It's been a while. Me knows as much.
Woot for italicized stuff!
I want to send out my love for this lovely reviewer, this awesome reader that just made my day.Souljewel, you're a total sweetheart. You're the only reason I'm updating right now!
In case it doesn't work, I just typed in a smiley face! Yay!
Anyways, I have vacation and am currently moving all my stuff to a new house-I was so sad, the outlets were two pronged!-so I've been writing but have no internet.
Inserted sad face. Anyways, I'm on me lovely bonso-beans computer writing this, uploading this, loving my lovely reviewer Souljewel, again, for being a sweetheart!
To answer her questions and, probably, the questions of those that don't review -insert angry face-
These lovelies WILL pursue a romance. In fact I was feeling particularly fluffy yesterday and wrote some, just a few chapters ahead!
This chapter, however, is total violent chaos. I don't like it that much. I'm trying to get Hermione as normal as she would be, had she suddenly lost all conscious thought of Malfoy not being a prick.
It will pass. Soon. No worries, baby dolls. Have faith.
Sorry I wrote so much, onward to the story!
It must be late.
She had thought so, when she had fallen asleep hours ago, protesting to Ginny that she could not stay up recklessly.
And now Ginny was curled into a ball beside her, having shared conversation until there were excessive pauses between responses, laden with sleep and snoring very softly.
Hermione would ignore it. If she heard it again…
She knew spending the night with Ginny was a good idea. They were not always the closest, and after the past two weeks and vapid summer it would be thought it to be hard for the two girls to connect.
Connecting was actually the easiest and most satisfying part. Both girls were able to speak and understand clearly, and nights with her always left her feeling stronger, that even if she couldn't see this girl for another week, she would be able to live through without worrying about being alone.
Ginny was a very good girl to spend time with when she needed to get over a guy, an attachment, or a defeat.
And even though she had not fully given the truth about Draco to her, had not spoken of the night, their conversation, or what she said to him, only what he said to her-
After callously dissecting everything he had ever said to Hermione to her unresponsive Ginny, Hermione felt invigorated.
Free.
Like she had just said Good Riddance to a maliciously detrimental factor to her happiness.
She heard it again.
Forgetting her discussion with Ginny, Hermione ground her teeth and her decision and turned from the door, wrapping her pillow around her eyes.
But he knocked again, more urgent and with less patience.
And Hermione was sure he would enter.
When she opened the door, of course, there was no one there.
On the top step of the stairs was a tiny piece of paper, a line of script shredded from a book.
Victims of Pervasus Capitis are not always permanently without the memories they lost.
Freezing, crushing the limp strip in her clammy hand, Hermione questioned if it was worth it.
She knew, she wasn't stupid. She knew her memories were coming back. She knew that if she spent her time with him she would surely become overwhelmed, eventually feel for him the way he wanted her to.
So she turned back to her room. Ready to never think of him again-
Unable to move, she tried to rid herself of the feeling.
That she had done this before, a fight, ready to never give the boy any attention again. Had he been able to read me back then too? When I knew myself?
No. No that's not fair. She knew who she was. He couldn't have changed her.
And yet the only thing she could think about was the fact that she had said that before.
That she was 'done letting him know her.'
Quite obviously, she had changed her mind, and would do so again.
Turning reluctantly to the shadow of what should be her personal library, Hermione kept a close watch on the ground below her for another scrap of paper, wondering if he knew that she would remain in his reach, wander the library for his traps, even without another tempting hint. Wondered if he knew she wasn't going to turn back now.
Spotting the next before the aisles of several tall bookcases, she tried her best not to run over to it.
As if it would run away.
To keep the victim from regaining any memories erased, there are several spells and potions available to maintain the ignorance…
Was this a threat?
And the next, behind a large couch that faced a fireplace he must had blazened.
Glancing around for him before reading it, she could not sense him.
If the memories are not attained within a time that depends on the severity of the attack, they will not be recovered.
He had baited her here for this?
She knew of nothing else to do than move around the couch, not surprised to see Draco sitting before the fire, a torn book tossed carelessly aside, his face slumped into his hands and glaring with contempt at the burning logs before him.
He had thought she wouldn't show.
She couldn't say she was opposed to proving him wrong.
And sitting beside him, she noticed that he held himself back from reacting, although she was certain he tensed when she sat beside him. As if he could make a response that would turn her figure to dust.
