City Sickness

[Chapter four]

Never Again

I walked under the unseemly lurid streetlights, knowing where I was going yet unaware of why was I going there in the first place. It had been less than a week since our last encounter. I really didn't know what I was hoping to find.

I had no idea what I expected.

He was the last person I had expected to find out here. Sure, he had always been brazen and arrogant, but this was something beyond my power of comprehension. It disgusted me. It made me revolted. It made me despise him. It made me curious. It made me want to peek inside his head.

It made me want to touch his hair and feel his breath. Just to know. Just to see how I would have felt.

Disgusted, no doubt about it. I just wanted to prove that to myself.

During some weak moment in the darkness of the night I might have admitted that it actually had, for a split second, made me want him.

Want him?

I didn't even know what it meant. I had never wanted anyone. Not like that. I remember wanting to hold Cho's hand and wanting to smell the fresh scent of her silky hair in the morning wind. I remember wanting to smile to her and have her smile back at me and walk through the enormous lands of Hogwarts, bluebirds singing around us. I never exactly wanted to touch her. She was pure and beautiful. She didn't need to be touched.

Millions of incoherent thoughts kept rushing through my brain as I strolled towards the place I had met him. I wasn't expecting him to be there, but I was sure that just going there would help me to clear up my head a little. I could always go for a drink or something. I might have even met someone new. Someone who could have filled this hollow place in my stomach that had kept aching at night ever since I had met him again.

As I said, I wasn't expecting him to be there.

I hadn't even realised it was snowing before my eyes caught a glimpse of him through the veil of snowfall. He was there, standing with his back against the wall, like a solitary figure in a child's snowglobe. The sight of him made my heart throb with need and power I didn't even know I possessed.

Long before my feet had the time to follow a will of their own, a huge black car dashed into my sight, parking before him. I can't say how many beats my heart skipped, but by the time I was able to breathe again, the car had already sped away, taking him with it.

I stood there for a long time, snow melting into my hair and wind crawling inside my collar. I felt my heart turn into a tiny bundle of mixed emotions as a slanted smile broke over my cold and numb face. I felt like nothing could touch me. Least of all him.

I turned around on my heels, ignored the whirling snow that kept attacking the defenceless skin of my neck and walked away with my chin up.

I didn't want him anyway.