Simple Hatred

Simple Hatred

He isn't in the least surprised to see her again. He has gotten used to seeing her here. She was never here as much as Granger, of course, but everyone had to come to the library every once in a while. Even a haunted soul like her.

His eyes stray from the page of his book, booted feet twitching in sudden restlessness. He is always restless around her. He tells himself that it is because she is an enemy, a Weasley, a Gryffindor; perhaps, he tries to tell himself, it's because she is a girl, and yet not a girl. She has never been a girl ever since she turned twelve. She is more mature than any other girl he has ever met, seen, or been acquainted with. She is stern without being stern, because that sternness is a part of her, as much as hatred is a part of him.

She has never smiled, never laughed. The pain inside her is so obvious to him, but he looks around, and realizes that he is the only one that can see it. It sends a shiver down his spine to know that others are somehow oblivious. They don't see the hurt behind her vacant eyes. The shiver represents an emotion. But Draco isn't sure what the emotion is. He tells himself the shiver is because he hates her, because her mere presence angers him.

In truth, his restlessness is not due to her, to Ginny Weasley, but his own fault, Draco Malfoy's fault. He doesn't want to be the one to blame. But he is. Because it is his own self that makes him twitch when she is near. It is his mind that makes him create poetry describing her as he watches her. It is his eyes that must force themselves to close upon seeing her pale skin, her crimson hair, her delicate figure, lest his eyes stare too long and the fire within her burns him.

When he sees her in the library, he watches her, for it is the only time he can. He watches her pale fingers become gray with dust as she slides one book after another down from the shelves. He watches those pale fingers brush aside a naughty escaping lock of crimson hair from behind her ear. He watches her waist bend to lean and pick up a book from the floor. He watches her legs stretch to tiptoe to reach a book high above. He watches her neck turn as she waits for another book to alight those dark eyes on.

She reads anything and everything. He always makes sure once she is gone that he knows what book she spent most of her time at the library being absorbed in that day. She does not read to study, to research, to pack knowledge in her brain, to learn something, yet nor does she read because she wants to, for the pleasure of it. She reads because it distracts her from the dark, painful, agonized, angry, hateful, hellish, tortured, haunting thoughts in her head.

Draco wants to know these thoughts. He wants to understand Ginny Weasley. For she is a mystery, and the only mystery Draco has been unable to solve or interested in solving at all. Every day, his denials become more feeble. He continues to watch her, waiting for something to happen.

It is two years since his observational obsessions over her began in Fifth Year. He is seventeen, she sixteen. Finally, something happens. Finally, something changes.

He walks into the library, prepared to sit in his usual shadowed corner and watch her. However, he finds the prickle of eyes on his own back. Turning around, he finds her staring at him, her dark eyes calculating, analyzing him. For a moment, it seems as if time freezes, and Draco's gaze is locked with Ginny's.

He wonders if his eyes remind her of someone elses, of another darkling she met years ago, a darkling that haunts her still, that tortures her every night and causes the red-haired witch to wake up in the middle of the night gasping. She cannot pierce his shield, cannot force down his barrier walls and roam free in his mind, and yet he cannot escape her eyes. They are so dark. But he knows not what the darkness represents.

Usually he associates a dark gaze with anger, sorrow, or hatred. But this look she gives him seems to go beyond all of those, far beyond the depths of anything he ever imagined one look could hold. Draco can resist her pull no longer. He walks up to the librarian desk, noting Madam Pince's absence. For a moment, he knows not what to say. He feels, for once in his life, inadequate, as if anything coming out of his mouth will not feed her flames. She seems inhuman, struggling and yet strong, morbidly fascinating.

Draco drawls, "What is the unsophisticated, Knutless Weasley brat doing here?"

That chin rises in defiance, eyes narrowing a challenge, every freckle seeming ready to pound him to bloody bits. Suddenly, everything about her is dangerous to Draco. Her hair, crimson and yet otherwise unremarkable, is blaring a rude statement at him, her slim fingers on the counter seeming to point at him accusingly.

"It should be obvious why I'm here. Madam Pince is ill. Meanwhile, you never change, do you? I see that the Malfoys' still teach the practice of being rude to those they hate for no reason other than that hatred inside their heartless selves. How crass."

Draco smiles, his gaze momentarily drifting from hers to look down at the desk. His fingers inch forward until the tips touch with hers, sending a strange jolt, like lightning, through him. He wonders if she, too, feels the electricity, the tension, between them. Absentmindedly he notices her low-collared uniform white blouse reveals more than the usual amount of milk-white skin. Before he can stop, it occurs to him that the answer to a question he'd had on his mind is now answered. That low-necked blouse tells all. So the freckles continue on down there, too. I wonder how far south they reach? Do they cover her entire body?

His gaze flits back up to hers before alighting, just to annoy her, at a spot on the wall to the left of her head. "Now, now, Weasley. Who ever said I hate you?"

His lips curl up in a victorious smirk as he gets her off guard. For a few moments, that small mouth is open in surprise. Then it closes with a snap, and snarling, she leans forward. Suddenly, Draco can't avoid looking her right in the face, for that dark gaze is glaring at him with the fiercest intensity.

"No one ever said you hate me, Malfoy, but I hate you. No trickery can deny that you hate me back. I hate you and you hate me. It's simple."

His smirk drops, and he returns her hateful glare with one of his own. It is difficult to say which gaze is more dangerous, the piercing grey one, or the fiery chocolate-colored one. Leaning forward so that their noses almost touch, Draco whispers, "Simple hatred. I doubt there is such a thing. You are in illusion if you think there is. Think again, Ginny. You can't hate me simply. I'm a complicated person."

With that said, he presses his mouth to hers for a brief, excruciatingly vicious kiss, lips hot, moist, smooth, flicking tongue even hotter. Then he turns and is walking out of the library the next moment, glancing back at her to give a teasing wink, his attitude as swaggering and suave as ever.

Ginny is left standing there, mouth slightly open, eyes wide. She doesn't know whether she wants to figure out the complicated jigsaw of Draco Malfoy or not. But one thing is sure: he will never stop watching her until he has the mystery of Ginny Weasley figured out, until he knows her better than she knows herself.

That fact states itself to Ginny plainly. But what she had thought was simple is not. Hatred is complicated. That realization brings a question to her mind, a question Draco has also been pondering. If hatred was not simple, then what about love?

Both are up to the challenge of finding out the answer.