Instead he only glanced to her and, following her lead, returned to stare into the fire.
When he was sure that she had also flinched, watching the log finally break and explode into a thousand embers, he laid his head onto his knees, looking at the very soft carpet below them, watching from the corner of his eyes as Hermione's hands pulled at the fibers, her fingers long and smooth, writer's fingers. Not a worker's fingers, ever.
"You know, you're the one that instigated this meeting."
With his head still hidden, his muffled reply was spoken without much heart. "Call it serendipity."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "I hadn't suggested your sudden decision to call me here at- two o'clock in the morning wasn't random in itself."
"Neither had I. The romantic definition of serendipity is that neither of us intended for what was, in fact, meant to be."
Hermione sighed, unsure of how prudent it would be to continue her argument.
So strange it was, to see him sitting in a posture so uncharacteristic to the identity she had associated with him. He was wearing gray sweatpants and black socks, a white shirt. She smirked at the fact that, had he been standing, it would appear that all the darkness was draining out of him. But that he should be sitting in a behavior so introverted, so unlike his ability to always seem to be taking in everything at once and hating its bore simultaneously…
Malfoy now appeared to have had too much, his arms wrapped around his legs and folding up into himself.
She could not look at him. He reminded her of someone too real to be associated with the cruel boy she was supposed to be remembering.
Sitting up abruptly, as if he had in fact been reading her, Malfoy whisked his wand and the pieces of paper she had let fall to the ground threaded themselves back into one of the books beside him, the pages flying back and forth as his whisper of reparo disappeared into the large, empty silence.
"It took me a while to find the right ones to entice you."
Hermione shivered, not at his words, but that his words were spoken with too much honesty, an openness she was uncomfortable sharing with him.
Quirking an eyebrow coldly to her, Malfoy seemed to be on the brink of something she would be unable to handle.
"So you're not even strong enough to try and remember what you've lost?"
Immediately feeling insulted by his desultory tone, Hermione glared at him and watched as this same disposition appeared tenfold colder on his own face. "Maybe I'm better off ignoring it."
"Ignoring what changed you? Well aren't you lucky. You're only affected by things that go your way. Aren't you a spoiled bitch."
Hermione scoffed, ignoring the truths of his statement so she could emphasize the clichéd and obvious. "Moi? Spoiled? I think not, Malfoy."
Suddenly he had turned on her, and her trivial hatred was suddenly shaken from her face as he began to confess without limit, too weak to enforce his misery upon her. "Yes, you are. So you've decided you're going to take it back and live without my significance, pretend I'm less than a rival, ignore me because you can't handle it. Because you can't make up your fucking mind and be strong enough to know how someone like me could have changed you. After I fought off a power that will surely kill me soon, that would have killed you, I get no thanks. You suspect me and now you get to act like I never happened." As this tumble of words fell from his mouth without grace, he looked directly into her eyes, so brown and vapid tonight, shaken by the power he felt roll from his choice to speak. "Meanwhile I'm left to think I've wronged you, simply because you can't make up your mind. Because you'll run to me broken but if someone else is there for you then you don't need a shoulder to cry on anymore. So I get to take your shit because you're suddenly without any knowledge that I'm a fucking human being, I can't blame you for anything simply because you don't remember. When you've come to me twice now asking me to, to change you, that you want to be. That maybe you just want to be who you've been. But it's my loss. You're just fine without me. I'm forced to remember that I lost you, not you but the girl you have been, a much more admirable sort. But now you've got your pride and your friends back and you can't bear to help me through this. And now I've got to get over it too, as if you never cared, as if I never cared, simply because you're too weak to talk to me like you want to. Simply because you're too weak to give up your bias and your ignorance. I'm not proud to be your enemy. You're pathetic."
Malfoy stood and Hermione was so taken aback she could do nothing but stare, gape, watch his disgust turn as he watched her and saw that she had no response for him.
Roaring, he picked up the two books that he had kept beside him and threw them into the fire.
And for a moment they were mutually entranced, they watched as So You Think You're A Legilimens and The Count of Monte Cristo exploded instantly, their ashes and embers swirling to contribute to the unbearable heat that consumed them.
"I can't believe I trusted you last night."
