Title: I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
Author: Tiny Q
E-Mail: one_legged_lesbian_seagull@hotmail.com
A/N: Well, this was my fourth attempt to write that first person story I mentioned at the beginning of Trees, if you still remember that. Well, it didn't really happen the way I wanted it to. Again. Well, didn't really happen is a touch of an understatement considering it has turned into OOC fluff. It's all Lallie's fault I tell you. But her conversation with me inspired the ending, so I suppose I should thank her. Her and her "natural happiness". Bah. It really beats the angst right out of you. Oh well, enjoy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I suppose the plot, though it is riddled with clichés. 'Crocodile Rock' is Elton John's and though I would like it to be my own cause it's fun, it sadly is still his. And I definitely do not own any references to Aerosmith's ever lovely song. Go download it and feel warm and fuzzy today!
I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
~*~
All I ever really wanted was to be loved, you know. I never really wanted anything else than to be loved with no strings attached. To not be loved simply because it was an obligation of my family to love me or to be told I was loved by a boyfriend who simply wanted sex. I just wanted someone to tell me that they loved me and they truly did because they wanted to. Because they thought I was beautiful inside and out. But I never found it. I never received the only true desire I ever had.
I don't even know why I bother anymore. Why I bother hoping that this stupid dream of mine will come true. I mean really, how could I expect that some lovey-dovey song would come true? That's where it all started really, from a song. Why would anyone ever think that they would want to stay awake just to hear me breathing? Or to simply claim that they didn't want to miss a thing? Perhaps there was a reason why the Pure Blood fanatics are pushing us to keep Muggle influences away from ourselves. They give you ideas like this. Ideas that simply tear your life apart.
I never really had a very high self-esteem. Six brothers that always belittle you or try to protect you like you are some incompetent damsel will do that I suppose. Even when I stood up to them they just knocked me down with their taunts. That is probably why I had felt the need to run to him, to run to my secret friend. To Tom Riddle. He seemed to understand me, to care and support me in ways that my brothers had failed. He had told me what I needed to know to be strong.
It's a pity that that all unraveled. Not that it had lasted very long. As soon as I realized his plight I crawled back within myself. I was horrified that I had let myself be tricked by that monster. I was even more horrified that the real reason I had let him trick me was because he reminded me so much of Harry. The one and only Great Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived.
I got over him, I really did. And I did it quietly, finding myself Michael. He was a nice guy, he really was but things didn't work out. It really didn't affect me that much. No, I pulled myself together. Somehow I knew that it would never be his voice in my ear whispering those words I longed to hear. Dean was much the same matter. Up until then the dating scene had been a relatively nice place. It really had. Until Mr. Fantastic Potter decided to step in.
I know the guy is disturbed, and he has every right to be, losing almost everyone who was ever a parent figure to him, but what he did wasn't fair. He came onto me you know, and Ron, my marvelous brother, had no objections to this. But I kept him away. I had gotten over him. I had. I saw him as a brother, and really, how couldn't I have? But when I refused his advances he got mad. He got very mad and began to scream in his usual angry way. And he had demanded how it was possible that I could fawn over him for years and then when he actually cared I was throwing myself at any male creature with two legs.
I hit him.
What else was I to do? And then I ran. I had never seen him so angry. And I hated him for it. I HATED him. A good thing came of that day though. That was the day I found this place. My little cliff. It's a wonderful place really; it overlooks the forest, allowing me to ignore the school that is behind me and around a bend. It lets me have the option to end it all in a watery grave.
I've found myself wondering if this option would really be worth taking. I keep having this desperate feeling in my heart that I will miss something. That I will be ending the game too soon. Ending it before I can find out what will happen in my life. I honestly think I really want to live, to grow old and find my happiness. To find a job and a man I can grow old with and live that fabled happily ever after life. Even though I know there are no happily ever afters in this world. Something will always go wrong. Terribly wrong. So perhaps it would be better just to end it, to allow the darkness to remove my pains and my loneliness. But that would be cowardly really. I can't take the world so I'll just beat myself before it has the chance to beat me. If I think of it that way it might even sound like I am trying to be a martyr. Now there's a thought.
