━━ 𝗔 𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗥𝗬 𝗦𝗧𝗬𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡
I feel her before I see her, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in attention. When I shut my locker, she's parting the crowd like the red sea. Imogen Greene is looking right at me, a smirk po...
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IMOGEN Greene's door opens before my fist makes contact with it, as if she'd been waiting for me to show up.
Her tired, dark eyes show the anxiety hidden behind the smooth planes of her face, the tight line of her mouth and if that nervousness wasn't there, I could see how she could intimidate someone like, oh, Zeus, maybe.
My stomach is sour at the ridiculousness of that thought.
I wonder if there are any nice asylums around here or if I'm going to get stuck in some shithole with Nurse Ratched.
She steps aside, letting me past her and into her room. The adrenaline that got me here is twisting itself into horrific self-doubt and how the fuck do I even bring this up?
Who am I kidding?
Her stare gives me chills and I wait for those stormy eyes to turn to the starry ones I've been missing.
They don't, and we're silent for a long moment. I can feel her taking in the lines on my exhausted face, the rumpled state of my clothes, my missing winter coat. The tension in the air is heating the room.
Her fingers keep curling themselves into and out of the palm of her hand, her bottom lip is trying to find its way between her teeth.
Beautiful, nervous hell.
Can we just skip the whole I think you're probably a goddess and go right to her either kicking me out or kissing me?
Kissing would be ideal, but it's not likely.
"So," she says at last, her voice shaky but still somehow firm, somehow intimidating.
"I...it doesn't matter," I say, because that's the only part of this that I know to be true.
"What?"
"What you are, I said it before and I mean it. It doesn't matter to me."
Her eyes change. Fury, darkness, but...hope.
There's hope trying to break the surface.
But her careful mask slides back into place and she turns away.
"I suppose you're right. It doesn't matter."
My heart thunders.
"I won't be here much longer anyways."
Crash, thump, silence in my chest.
"What?" I croak to her back, the sharp bones of her shoulders, the rigid set of them. And she's facing me again, her entire being fire.
"I'm not going to be here and it does matter, Harry. You don't know anything, you're naïve and-"
"I don't care if you're the entire night, Imogen," I grind out through my teeth. I'm a lot of things but naïve is not one of them.
