𝐀𝐝𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚
"Have you forgotten everything that has ever happened?"
Pansy is staring at me from the other side of the room, not breaking our eye contact while I wish I could just run out of the room and shut the door between us.
"No, Pansy, I have not but you have no idea-" I try to defend myself, but once again she interrupts me which causes me to sigh heavily.
"Oh believe me, I have an idea!" she raises her voice, stepping closer until she sits down on her bed while I am seated on mine. "He is the same as he has always been and sooner or later you will see it again. I don't know why he is acting like that now, but the day will come on which you will get hurt again."
I love her, I really do, but in moments like this I wish I could just make her disappear. I know that friends are supposed to give me advice and help me see more clearly when I myself am somehow blinded, but friends are not here to take my life and my choices away from me.
Supporting is good, but if they decide to rule for me, then it gets too far.
"What are you saying?" I ask her in a provocative tone, starting to crack my fingers because anger is rising inside me.
"I'm saying that I don't understand why you and Draco are suddenly so close. You had Theo, but I somehow missed the point where you decided to drop him and rather meet up with the guy who hurt you more than anyone else ever did. So basically I'm saying that you should stay away from him, not entirely if you really think that you two could somehow be friends or whatever you want to call it, but in my opinion it would be better to leave him now before it is too late. I don't understand one single bit of it, I'm sorry but I really don't."
Not once in our friendship have I ever felt the urge to throw words in her direction I swore to never say to her. I want to grab her by her shoulders, shake her and yell at her that she should piss off and leave me the fuck alone. I'm not saying it to her because I have some kind of self control, but it's hard to be boiling inside without exploding.
"I'm sorry, but is it my life we are talking about or yours?"
"Adhara, I know that it's your life. All I want to do is keep you away from everything that has the potential to hurt you some day. You know I don't want to make decisions for you, I'm just-"
"Well, it doesn't feel like that." this time I am the one to interrupt the other. "If you really want to talk about that right now, fine, but I won't do it if you keep judging me like that."
She is silent and I don't say anything either.
"Okay. I didn't mean to judge you, it's Draco I don't trust and he makes me mad because he can't keep his goddamn eyes off of you even though he knows what he did to you."
"Yeah Pansy. He knows, I know and everyone else fucking knows!" this time I can't control the volume of my voice and only after I spoke to her I realised how loud I really was. "Sorry. But he is your best friend and I don't get how you can talk about him like that."
She is quiet once again, looking down at her fingers before she meets my gaze again.
"Draco and I are like siblings. We love each other but I fucking hate him at the same time. It's two sided, Adhara. The one side is always going to love him like a sister would love her brother because we've been through so much that I don't think I will ever get rid of him. I don't even want to remove him from my life because as you said, he is my best friend. But on the other side I could kill him over and over again just because I know that you two have a past that absolutely sucks. He is important to me, yes, but if he decides to hurt you, then I don't give a fuck about whether I'm hurting him with my feelings or not."
"Siblings hurt each other which causes them to not talk for some time and it sucks because I have to see Draco almost every day, but at some point everything turns normal again and he is the Draco I have known since forever and I also know what kind of person he is and I'm sorry to say that, but in this situation you are the one who should have a little trust in your best friend because I am the one who knows almost every page of the fucking diary he is, not you. You don't have the key to open the diary, I do."
I'm mad because I hate fighting with her, but at the same time I never want the fight to stop because I want to yell at her, I want to tell her how wrong she is and I want to hurt her with my words because I know that she somehow is right. She is speaking the truth and maybe that is what is causing me to want to hurt her as much as she hurts me.
At this point, I start to silently cry because if I wouldn't start to spill tears, I would completely explode and I don't think that would be a good idea. I'm someone who starts to cry whenever a situation gets too much for me because even though I would have the ability to use other means to express my anger, I don't do it. I don't know why, but it's like the dam behind my eyes is cracking, leaking at some spots and a few single tears are already rushing through the wholes.
