If you were confused in the last chapter-congratulations, you were meant to be. For those of you who PM'd me afterwards having figured out this was the point, thank you for your feedback. I wanted everyone to have a glimpse into Draco's mind, remember everything he ever thought about himself has changed.

That would be confusing for anyone.

Chapter Nine

Everything they saw

"They call you heartless, but you have a heart and I love you for being ashamed to show it" Friedrich Nietzsche

As I lay in bed that night, eyes fixed on the canopy above me, all I could think about was the shame that twisted and writhed inside of me. Shame in myself, in what I had allowed myself to become. I had been weak and so incredibly feeble-minded and in allowing my character to display traits that I had never associated with myself before; I had let myself down.

Ron had created a hole in my heart and I had stupidly believed that someone like Draco Malfoy could miraculously fill it. Malfoy had more issues than even he realised and by asking him to create a rumour, his problems had bled into my apparent solution.

They say that if we all threw our problems in a large pile and got a good, momentary glance at everyone else's, we would scramble to take ours back. I'm not sure who "they" are in this instance but you have to admit, it makes sense.

Malfoy's outburst at me yesterday had been confusing, broken and contradictory in several places. He had been like a raving drunkard, like the men I had sometimes seen fall out of the Hog's Head at one in the afternoon; stumbling blindly along the street, ranting about some girl they had foolishly allowed to leave them many years ago.

This had led me safely to the conclusion that whatever had been going on in Malfoy's head, had very little to do with me and therefore his words were not to be heeded and his actions, ignored. My chest had ached a little at this revelation but I had firmly told myself it was disappointment in myself that caused this hurt. Disappointment in my stupidity and fairytale notions that Malfoy was more than I had ever thought him to be. It didn't occur to me that I was the one who wanted to be seen as more.

Ron, however, was another story. His declaration of love had frightened me, not given me relief and this fact annoyed me immensely. I hadn't wanted him to still be in love with me and now with the benefit of hindsight and having replayed the moment over and over again in my head, I knew he wasn't. He had said it out of sheer anger. That I would choose Malfoy as his successor, was an insult to him, as if he had a right to choose who I got to be with. But I had assumed that if Ron had ever declared his love for me after breaking my heart, I would have happily gone back to him. Now, I knew this wasn't true. I had wanted him to be speaking out of anger, not love.

Seems I didn't know myself as well as I had originally thought.

I considered myself quite self-righteous in a lot of respects but tomorrow I would have to swallow it all down and go and seek forgiveness, rejoin my friends and try to forget this whole sorry episode. I'd made a terrible fool of myself and now, when my tears had dried and my mind had long since cleared, I refused to accept that Malfoy was everything I needed.

With this in mind, I turned over onto my side and tried to sleep.

As if it has ever been that easy.

The next morning, nobody spoke to me in the dormitory and if I'm being honest I was profoundly grateful. They all blamed me, I assumed, for what Ron had said and subsequently Lavender's tears were my fault. She kept her red eyes averted from me as she got ready, bursting into fresh, loud sobs occassionally prompting Parvati to glare at me as if I'd spoken. If anything it helped me to make my mind up that the first person I needed to find was Ron.

I needn't have worried though, Ron, Harry and Ginny were waiting for me in the Common Room, standing to one side as if in preparation for a fight. I froze on the bottom step of the dormitory staircase but Harry was quick to spot me and motion me over.

"Hey Hermione, will you talk to us?" He began when I had reached them.

I nodded, composing myself dreadfully as my discomfort remained on my face.

"We want to talk to you about what happened", began Harry, but I couldn't stand it.

"I'm sorry about what you saw, I've been...I've not been myself lately and I think I was vulnerable and I let Malfoy...I let myself believe Malfoy could help".

"You were kissing him", whispered Ginny as if it was still a secret. Her optimism astounded me.

"Yes, I know but as I told Harry before the rumour wasn't true and that hasn't changed. We...nothing happened between me and Malfoy before yesterday", I held my breath and inwardly prayed they wouldn't notice my hesitation as the memory of the way Malfoy's touch had seared my skin came charging forth.

"You made a fool of yourself in front of a lot of people", said Ron belligerently.

I looked down and resisted the urge to throw a scathing remark at him, I swallowed and took a deep breath instead.

"I never meant to hurt anyone and to be honest I can't see that what I did was any worse than what you blurted out in front of Lavender", the words came out slightly more bitter than I had intended them but they seemed to do the trick. I didn't stop there though.

"I'm getting tired of feeling like I have to explain my actions. I'm a free person and if I make bad decisions, they are my decisions and mistakes to make. I would hope my friends would accept me regardless. Did it ever occur to any of you that I was acting out because Ron had hurt me and you all seemed to just accept him and his new girlfriend without any thought to how humiliated and hurt I was?"

They didn't answer for a long time, choosing instead to stare at the floor under my gaze. I was glad I had finally shamed them, they had had it coming as far as I could see.

