Chapter Five-
Everything I should have said.
"Do you ever feel like you aren't the person you're supposed to be?" J.M Reep, The Spring.
I spent the rest of the day pointedly ignoring his existence after that little display in potions and afterwards but I needn't have worried too much. He seemed to be doing exactly the same thing to me, going so far as giving me a wide berth when we passed in the corridors. However, it didn't take long for my own problems to come exploding forth when I rounded the corner just outside the library that evening and discovered Ron and Lavender clinging to each other ferociously. It was almost as if my emotions felt me rude for thinking I could forget their existence for one full day.
They fell apart quickly, the lip smacking sound appalling to my ears.
"Oh", giggled Lavender uncomfortably at the awkward silence that followed upon my inability to remove myself from their presence.
"Ugh", I said before I could bite it back trying to quell the urge to vomit. I slowly began backing away when my senses finally returned but Ron roughly pushed Lavender away and took two strides towards me.
"What was that with Malfoy today?" He growled angirly.
"What?" I said quietly, grinding to a halt.
"Ron, don't", Lavender squeaked from behind him, grabbing his shoulder as she spoke but he shrugged her off without turning. "Is there something going on between you and Malfoy?" He said visibly seething now and glaring hard at me.
"How can you ask me a question like that? Six years of being my friend, six and it doesn't occur to you that a question like that, directed at me, doesn't make sense?" My hands balled into fists furious how this boy, this boy I stilled somehow loved, understood nothing.
"So you deny it? It doesn't sound like it and what I saw today was the most disgusting display I've ever had the misfortune to witness. I mean, I know you're upset at what happened to us, or maybe depressed is a more accurate word and maybe you don't know how to deal with it. But how dare you act out desperately like this by turning to Malfoy". He breathed heavily having finished his tirade.
"H-how dare I?" I murmured dangerously.
"After all we went through, how dare you turn to him. You were mine, you cannot now be his", he glowered.
I paused before answering torn between laughing and wanting to punch him. I noticed the hurt look that passed across Lavender's face at his words but she knew better than to make an issue of that now. I took a deep, steadying breath.
"Last I checked you broke up with me and as far as I was aware, how I behaved post break-up has absolutely nothing to do with you. You forfeited that right two weeks ago. You say 'after all we went through', well where was your respect for me before you told me I was 'impossible to love' and shacked up with this vacuous, insipid idiot", I motioned to Lavender and she opened her mouth to retort but Ron raised a hand in a 'not now' gesture.
Now I did actually laugh, "Good to know you don't defend her either".
"So it isn't true?" He muttered again.
"What's it to you if it was?" I replied folding my arms, "It isn't any of your business how I choose to live".
"So, you are shagging Malfoy?" said Lavender, my previous insult to her now forgotten in light of the gossip she had received.
"Think what you like", I replied shrugging. "Besides, maybe Malfoy deserves a thanks from me too. I don't know what he said to you Ronald and I'm not sure I care now but it seems he saved me from something".
With that final sentence uttered, I turned on my heel and walked briskly the other way. I had underestimated these idiots, all of them, but it seemed as if Malfoy had not. I had assumed after knowing me all of these years they wouldn't have believed something so moronically simple and undeniably out of character as something going on between Malfoy and I. But this couldn't possibly be the rumour, as far as I could tell neither Ron nor Lavender had actually mentioned having heard a rumour.
They were drawing their information off of what they had seen. A rumour could be denied but you couldn't make a whole classroom of people unsee anything, more's the pity. Now it would grow with the help of Lavender, I had heard it said before that people always struggle to create memories where none exist. Meaning that now people would talk about 'signs', like how could they never have noticed the way Malfoy and I looked at each other or how I had always been a bit unpredictable and volatile or some such nonsense.
But where was this going to lead? What was the point?
My feet continued to move of their own accord, my mind no longer paying attention to the direction but it wasn't long before I reached the Gryffindor tower and beyond all surprise Pansy was standing waiting for me.
I started, my stride failing me for the second time in twenty minutes. I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder.
"What do you want? I've had enough crap today", I said tiredly. "Oh believe me Granger, if I could be anywhere else right now than waiting for your sorry ass to turn up, I would", she said scathingly, moving to stand in front of me. "However, I wanted an urgent word or two with you and as I can't find Draco I had to unfortunately come and find you".
She sniffed disapprovingly as if I had wasting her time but simply not knowing she would come and find me.
"What can I do for you?"
"Whatever is going on between you and Draco, I'm telling you to stop it and stop it now, I won't stand for it. He is mine". She ground out angrily.
"Oh, for fuck's sake are you kidding? Are all of you people really that stupid?" I retorted, sick and tired of this new world I'd found myself in where the everyone had been dropped on their heads leaving behind not one shred of rationality.
I raised my hands to my temples rubbing smooth circles and trying to iron out the creases in my thoughts. "Listen to me because I won't be saying this again, get a life all of you and leave me alone. Whatever I choose to do with my personal life is nothing to do with any of you even if it was something as insane as being with Malfoy".
I glanced at her to see had the message been concise enough for her to grasp without wasting any more brain cells. I mean she clearly didn't have them to spare.
"Well, that's precisely what you would say isn't it", she exploded raising her hands to the sky in frustration.
"Right", I said sardonically, pushing past her towards the portrait hole. "Goodnight then".
"I'm not finished with you, stay away from him", she spluttered.
"Yes, I heard that part the first time", I said muttering the password over my shoulder and waiting for the portrait to swing open behind me. "I'm done living in never never land for today, goodnight".
"Is that code for something you little bitch?" She screamed after me.
"Goodnight", I said again as the portrait swung shut after I had scrambled through. I paused just inside the door, what an unbelievably weird day, it had served one purpose however, for the first time in days something else had occupied my thoughts and it wasn't until I collapsed exhaustedly into bed that night, that I realised this wasn't necessarily a god thing.
My mind was now buzzing, analysing everything and the realisation that if Pansy, Malfoy's only non-rumoured on/off again girlfriend, could think there was ever the slightest possibility that something could happen beween me and Malfoy, then where did that leave the rest of the school?
They would believe it too, because if someone who had known Malfoy for years and someone who I thought knew me had been persuaded to doubt and question without any real expenditure of intelligence then everyone else would too.
And where had Malfoy been when all of this was coming to a head?
Needless to say, I didn't sleep.