Chapter Four
Everything I was
"The very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone", Jane Austen Love and Friendship
I'm not particularly sure what I expected to happen after that. That Malfoy would somehow, singlehandedly, change what people thought of me, change a perception that had taken six years to build up, six years to settle in people's minds as fact and simply tear it all down in a day? Even he couldn't be that good but then I guess it depended on how depraved or in school speak 'juicy' the rumour was but fortunately that part didn't occur to me. I just kept waiting for something to happen but nothing actually did. I tried not to be disappointed, even when he deliberately avoided looking at me, I guess it had been a lot to ask even by his standards.
Like I said, to suddenly tear down every conception and idea people had of me in the space of a few days? Surely that was impossible, I mean, we would be changing the ideas of people who knew me, people who had grown up with me. They wouldn't be swayed so easily, would they? So why would anything Malfoy said hold any weight at all?
Well, I don't think I could have imagined just how wrong I was on this score. I had grossly underestimated how much these people, these teenage vultures wanted a finale to my extraordinary breakdown and subsequent demise of the old me. They had been waiting for this and unwittingly I had given them exactly what they craved. I had released a horrifying can of worms in the form of Malfoy and he showed no mercy.
The route he took though, was not one that I had seen coming, nor gun to my head would I even have guessed at. My desolation was complete and while I was ready to be born again from the ashes of the rumour, Malfoy was ready to suffocate me underneath them. Which was exactly what his rumour threatened to do.
About six days after my encounter with Malfoy during which nothing had happened and I had put the whole sorry affair out of my head, another week drawing to a close, it began. Malfoy had been paired with me for a potions assignment and the very air around us was crackling. Even breathing the same air as him made me want to gasp for breath in an effort to inhale properly. I had been on tenterhooks for the intial day or two after speaking with him but Malfoy had clearly had other ideas. He wanted me unprepared, he needed me not to expect anything to happen, to have already reconciled myself to the fact that nothing would happen.
The Slytherins were watching me carefully, Pansy's expression a comical mixture of shame and almost unfathomable fury. It was a pity for me that I had taken no notice of her or her cronies that day, or indeed any other, in hindsight it may have given me a clue. I had been ignoring him so far and was patiently cutting up gurdyroots when I very nearly sliced my own fingers off at the feeling of Malfoy's arms ensnaring themselves around me, his body pressed up against my own and his hands coming to rest on top of mine. "You're cutting them too thickly, here", he said into my ear, I could feel his blonde hair brushing against my cheek as he spoke. The classroom noises suddenly ceased, as if someone had sucked all the air out of the room.
He took the blade slowly from my hands and continued cutting while all I could do was lean my hands on the table and try to move my body even a fraction away from his while trying to remember how to breath. The truth was, my heart was racing, he was too close, this was too intimate. Having avoided physical contact with anyone since Ron had broken up with me, this was too much and it was Malfoy.
It was wrong...wasn't it? No, don't start questioning it. His stomach pressed against my lower back, pushing me into the desk so there was no getting away. His face remained almost cheek to cheek with mine, even though I had attempted to turn my face away.
"What are you doing?" I eventually managed to grind and stutter out between clenched teeth.
He chuckled softly into my ear, "You wanted a rumour, I'm going one better. I'm giving them a show".
"This wasn't what I meant and you know it", I muttered angrily, my face on fire as the red heat of embarrassment spread up my cheeks.
"Ah well then, you failed to specify the exact terms and conditions. That threatens to make our transaction null and void but I'll be kind enough to oversea your slight mistake", he said slowly, grinning widely at my thunderstruck face while removing himself from me.
I looked around, the flush still beaming on my face, to see that everyone had been staring, dumbstruck and disbelieving on what they had just witnessed. Ron's face was utterly furious and I felt my hands where Malfoy had touched me tingling with pleasure, well the display had done something right.
My hands shook uncontrollably as I turned back to my work, pointedly ignoring Malfoy at the other side of the bench but this time I did manage to cut myself. I put the blade down calmly, closing my eyes from exasperation at my weak display of emotions, before assessing the damage I'd done to my fingers before muttering darkly to Malfoy. "You can meet me after class and tell me what the hell you were thinking", I raised my bleeding hand, "This is your fault".
"Are you alright?" He asked with a raised voice, causing heads to once again swivel in our direction.
"Here let me", he said, smiling, his face the epitomy of someone who is enjoying themselves just a little too much.