I'm scared that the small wholes, the small cracks, will turn into a huge one and that I won't be able to close it again, that I will keep crying and crying even though I want nothing more than to keep everything inside me.
Glue. I need glue so that I can puzzle everything back together and make sure to fixate it so that the dam will never break again. Is anger the glue I need? Is seeing how I hurt her feelings the glue because after all, she is hurting me throughout our whole conversation?
Maybe.
"You may have the key to Draco's diary, but it's me who has the one to Blaise's." I say, voice cracking when I see how intensely she is looking at me now, but I need the glue more than I need her as my loving friend right now.
"Adhara, don't pull him into this right now."
"Why? You keep telling me how fucked up Draco is and how I should keep my distance from him even though Blaise, your boyfriend, is not innocent either. He does shitty things too, you know? Do you have the key to the one page on which is written that he only gave you a chance because you were so obsessed with him that he just wanted to sleep with you to find out how you are? Third year, he told me and I was mad at him too, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings so I dealt with him instead of coming to you. Or do have the key to the one page on which is written that he had a list with Draco on which every fucking girl from our year was written on it with the number they rated them? And guess what, Blaise was the one who asked me if your name was spelled right and do you know which number I saw? It was-"
"What is wrong with you? Adhara fucking calm down before you say stuff you know is complete bullshit!" she is angry and I'm too.
She is hurt and I'm too.
I'm still crying even though I hoped that I could stop it by throwing these words at her. Well, it didn't work and now I'm crying even harder because of how stupid I was.
Pansy is standing up, looking down at me while I can't bear to face her so I look away.
"God, did it at least feel good?" she asks me and I shake my head, suddenly beginning to laugh even though nothing is funny.
Another coping mechanism of mine, I guess. I'm mad, so I cry-laugh out of frustration. I'm sad, so I laugh because my brain has somewhere registered that I have no real reason to cry about, so I have to stop.
Unexpectedly, I feel the mattress slightly shift, feeling how my best friends is now sitting down next to me even though I was being an asshole to her.
"I'm sorry, Pansy. I really am, I'm sorry." my crying doesn't stop and I just feel how she pulls me towards her so that my head is lying on her shoulder, telling me that it's okay without using her words.
From talking, to screaming, to hurting, to crying and lastly, to comforting one another. Is that's how friendship works? I guess so.
"Do you hate me now?"
"A bit maybe." she says and I laugh a bit at her statement, but at the same time tears continue to fall from my eyes. "Do you?"
"A bit maybe."
Sitting in silence for some time, I wish I could turn back time. Not just so that I can pretend like the conversation never happened. If I had the chance to turn back time, I would go two years back, to the one point that changed everything completely.
"Do you still want to continue this conversation or is it done?"
"It's not done," I say lowly. "but if we keep going then we won't yell, okay?"
"Okay."
I don't really understand how we can make up so fast because as she said before, when she has a fight with Draco, she stays mad at him and they refuse to talk to each other. Maybe the relationship between her and me is different. Maybe we are not 'siblings' like she and Draco are.
Pansy and I are just two best friends that fight and forgive because we wouldn't survive without talking to the other for long. Siblings are somehow similar because they can hate each other as much as they want, but the love between them never gets lost, it is always there, but the only difference is that Pansy and I always find that peace and love really quickly again while for siblings it might take a few days or weeks.
"He has changed, Pansy." I begin to whisper because the silence began to feel uncomfortable. "I know who he was and who he is, maybe not as good as you do, but I made my own picture of him. Draco said that he is sorry and of course I didn't immediately forgive him, a part of me still hates him, but another part of me started to like him."
"So you are falling in love with him?" she asks, voice matching the tone of mine.
"No! No, that's not what I meant. I like him as a friend." I say but my heart started to pound faster with every syllable I spoke.
