I had to skip on Week 2, so this is Week 3, and "Hogwarts" was the challenge prompt. Again, I welcome feedback of any sort!
She dreads the second Tuesday of each month, because she has to sit across from Draco Malfoy for an hour and fifteen minutes without hexing, slapping, or insulting him.
She's quite proud of herself--she has lasted through seventeen meetings of the H.E.R.B. (Hogwarts Educational Review Board). But she's ashamed of herself, too, for hating him so much that she has to clench her fists in her lap, until her nails leave marks on her palm that last for days, just to get through the meeting without losing her temper.
She'd been shocked to discover, seventeen months ago, how much she still hated Draco Malfoy. She'd scarcely thought of him during the last four years, and she had fancied that all her old grudges had faded away. The loathing that had washed over her at the very first H.E.R.B. meeting had shocked, and even frightened her; she'd never hated anyone like this until now.
As she walks from the gates to the main doors each month, she tries to rationalize the anger away. Sometimes, she almost succeeds, and then, she'll see the spot where he first called her a Mudblood...the corner where the basilisk's eyes stared back from the mirror...the alcove where he gloated over Buckbeak's pending execution. All her old childhood hurts seem magnified, somehow, by what came after.
He's clearly uncomfortable around her. He's never looked her in the eyes--not once. He agrees with every suggestion she makes, even the bad ones. This makes her even angrier, because she knows that this is his way of making amends. She does not want him to be sorry. She wants the sneering, vicious Malfoy back, so she can hate him without remorse.
On her seventeenth walk back to the gates, Malfoy purposefully slows until she has to pass by him, or stop walking altogether. This is the first time they have ever been alone together, and she is afraid of what she might do or say. He still can't meet her eyes, but he makes halting, stuttering small talk. She will never remember exactly what she replied, but she finally sees him, and not the shade of the schoolyard bully that has haunted her for so long.
Maybe the second Tuesday of the month isn't quite as dreadful as she thought.
