Chapter Eight
Everything we do
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had-Friedrich Nietzsche
It had been a beautiful autumn day but by the time I reached the lake, my tumultuous thoughts running riot, the sun was already sinking steadily and the breeze had gained an extra chill. I had the most horrible sense of impending doom as I pulled my scarf out of my bag and wound it tightly around my neck; the feeling that something big was about to happen.
And it would change everything.
I shook myself, willing the paranoia to susbside enough for me to get through this, and strode purposefully towards the lake. As predicted, Malfoy was nowhere to be seen and that thankfully left me as the one waiting. It is easy to appear relaxed when you aren't the one walking awkwardly into the middle of a situation.
I settled myself on the edge of the lake and allowed my head to empty itself along with the cool breeze, it wasn't easy though. Malfoy would come creeping back in as soon as I let my guard down, why was he always there? This had started as a fairly naive request; change my reputation. I hadn't known this was how he would do it but...
That's a lie, my head whispered and my shoulders slumped a little. Yes, it was a lie. I knew I was risking this sort of rumour but the truth was I hadn't cared, anything to make the pain Ron had created cease and to ensure people had something more interesting to talk about than my complete emotional breakdown.
Ron, his face loomed in my mind but he was somehow smaller than I remembered. Perhaps his complete significance had diminished in my heart, one dream had forever vanished with him and it was clearer every day I would never get it back. But it was slowly dawning on me, that maybe I didn't want it.
"Granger, you made it", his voice dashed away my melancholic thoughts and it took me several seconds to realise his tone was nervous.
I felt his presence in the air around me without even having to look at him, I felt like I was receiving tiny bolts of electricity and I knew then that I was in trouble, Ron had never made me feel like that. Safe and yet in danger at the same time.
He seemed annoyed on second glance, his features dishevelled along with his uniform and hair, as if he hadn't had time to school everything into place. He sauntered casually towards me before throwing himself on the ground beside me.
He didn't speak for several minutes, staring out into the distance far beyond the lake.
"You wanted to speak to me? Urgently you said", I started, attempting to quell that impending feeling of doom that had once again risen up inside of me.
"Not so urgently", he said quietly, still staring out beyond the lake. "Something is coming Granger, did you know that? Are you aware of anything outside of yourself?"
The words were quiet, like an afterthought but with a rehearsed air as if he had deliberated how they would sound if he spoke them aloud.
"I know", I whispered back. "I'm not completely impervious to my surroundings". I followed his gaze out across the grounds and wondered what future he was now looking into. Or was he looking into any future at all? I mean what kind of future could Malfoy ever hope to have?
He laughed lowly and I felt that it was genuine rather than heard it.
"You have no idea", he rubbed his left arm unconsciously before sitting back, propping his elbows onto his knees.
"About?"
"Huh?"
"What do I have no idea about? You and all that you are? Or the war? Or Voldemort? What significant thing am I missing here?" I spoke belligerently, annoyed that he would assume I was far too wrapped up in my own problems to know that the world was beginning to crumble around me.
"What do you mean all that I am?" He said, turning towards me for the first time and I noticed his eyes glinting dangerously.
"You know", I said, waving my left arm in the air, his face fell. "I'm not stupid Malfoy, did you think that nobody knows?"
"You don't know what you're talking about Granger", he growled.
"You're right, I probably don't but let's imagine for one second that I'm right about...about it. You're just fulfilling everyone's expectations of you. Nobody would expect you to have done any less".
"Did it ever occur to you that I might be more than that? More than what you already think?"
"Please, you couldn't be", I realised how unfair I was being, I had asked him to change my reputation so that people would see me as something else surely that meant I couldn't be the only one unhappy with how the student body had categorised me?
He roared suddenly as if in frustration and jumped to his feet. "You still don't get it Granger, why do you continually disappoint me?"
I scrambled to my feet and stood in front of him, "What are you talking about, disappoint you?"
The second he said the words however I knew what he was alluding to and took the opportunity of throwing it in his face.
"The last few weeks everytime we have spoken you have sounded disappointed in me, as if I've missed something crucial in what you've said and I don't get it."
He laughed but the anger was still plain on his face. "You're right, you don't get it. You, Granger, you are everything I am".
"What does that mean?" I said quietly, no longer able to shout at him.
"You know the fundamental reason I tried to get Weasley to end it with you? The real reason?"
He paused before continuing. "Because you thought you were better than everyone including him and let me tell you something, you were right. You are better than him. You are one of those annoying, deluded, semi-idiots that think they are perfect and they want everyone else to be perfect around them. Let me tell you something, you are a fool".
"I'm a fool because I want to be happy? I said angrily.
"You aren't listening, you aren't perfect but because you think you are Weasley couldn't handle it. You need someone willing to call you on your shit, who won't allow you to think you are better than everyone else but will secretly always think it himself. I am what you deserve Granger. We've both spent most of our lives with this deluded, unwavering sense of self; that we are perfection incarnate and then suddenly it is brought home to us that maybe, just maybe, we aren't enough on our own".