Malfoy, who had been so ready to stop this fight and walk away for some other night, was immediately ready to reciprocate maliciously to the hypocrite, wanted to hurt this girl more than he had ever wanted to any other.
No whore that had ever chased him had enraged him to the point where he wanted to wring her neck and choke them in the embers of the fireplace, when in jail, when in hell, he would treasure the burned scars on his hands that would give him patience, knowing he had destroyed her and nothing could be worse.
These were thoughts he didn't care to hold back, not for her.
So he landed on top of her and his hands found her throat and she was shocked, reflexes failing to the point where she could not think to throw him off, so assured that he had never attacked like this, and she thought of Harry and finally started choking, fighting.
Realizing she was not to forget this, Malfoy hit her head against the berth of the fireplace below her, her eyes fazing as they struggled to focus on the man she hoped to hate most.
"I once told you, whether you fucking remember or not, that I hated you for always using your heart. That you forgave your fucking friends because they were friends, because you got to use your heart and never thought twice about it. And I stupidly broke down and asked you to use it for me. And I can't believe this is where it's brought me. I fucking knew it. I wont fucking care, I wont fucking trust you, I'll never ask for your fucking love," so quickly he spoke the word, not regretting it, glad the first time he spoke of it was in such a terrible context as this, glad he was shunning it and not himself, not speaking of his own weakness, "from you, from any girl again. You can believe I wanted to fuck you but you know it went nowhere last night, you can believe it's all a game to me but I'm not telling my little friends, and now I can't keep it a secret anymore. I fucking hate you, I fucking hate that I forgot this and thought you'd be different. That even if I knew everything you seemed to be to the rest of the fucking admiring, bowing world, you could be something more for me. And all I can find is that you're hardly more than an act. You're weak, you're clichéd, and you're unreasonably attached to your foolish biased animosities, as foolish as my hatred of lesser mortals. And you will not change, you will never change… No one knows you better than I do now. I trusted you because I thought there was more to you. That if I knew you, knew something better about you that no one else knew, I could trust you."
And she broke in, knowing she would not let him get away with another defining monologue, wouldn't let him walk away so she could question everything she was supposed to be. "You think you're threatening me?! You don't know me, for all your arrogance you can't understand, and now that you hate me it's going to be so easy to keep it that way, right? You think I'm stubborn and I won't change but I don't care if I've been someone else these past, what, two weeks? It couldn't be anything better than who I want to be. I want to be the one you hate most but it won't be because you know the real me. I'm not going to let you hate me if you think you have the right to." And Malfoy's face still boiled a terrible shade she had never seen, so pale and apathetic he always was, and some strange pride from knowing she could infuriate him gave her the power and courage to continue, even though his hands beside her head were curling, the muscles in his arms began to prepare for her maiming. So ready she was, to be beaten, so sure she was that somewhere he had a conscience and she was slowly losing both her conscience and conscious, her grips on reality, her next sentence was spoken in a whisper and when she had passed out she prayed he would remember it, prayed she herself could remember it and never think twice of hating him. "My mistake is mutually your own. Fear the fact that it is I that can hate you, for I am wrought with memories of the real you, with your guard down."
And he wished he had not helped change her, as she insisted he hadn't, that she had hair that he could drag her off the ground with, that he did not have to rely of a thin piece of tree to threaten with. This arrogant, instigating girl had managed to keep from death for all her life as a Muggle, and surely there was more satisfaction within the strength of his own hands anyways.
So her head smacked against the brick again and she was limp, eyes barely focused on him above her.
I am above her.
And he breathed hot in her face and wished she would remain conscious and malleable enough to let him torture her for the entire night.
Instead he relied on the fact that every shocking action kept her worthless attention for another second more.
And her body was just below him, he could rape her, break her, and never care again, her eyes for once not adamantly characteristic.
But he knew, watching her struggle for conscious hatred, that she was expecting him to.
As if she knew him.
So he twisted her head to grind her cheek into the grit of the stones below them, and her other cheek appealed to him.
So he sent a kiss to her, twisting her head back to face him, and she seemed awake, disgusted, but it was he that wanted to spit in her face. So he smiled, with his charm reserved for conquests, and winked.
Satisfied at the surprise on her face, rejoicing in her fear that may not have even been related to him, and took advantage of her hopeless shock to tower over her for but a moment and leave, before either thought of something else to say.