[Wattys '13 FINALIST] How Can I Love You When I Hate You So Much? (Draco Malfoy)

How Can I Love You When I Hate You So Much? (Draco Malfoy) Chapter 30

Holy shiz, 30? Sorry it has taken me so long to get here. A lot happened in my life in the past year, and it kinda consumed me. I am really sorry! Thanks so much for sticking with me this long.

Chapter 30 We'd be better run by a pack of rabid Nargles!

I paced the hall on the seventh floor, unsure if I even wanted to go to another Dumbledore's Army meeting. As much as I felt I needed to reconcile with the Golden Trio, I was unsure if it was even worth it. The glares were starting to make me itchy.

I turned again, past the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls to dance the ballet for probably the eleventy millionth time, when I slammed into a black figure standing in my path.

"Damn! Sorry! I wasn't looking where I was- Oh fuck, it's you."

"Watch it, freak!" Malfoy hissed, rubbing the shoulder my hard head had just smashed into. I ran my fingers through my short, black hair, brushing it from my face, and looked at Malfoy's shoes. "The hell are you even doing?"

"N-nothing. Just thinking, I guess." I said half-heartedly. I turned and headed back the way I came, pacing once more.

"Hawthorne, wait!" Malfoy called to me. I turned quickly, my eyes meeting his familiar stormy gray ones for the first time in weeks.

"Yes, Dr-Malfoy?" I said, heat rushing to my face in a very unfamiliar, icky way.

"Umbridge is recruiting students for her Inquisitorial Squad We'd get to rat on all the idiots and Mudbloods in this hellhole of a school. You in?" He said with that smug smirk I hadn't seen since our time together with Madame Pomfrey. I rolled my eyes.

"Get the hell out of here, Ferret. I wouldn't help Umbridge if she was choking to death alone with me on some deserted island somewhere. Just...get away from me, Malfoy." I said with a sigh. I wasn't sure why it made me so sad to know that Malfoy hadn't changed. Purists never change. I should have known that. My nose started itching again and I turned the corner, away from Malfoy and the meeting and everything. Before I could get very far away, I had a vision stop me in my tracks. It was me, with Harry, Ron, Hermoine, the entire of Dumbledore's Army. And something was wrong. I turned back suddenly and almost ran to the stretch of hallway. I paced back and forth, willing the door to appear.

When the door finally appeared, I stumbled quickly into the room, grabbing the robes of someone near the door to keep from falling.

 "S-Sorry!" I stuttered out, straightening myself before looking up at the last face I wanted to see. "Hi, Fred." I said softly before quickly walking to the other end of the room. Harry looked up at me as I passed, but didn't say anything. He stopped meeting me for Occulmency lessons, so we now never spoke. I smiled at him as we locked eyes, but his stare dropped to the ground. I sighed and leaned against the wall. I would tell them at the end of lesson, I suppose.

They had finally started work on Patronuses, which everybody had been very keen to practice, though as Harry kept reminding them, producing a Patronus in the middle of a brightly lit classroom when they were not under threat was very different to producing it when confronted by something like a dementor.

“Oh, don’t be such a killjoy,” said Cho brightly, watching her silvery swan-shaped Patronus soar around the Room of Requirement during their last lesson before Easter. “They’re so pretty!”

“They’re not supposed to be pretty, they’re supposed to protect you,” said Harry patiently. “What we really need is a boggart or something; that’s how I learned, I had to conjure a Patronus while the boggart was pretending to be a dementor —”