When It's Not a Game Anymore

A cool breeze blew past Draco as he sat on the hillside, musing his long hair. The spring sun was setting in a dazzling display of reds and oranges and yellows. The sky behind him was already a deep purple and blue, dotted with small sparkling diamonds. He sighed, pulling his knees up to his chest.

He wasn't the same. This school year had changed him dramatically - too dramatically. He would throw half-hearted insults at Harry and his friends, but catch Ginny lurking in the background, or around the corner. She would stare at him with cold, hurt eyes, and suddenly, he'd stop.

Now, even throwing insults at the Gryffindors was no longer amusing.

And nobody from the Slytherin house would acknowledge him because of his weakness, and just today, he had received a letter from his father. An angry, hateful letter that demanded an explanation for his actions, or so the first line stated. He threw it out without even looking at it.

He could've pretended that he didn't care what they thought and like it never had happed, but he didn't. It wasn't like he was concerned about self-image; Ginny had taught him to stop caring about what people thought. No, it was because he didn't want to be fake, and he didn't want to pretend nothing had happened. He knew this is what he deserved, but he also didn't want to throw away the memories that the two had when they were on speaking terms.

"Hi," said a weak, timid voice behind him. He turned around and faced Ginny. The wind blew her red hair to the side over her head, but her eyes remained steady on his. Anger gathered up inside him, and his hands clenched into fists.

"What do you want?" he asked harshly. She flinched, her brown eyes searching him.

"May I sit down," she asked after taking a deep breath. He shrugged. "It's not mine, so I can't tell you were you can and can't sit."

Her eyes quivered and her lip trembled. She felt like screaming `Don´t be like this´, but she knew that it would be fruitless. He wanted to brood and plot revenge, not to let it go as she so easily had.

She sat down next to him, silently, and watched the sun set. Her hair, in some places, looked lighter in the light and darker in the night. Her pink lips were set and she stared determinedly out into the disappearing sun.

"Why are you here?" he asked her, glaring at her under hooded eyes.

"I feel like it," she shrugged, her small shoulders moving up and then down. Her heart was pounding, and she was surprised that he couldn't hear it.

"Did you come here because you want to make me feel bad? Because you want to rub it in my face that I've sunk down to your social status, Weasley?"

"Draco, what are you talking about?" she asked. He turned his head and looked at her. Her brown eyes, filled with concern, moved up and down his face. For a moment, he felt a tingle that he hadn´t felt in weeks. "I don't understand why you're being so... hostile," she said.

"Hostile? Why shouldn't I be hostile. My whole life, down the drain in one night, and I'm not aloud to be fuckin' hostile at the damn world?"

"Please, stop," she begged. "You're blowing this out of propositions now..."

"What am I supposed be, happy? Happy that I'm a fuckin' loser and the whole school thinks it too?"

She was silent, left speechless. "You mean, you're not happy like this? Where no one cares who you are or what you do. You're free to be whatever you want to be now."

"You seriously think I´d be happy like this, woman?! Is that what you´re saying?" he yelled at her, jumping off the ground. She bit her lips, refusing to cry the tears that welled up at her eyes. She brushed them aside as she rose. Her bottom lip quivered and her heart raced. She was so confused, she had never seen Draco like this, and it pained her that he was angry at her. He looked like it might kill her.

"You liar," she accused him. "You told me you didn't give a damn what anyone thought about you, and here you are, brooding because you're the bitch of the school. You are nothing but a liar who should rot in hell for the rest of his life.

"This is Hell for me," he said.

"But yes, ok? I'd thought that you might like it this way. To be a nobody, to be a loner, to be a laughing stock." The tears flowed down her cheeks and dripped onto her worn robe. She ignored them. "I thought that maybe we could get together again, since you've become a leper like me."

"Oh what now? 'Birds of a feather stick together', is that what you're trying to tell me?" Malfoy swore he was seeing red. The Weasley girl still made his heart pound and his head become dizzy, but not in the way that it had. He wanted to kill her, she was making him so frustrated. Here, she was showing him how human she was, with small words he could understand.

"No! Yes!" she said shakily. She brushed a tear that ran down her cheek with a trembling hand. "This is what you get when someone backstabs you, Malfoy. Ok? This is what you get!" she gestured around to the empty lakeside. The Quidditch flags flapped as the sky around them became dark.

"You're alone. No one wants to talk to the misfit, once you've been used, but they all talk about you. You hear the whispers and the laughter and the glares that they send you. No one sits next to you because you have a bad case of loser-itis. It's not much, but I call it Hell.

"So I know what you're going through," she said quietly.

"No you don't, you bitch," he said. The insult stung and Ginny became silent, small whimpers emitting from her mouth left from her sobbing. "All my 'friends' have deserted me and now I might be disowned from my father's will, and this is all because of you."

"As if you don't deserve it!" she yelled back. "As if you're the only victim in this whole ordeal! As if you were the only one to be hurt, you bastard! All you deserve right now, Malfoy, is to rot in eternal damnation, you lying, selfish moronic narcissist."

She turned to walk away, and Malfoy crossed his arms and glared at her as her figure became smaller and smaller as she walked down the dirt path.

"And dammit, I thought I loved you," she whispered, but loud enough that the man behind her could hear, drawing her hands up as tears streamed down her face.