Wow, sometimes I really did sound like Malfoy. The words he had once spoken to me appeared sharply in my mind: Sometimes we can't care about anybody else and the best thing to do is learn exactly who you are and what you are capable of and accept it.

"We thought the rumour was true", said Harry startling me out of my reverie. "I'm sorry, we should have known better. I mean how could our Hermione ever be like that", he smiled at me.

I couldn't smile back, his words made yet another Malfoy memory come to the fore of my mind. It excites you to know that people think you are capable of such passion. That even for the briefest, infinitesimal second people finally saw you as something else. Something more.

I shook myself and attempted a smile back. "Maybe we can start again, put all of this down to an error of judgement, a miscommunication on all of our parts. If none of you object though, I'd like to speak to Ron alone? If you go to breakfast, we can follow you down?"

Harry nodded, shrugging at Ron's uncomfortable glance his way. Ginny hugged me "Glad to have you back", she whispered as if I had gone on a long trip and replaced myself with another Hermione she didn't understand or like.

Then it was Ron and I standing alone, awkwardly waiting for a clue on how to begin.

"I know you didn't mean what you said yesterday Ron, I'm not about to start believing that you did but I want to know why you said it? I finally looked him straight in the eye and what I saw was a belligerent child staring back at me.

Malfoy was right, I was better than him.

"Well, see it from my point of view", he began. "You were mine and then you go from being that to suddenly being with...him".

I opened my mouth to say how unfair that was, the fact that we had already had this argument coming to my mind swiftly but he got there before me.

"I know what you're going to say, I should have known better than to think you would ever do anything so out of character but you know, of course I still had feelings for you when I broke up with you, I just couldn't be with you. You were impossible to love".

My mouth snapped shut, had I been so good at projecting one image of myself that I had naively thought my friends might just see through it? See that there was obviously more to me than I wanted to display to the public?

I was tired of retching everytime I saw you both; everytime I saw you look at him with some sort of adoration I knew he didn't deserve I thought I would puke.

Is this what Malfoy had meant? That it was so clear to everyone that Ron was oblivious to the fact that there might have been more to my personality than what I was projecting and I had foolishly adored him for thinking he could see it?

"You need to make up with Lavender", I couldn't believe that with my tumultuous thoughts these were the words that came out of my mouth. I also knew that there was nothing further I could say to this idiot. "You don't have to worry about me "acting out" anymore, I'm done. See you at breakfast".

I sat at the Gryffindor table amidst the whispering and finger pointing, purposefully sitting with my back to the Slytherin table. Harry made room for me next to him and Ginny, sitting opposite me, began chattering animatedly filling me in on the things I had missed.

Neville and Luna blushed furiously when Ginny told me they were now a couple, laughingly adding that now everyone was in a relationship. Her gaze fell when Ron and Lavender walked in hand-in-hand and she realised that no, not everyone was in a couple.

Lavender smirked at me in a sort of, he picked me, way and I swallowed down my annoyance. Angry that she would think I would still want him.

Ginny humphed suddenly. "Hermione, Malfoy's giving you the evils right now".

My chest constricted the tiniest fraction but somehow I managed to answer. "Let him glare all he wants".

Harry turned to see and mockingly added. "He's probably pissed that you don't want him, seeing how he thinks he is God's gift to everything".

"Yea, slimy git", laughed Ron.

"Really though, he is proper glaring at you. I wonder what's up his arse?" continued Ginny, "You should see his face Hermione, he..."

"For God's sake shut up!" I shouted. "How do you all expect me to put this behind me if you all keep talking about him?"

They silenced immediately, staring at me in disbelief.

"I'm sorry", I said sighing. "It's just, what he did...it hurt me too. If I'm going to move past it, I don't want to talk about him".

"Of course Hermione", said Ginny nodding solemnly. I wanted to slap her so badly for thinking she even understood where I was coming from.

"You know what I'm a bit hazy on?" piped up Luna as if voicing her thoughts aloud.

I closed my eyes.

"Why were you so upset yesterday, was it because we saw you or was it because you thought Malfoy had planned it all and you had wanted it to be real?"

Harry turned to me, "That's right, you asked him if he'd done it on purpose and he said you can't have thought it was real? Was it real for you, Hermione?" He waited for an answer, frowning at me as he spoke but I didn't have one. All I could manage was.

"Do we need to talk about it?"

"I just don't get it..."

"Harry please", I shouted shooting up out of my seat. "Can't you all just leave me alone, you are all so goddam changeable and I can't stand it. It would have meant so much more to me if you had all stuck by me even when you thought I had had sex with Malfoy. You all still should have been my friends because I thought that was the point of friendship, no judgement because people make mistakes. But now you know we weren't and aren't having sex, now suddenly I'm worthy of all of you? That's fucking rich".

With that, I stormed out of the Great Hall glancing at the Slytherin table just in time to notice Malfoy had already left and had missed my nice little outburst and he was the only one I wanted to share it with.

Malfoy was the one who had considered me worthy of his time only after I had fallen off my stupid, self-erected pedestal and that, I felt, was something I wouldn't mind looking in to.