I'm not lying. I'm telling the truth. Me having feelings for him? Ridiculous. I hate him but I like him. He is an asshole but sometimes he is a cute one. His eyes can scare the shit out of me but at the same time they can give me the feeling of freedom and carry me towards a place where I feel safe and protected and-
"Don't let him hurt you again, I swear to god if you get blinded by him, I'll scratch out his eyes." Pansy interrupts my thought, being completely serious with what she says even though it sounds like a joke.
"He won't. He promised me and I know that you don't think much of it when he does that, but I believe him because he is really trying, Pans."
I feel how her shoulder is rising higher and higher, feel how hard she tries to not say anything else and she instead inhales everything in order to let the air, that is now filling up her body, destroy her words.
"If you believe him, then that's fine." for a short time, she puts her head on top of mine, showing me a gesture of kindness before she stands up to walk towards the bathroom, but before she enters it, she stops.
"Oh, one thing." she says and I look at her, wiping my face but all the tears have dried and I can't get the feeling of the non available water off of my skin. "What is that?"
She is pointing at my wall, at one parchment to be precisely.
"That's me." I say, feeling how anger is trying to consume me again.
Her eyes are still locked with mine, expecting me to say anything else to it because she knows that it's not my handwriting that is decorating the parchment.
"You know what? I'm going to get us food before we continue this because it gets hot in here and I really don't- I really don't feel like talking about that right now because I already know what you are going to say and I don't think that you want to hear my answer to that."
My feet carry me towards the mirror, checking if my face looks too puffy or if it is okay and after a few seconds, I open the door to leave.
I have hope that once I enter my room again, everything will be forgotten and fine because I don't intend on talking about my parchment with her. She can hate the fact that he took his time to create it with me, but if she does, then I don't want to hear it.
The corridors are filled with students who want to go to the Great Hall themselves to eat lunch, but even though there are so many figures in my way, this one pair of eyes manages to meet mine and even though I like seeing him these days, right now I wish I could turn around because the thought of him threatens to break the dam again.
"Hey." he is coming closer to me, smile slowly disappearing when he fully sees my face.
"Were you crying? Did you have that nightmare again?"
Looks like mirrors don't tell the truth after all. I checked and I thought that I look fine, normal even, but he still noticed.
"No, no everything is fine." I answer him, continuing to walk towards the large door and he follows me although he was originally heading the other way.
"Come with me real quick." he whispers in my ear, taking hold of my wrist and pulling me towards one of the nearest classrooms.
I'm looking at him and he is looking at me and for this moment right now, everything turned out to be alright after all.
"So basically, I wanted to ask you something." he starts and instead of just telling me what he wants to know, he looks into my eyes to find an answer to whether he is allowed to ask me or not.
"Well, go on then."
He is close to me and I think he showered because the scent that is radiating off him is filling up my nose so strongly that I wish I could hug him just to get a better access to his clothes and his skin.
"What are you doing on Wednesday?"
I want to laugh at how nervous he was acting before just because of the simple question he just asked, but before I can actually manage to smile, my eyes widen in shock.
Wednesday is Valentines Day.
Maybe he didn't even realise it, maybe he just feels so lonely that he wants to hang out with me and he totally forgot about Valentines Day.
"I- Nothing. I'm doing nothing."
He just keeps staring at me and for a moment I thought his lips parted to say anything else, but I'm not sue if he actually spoke because my heart is pounding so hard, blood rushing so loudly through my ears that I'm worried my eardrum exploded.
"Do you want to do something with me?"
"You are not asking me out, right? You just want to spend some time like we did these last weeks. Right?"
Draco starts to smirk, stepping closer to me until my back collides with the border of the table. His breath smells like mint and I somehow ask myself if he would taste the same.
"Do you want me to ask you out?"
He is so close that I can make out every detail of his face. His lips that look so soft and that are turned up to form his typical smirk, his skin that appears to be perfect with no flaw that would make him less handsome. And lastly of course, his eyes.
