**Author's note: The next week is going to be hectic, filled with work things and travel things and all sorts of things, so I apologize in advance for whatever delay the next chapter will be under… but know that I'm writing and wishing you all well!!!**
CHAPTER THIRTEEN- Walking on Eggshells
He drummed his fingers against the smooth wood of the table in the Great Hall, looking across the table at her and wondering what to say. She'd been reading that Divination book for more than a week now, and he was quite certain she'd finished it more than once.
But… what to say?
Hermione may have been one of his best friends, but there was more to it. There was, for instance, the fact that Harry had no earthly notion how to handle Hermione, how to talk to her, how to treat her. Without Ron acting as a buffer, all Harry felt was… foolish. Every time he opened his mouth, something idiotic leaked out, each slip incrementally more idiotic.
"Is it really so awful?" he asked suddenly, groaning inwardly as his voice careened off on its own separate path. Stupid voice.
Hermione looked up at him from her book, eyebrows raised in surprise. He'd hardly said more than a handful of words to her since Ron and the others had gone, and he'd certainly never burst out with something so involved as a question. It had saddened her, really, their sudden separation. It was bad enough all their friends were gone, but for Harry to all but ignore her…
Well, she'd really had no choice but to throw herself into research.
"Is what so awful?" she asked, holding her place in her book with a finger in the event this conversation died quickly, as they all seemed to these days.
"Spending time alone with me," Harry barreled on, visibly wincing behind his glasses. What was he saying? "I mean, Dumbledore told you they were safe, but…" He looked pointedly at the book she held.
Spending time along with him? Hermione's brain buzzed around the idea and she contemplated clouting him upside the head for his simplicity. All she wanted was time alone with him, but every time she had it, he acted as though he'd rather have tea with Voldemort than speak up.
"Of course not," she said, trying to keep her voice light and conversational. Casual was the key, she told herself. "You know, I'm just curious." Was her voice strained? It sounded strained to her own ears.
And then Harry leaned over and put a hand over hers, speaking softly. "They'll be all right, Hermione."
Casual flew out the window, and Hermione raised wide hazel eyes to his bright green ones, surprise written plainly on her features.
And, feeling incrementally less idiotic, Harry smiled.
~~~
The earth didn't stop.
Her brain may have been working at twice, thrice, tenfold its normal speed, throwing thoughts and feelings and doubts and questions at her in a barrage; her feet may have carried her up the walk and into her house a bit more slowly, the muscles aching, unused to the activity they'd performed; her emotions may have been scraped raw and bared to the surface-but the world was still going on.
It was the same house Gen stepped into, the same family clamoring over the supper about to be set on the table. Rob gave her that same goofy grin when he saw her come in, and her parents greeted her in the same fashion.
What would they say, she wondered, if they knew what she'd done?
And because nothing had changed-nothing other than her, that was-Gen kept up easy conversations with her parents, with her brother, while thinking ahead to a shower, thinking behind to a young man with wounded eyes, while thinking of the present and her own tangle of feelings.
It had been bound to happen, she supposed-even she knew flint and steel would only spark so long before starting a fire. But she hadn't expected the reality of it, the harsh truth of his life. Pity, sorrow, grudging admiration. Where had they all come from?
Lust she could handle. That was simple, the simplest of everything. Even anger was more complicated than lust. But what had just transpired…
"Gen?" Rob asked again, leaning across the table to prod his sister's arm. "The salt?"
She passed it to him with an apologetic glance and engaged herself back into the easy talk of suppertime and family.
The earth, after all, didn't stop.
~~~
The bed had been stripped, the comforter undoubtedly removed by some tactful, secretive maid. And if the comforter went, the matching sheets had to go, and so the end result was an entirely new set of bedclothing for Drake's enormous bed.
He couldn't decide whether he was grateful or disappointed for the lack of a reminder.
She'd not spoken a single word until he had pulled to the curb in front of her house, and even then she'd merely said "Thank you" in a voice entirely unlike her usual waspish screech, tugging her skirt down as she'd walked to the front door.
He'd found he couldn't go home, instead choosing to drive around, one hand on the wheel and the other twisting worriedly at locks of his hair, mussing the spikes and giving the wind something malleable to tear through. He'd driven until dark, and by the time he'd gone home, it was hard to believe what had actually happened.
