Just a Kiss

Chapter 18

 When Hermione returns from the woods she'd fled in to, it's to find Draco wearing a line in her carpet. She arches a brow and tilts her head when his gaze lands on her and the relief is visible in the way his tense body seems to slump forward until he's leaning against the mantle of her fireplace. He doesn't speak, though, so she shrugs and makes her way back to the kitchen to start lunch. 

Draco makes it approximately one minute and thirty-four seconds before he explodes. 

"Where in Merlin's name have you been?" He shouts, stalking into the kitchen after her. The anger billowing off him in waves causes her to momentarily freeze, and it takes a lot to keep from flinching away. The last time someone had been this angry with her, she'd been struck to the ground. 

"What do you mean?" She asks, keeping her voice carefully devoid of emotion. Her back stays facing him so he can't see the way her hands shake as she layers meat and cheese onto bread. 

"What I mean is that you've been gone for three days, Granger! I've been locked away in this house for three days because of the bloody enchantement on the doors and windows and I haven't had a clue if you were coming back! You could have died and I would have been trapped here alone. So I'll ask again, where have you been?" His fists are curled tight at his side when she finally turns to face him and his eyes hold the wild glint of a caged animal. 

"Has it really been that long?" She wonders innocently, feeling just a touch cruel. After all, he had been the one to chase her from her house. "I must have lost track of time." Seeing the way his alabaster skin turned a brilliant shade of angry crimson is completely worth it. 

Draco crosses his arms over his chest and glares at her with all the fury he can muster into a single look. "Don't play games with me," he growls. "I sat here for three days thinking something had happend to you. It wasn't funny, not in the slightest. If this is some sick way of getting back at me for what I said, then you sure succeded." 

Hermione's brow furrows and she stares blankly at the wall just over his shoulder, lost in thought. 

For a moment he had actually sounded like...like he cared about what happened to her and that is exactly what she didn't want to happen. It was bad enough that Ron disrupted her life by coming back, now to have the person she hates suddenly start to show concern? It would flip everything upside down. She's relying on this one constant to keep her grounded and if she loses it then she might just loose her sanity.

 So she did the only thing she could do: make him hate her. 

"You were afraid?" She taunts, sneering at him. "Who would have thought that the big, bad Slytherin Death Eater would be afraid of being alone?" 

The reaction is instantaneous, but it isn't what she had hoped for. There isn't anger, like she'd been striving for. Rather, hurt flood across his expression and his body seems to deflate. His shoulders drop and his head hangs low, hiding most of his face from view. He looks so defeated in that moment that it sends a sharp pang of guilt crashing through her. 

This was what she had wanted, for him to hate her, but not in this way. She wanted to yelling and the angry taunts to be shot back at her. She feels sick with herself.

"That was a low blow," Draco declares quietly, refusing to meet her eyes. He glares out the window facing the back yard. "You know as well as I do that it wasn't my choice. I didn't want that, but I was forced into it. I thought you, of all people, would understand that. Clearly I was wrong." Hermione jolts back, face twisting up in pain. 

Then, just as quickly as he had turned into the broken boy, he's jerking up straight. She's stunned into silence as she watches his eyes narrow and a smirk pull up the corner of his mouth. If she hadn't been witness to the way he had been moments ago, she wouldn't believe the saddness that this cold face has held.