Believe It Too

He just had to show her that he didn't care.

Forget the fact that extending such an effort meant that he did, in fact, care. But he had to show her that he didn't.

He had to be with her the way she was with him. A stranger.

Nevermind that they once knew each other as only two people just waiting for the right moment to fall in love could. Nevermind that years ago he sat with his best friend, who just happened to be in love with her best friend, and laugh about how, if the Fates smiled on them, the four of them would be practically family - nevermind that men didn't actually own up to such thoughts! Nevermind that once, that smile used to be directed at him. And that his was only for her. Nevermind that they were both with different people now.

No, wait, yes. Not nevermind. They were with different people now. People they cared about. They cared about everyone. Just not each other.

Not anymore.

God, nevermind that New Year's Eve when she had danced so close to him that his body had burned from her heat and his eyes had been locked to the sparkle (how he had loved that sparkle) in hers and her hands were entwined around his neck and she just fit so well and her mouth was soclose...

And he never kissed her.

And he didn't know why a little bit of him died knowing that although he was with someone, and so was she, she had wanted to kiss him. She said it. "God, Draco, when we were dancing...I wish you had kissed me. I wanted you to." Her candour was not commonplace, and had it come when she was still in his arms, things might have been so very different.

But they were strangers now, he and she. They had the same friends, the same interests, the same pastimes, the same meeting places. And yet, he could count the words they had exchanged recently on one hand.

Nevermind the times when he couldn't wait to talk to her. When really, all he wanted to do was talk to her. He could get by without hugging her, without touching her, without doing all the things that compensated for not being able to kiss her the way he wanted...if he could just talk to her. Intelligence, genius; such words were almost insults in describing her. She came alive when she talked and there lay her beauty: not in the frizzy hair or the sparkling (wonderfully sparkling) eyes; but when she spoke in her often superior tones, she was beautiful. And he took special pleasure in correcting her. It wasn't often that he got a chance to. That's what made it sweeter. "How the mighty have fallen," he would tease. And she would toss her head and his heart would flip and all would be right with the world.

Funny, really. He couldn't remember the start of this Cold War. He didn't know how or when it had started. Just that one day, she stopped smiling, and her eyes didn't twinkle for him, and she never talked anymore, and she had time to spend with everyone but him, and when his eyes would search her out she would purposefully look elsewhere. And his heart, instead of flipping, would clench painfully in his chest.

Of course, he never asked her about it. Never talked it out. Malfoys don't discuss their feelings.

Neither, it appears, do Grangers.

Because years passed. And the distance grew to such an extent that while they were standing right next to each other, you could have fit a continent in between them.

It occurred to him that she could be protecting herself from getting hurt. It occurred to him that this was a defence mechanism. It occurred to him that she feared letting anyone get so close. She feared the hurt.

Well, he was through with the maybe, maybe, maybe. But damned if he was going to talk it out. Let her make the move.

She never did, though.

It is a lie that love gone wrong spawns hatred. Love gone wrong spawns nothing but hurt and confusion and circular thoughts and a desire (however futile) for indifference. There was a time when he thought he could love her. Now he didn't know if he even wanted to expend the energy it would take to hate her.

He just had to show her that he didn't care anymore.

Because maybe if she believed that, he could too.