tell, even Ron who'd taken to commenting during the games with Blaise Zabini.

It was the longest Quidditch game we'd ever played here at Hogwarts -- Hermione and I were sitting next to each other in the stands, and it went on for nearly seventy-eight hours. The teachers had to bring food up from the castle (and don't think McGonagall and Snape weren't bitter about missing part of the game to do so), and everyone would doze off against everyone else's shoulders from time to time. Thank goodness it wasn't raining.

Pure dumb luck that Draco lost and Harry won; Harry even said so afterward. He went to visit Draco in the infirmary. I still don't know what they said to each other, but after that, they weren't nearly as arch-enemy-like as they used to be. Draco started to mellow after his fifth year, after some business with his father and Voldemort and something Harry and Ron and Hermione were really vague about. Mostly, they ignored each other. After that game, though, the Quidditch matches got really interesting, because it was like Harry felt the need to play as well as he possibly could to be worthy of playing against Draco, and Draco felt the same.

At least, that's how I see it.

Hermione and I talked about it once, and she agreed, which is why she chose to make that particular barb at Draco -- she knew it wouldn't score a direct hit, but would make Draco just irritated enough to leave.

Sure enough, it caused him to push away from the table and glare at her insolently.

"Tell your boyfriend I'm looking forward to the match tomorrow," he said sincerely, "and that I'm desperately sorry he's got such a harpy for a girlfriend."

Hermione rolled her eyes. As soon as Draco was out of earshot, she plopped down beside me, leaned in close, and said "Has that troll put some sort of love spell on you? Because if he has, I swear, I'll have him locked away in Azkaban."

"I wish it were a spell," was all I'd been able to say before bursting into tears.

Now, I'm not normally a hysterical sort of girl; I rarely cry, as, having grown up with six older brothers, I learned at a very young age that I had to be tough if they were ever going to respect me or give me even a shred of independence. But I cried then; I cried and I cried, and Hermione's shock gave way to sympathy, and she wrapped her arms around me and told me it was okay, that everyone would be okay, that she would see to it.

While I was bawling, Hermione offered to tell Harry and Ron that "Malfoy" had been messing with my head and I sprang back from her.

"No!" I said emphatically. "You can't, Hermione, swear it."

"I swear," Hermione said, looking utterly confused. I knew exactly how she felt. "I just . . . I don't understand, Gin."

"It started out as an arrangement," I sobbed in a whisper, so as not to alert Madame Pince. "It was just supposed to be so I could get into this stupid club and he agreed, which was a lot more decent than I ever thought he could be. And then we started spending time together and even though he was a total prat he was also sort of good to me and my skin gets all hot when I'm near him and I can't quite catch my breath. Then he started telling me things he'd never told anyone before and he kissed me and I lost it a bit and tried being in love with Kyle, but it wasn't a serious try, because I know you can't really try to be in love with someone, you either are or you aren't and he hates me, Hermione, not Kyle, but Draco, it's awful because he's so mean to me and he kisses me like he means it but he doesn't because he HATES me and I'm nothing to him and oh, Hermione, I think I love him so much."

Hermione and I have never been really close friends. I've always gotten the impression that she puts up with me for Ron's sake. But she was a real friend to me earlier and for no other reason than I think that she felt bad for me, finally understood where I was coming from (even though I didn't even understand) and just wanted to help.

Among other pieces of advice, Hermione pointed out that I couldn't very well mean nothing to Draco if he hated me so much. I imagine that was meant to make me feel better, but instead, I'm left feeling somewhat hollow. I shouldn't love Draco for a thousand reasons and I don't want to love him . . . but I do. And there's some oddly compelling physical attraction between us, and I know he feels it, too, and he clearly hates me for it and for even suggesting this stupid bargain in the first place. I wish I'd never heard of the sodding Order and I wish I'd never heard of Draco Malfoy.

I wonder what he's going to make me do to make up for his sweaters. I wonder when he'll make me do it. I wonder if he'd be able to love me if I were in Slytherin. I wonder if I'd find him so attractive if he were in Gryffindor.

I wonder if he's ever going to kiss me again and mean it.

~