Easy to remember, perhaps, but hard to believe.
He sat now on the scrupulously clean bed, his anger long since drained.
He'd woven a web and ended up just as tangled in it as she had, bound just as surely as if his hands and feet had been tied. What sort of state was the world in, he wondered, when a Mallory shagged a Wesley?
And, if he were totally honest with himself, what sort of state was the world in when a good girl shagged a troublemaker?
But it was not regret Drake Mallory felt as he lay atop his bedcovers fully clothed. It was wonder, confusion, the nagging certainty that a fuse had been lit and a course of action started. And for the first time in his life, he felt self-doubt.
Had he somehow let himself become an object of pity rather than of envy, of want?
He wavered into sleep with these thoughts in his mind, his brows drawn together in a furrow and his full mouth turned into a frown.
For the first time in his life, Drake Mallory was worried.
And across the small town, lying freshly showered in a narrow, rickety bed, Gen had thoughts of her own, all centered around one young man. She was not regretful, thought not of the decision she'd made or its possible consequences, but instead of the life she'd never bothered to see, the problems that had never before been apparent to her, or anyone else.
And Genevieve Wesley worried.
~~~
"He's tired, Minerva." He followed her brisk pace through the hall like an unusually determined shadow, the only relief in the flood of black coming with his pallid, peaked face. "He is exhausted from his efforts. We must force him to stop."
Minerva McGonagall swung down a corridor, fervently wishing she could shake loose of Severus Snape. The man was like a giant, worrying crow, she thought. It wasn't as though she could do anything, and she said as much.
"If the Dark Lord-" Severus shook his head, correcting himself. "If Voldemort knows the headmaster is weakened, trouble will be on the rise. This game of his must end." He'd thought it through in every single way, and though he knew Dumbledore's "game" would mean better chances against the Death Eaters if it paid off, Severus could see no possible way for it to pay off. There was simply not enough time in the world to do such a thing.
Such a thing, he thought dourly, was impossibly optimistic.
"Have some faith, Severus, surely you understand that concept," Minerva sniffed. Though she had doubts of her own, she wasn't nearly ready to start calling them out, to further divide what was already fractured. "Albus knows his capabilities. He will not attempt to exceed them."
Severus actually snorted at this, made a thin, derisive nasal sound to indicate his disbelief, and the arch look it earned him from the Gryffindor Head of House made him tack on a sneer. "Don't you think excess has already occurred? House unity, Professor McGonagall. It is a thing of myth."
And as she reached the door to her office, Minerva McGonagall turned and gave a strange, sly, almost coy smile to her peer, and she spoke in a superior tone all of her students would recognize.
"So, Professor Snape, is magic."
~~~
Gen found, as she usually did, that sleep-no matter how little- brought an edge of clarity to things as nothing else did. With that clarity, however, came the knowledge that she was ill-equipped to handle this situation. She was ill-equipped to handle her own emotions, and emotions weren't, she knew, something she should have in regards to a Mallory.
So she would have to hide them.
She dressed slowly, studying her body in the dark, age-spotted mirror that hung behind her door, splaying steady hands over the pale, soft surfaces of breasts and stomach, bending down to test the muscles of her thighs, still aching with the memory of sex, still tingling with the memory of his hands.
The world went on, and in this new world, she knew she would have to walk very, very carefully.
~~~
"Bloody… stupid… hair," he ground out, standing at the massive marble sink in his bathroom. He'd been
fussing with the platinum mess for fifteen minutes already, and where had it gotten him? It still looked bloody stupid.
Jerking his dress shirt on, Drake ducked his head under the tap, fed up. Wetting the stiff and sticky locks, he stood,
shook water all over the bathroom, and walked out the door, letting his hair hang in his eyes in long forelocks.
He barely remembered his tie, and would have forgotten a pair of shoes altogether if the maid hadn't timidly offered them to him on his way out, meticulously shined and already unlaced for him to shove his feet into.
He tied them on the way to school, propping his feet in the seat while steering with his knees and looking in the mirror to speculate on the condition of his hair.
Did it really look stupid?
He parked with a screech of tires, got out of his car, and backtracked to get his sunglasses, grumbling and cursing the whole while.
