Bad Reputation

The Owl and the Pixie Cat

He takes a sip. "My father is beside himself that I've never brought home a girl. At this point I think he'd almost settle for a boy. Anything to keep up the charade of monogamy and ownership."

"I hate the idea that I have to perform anything," she says, with heat. "I love to be alone with my thoughts. I love to read and study. I love to be experiencing life on my own terms. I know people say that relationships take compromise and meeting in the middle but...maybe I don't want the middle. Maybe I want... "

"What do you want, Granger?" he says quietly.

"I want to be in love, but also to feel free," she spills, surprising herself. "I want to find someone who admires me and let me exist at my full size. Who understands my need to explore and learn and discover. Who doesn't need me to put on a show as his girlfriend or his social accessory, but who wants ME. ALL of messy, intense, note-taking, all-night-studying me." She surges on, her heart pouring it all out for the first time. "Someone who's a partner and an equal. Who loves his own solitude as I love my own. Who wants me deeply but is complete without me. Who intoxicates me but isn't intimidated by me. And —" she looks down shyly — "looks forward to kissing me, etcetera."

She stops abruptly, out of breath.

Malfoy is looking at her with a strange, intense expression that's almost...starry. But could also be indigestion. She's not sure.

"It's not silly, Granger," he says at length. "There are people out there who would die to provide that for you."

"Teenage boys, though?"

"They're rare, especially at our joke of a school. Especially since purebloods aren't really raised to look for love, more for pragmatic partnerships. But...such boys do exist."

"Help me find one, will you?"

"Never," he says with a snort. "I'm going to order another, you want more tea?"

"Yes, please."

He orders more, and she sits with her embarrassment at having disclosed so much to the school whore.

He's not the school whore, she reminds herself.

But he is Malfoy.

"Tell me something about yourself," she says sheepishly as he sits down. "Tell me about flying."

"You hate flying, Granger. Everyone remembers the flying class from year 1. You hung upside down from your broom until you had to be rescued. Your robes hung down like batwings." He snickers.

"Why don't you hate it?"

"Merlin, what a question," he says. He looks into his cup. "It's one of the only times, including sleep and dreaming, when I feel completely free of anyone's expectations. As a Malfoy. As a boy. As a boy who finds both boys and girls beautiful. As a pureblood. All the things I'm supposed to be on the ground — in the sky, they just fade away and disappear. And I can just be...whoever I really am."

He coughs. "I'm sorry. Now I'm the one who sounds like the back of a matchbook. It's...if you can get over the fear, you really should, Granger. I don't know how to put it, but when you fly, it feels like you finally belong to the world as your right self. Your whole self."

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth / and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings," she quotes.

"I have never been seen laughing," he says sternly, and it makes her laugh harder, placing a companionable hand on his arm.

He flexes suddenly under her touch, then relaxes.

This. This is nice. There could be more of this, she realizes.