"Today's not the day, is it?" his voice rang through the air as I stood there on the edge as I always did. When it all started I had told him that I was thinking of doing it. That I was certain that one of these days I really would. I think I told him that simply to scare him off. But then he had scared me after a few encounters that if I did jump that he would have to jump in after me, for I was all that he had left. I suppose that that is another reason I have never done it, because I would hurt him. And I don't want to be another person who does. He's been too hurt over the years, too abused, for me to add to it.
"No," I replied, smiling slightly as his warm presence stood beside me. "No, Draco, I don't think it is."
"Good," he replied, his posture shifting ever so slightly. "I wasn't looking forward to getting my shoes wet today." With that he lapsed into silence.
It's such a queer relationship that we have. We never talk about good things really, just the bad. Which makes our relationship a rather sadistic one. We dwell on terrible things, never really trying to find a solution to it all. Just floating in our misery and realizing that perhaps we are not so different after all. That we both have things in our past that make it impossible for us to be completely normal. Or what the rest of the world would like to think is normal.
Malfoy's not evil. Despite what the world would like to think, he's not. He was raised to be his father's heir. He has mentioned this on several occasions with much bitterness in his voice. He had been trained from birth to respect his father and to look up to him without question. And he had. Now his father was an evil man, no question about that. And for his evilness he had wound up in Azkaban where he spent the rest of his short and miserable life. It was a pity really that he didn't suffer much longer. Then he might have received a better sense of just how much damage he did to people. People like me. Or his own son.
As soon as Lucius died, Draco had been left in charge of the estate, of all his father's evil belongings. It seemed his father had not planned on dieing quite so early in his life for he had left it all to his son, his heir. And though Draco was of age at the time and had been trained in what to do, it had crushed him. The ministry had taken everything they suspected of being related to the Dark Arts and tore his Manor apart in the process. He had been questioned relentlessly about his actions, and his father's actions and those of his mother's. It was a terrible way to treat a boy who had just lost his father to a place he would never return from. But he had survived. Draco was a survivor; his father wouldn't have had it any other way.
I sudden and violent onslaught of coughs rocked my average form, causing me to teeter back and forth. I have been fighting this damn cold for the past three weeks. I still am not quite sure why I haven't gone to see Madame Pomfrey. I am beginning to suspect that I like the feeling of not being entirely real.
Malfoy looked at me in concern and I felt suddenly guilty.
"It's just a cough," I offered as though it were a peace offering.
"Yeah," he sneered at me, frowning with the concern that only shines through for me. "Just a cough that turns in to just a terminal illness." He frowned further. "You shouldn't be standing out here, Weasley."
"Neither of us should," I hissed back. "There should be no reason that the world we live in should have chassed us out here. Forced us to take refuge on a fucking cliff." I often rant like this. It just comes out naturally when I am around him. I always keep it all bottled up inside around everyone else, but he seems to know how to take the cork out. And I bet he doesn't even know how he does it. But then, he's not too silent himself.
"That's the way the world is, weasel," he said simply, yet bitterly. "The majority rule. We, unfortunately, are not the majority."
"Well it shouldn't mater," I said angrily, kicking at a rock. "I'm sick of how the world is constantly bringing me down. How it constantly belittles others because of what they are so that others will feel better. There is so much bloody prejudice everywhere I look and it disgusts me. And the more I think about it the more I realize that our world wants conflict. That we could never live peacefully in a happy world for we would always be looking for something to hate. For something that would seem more real that the blessed happiness we have. How can this be sane? How can we live in a world that works like this, Draco? How can our world be so fucked up?"
"I don't know, but where else do you propose we go?" he offered. I saw his fists clench up. Obviously he had been thinking about this as well. "We can't leave the planet. We're stuck here. We're stuck with all the anger and the hate. And all we can do is try to learn to live with it. We have to try and adapt." He turned to me slightly. "We have to try and find something that is better than what they are offering, despite the prospect that the world might try and take it away-
"Ginny, you look so cute when you write like that," Colin Creevey's voice sliced through Ginny's angst ridden manuscript. She turned her head up from where it was hovering about three inches above her parchment and glared at her mousy haired friend. Her mousy haired friend who had apparently decided to visit her in her usual haunt: an abandoned classroom with a lovely bay window. "How can you see?"
