Disclaimer: I own nothing. It's all JKR's.


VIVAASA

by: carpetfibers


Day 236

The owl is one he has seen before. The white feathers are more grey than snow now, and its former dislike of his hand is absent. It leaves the envelope on the table, and he reads the name slowly, a tired anger stirring in his stomach. He dislikes the name and its owner; he has always disliked the name and its owner. Years before, when he was young and simple in his selfishness, he once offered the possibility of friendship. Years before, when he had no friends or equals, when his only companions were lackeys who could neither think for themselves or for him, he had chanced to strike a connection. The rejection's bitter taste, from years before, still lingers, and all it takes is crooked handwriting on an envelope to remind of this.

He opens the letter and reads, not caring that it's not for him. He reads and the anger grows. News, good tiding, concern, entreating- each phrase is layered with feeling and fondness, each word is underlined with distant notes of I miss you and Come back home and I need you, and he hates the whole of it with a deep wretchedness. When she comes home that evening, he is still there, the letter open and naked on the table, her discovered wand beside it. Her smile leaves her lips and hurriedly, she snatches the two spare pieces of parchment to her breast. "How dare you-" she begins, but he is faster and has had the entire day to spend thinking of reasons to be angry.

He feels betrayed, and this makes him all the more spiteful. "Coward. Liar." He seethes, each word landing with visible affect.

Her hair is loose today, an increasing dampness on its crown as the few flurries caught there melt in the kitchen's warmth. She is pale, and he enjoys the impact with a sickening relish. "You said this was your penance; you made it sound as if you were doing this for your parents. Giving up magic, pretending you're not a witch- all you're doing is running away from it. You're hiding here, in this pathetic excuse for a life, acting as if you're alone in the world. Liar."

She stands passively, her expression as one struck, and yet, she acts as one satisfied. She seems prepared, somehow; she plays the martyr and the urge to strike her physically clouds his thoughts. Instead, he reaches for the porcelain vase he knows to be her mother's and drops it, casually, never removing his eyes from her face. The reaction is immediate; she wilts and lands heavily on her knees. "How could you?" she cries, her fingers grazing the littered pieces. "You know this belonged to my m-"

"You can fix it." He drops her wand beside her. "Use your wand and fix it."

She picks up the wand, a visible flinch shuddering through her lips as the stretch of wood settles in her palm. An ache of his own begins boiling near his spine; he can remember the exact texture of his wand, the weight and feel of it as it broke into his skin. He never forgets its absence, and her expression fools no one. "Reparo," she says and his blood burns.

Her magic feels of desperation, hints at completion, and inexplicably warms him. She does not move from the floor, her wand clutched in hand. "Grang-"

But she is faster and has the greater anger. "Bastard. Murderer." She hisses, her lips jerking in an exhausting staccato. "You have no right to force me into anything! What I choose to do or not do is my business alone. So what if I don't want to use magic anymore? So what if I live like a Muggle? There's nothing wrong or cowardly about it! Is it so awful that I want a chance to have a normal life? Is it?" She stands and pushes and prods, her fist a heavy force on his chest. She is all aggression and anger, and he recognizes that she speaks in earnest and that she is hurt by his actions.

He does not care. "It is- when you're a witch. It's not something you can just stop doing- it's who you are."

"I was a Muggle for the first eleven years of my life, I can be one again. I can be happy just like anyone else-"

"But you're not happy, are you Granger?" Her fist halts its rise and energy slips from her shoulders with his uttered truth. "You felt relief, didn't you, when you held your wand? You felt right then, didn't you? You felt complete and whole and you couldn't see it, but your whole body was smiling with just holding it, and damn it, but Granger, I'm right and you can't ignore that."

But she is not listening to him, she is withdrawn and searching for excuses. She speaks to his chest in a voice cold and brittle. "I hated you in school, and I hated that you made me feel that way. I couldn't stand your face or your voice. I thought you were a weak, selfish, spoiled prat, and when I learned that you had survived the last battle- when I learned that in the very end you suddenly turned sides to ours, I felt nothing at all, and more than anything else, I hated you for that. I could forgive anyone, but with you, I couldn't manage it, and do you know what that did to me? Can you understand what that sort of self-realization does to a person like me?"

He wants to understand her; he wants to touch that tangled, tousled hair of hers. He wants to kiss the hollow of her throat as she cries out; he wants to hear her whisper his name in a pained joy. He wants her broken and surrendered; he wants her whole and tender. "No, I don't. But I'm not like you."

She laughs, and he's holding her shoulders, her skin warm beneath the thin sweater. She stops and grows quiet, her mouth hidden beneath the curtain of hair that spills over his hands. "God, I hated you for so long and yet now-"

She is kissing him, and he thinks only of the way her lips melt like velvet chocolate over his. He tastes the lingering peppermint of an earlier confection, and she sighs into his mouth, a low sound that reverberates into his blood and sends his thoughts keening. She is kissing him, and he forgets the past and the present.

End Day 236