He took my hand and pressed a bandage around it, holding it tightly between both of his seemingly oblivious to my fury.
"Get off", I managed to splutter eventually before he chuckled and moved away.
The Slytherins were still staring at us, Pansy one move away from striding forwards and killing me with her bare hands. I spent the rest of the class as far away from Malfoy as the desk would put us, attempting to still my trembling hands, my heart gasping from its regular beat while I tried to contend with the whispers swirling around the room, droning ceaselessly in my ears.
The little ball of ice I'd been carrying around since I'd found out about Ron and Lavender, melted slightly in my anger. Had they nothing better to do that watch me? The bell could not have gone fast enough and with it I bolted from the room, determined to speak to Malfoy alone and to do that I had to be ready to corner him on the way to lunch.
I settled for waiting for him a little way down the hallway from the potions dungeon but I hadn't planned on him being surrounded by his Slytherin cronies knowing as he did that I had wanted to speak to him.
I stepped out from the wall, "Can I have a word?"
"Go away mudblood", said Pansy harshly, linking her arm through Malfoy's who in turn threw her a withering glare extracting himself from her talons.
"Now Pansy, we talked about this remember", he turned to me. "Fine, in here".
He led me into an empty classroom turning to the gaping glares of his friends, "You can go" before slamming the door and shutting us in.
He moved to sit upon one of the desks, raising an eyebrow at me and I was caught for a moment in the half light of that classroom about just how striking his features were.
The breath hitched in my throat and it took me several seconds to gather my thoughts, my eyes noticing how his tie was loose around his neck, his shirt crumpled as if he'd fallen asleep in it the night before but his hair still fell gracefully into his eyes.
"What's wrong with you now?" He asked gruffly, rubbing a hand through his hair. "What...what was that display in potions?" I stuttered but the words still came out angrily. "I asked you to star a rumour, not act anything out".
"Well Granger, believe it or not I know a thing or two about rumours and to give them creedence something generally has to happen or the story won't stick". He folded his arms and smiled sardonically. "I have to start a fire before I can feed it and make it bigger".
"And what fire are you starting?"
"Now Granger, that wasn't part of the deal. Never did you say I had to discuss the particulars with you first", he jumped down from the desk, shoving his hands casually into his pockets, his grey eyes sparkling at me. "Pansy is the sneaky one, spreading rumours isn't my area sorry". "I'll be off then", he finished when I didn't answer.
"Nice touch by the way", he added smiling.
"What are you talking about?" I said mirroring his movements unconsciouly by running a hand through my hair.
He moved towards me, leaning down until he towered over my small frame while I involuntarily shrank back hitting the classroom wall. He placed his hands on either side of my head, blocking me in. "You're fueling the rumour mill yourself, secret classroom meeting", he waggled his eyebrows suggestively, "Nice touch, like I said".
"Now", he breathed deeply while I couldn't breath at all. "If there was nothing else", he moved down until his lips hovered above mine. I kepy my eyes on his, never breaking eye contact feeling as if he was waiting for something.
Waiting for me to raise my lips to meet his? To finally press mine against his cool mouth and revel in the taste of him? No, surely not but that is what it felt like.
Waiting for me to finally ask just what he had said to Ron?
But, shamefully, it was the first one I couldn't get out of my head. Ron had never been further from my thoughts in my whole life.
He laughed lowly, "Until next time" and with that he sauntered casually out of the classroom slamming the door in his wake.
Surely he wasn't starting a rumour about him and me? That...that wasn't possible we hated each other, he surely wouldn't want anyone to even consider thst we were...that we would, no. I shook my head and tried to catch my breath feeling as if my chest would explode, no he wouldn't do this, he was surely aware that any rumour like that I would vehemently deny, it would never last, simply because it was just too unbelievable. Not to mention utterly impossible, so I straightened my posture, flattened my hair and walked from the classroom positive and undeniably certain that what was going on had nothing to with the rumour I had asked him to create.
Nothing.
But as I walked from the dungeons back up to the Great Hall, I realised with a jolt that when he had put his arms around me in potions and again when they had been placed either side of my head, the nausea I'd been carrying for days had eased, subsided to a barely there dull pain. All the while the niggling feeling in my gut, that was not altogether unpleasant, had refused to leave and instead was growing and spreading through my limbs. But that was just coincedence, my eyes wandered over the to Slytherin table upon reaching the Great Hall, unconsciously looking for him and finding him, his eyes locking with my own as he smirked at me.
Yes, coincedence.