"I can see just fine, thank you," she growled, annoyance filling her. She could feel the angst inside her slipping away. It was like water slipping through your hand when it disappears like that. And it was ever so hard to get back. Ginny turned her head away from her friend and looked mournfully down on her rather short life's story. She would have to start from the beginning now to keep the coherence. And this had been her fourth attempt. And I will give you three guesses as to who was the reason for this. He was grinning at her like he didn't have a care in the world too.
"You just threw off my angst groove," she grumbled at him, glaring a little harder but feeling like a stressed out and fatigued person in sweat pants after a nasty final exam. As to why she suddenly felt like that was beyond her. "Again."
"Sorry," Colin replied, seeming to have to grace to look embarrassed. He gave her a sympathetic look. "It's not my fault that I'm naturally happy."
"I know," Ginny hissed bitterly. "But do you have to spread it around like a disease? I am trying to write here." She gestured to her parchment which the sandy blonde looked at with sudden interest.
Without even asking if he could, he reached out and took it in his camera solution stained hands and began to read. Ginny knew it was hopeless to try and get it back. He would just stand up and hold it over his head as usual. And it wasn't like Ginny was that short herself, but the boy was like an excessively tall tree. And skinny like a toothpick to boot. If only she could pull off that slimness as easily as he did. It would save her hours in exercising.
After a bit Colin looked up at her and frowned. "This isn't how it happened at all!" he exclaimed, waving the parchment about. It drifted after his hand like a pathetic fish on a leash. Ginny couldn't help but stare longingly at it. "All that really happened was that you had been sitting there and the prat came and sat beside you. And of course, you being you, just had to engage him in conversation leading to where you are now. No angst, no melodrama, no nothing!"
"What do you mean, me being me?" she hissed, turning her eyes from her manuscript to her friend.
"Oh come on," he growled at her. "You talk to everyone, whether they want to talk to you or not!" Ginny faked a hurt look. "Not that that is a bad thing," he amended quickly.
"Oh sure," she said miserably, trying to hide a grin. "Perhaps you were wrong. Maybe you really create angst but keep it under wraps until you really want to inflict some pain."
"Damn," Colin swore. "She caught on. Well I guess we'll have to switch to plan B then, voice number twenty seven."
"And what would plan B entail?" Ginny asked, grinning slightly at her frowning friend, who seemed to be concentrating on what his twenty seventh voice was saying to him.
"Kill the girl," he hissed at her, then lunged.
Ginny let out a shriek of surprise as Colin landed on her, knocking her back on the bench. She shrieked again, but this time with laughter, as she felt his hands travel the lengths of her sides, making her squirm.
"Ahh!" she gasped, amongst laughs. "Colin! Stop tickling me!" She tried to swat at him but it didn't help. The excessively tall tree boy had his mind set on tickling and there was nothing to do to escape, even as she rolled onto her stomach and tried to worm her way away. That only left her hips open as handles to pull her back, giving him an even more ample tickling areas. "Stop!"
"You know," a voice suddenly drawled to their right, causing the both Gryffindors to stop their squealing and tickling. "If you have to ravish my girlfriend, could you at least have the decency to do it somewhere that I don't frequent?"
Colin paused, looking at the new arrival. "No," he replied simply and continued with his tickling campaign. Ginny let out another shriek.
"Draco!" she cried, trying harder to squirm away, yet it didn't help. That stupid sandy blonde was far too quick for her. "Help me!"
"Nope," the silver blonde drawled, lounging back against the wall. "You're on your own, Red."
"I hate you both," she cried, tears running down her face, laughing the whole time. "Why must you torment me?!"
"Because if we didn't you would be left to your own devices," Draco drawled lazily, striding forward. For an instant Ginny thought he was going to save her from her fate of laughing to death, but he stopped about two feet too short and stooped down. "And then you create stuff like this."
Ginny let out a particularly loud shriek as Colin's hands drifted to an extremely sensitive spot that sent her curling into a ball. It only made his attacks more purposeful, as he seemed to realize exactly where she was the most ticklish. "Colin!" she let out, laughing hopelessly.
"Ah, so it's us this time, is it?" Draco drawled, standing just far enough back that her flailing arms couldn't connect with his legs. "I don't remember it happening this way. You were just sitting there quietly, humming some stupid song about crocodiles."
