Waiting

Thanks so much for the response and reviews!

xx
suzz

**

He was late.

Actually, if you wanted to be technical, he had been one minute early, planning to saunter over to the table – their table – perfectly on time, just as he had every day for the past two weeks.

But this wasn’t just another day. This wasn’t just a Saturday afternoon meeting to work on a Transfiguration project. He knew it very well, and if he had forgotten, he was quite positive that his sweaty palms and raggedy breath would have quickly reminded him.

And, so, he was sitting inside the library, not quite close enough for her to see him, but enough so that he was near to her and could get his thoughts straight.

It was very difficult.

The overwhelming desire to go to her, take her in his arms, and kiss her was filling him up, and he couldn’t even remember when his Quidditch practice was. Did he even have one today? No, no, that was tomorrow, right before his and Granger’s –

Oh. That’s right. There she was again, in his thoughts. Even after she left his sight, she was there, smiling or laughing or yelling. It didn’t matter which; she was still all he could think about.

Why did he have to kiss her? Why?

It had plagued him ever since his lips had first touched hers. He hadn’t planned it, hadn’t even realized that he wanted to kiss her until he did. It had been an instinct: be alone with pretty girl, make pretty girl like you, make pretty girl laugh, kiss her. He hadn’t even realized that he was doing it until it happened.

And then she hadn’t even responded, just sat there, his lips pressing into hers, until he, positive that she didn’t feel the same way, had leaned back and said the one word he never said to a girl after kissing her. Even now he was ashamed of the way his voice had sounded, the way he had bolted from the table, and the way he still wanted her. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

A variety of things weren’t supposed to happen, actually. He wasn’t supposed to have feelings for her in the first place, but he did. He wasn’t supposed to kiss her, but he did. She wasn’t supposed to reject him, but she did. He wasn’t supposed to want to go crawling back to her and beg for her returned feelings, but he did.

So now he was fifteen minutes late, and he sat on the floor, his bag next to him, hoping that no one noticed him and she didn’t come looking for him. He needed to sort out his feelings and make a plan, and didn’t want to be interrupted.

Or did he?

Was he secretly hoping that she’d come around the corner, find him and give him a thoroughly verbal thrashing? The Malfoy in him said “hell no.” But the male in him said, “If it means she’ll look at or talk to me, yes.”

Gods he was pathetic. He ran a hair through his blonde hair nervously, attempting to form a method of operation in his head. But it was impossible.

What do you say to a girl when you do that? If you do it at all, you wait until it’s your very last meeting, or the project is over. You don’t do it right smack dab in the middle or during crunch time.

But then, when it came to Granger, all of the typical rules Draco had for girls tended to go out the door. She was unlike any other girl he had liked, and that wasn’t just because of her blood. In fact, he hadn’t even known that she was Muggle-born until the end of their first year; looking back, he was certain that he would have called her a Mudblood before then if he had known.

During their first year, she been this busy haired, buck toothed, over-eager know-it-all in Gryffindor; enough reason alone to dislike her. Once he had discovered that she was Muggle-born, she had immediately become his basis of what a Muggle-born was. She was the Muggle-ist of the Muggle-borns, the Muddy-ist of the Mudbloods. The very bottom of the barrel.

The barrel which, at this very moment, he was scraping. He had made up his mind; he would go over and apologize to her.

After all, he was now half-an-hour late; she deserved an explanation and, if she would have him, a very thorough snogging.

Just as he was getting up and smoothing down his clothes, he heard a rustling sound coming from their table. Curious, he saw her walking down the side of the stacks of books, one arm over laden with books and the other briskly wiping her eyes.

Quickly, Draco moved back into the row so that she wouldn’t see him. He couldn’t believe it; was she upset because he hadn’t shown up?

And then, barely above a whisper, he heard her say, “Hermione Granger doesn’t wait for anybody,” as she passed him unknowingly.

Crap. Had he just missed his chance?