Even in the dim-lit classroom, his eyes are enabling me to see everything that needs to be seen as if they were the only source of light to ever exist.
Usually, the grey is portraying the ocean in which I always seem to drown, but now it's like he is an iceberg that is freezing my insides a bit more with every second I meet his gaze. He makes me nervous, makes me feel things I shouldn't feel and sometimes it's like his presence is a fire that is burning my skin and my whole existence just by looking at me. This time though, he is freezing my every muscle with his cold grey eyes and I keep looking at him because I have hope that my warm golden coloured eyes will be able to melt the iceberg that is turning me into an ice sculpture.
Grey meets brown, cold meets warm and boy meets girl.
It's him and me, one is trying to send coldness to the other because I'm loaded with warmth and I do the same with him, just the other way around.
Draco has been so cold these last months - years even - and Pansy is holding on to that picture of him, the picture of an iceberg whose core is a boy that is trying to hide everything that would make him vulnerable to the outside world, a boy who is trying to hide himself.
The conversation Pansy and I had didn't work out because even though we both are looking at the same boy, I'm seeing a different picture than she does.
In my eyes, Draco is still an iceberg, I realise that now that I'm staring into his eyes, but it's not nearly as huge has the one my best friend is seeing. With every passing second my warm eyes meet the cold pair of his, a thin layer of ice is melting but he somehow decided to just make this phenomenon visible for me.
Others help him built the iceberg, I help him destroy it.
My hand moves upwards, finding its way on his face to let the tip of my finger brush over his forehead to remove a strand of hair that is keeping me from seeing the whole portrait of his. I trace his face as if he weren't alive, as if I were in a museum and Draco is a statue I'm examining. My finger moves softly over his skin because I don't want to add a flaw to his face that doesn't need to be added.
My finger moves softly over his skin because even though I told myself that I would keep breaking the ice layer for layer until his true self reveals itself to me, there is no need to add force to it because his iceberg would survive strength no matter how hard someone would try to break it. The only thing his iceberg won't survive is warmth that is radiating off my golden brown skin and my golden brown eyes which cause his cold facade to melt.
The whole world can call me weird for it, but I believe that my interpretation of this situation is true. I believe in the protective cover he built for himself and I also believe that I have an effect on it, an effect he most likely didn't mean for me to have.
With every slow and careful movement I make, his whole appearance shows a reaction to it because even though his eyes look the same and even though his skin colour doesn't suddenly change to a warmer and more tanned one, I notice that he changes. The Draco in front of me looks the same and he always will because after all, the block of ice is inside his body so that it can protect him from the outside.
I keep staring, keep motioning my finger because I want to give him the warmth he needs and at the same time I absorb the coldness he gives in return.
Slowly, I become aware of reality again and try to remember the last thing he said to me. My touch leaves his face, hand carefully finding its way down to the side of my body but before it can actually reach its destination, it takes a detour.
He has taken hold of it, thumb drawing circles on the back of my hand while his feet move one step closer to me and the front part of our shoes are now in contact, noses about to brush the one of the other.
"You didn't answer my question, princess."
"I don't think it would be good to spend a whole day together, Draco." I whisper, not knowing in which eye to look or if I maybe should look at something completely different.
I can still feel his thumb on my skin, but when I look down at our hands I realise that he has already broken our contact.
"That didn't answer my question." he whispers back at me, sending me a smile that makes my knees grow weak and if it weren't for the table and his closeness, I would most likely sink to the floor.
He is waiting for my reply and when nothing leaves my mouth, his hand travels up so that he is touching my face now. His hand is lying on my cheek, thumb slowly moving up and down and sending a whole firework through my body.
I start to smile, knowing that the next thing I'm about to say won't bring us one step closer to a solution, but I like giving him what he doesn't want.
"I think it is your job to figure out if I want to be asked out or not, Draco Malfoy."
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hello!
this is more of a filler chapter again, but y'all can be ready for the next chapter because a lot is going to happen!
thoughts?
Xx