"The professor doesn't know that!" she let out, squealing right after it, feeling like her sides were going to split any moment now.
"I am still not liking this new DADA prof," the blonde said slowly, still looking down at her manuscript. "How can a defense teacher offer creative writing classes? It just doesn't work."
"I agree," Colin said, slightly out of breath, but still relentlessly tickling the red head beneath him. "Just look at what he's making her produce. OW!"
"What?" Draco demanded, finally looking at the couple in concern.
"She bit me!"
"Then stop tickling me!" Ginny howled, now resorting to hitting at his hands which had frozen on her sides.
"All you had to do was ask," he muttered resentfully, releasing her. He sat up and glared moodily at her as Ginny pulled herself up and sat beside him, looking more than a little disheveled and panting as though she had been holding her breath for minutes.
"And Professor Lobbling is a fantastic teacher in both fields," she turned her glare to Draco. "And just because he's a defense teacher doesn't mean he can't have an artistic soul."
"Right," he drawled at her then plopped down on the bench beside her.
It was quite an interesting image really. The three of them sitting there on a padded bench before the winter frosted window. The tallest of the trio looking rather rumpled and flushed in the face as though he had run a marathon. Then there was the shortest of the three, looking as though she had just been through a hurricane, or at the very least, a might windstorm, the way her hair and clothes were sticking in odd places. And then finally there was the pristine blonde who looked as though he had just come out of a drycleaners his clothes were so neat.
"I hate you both," she muttered at them again, letting her head drop and glaring at her flushed hands.
"No you don't," Draco said as cheerfully as a Malfoy could, which meant that there was no drawl or sneer in his voice. Ginny felt his warm arm wrap around her shoulders and pull her body against his. "If you didn't have us you would be doomed to write depressing stuff like this for your entire life."
"And that will get you so far," Colin agreed, nodding his head at her. "I can just see it now," he said, raising his hand as if to press on each word he spoke. "Ginny Weasley and her Wonderful World of Angst!" He dropped his hand. "It will be quite the hit, I can tell you now." He grinned stupidly at her. Ginny stuck her tongue out.
"You're just jealous," she said haughtily, letting her bottom lip stick out slightly because she knew it annoyed him. "All you're good at is taking silly pictures."
"At least my pictures don't promote self destruction," he hissed at her, but there was a hint of a grin on his face.
"Now Creevey," Draco butted in. "That wasn't nice. I am sure when Ginny here wrote that she thought she was going to jump off the cliff that she just meant she wanted to go for a swim. Isn't that right dear?"
"Of course," she hissed sweetly at him. "Swimming was just what I had in mind."
"See?" he asked, smirking at the other boy. "She's not that screwed up. Give her a little credit."
"Oh, I'll give her credit," Colin said slowly. "When she writes something happy that isn't as though we live in hell on earth. There are better things in the world." He paused. "Then I can give my wrists a break, tickling takes a lot more out of them than you would think."
"Oh I know there's better stuff," Ginny replied, glaring at him. "But I don't feel like writing about it."
"Then I suppose we will just have to have another repeat of this tickle incident at the same tickle time."
Ginny frowned.
"That was corny, Creevey," Draco sneered, smirking slightly. "Never become a writer. Ever."
"I agree," Ginny said, smirking at him herself. "Stick with taking your naughty pictures."
She didn't have a warning this time before the tree like boy attacked again, this time with no mercy. And you know, her boyfriend just let her have it, instead taking to get out of the way as quickly as possible and commence smirking. If this was what it took to cheer the girl up, then this is what she was going to be subjected to, every chance they got, until she was as happy as she should be. For after all, you will miss a whole lot of life if you are wallowing in self pity. And that folks is the moral of this story. So don't worry and be happy! And write lots of fluff!
~*~
A/N: Mwa! Ok. That was a little odd, yet it has a tiny little place in my heart. Well, how could it not when the first part had been festering there for so long. Bah. But yes, there will not be another part. Nope. Even though I could go there, but as I mentioned before, Lallie kills all inklings of angst as of late, so it just won't work. I know I have been cutting a lot of stories short lately, but to me, this one doesn't seem to be quite so short. Anyhoo, Happy Halloween!