Tangled in a Nott

Face to face, nose to nose.

"Get fucked, Mudblood."

Haughty and venomous, he bore down upon her; height obviously playing to his advantage, it became startlingly clear that a mere two inches won him a certain degree of condescension where brains - albeit matched - might fail. His face was set, his fists so clenched and knuckles white.

How dare she touch him, he thought, how dare she soil his robes with her filth?

He was only seconds away from spitting, his mouth puckered up; so livid was he. He envisioned a pretty little spray catching her right between the eyes, his pureblooded fluid streaking a clean shine against the Muggle film that covered her face like grime on a porcelain doll. He relished with such vivid imagery the expression she would wear, the repulsion, the disbelief, the hatred, the tears. She was a Gryffindor - so proud, so ill-fitted at appreciating a good thing even if it ran down the length of her nose; if anything she should be thankful, he thought, his spit was like holy water, he thought... but it only ran so deep, only touched so much before the essence could be tainted, rubbed away by skin of the offending hands themselves (her own); it would be a never-ending cycle. Spit. Shine. Dust. Spit. Shine. Dust. She was hopeless, this one. And he was not her savior.

Her face contorted, expression rippling as the temper boiled beneath.

Come on, Mudblood, his mind coaxed, soothing her temper yet feeding it all the same. She was a stick of dynamite in his hand, the fuse burning fast and close - or else she was the beginnings of an inferno to which he dutifully fed every log, every stick, leaf and ounce of tinder, cheeks flushing as her flames licked up each and every last one, greedy, needy, and destructive all at the same time. Come on, Mudblood, his mind goaded, there's some Slytherin in you yet.

Books, essays, charts and runes papered the corridor. They painted the dank, stone walls a nauseating cream color, her glistening cursive penmanship staring up at him from all angles. Though each unfurled scroll depicted different arguments, different viewpoints, as he observed them from his periphery, they all seemed to implore the same thing of him: Why?

No, it hadn't been pretty. The halls had been emptying and she had been on the run to some class - Arithmancy, so it appeared, for the dungeon door remained not but one hundred yards from this very spot. Oh, so close, so close she had been! It had been a damned pity that he should be on his way to the commons, prepared to laze away the afternoon bunking off class (it never did seem to fit his schedule, the poor thing), only to be collided with head-on and messenger bag first.

Funny. Only one other person roaming the present corridor, and yet she managed to bowl him over without giving the wide berths around him any consideration, any at all.

He had been winded. His back had hit cold tiling, shoulder blades threatening to shatter on contact, and there had been an elbow and a sudden weight on his chest that was both light and suffocating at the same time. Then, inexplicably, the ceiling had started to rain sheaves of homework and diligent note-taking, floating like feathers from a ruptured pillow sack to the ground where he lay, sprawled and breathless, and as one assignment happened to envelope his face like a failed mask, his eyes nearly crossed themselves to read the heading, the name that flourished the upper right-hand corner, the identity of his assailant. Or rather, the identity of the soon-to-be poor, unfortunate soul.

The blues of his eyes had expanded then contracted at once.

Hermione Granger.

Oh, the revulsion.

How badly he had wished it could have been someone else. But there was a certain beauty to the situation he couldn't deny. This gave him a free pass to demean the Mudblood girl - without so much as an audience to survey the tongue-lashing and kiss his shoes afterward, sure, but he much preferred the makeshift privacy this gave him; he relished the idea of having little Miss Know-it-all to himself without that sniveling Draco around and the oafs he had somehow conned into trailing his every step. They were, as far as he was concerned, as irritating as that damned trio the rest of the student body seemed to worship, for Malfoy seemed to think it necessary that he laugh at every supposed joke he, Theodore Nott, made. It was a bit like having an annoying laugh track to his mundane, day-to-day life and he despised the attention, that sound of forced glee, he looked down upon the sheer willingness of Malfoy to play sheep as highly disdainful and tried. Where was his spine? He wanted to know.

He shoved her off at once, moving to his feet in a hasty attempt to distance himself from her. And she was blindly apologizing, not having realized the very person she had crashed into - not yet. She was too busy mourning over the emptied belly of her messenger, looking positively grief-stricken at the mess of papers that had been shuffled and discombobulated upon impact. "Oh no, oh no, oh no," she kept saying, nails digging crescent moons into her cheeks as she paled, surveying the wreckage; meanwhile, Theodore had looked murderous, eyes darkened at the ducts as he stood there, smoldering, waiting until the precise moment their eyes met to attack.

She didn't blanch. Quite the contrary, her eyes had found somehow found coldness amidst the heat of fury that caused the caramel of her eyes to liquidize on the spot. The rosiness of her cheeks only intensified as the gauntlet was thrown, landing on the floor in the narrow space between them in the form of a snarl and a foul word, one that had wormed its way into his vocabulary at an early age, eating away at all pleasantries and gentleness that may have existed before.

"Get fucked, Mudblood."

"You know. That's such a good idea, Nott, how about you take your own advice?"

Her voice shook but her expression never faltered.

"The fuck if I will," he spat, rounding on her, but any closer and to any rogue passerby they could have been kissing, an assumption he would not for the life of himself feed.

"Tsk, tsk, Nott. Such dirty language in front of a lady. Oh, what will your mother think?"

