"I've always been able to charm the people I need."
He thinks she would have laughed.
Before.
She always laughed when he said something like that.
Before.
She called it pretentious and ridiculous.
Before.
Before.
Before.
She doesn't anymore. She's serious in her response and the change confuses him, pains him, worries him. She worries him. Her reactions and actions and words worry him and it's a painful thing to worry, to care, especially when such thoughts and emotions had never before existed in his mind and heart.
"And you need me?"
And the pull in his chest tells him he does but he doesn't want to say that, not to her, not like this, so he doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything for a while and neither does she and he knows she'd usually be itching to, her hands shaking with the force of her restrained words, her tongue begging to move, her mind warning her that it would not help her, that it would only damage her situation, whatever she's working towards that she won't tell him about, but her heart pushing for it regardless, forcing her into a wild and impulsive decision that could only belong to her. But not today. Today she merely sits, not beside him, not anymore, just far enough away to still be able to see if his face twitches, if he looks away, if he smirks or frowns or lets anything slip. He knows her too well. He's spent too long memorizing what she does, trying to learn how she thinks, and it frustrates him to realize that still, after all the time and effort he's put in, he still knows so little about her. He knows her favorite color, her favorite subject, could recognize the sound of her laughter a mile away, could make her produce it with relative ease, but he knows nothing about her, of where she came, of what her plans are for her future, of what and how she loves. Of what it would be like to be loved by her. To love her in secret and in public and with fervor and with laughter, and with power and prestige and all the life it brings. He knows nothing and wishes he felt nothing and wishes he knew everything but neither wish comes true, he's granted none of his three but is left instead with a fee of worry and of confusion and, more and more often now and more and more often with her, of pain. And so, he wants to know, to understand, but she is the one thing that is banned from his understanding, from his knowing, from his controlling.
"You confuse me."
She takes only a second to respond, seemingly not giving the response any thought, but he takes in her tilted head, her minimally widened eyes, and he knows she wants to understand too. Her responses are as calculated as his own, her words only sounding of a buried hesitancy.
"How so?"
She does not ask about how this relates to what he had said earlier, about how her confusing him might be tied to him needing her, but he knows she's curious, her head is inclined towards him, just the tiniest bit, hinting at her interest and curiosity, pushing at the tenseness in his body, at the rubber band she always stretches in his mind, just begging to snap and end its torture.
He looks away and she must understand. He can't say these things out loud, not to her. From the corner of his eye, he sees her flinch slightly, draw her sharp gaze from him and to the floor, then to the same window he pretends to look out of. She takes a breath and he can see her struggling to keep her composure. Of course she understands. Of course she understands. Of course.
She confuses him because she's a mudblood, but brilliant. Charming, but hates him. Lovely and beautiful and kind, but cruel and hurt and violent. And she confuses him, and he is never confused, he never does not understand, does not know. And she confuses him because he thinks he might love her, this lovely, brilliant creature, and that is the biggest curiosity of all, the biggest enigma, the most pressing riddle, and it pushes and shoves at him, taunts him for an answer he cannot reach, a problem he fears he will never solve. And she hates him. She hates him so much he can feel it burning him whenever she looks at him when she thinks he's not paying attention, her hatred undisguised and unbridled in such moments, but he's always paying attention, always attuned to anything she may say or do or reveal, so he knows all of her hatred, all of her anger, and he does not understand any of it. But, just like love, the fact that he does not understand it does not mean he does not feel it, does not bring it into himself and try to quell it and extinguish it and fail, again and again until he's forced to admit his defeat and concede. To her hatred for him, to his love for her.
Her voice is quiet and it feels almost as if she had read his mind, her words sounding like the kind of response you'd read in a book, perfect and something that could only come from the pen of a person that could know the right thing to say, that could read into the minds of everyone they had created, but he would have known if she had been in his mind, he would have known, he always knows. But she never falls into what is expected. Maybe she had read his mind, done it so discretely, so effortlessly and skillfully that he hadn't even noticed, hadn't had a clue that there were not one, but two people in this sacred spot, invading the one place, the one thing, that was only his and always had been and he'd usually be furious, but he can't bring himself to care. All his thoughts would be hers if she wished it, she only had to ask and he didn't entirely mind if she didn't, she could take everything from him and he'd love her all the same. The idea makes him sick. How could he be so weak? So pathetic?
