Chapter Five

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I can't believe I was gone for a week, a week while my father and Voldemort and all the rest held me down while I screamed and they branded that thing into my arm and all I wanted was to see you and tell you I loved you and make you understand, make you forgive me, AND YOU NEVER EVEN NOTICED I WAS GONE! Is the mudblood's cunt that good? Even the Weasel noticed, and he hates me.

But you, you said you loved me with your lips and your eyes and even after you started fucking your best friend's girl you still looked at me like I was the only one there. And then I wasn't there and you didn't even know. How could you not know? How could you just forget about me like that? How could I have been so stupid?

My father was right.

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Do you remember when you kissed me? I'd been in Snape's room the night before doing something, I don't remember what, but then someone knocked at the door and it was Professor Sinestra and she said, "Hey, Sexy," before she realized it was me and not Snape and then, thank Merlin, she had the presence of mind to close her bloody robes and run off, and we had such a laugh?

Well, I was laughing, anyway, when I found you. And then I said, "Hey, Sexy," to you, to share the joke, because really, it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. I'd never seen anyone go so still so fast without someone saying Petrificus Totalus first. I couldn't figure out why you weren't laughing, and then I realized I hadn't told you about Sinestra in her knickers at Snape's door. But then even when I did tell you, you still weren't laughing.

All you said was that you wished it had been real, that I'd meant to say something like that to you. I didn't know what to say, so I brushed it off, and made a joke of it. You did laugh then, but your eyes looked…off, not like they usually did when you laughed. And then I tickled you and you really did laugh and we were happy, weren't we?

I don't know why I said it, maybe I wanted some of that back from the night before, maybe I just wanted an excuse to say it to you because no matter how much I wanted to, I could never leave myself that open to rejection otherwise. But whatever my reason, I said it again, in the hall outside Flitwick's classroom in front of everyone. I thought you would share a smile with me over the image of Sinestra and Snape, or if I was lucky, really lucky, you would burst out laughing at our private joke.

But you didn't do either of those things. You just stopped in your tracks, turned around and pressed me into the wall. Every part of you was touching me and the only thing holding me up was the stone at my back. And then you kissed me and I forgot how to breathe. It might have been a split second or an hour later, but the bell rang and you had to go.

You were so happy. You ran down the hall like a little boy and you crowed at the top of your lunges and you looked like you might fly. If you had looked back you would have seen me fall. I couldn't even walk. Pansy had to drag me into the classroom. I was so out of it I let her braid my hair. She braided my hair, Potter! She reminds me of it. Constantly.

And I thought it was worth it. But I was wrong.

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Imagine my surprise when Granger dragged me into an empty classroom by the front of my robes to tell me she's breaking up with you tonight in your cosy little common room. Seems I got off easy, not even she can stand your constant whinging. I don't know why she elected to fill me in on her little plan to cut you off before she told you, but I've never really bothered trying to figure her out before and I'm certainly not going to start now.

Not being one to miss what promises to be an event spectacularly humiliating for you, I have persuaded Ron to sneak me into Griffindor tonight so that I can witness it for myself in exchange for fire whiskey to console you with. Actually, as he's quite excited to see her drop you, too, he wasn't terribly hard to convince. He was drooling all over himself at the prospect. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him quite so pleased, not even when he won the Quiddich Cup last year, and that was just disgusting.

I wonder if you will cry when she tells you it's over. Will you use this as another pathetic excuse to drown in your weakness and get all depressed again like you did to me? Will you roam the halls like a ghost again for months? Will you stop eating and speaking until Dumbledore calls her muggle parents in for a chat about how their clever daughter has broken his Golden Boy?

I know why she's doing it, you know. She didn't even have to tell me, I could see it in her eyes. She can't stand your whinging anymore, or your blubbering ever time you come. Can't say that I blame her, actually. Not very flattering to listen to someone cry every time they take you to bed, is it? And apparently even mudbloods have enough pride not to put up with that sort of behaviour after a certain point.

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A/N: I'm not clear on how I'm meant to respond to comments on this site, as I am used to my LiveJournal and all its instant gratification-y goodness. But, thank you to everyone who has left me reviews, which, as I am sure you know makes my heart beat faster and my mouth curl up at the ends.