"You are hardly a lady, Mudblood," he exchanged, lip curling as his gaze bolstered a new brand of fire. "And oh, I wouldn't know, would I," he added, so incensed that each word spoken seemed to drip with some new brand of hazardous chemical, "when my mum's dead."

Her hand took no apparent time in covering her mouth.

See, that was what made having a heart the worst disadvantage of all.

Though she might not have meant it to, the gesture to him shone like a beacon of victory.

He had won.

"I... I - I am sorry." She was tearful then, and for a moment he had allowed himself to be astonished by this Muggle girl; the name-calling hadn't done it, and neither had his deliberate trodding over her fallen papers and quills. Instead she was watering over - what was that word - sympathy? Such a change of heart, this one, so weak and so malleable. It was pathetic. The look of heady distaste only deepened as he surveyed her, her with her emotions coloring her cheeks like a china doll and the way she had dropped her gaze, hands twittering with the hem of her sweater vest, making it flutter. He couldn't stand it, couldn't stand her. Dropping her guard, just like that? Where was the insolent stare she had pierced him with, and why had it gone so easily? Maybe, Theodore thought, he could have respected her intelligence - or no, too strong of a word, too little of an effort on his behalf... acknowledged her studiousness was more like it -- but this? What was this shit?

This was why it was never proper to feel.

"Don't apologize to me about my mum," he whispered, so low, like simmering hatred from a pot. "I sure as hell do not need you to --"

A voice rang like a firecracker throughout the corridor, a touch less noisy but completely unwelcome nonetheless; Theodore raised his eyes at the disturbance, searching, only to roll them in the heat of the moment as he realized the intruder for who he was.

"Nice work, Nott," the blond boy said, his own gaze roving over the explosion of parchment and books, then finally settling upon the pair of students in the epicenter of it all. "But who do we have here?" he sneered, squinting and then recognizing that head of wavy brown hair at once.

Granger seemed to shrink at the arrival of Draco Malfoy, but her boldness had returned, masking the previous dollop of sincerity she had felt for a Slytherin, for Nott of all people.

"Shouldn't you be in class, Draco?" said Theodore coolly. He never did play that schoolboy game with his fellow housemate, preferring to resort to Malfoy's first name whenever possible; whatever association the pompous lad had seemed to want from him, Theodore was simply not interested. Unlike him, he didn't need cronies, didn't need a second or third opinion or someone to back up his every snide insult, joke, and taunt - come to think of it, he didn't need anyone. He never had. And the one person that maybe, just maybe, he would have run to at any given moment's notice - well, she was long gone now, wasn't she?

"Shouldn't you, Nott? Or are you bunking off again," Malfoy had drawled, although where there should have been indifference, a tiniest amount of admiration could be given. Perhaps because of his father, Draco never dared to accompany Theodore on his so-called free periods, and Theodore preferred it this way, really. "I was just coming from the loo, but - and what are you looking at, Mudblood?" He barked suddenly, yet not without backtracking a step or two. He was probably remembering all too well the left-hook Granger had given him their third year, and Theodore was sorely perturbed by this, that a memory so distant could still torture him so.

She didn't say a word, only flickering her eyes at Draco insolently, but this was getting boring, Theodore thought as he stood by and watched, arms folding themselves over his chest.

"Get to class, Draco," he said finally, "I can handle this myself."

"Oh, I don't doubt it," Malfoy stated, with a pointed look in Granger's direction, "but seeing as how I've got class to attend anyway, I thought I would just --"

"So go on, then; make daddy dearest proud," Theodore taunted, dismissing him with an abrupt interruption and a jerk of his head to the door obstructing the torch-lit stone wall.

And there was a second, one long second where Malfoy looked mutinous, but he turned on his heel and started down the hall just the same, bumping shoulders with the girl before disappearing off, leaving a shuddering echo of a closed, wooden door in his wake.

At the sound, Granger seemed to remember where she was and who she was with and the circumstances of why the two of them had lingered for so long in an empty hall. "So you bully even your own kind," she said, seeming to think she was making some sort of scholarly observation as she tore her eyes away from his own to gather her fallen papers, crouching to the floor, and it seemed fitting, her kneeling at his feet, like a lowly peasant yearning to touch the robes of someone great, someone worthy, someone or something of any value whatsoever.

"Draco? My kind?" he scoffed, watching her scurry around on the floor around him, "Hardly."

She snickered. "You must really think you're something, Nott," she remarked, her tone daring to be airy, "but you are a Slytherin, all one in the same, what separates you, might I ask?"

"Fuck if I'll answer you," had been his initial reply, but as she struggled, reached, and gathered all around him, he couldn't help but bring his wand out despite every protest his very brain seemed to be shouting; so pathetic, really, doing labor by hand when magic was all one truly needed. A sweeping motion of his wand and essays, charts, and calculations had collected themselves in his hands, all bearing her name, and she looked at him, surprised, confused, and astonished all at once.

"Here," he said gruffly, shoving the papers into her hands once she had regained her footing and stood, however perplexed, in front of him. "Here," he repeated, voice far from being liberated of the sheer annoyance Draco's appearance had caused it. "Your damned evidence to the fucking contrary, Mudblood."

And with that, he left, left her standing transfixed on the spot, feeling her eyes pelting his back, but he needn't a reminder of the good deed he had done for that Muggle, however begrudgingly it had been. She had just better not get used it. Or, did he mean himself?