hand was starting to twitch too.
"After five yearsthinking you were dead or dying or worse and with no way to reach you after those pathetic three postcards you sent me. After all the agony you put me through, that is all you have to say to me? That?!"
"That night in Knockturn Alley I told you there was no turning back. Fida Mia started something but we bloody well took it to a whole new level and then we fucking sealed it. Granger. I'm not going to join you in pretending that what we had was some sort of stupid fling, you felt what I felt. Give this time. Please."
"Evidently you didn' t feel it as strongly as I did," Hermione replied, in low, clear tones. She jabbed a finger over her heart. "I'm the heartbroken one, remember! I didn't do the leaving, you did. Don't you speak to me about time!"
He nodded. "Yes, I know. I' ll get to that in a minute. Right now please consider that you can' t realistically stay angry at me forever. Now that I' m back, we can' t stay apart forever either. You know it will eat at us. It is already."
She snorted. "Like hell it will. I rather realistically got over you, Malfoy! I moved on with my life. It's not my fault you haven't!"
He took a silent step toward her. "I don't doubt that you did move on. Your resilience is astounding. It's one of the many things I love about you, Granger. But you're lying to yourself if you think you've got over me."
Hermione couldn't believe what she was hearing. Did he really have the audacity to think that he was actually being reasonable? If his easy, effortless admission of love nearly undid her, his massive, undented ego just about did the trick. Hermione recognized she was in serious danger of going to pieces right in front of him. She despised him all over again for it. This was not supposed to be happening. It had taken her so very long to steel her heart.
She turned away from him in an effort to regain some composure. He apparently mistook this for indifference.
"Alright," he said, and she was oddly pleased to hear the tremor in his voice. "Let me put a scenario before you. Put yourself in my shoes five years ago. Imagine you're in love with me."
Hermione opened her mouth to retort, but he stopped her. "Wait, just hear me out. You fall in love unexpectedly. Something you didn't expect you were even capable of. You despise the world and all the people in it and you trust no one, least of all your own family, whom you think has betrayed and abandoned you. But this new love...it's..." Draco paused, searching for a word, "it's remarkable. It's a whirlwind, passionate, fragile, completely illogical, as badly timed as you can get, but it's also true. Head over heels, up to your eyebrows true. Then something happens and it's because of you, directly and indirectly. Something terrible happens, and that someone dies. Badly."
"Only I didn' t die. You saved me, remember?" she reminded him, in a whisper.
Draco' s eyes were searing, colourless crystal in the moonlight. "Barely, Granger. I saved you just barely. You drowned in my arms. I felt the life go out of you. You have no idea what that did to me. You died because of me."
"But you promised you wouldn't leave without telling me!"
She realized she was shouting. Hurt and fear was pouring out of her and with it came an almost intoxicating relief she hadn't expected. She was incapable of stopping it. She didn't want to stop it.
Goodness, when exactly did he get that close to her? They were standing barely a breath apart. His frowning, intense face hovered over her. Ginny's home haircut had grown out a little. His fringe was long enough to keep out of his eyes. The hair at the back was still short and choppy though. There was a thin, white scar across his left cheekbone. And another along his jaw on the same side. Her mind reeled off at least a dozen more, new details about him, small little revelations that transfixed her.
"You knew it was a promise I couldn't keep when you asked me," he hissed.
Some small part of her brain was also registering the fact that Draco Malfoy was probably ten times scarier than he was before. But anger often made you braver, even if it tended