The Symmetrical Transit (Dramione)

Twelve

Day One Hundred Twenty-Three; 3:36pm

He looked good.

Just as good as he had the last time she had seen him, in fact. Better, even.

And it hurt a lot worse than she had thought it might. There was this horrible tearing inside of her, like her insides were split in two. She wanted to look away and walk away as much as she wanted to run up to him and whack him, and then kiss him, maybe, too.

Because she had been thinking a lot, and she knew it was one of those stupid things she had seen other girls do and thought was ridiculous at the time, but she had been rationalizing like hell for days and weeks now. And she had been wondering just how much she was supposed to blame him.

She knew it was just because she missed him. She knew it was a stupid thing to do. She knew she should never want anything at all to do with him again.

But she sort of understood, in a way. In a way that she was still pretty angry over it, but that she still wanted to maybe bandage him up after she hexed him.

He was doing what he had to do. What he was told to do by an Order who he fully believed would try to screw him over the moment he wasn't doing something they needed him for -- unless, of course, that was a lie too. But if his actions had been anything to go by, Malfoy had been at least a little guilty over carrying on with it. In fact, knowing the circumstance, she could even remember situations where he might have been torn between the two decisions he had to make.

In the end, he was on a mission that they told him was for her own safety. And she wasn't the sort of girl who would believe that he hadn't told her because he feared for her safety either. But she was the sort of girl who could think about it in the privacy of her head for a bit before dismissing it.

Really, though, she understood. Hermione was very good at putting herself in the shoes of other people, and had it been her mission, she couldn't say she wouldn't have done the same thing. Even after liking him and spending so much time with him, she still wouldn't have told him what the real plan was. It would have been her orders, after all.

Though she still didn't think she would have slept with him while lying to him. Not that her desire for him would have meant less, or her feelings for him at all, but he might have thought he was being completely used in the end. Lied to and used. Which was basically what she felt. She wasn't sure, though, because she hadn't been in that role in the situation. She couldn't honestly know for sure that she would have done this and wouldn't have done that.

She didn't know how Malfoy felt. He had been apologetic, but that was the extent to which she really knew. For all she could figure out, he didn't care if he saw her again. He had spent some time with her, and got what he wanted out of her during that time, and that was it. He was done and free to go on to whatever assignment the Order gave him next.

Sex wasn't something she could just do. She could still lay in bed at night and remember the feel of him.

It was hard to feel used. Especially by him. Especially when she had wanted so much more out of that situation than staring at him from across a room and having no idea what to do, or think, or feel at all.

He was talking to someone she didn't know, and she liked to think he saw her, judging by the rigid posturing and the way he kept looking at the floor space of the room between them. She might have just been imagining it, but she wanted to feel that he felt as awkward and unsure in that moment as she did.

God, it felt so hard to see him right there, just a short space from her, and not be able to do anything about it. To have missed him so much since she last saw him, only to see him now and not be able to relieve that ache. To see him now and only miss him a hundred times more.