What in bloody hell had gotten into him this morning?
And then he saw her.
She was leaned against the wall, books cradled against her chest, talking with that poncey, sickly Collins and that sideshow Lovejoy. Her normal skirt was back-Thank God-and she didn't look the least bit different. Or did she? Did she seem a little more relaxed, a little… brighter?
Quit staring, you sodding git, he told himself crossly. She's still the same bloody pauper with the same ratty clothes and the same freakish freckles and the same superior attitude.
And perhaps that was what was bothering him. She didn't look the least bit bothered, which was downright indecent, he thought, if one were to consider that merely hours ago, she'd been underneath him, practically begging him like a-
What in the bloody hell was wrong with him?
He stalked up to her, fumbling a cigarette out of his pocket with jerky, awkward motions and lighting it with a generic lighter-damn her for getting his old one taken away, damn it all-and grabbing her arm with hands that were just a little too unsteady, and as a result, a little too rough.
"Ouch!" Gen gasped indignantly, rubbing the spot on her arm once she'd jerked away from him and waved Connor and Lucia back. The last thing she needed was them following and catching on to… well, on to anything. "What in the hell's wrong with you this morning?" He looked… interesting, she judged covertly as he herded her into a small, dead-end corridor containing all the housekeeping supplies. His clothing was perhaps a bit less haphazard than usual, and instead of the expected Billy Idol-esque spikes, his hair hung sleekly down the sides of his face, partially obscuring his sunglasses in thick, touchable-looking locks.
Treat this one carefully, indeed, she thought. He'd clearly gone dotty.
"What in the hell's wrong with me?" he repeated with a dry laugh. Hadn't he been asking himself that all morning? "What are we going to do?" he asked, shoving back his sunglasses and anchoring his hair back with them. It was annoying, having his hair in his eyes like that. What had possessed him to leave it like that?
"Do?" she repeated, her strawberry eyebrows popping up in surprise. "About?" Surely he couldn't be talking about them. There was no them, after all.
Keep it cool, Mallory, he told himself. He was about to fall apart over… what? A poor wreck of a girl. And why? Because maybe she hadn't actually wanted to have sex with him.
Maybe she'd just felt sorry for him.
"About tutoring!" he burst out, trying to kill that new, weird, internal voice. Bloody nuisance. "We need a place to tutor."
"Well, we can't do it here!" Gen snapped back, wondering why he suddenly seemed angry. It was ridiculous, the way he was acting. He seemed furtive and weird-as though he were ashamed someone would see them.
Smug, moneyed ponce.
Oh, bugger. She couldn't even think the insult with any level of sincerity.
"Let's do it at your house," Drake said, suddenly wondering at the implications of their words. Do what, exactly? Were they still talking about tutoring?
And another image of her, pulling him down to her, flashed through his mind, honing desire he didn't even know he had to a sharp and frightening point.
"We are most definitely not doing it at my house," Gen said, her voice rising. Why couldn't he ever button his shirt? Was it really necessary for her to have to look at his bare torso practically all the time? Could he not manage more than those two buttons?
"Well, we can't do it at my house!" Drake exclaimed, raking a hand through his hair and mussing it into several different directions. "We've seen what happens there!"
They both froze then, staring at each other with wide eyes and accelerated breaths, bright spots of color burning in their cheeks.
Total madness, they both judged simultaneously.
Total madness really couldn't decelerate into anything worse, Drake judged, and with a manic look in his eyes, he yanked her to him, covered her mouth with his, and kissed her.
She stretched to her toes, her books still held between them, her knees knocking slightly into his as she moaned just a bit into the demanding warmth of his mouth.
And then he released her, eyes squeezed shut, the very picture of frustration.
"Fuck!" he barked. "Just… fuck!"
He wanted Genevieve Wesley.
Damn it all to hell.
"You find a place for tutoring," she said tremulously, backing away from him on knees suddenly turned to water. What in the hell was going on?!? Last night hadn't been the damper on a fire.
It had been extra fuel, apparently.
"It's your fault we can't use the library, anyway," she added, a careless, habitual, and comparatively weak accusation.
He was opening his mouth to correct her, ridiculously slow on the uptake, when she turned and darted down the hallway.
"Buggering… fuck."