All You Want

32) My World Is Only You

Everything in Hermione's vision turned red. She found herself standing. All she could hear was her own breathing.

Draco looked over sharply, and his eyes met Hermione's.

Her jaw trembled, and she clenched her hands into fists as she struggled to tamp down on the overwhelming desire to set him and Astoria on fire. The tables and platters of food shook.

Hermione drew a deep breath, turned on her heel, and bolted from the Great Hall.

The blood was roaring in her ears as she sprinted through the castle, back to her room.

"Kismet!" She spat the password and flung the door open.

She stormed across the room, gathering up all her possessions and dumping them into her trunk.

She was—to her astonishment—not crying. After a week of crying over almost everything imaginable, she was not crying about something that she would have fully expected to be hysterical about.

Rather, she felt remarkably clear-headed. The scales had fallen from her eyes and reality had reasserted itself; and it was cold and clear as crystal. No more emotional, hormonal, biological illusions.

She was an idiot.

A weepy, clingy, hormonal idiot.

That was resoundingly obvious.

She and Draco were always doomed. No one thought it made any sense that they were together. Not her friends. Not his friends.

A few coincidences and she'd been stupid enough to mistake it for something dreamy and predestined.

Of course it would feel that way. The biology would be intended to seem that way so that it was easy to give into; let reason go and believe that a co-dependent relationship where she tied her magic and emotions up with someone else was healthy and romantic. Ideal even.

The presentation wanted her to fall for it. To make her believe her biological dependency wasn't just endurable, it was destiny. Draco wasn't just right for her, he was her soulmate.

Rubbish. All of it was rubbish.

There was no such thing as soulmates. It was just a fairy tale to make the indignity and horror of the fact she was fundamentally a magical broodmare somewhat endurable feeling.

Who cared about self-determination when "destiny" came with so many orgasms?

She kicked her trunk and swore as she shoved an armload of books into it.

The door clicked, and she turned to find Draco standing behind her.

"What are you doing?" he asked, looking past her to her half-packed trunk.

He didn't have the book anymore, presumably because he'd left it with Astoria.

"I'm going back to Gryffindor tower," she said as she walked over and snatched up a pile of laundry she'd kicked into the corner the day before. "I think that makes the most sense."

"Hermione—"

Hermione turned away from him. "I don't want to do this anymore. It was a mistake, I think. I realized while I've been packing—that this was a mistake. I don't think—," she dropped her head and stared down at her shoes. "I don't think St Mungo's actually has any intention of approving me, they're probably just putting me off until I give up. So—I should probably just write to Charlie. I don't want to keep pretending that biological factors make this something that's actually"—her voice fractured slightly—"real."

She walked into the bathroom.

She grabbed her toothbrush, comb, and shampoo and stuck them into her box of suppressants. Draco was blocking the door when she turned to exit.