Twenty-Twenty Hindsight

Chapter Three

By November, I eagerly looked forward to every "chance meeting" we'd have in the halls. They didn't happen every day, but they were frequent enough.

In December, Alexis and Cynna started thinking that, maybe, he wasn't so bad. Apparently they'd been hearing less and less rumours about him and figured he'd reformed. He started saying hello to them in the halls as well.

Christmas holidays were dull enough. I was alone at school with Ron, Harry, and Hermione. Cynna and Alexis had gone home to their families like they did every Christmas. My parents were visiting Bill - Fleur had just given birth to their daughter, Isadora. She was gorgeous right from birth. It came from having Veela blood in her, I suppose.

The result was that I had very little to do because, of course, the Wonder Triplets were busy with their own oh-so-important lives. I finished all my set homework within the first few days, and had the rest of the holidays to simply relax and enjoy the break.

As luck would have it, he stayed for the holidays too. He was alone - most of the Slytherins had gone home for Christmas, with only three or four others remaining - none in his year and none really interested in what he was up to. I wandered off to the library a lot, just reading and doing a bit of extra research - I was a good, dedicated student, owing to my lack of fulfilling friendships and not-so-active social life in general - and it seemed that, more often than not, he was there too.

The first time we spoke was...well, sadly, there's no other way to describe it than "wonderful". It was; I was amazed at how casual and aloof I had been, considering my limited social prowess. I think it came from having just come out on top in a fight with Ron - he was badgering me about some stupid thing or other, which I can't even remember now, but coming out on top really made my day. I only stormed out of the common room to make the whole thing more dramatic, and, having no better place to go, I found myself in the library.

He wasn't there when I arrived. I wandered through the aisles and aisles of books, just browsing for nothing in particular. I found myself in the fiction section, and I picked out a book about a woman who was kidnapped by a vampire. She fell in love with him and ended up trying to save him from a band of wizards trying to kill him.

He walked up to me when I was about two thirds of the way through the novel. It was around four o'clock by that time, and I had been reading for almost the entire day.

"Why do you read that?" he'd asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Because it's nice to have an escape once in a while," I answered, reciting the reply I'd given dozens of others who had asked the same question.

"It'll rot your brains, that. Bloody bullshit if you ask me. How could a woman possibly fall in love with the man who kidnapped her? Especially when that man happens to be a vampire?"

"How did you -"

"I came across it in my common room once. I read the back cover and felt like vomiting. I've never come near any books like it since. Until now, that is."

"Well if it makes you want to puke, please do it in the other direction or I will be forced to hex you into the next century."

He let out a bark of laughter then, harsh and loud, drawing the attention of Madame Pince. She gave us a loud "SHHH!" before continuing on with whatever she had been doing.

"No doubt that you would," he said, still laughing quietly. "But don't worry. Whatever effects the book might have on me are neutralized by you." He'd said the last part softly, taking the conversation to an unexpectedly intimate level.

I had no idea what to say to that. No one had ever said anything so kind to me before. It was odd that the remark should have come from him; he was, after all, the cruelest boy at Hogwarts. Or, at least, he had been. This year though, he seemed to be completely different. I don't know why or how, but he controlled his ego much better and had barely said any scathing remarks to Ron or Hermione. Harry was still fair enough game, but he hadn't even been that nasty to him.

This should have sent off red flags all over the place, not only for me but for everyone around him, but for some reason it didn't. I guess everyone was just so relieved about it that they didn't think to look deeper into the situation.

In the end, all I did was blush at his comments. That sounds mild enough, but when I blush, it's difficult to tell where my hair ends and my skin begins.

I turned to him, intending to say something sexy and seductive (although I'd had no idea what), but before I made a sound, he'd covered my slightly open mouth with his.

It was the most amazing kiss I'd ever felt. I'd kissed my other so-called-boyfriends, but they were always chaste little obligatory things, exchanged at the end of a date rather than spontaneously like this.

But this kiss...I don't know what it was. It was soft and tender but at the same time wild. It was like he barely brushed his lips with mine, yet I could still feel it throughout my body, right to the tips of my toes. It was just amazing.

After that, I was in shock. I didn't know what to do, whether to kiss him back or not, to say "thank you", even. I just sat there, staring at him like a surprised fish, my mouth opening and closing (from what my distorted memory can recall). Then he smirked at me - what I still see as his sexiest expression. He stood up, flashed a genuine smile, and strolled out of the library, smooth as anything.

Despite the somewhat awkward kissing circumstance, I felt proud of how I'd handled the rest of the situation. Obviously I'd done a good job if it had made him want to kiss me.