Inescapable

Chapter 3

Hermione climbed the Grand Staircase like the fiery depths of hell were licking at her heels, and didn't stop until she reached the 7th floor.

The main corridor was empty of people, living or dead, so she leaned against the nearest wall and tried to catch her breath.

She felt hurt, oppressed and above all, angry. She clung to angry. Anger was good, anger was what she needed right now.

Malfoy seemed to think that this whole thing was some big joke, and maybe it was to him. He'd had the gall to sit there and mock her like she was nothing more than an insignificant nobody that he'd randomly decided to shag, purely for his own amusement. But of course he did, he was Draco Malfoy. This wasn't anything new to her. He had always been like this - an insolent sod who thought that the sun shone out of his arse. Yet, did he really have to mock her in such a disparaging way after what had happened between them? Didn't he have even a scrap of decency left?

Clearly not.

Hermione had barely thought about him over the last few weeks. She was very good at compartmentalizing the things she didn't want to deal with. Draco Malfoy being at the very top of the list of things she'd prefer not to look too closely at.

The day after the... unfortunate incident - it was best to call it what it was - hadn't been particularly great. She'd gotten no sleep the night before due to endless amounts of fretting about whether he would tell someone or not. In hindsight, it was silly, really, because he'd seemed rather adamant that he didn't want anyone to know about what had happened. At the time though, she'd thought he had only meant her friends, and had convinced herself that he was going to tell all of his cronies.

All the next morning, whilst showering and getting dressed, she had worked herself up into a tizzy, imagining Malfoy's housemates staring at her knowingly and laughing. Thankfully, that didn't end up happening. In fact, no one in Slytherin so much as glanced in her direction, except Malfoy, of course. So after she had given the blond-git his wand back, and subsequently scared him out of his wits with thoughts of contamination, she'd decided to put the whole horrid thing behind her and just pretend like it'd never happened.

Sure, it wasn't the best-thought-out plan. Bottling these kinds of things up always came back to bite you in the arse, but it had been working. Until today, that is.

Why did he have to come into the bloody library? Or better yet, why didn't she just get up from the table and leave the spoilt brat to his own devises?

Perhaps because that would have been bowing to defeat and letting him get one over on her, again, and she simply couldn't bear to let that happen.

Hermione had managed to mostly ignore his taunts, even fired off a few of her own when the opportunity presented itself. She couldn't let him see that she was overly bothered by the things he was saying. Hell no. That would have been detrimental to her health. He would have struck like a poisonous viper and gone straight for the jugular.

She'd stood her own and done alright, considering. That is to say, she had, right up until the last few minutes when it had all gone to complete and utter shit.

Hermione cringed as she thought back to the way she had exploded on him and stormed out of the library. God, she must have sounded so jealous, which she absolutely wasn't. Not at all. She just thought it was tasteless of him to sleep with someone else only a week after they had slept together. The fact that it was Parkinson didn't help the matter either.

Bastard.

Imagines of him and Pansy Parkinson flashed through her mind, and she gritted her teeth together, hard, and thumped her head against the wall in frustration.