"I don't know where you are going with this", I whispered, staring hard at him and trying to see past the fury in his eyes.
"I didn't want people to associate your name with his, it was insulting considering how much you outweigh him in every capacity. I needed it to be my mine because as far as I see it, my name is the only one that could ever live up to be equal to yours. That makes us two arrogant pricks who deserve each other and you are arrogant we just put it forth differently".
"I will never love you", I burst out. "You are incapable of any sort of emotion especially one as selfless as love".
To my surprise he began to laugh. "Oh it took me a long time to accept the fact that I deserve someone like you, believe me, I still don't want to feel any of this and who said I loved you? I said I was what you deserve and I am. You know the first time I realised? When you punched me in third year. All I could think about afterwards was my own wounded pride and the fact that you had shown me a side of yourself I don't think you meant anyone to see". His look darkened and I felt as if he was trying to salvage some pride right in that moment, as if he had let something slip and he was struggling to retrieve it.
He glared at me, "Then to see you pick someone so beneath you and bury everything away where nobody could see it made me sick. But since he finished it, all I've seen is you fighting to set yourself free".
"And you think you're the one to do that?" I scoffed.
"Scoff all you want and no, that isn't what I'm saying. I'm the one trying to pull you off the pedestal remember and to open your mind to the possibility that I might be the perfect one to help because I am exactly what you deserve and believe me I hate myself for it".
I shook my head, "I hate you more than I've ever hated anyone, you shouldn't make me feel anything other than loathing".
"But I make you feel something else don't I?"
I nodded before I could think about it, but it didn't matter because by the time I had raised and lowered my head once, his lips were on mine.
I gasped, my mouth opening involuntarily and he forced his tongue deep in, pulling me closer and wrapping his hands in my hair. We lost our balance and toppled to the grass, the kiss broke for a second as we landed with a sharp thud but his mouth was back on mine in the same instance and this time I was ready. My tongue grappled with his as his hands slid down to my skirt, raising it higher and allowing his fingers to run up and down my thighs, gripping and stroking.
His lips sought my neck, my collarbone and under my ear. I groaned in his ear, listening to the sound of his ragged breathing.
He lifted my skirt higher and I felt his fingers brush my underwear.
All that he had said, he had never said he loved me, he had said I deserved him but in truth I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that information.
Right now, I didn't exactly care. All I knew was he had awakened something in me I hadn't even known was there and I needed him, all of him.
"Hermione?"
Harry's voice was shocked with barely concealed anger but I heard him all the same, even underneath Malfoy.
I struggled to remove myself and pull down my skirt but Malfoy wasn't going to make it easy. He just wouldn't get off me, not fast enough anyway.
When I managed to extract myself from his grip, I realised Ron, Lavender, Harry, Ginny, Neville and Luna were standing watching us. The Slytherin crowd were behind them laughing manically.
"Malfoy, you did brilliantly mate", roared Blaise choking back tears of joy.
"You...you did this on purpose?" I turned to him, he certainly didn't look as if it had all been planned but he quickly composed himself and shrugged shoving his hands into his pockets.
"You can't think it was real? I'm a great actor amn't I?" He grinned but it was all wrong somehow.
Ron shoved himself forward and aimed one swift punch to Malfoy's jaw, making sickening contact. Malfoy stumbled backwards a few steps as Ron turned to me.
"How could you do this? I still love you and here you are with him!" He screamed.
"You still love me? You said I was impossible to love?" I shouted back in surprise.
Malfoy regained his composure quickly or maybe what he heard pissed him off because the next thing I realised Ron was lying unconscious on the ground, his eye swelling at an alarming rate.
"How could you do that?" I screamed. "Ron, Ron are you okay?" I knelt next to him, rubbing his hair out of his face.
Malfoy shook his head at me, "Jesus, you are so disappointing". He turned and walked back towards the Slytherins without giving me a backward glance but his shoulders slumped as if in defeat.
Harry wouldn't look at me as he picked Ron up off the ground, Ginny helped him as Lavender had already fled back to the safety of the castle.
None of them would even talk to me as they turned away and began the slow walk back, Luna however hadn't moved.
"Luna, I..." The tears began rolling down my cheeks and I couldn't figure out who they were for.
"I don't need to hear it Hermione. Whatever you do is your own business but if you ask me you've fallen in way too deep and with someone like him it can only lead to bad things, he is cruel and capable of so much evil. He is dangerous". She turned and began to follow the others.
"You're wrong", I whispered, "He isn't cruel, he is just an arrogant prick. Like me".
I slumped onto the ground, sobbing uncontrollably realising that she knew how I felt even if I didn't fully understand it myself. Then I knew, the tears were for him.
He had left me and he was right, he was what I deserved.
He was what I needed, not Ron.
This pale, slytherin, blonde haired asshole was everything I needed.
I couldn't move.