"I don't hate you, you know."
He sighs, shakes his head, almost laughs.
"Hermione, please, you insult me if you think I'm so stupid as to believe that."
She sits up, straightening her stance to argue, her natural form, "I don't—"
"Hermione, please."
And his eyes must look earnest enough, his voice must sound tired enough, he must look broken or sad or angry or enough of all of the above because she is quiet, her words halt and no more rush to take their place. He knows his voice sounds cracked, maybe even broken, but he cannot see what she sees, feel what she feels, understand what she thinks. She doesn't look at him. They're quiet once again and the wind outside howls, an owl hoots, the sound of splashing water reaches them from the Great Lake, the Giant Squid moving about and she decides to speak, quietly, any fight taken out of her from all the times they've talked about this same thing, argued and yelled and forced to feel, no matter how much they may try to fight against it, try to be rational and think and not let things as petty as emotions take them over.
"Do you feel the least bit of guilt?"
And there she goes, bringing up Hagrid once again, as she has done every day since it happened, save for the one she spent with Alphard, away from him and any dark thoughts he may bring into her heart and soul.
He decides to be honest with her, a decision he never makes consciously, never makes when he's not in fits of anger or desperation brought on by her cruel persona and the specific actions she takes, the specific words she speaks, the specific moves she makes to illicit such a response in him. But, today, he is honest, willfully and gracefully, his voice coming out like water flows in a stream after heavy rainfall, smooth and forceful and everything in between.
"No, not at all. The only reason I've even given it a second thought is because you seemed so upset by it."
She hardly hesitates before she nods, but she does hesitate, he notices that much.
She makes to leave, starts dragging her legs towards her, preparing to stand, and she gets about halfway up before merely crumbling to the ground once again. And she nods. She nods. He means to help her up, to help her feel happy again, to help her do anything, but he stays put, watching her broken form.
Okay.
"Okay."
"Okay."
And he can see she wants to speak and so stays quiet as she gathers the courage, as she gathers her thoughts and wit.
"I could love you, you know."
Her words are quieter than he's ever heard them and she's looking down at her feet, her bravery not allowing her to look away from him, but her humanity not allowing her to look towards him, to see what effect her words may cause, what pain they may bring, what hopes they may shatter, what dreams they may create.
She tells him it scares her that she doesn't hate him, after all of this, after all of him and what he is and what he's done, but she doesn't. She doesn't.
He asks her if she would ever join him and she doesn't know but he can see a flicker of something, maybe an urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, take light before she pinches out the flame.
"I'm a mudblood, after all."
And she does smile this time, letting a spark of herself take flight, the ember disappearing into the night air and leaving her cold, the fire inside her burning out faster every moment she has to spend in this reality, in this reality that has become hers, theirs. And the word sounds equally beautiful and awful coming from her pink lips and he has no words for her, finally neither knows what to say and he can see it does not bring her the relief she had hoped for, her despair too great for something so simple to solve it anymore, and it does not bring him anything at all except another pebble to add on to his great mountain of hopelessness in ever getting this girl before him to love him. To love him back.
Back?
Back?
Back?
How can it possibly be back?
Back means he loves her. Back means he cares for her, maybe more than himself, maybe more than his goals or his grades or immortal life or anything and everything, which is a purely ridiculous thought.
But,
He does, doesn't he? He would curse someone if they looked at her the wrong way, kill them if they touched her.
He doesn't kill Alphard merely because he knows it would upset her, knows it would pain her to see his lifeless body, to know it would not have happened if she had not existed and he cannot hurt her, cannot bring himself to throw the last handful of sand into the hearth of her heart.
He loves her, he's said it all along but now he must accept the entire reality of it. This isn't just some foreign idea to ponder upon, just another condition of his life that he must learn to live with and deal with. He loves her. He does not want to push the thought into the corner of his mind, he wants to see her in front of him, hear her laughter, feel her heartbeat in the palm of his hand. She confuses him because love doesn't make any sense. She confuses him because she's alight with life and he craves such an everlasting force. She confuses him because she fills every gap in him, every gap he refused to acknowledge, refused to believe existed, and she hates him, hates the very core of his being, the very air he breathes. She hates him and belongs to another, but he loves her all the same and suddenly there are two people in this very room that hate him very much.