13. The Sting of Love

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“In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life.” 

 Nicholas Sparks

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Draco had never been a man to think things through. Actually, no male thought anything through, but this time was much worse. For instance, when he was in fourth year, he’d brought Pansy Parkinson with him to the Yule Ball. Now, if he hadn’t have done that and taken Daphne Greengrass instead, he probably wouldn’t have had to deal with the strain of their relationship for two years afterwards, nor would he have met Astoria and, on the whole, life would be slightly easier to live with.

But no, Draco had not learned when he was fourteen and neither had he when he was sixteen and he’d tried to kill Dumbledore. It hadn’t dawned on him at the time that he was going to be taking away an actual life, and not just anybody’s, but one of the supposedly greatest wizards of all time, which he still didn’t entirely accept.

And now he’d done it again. He had been about to jump into a life of dark deeds all over again. Only moments ago, he had thought of it as his way out. Surely they couldn’t be as bad now as when the Dark Lord had ruled. Surely it was better than how the ‘good guys’ were treating him. But he hadn’t thought past that, he hadn’t thought what it would do to his parents, he hadn’t thought what to do if it were a trap, and he hadn’t thought what would happen if Granger found out. Or more or less, caught him in the act.

He’d wanted to get under her skin and bother her as much as possible, that was still true, he’d wanted her to crack. But now that she had, it wasn’t in the way he’d been hoping for.

She was standing opposite of him, casting spell after spell after spell at him and each time Draco deflected it and occasionally aimed one back at her. He’d thought she would be fun to antagonise, but looking at the fury on her face, he supposed this time he’d gone too far.

But that still didn’t make it okay for her to try and bloody well kill him.

“Stupefy!”

Draco made his move, ducking swiftly under red light narrowly missing his head, he launched himself at Granger’s midriff with such force that both hit the cold stonewall with a grunt.    

“Malfoy – let – go!” she panted, kicking and withering against him as he tightly wrapped his hands around her wrists, pinning them to her sides.

“I don’t think so, Granger,” he breathed back.

“You are incorrigible!” she cried, still furiously fighting for freedom.

He wished she’d stop doing that; her constant moving only pressed her body even closer to his. It was bad enough he was at this close proximity, but Merlin, she was only making it worse for herself. He was sure his tight hold on her must be hurting. The sooner she calmed down the sooner he’d let go.

“Stop it, would you?” he said hotly.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll –”

“Slap me?” she challenged. “Because, hey, you’ve been there once, why not do it again?”

That was when he lost all pretence, shoved her savagely into the wall and turned away on his heel. He was done. The day he had agreed to his mother was the day everything started falling to pieces. He honestly couldn’t have cared less about the stupid family’s reputation. He did not understand why they couldn’t just be Death Eaters already; no one here seemed to be too welcoming on the good side.

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