Draco
Glaring at the open text before him, he couldn’t shake the gnawing sensation inside him that compelled him to watch the witch seated on the other side of the aisle, tucked within the shelves. He had already given in once when she had walked into the library and unloaded stacks and stacks of texts onto the table on the opposite side of the row he had hidden himself away in.
He had to finish his assigned reading or he would fall behind, but he couldn’t seem to keep his mind from wandering back to her. Why had she come back to Hogwarts? None of the other muggleborns from their year had. She had yelled at him as if she had been forced to return, but she knew nothing about being forced to do anything.
Since the moment his father had failed the Dark Lord, he had been forced to follow every order to the letter else his mother would have been tortured, assaulted, or killed as a means to punish him. He had never wanted to take the mark. He hadn’t asked for it. He would never forget the crawling sensation under his skin and the immediate twisting of his stomach when his aunt had dragged him from his bed and presented him to the serpentine man. The bruises left on his knees when Bella pushed him by his shoulders to kneel before his dias ached for days afterward. Still, they were nothing compared to the excruciating burn that radiated up his arm into his chest as his body relearned how to function with the mark embedded in his arm.
Granger knew nothing of being forced. Forced to take the mark. Forced to torture. Forced to kill. Forced to watch his mother be tortured when he wasn’t good enough to please him. Forced to watch a woman eaten alive by Nagini on his own dining table. Forced to attempt assassination as a child. Forced to witness one of his childhood best friends burn alive in fiendfyre. Forced to await trial in Azkaban. Forced to leave his mother and return to a place he had grown to despise.
He could feel his temper rising as his control of his spiraling thoughts continued to slip. He lifted his gaze to sneer at the back of her head, only his eyes weren’t met with the curtain of curls he had expected. Instead, amber eyes were intently staring back at him.
Anyone else when met with his anger would have shied away, but of course, Granger only narrowed her eyes at him in challenge instead of turning back around in her seat.
The battle of wills had begun and he would not be the one to back down. Before he realized what she was doing, she stood from her seat and his book was plucked from his grasp.
“So Malfoy, hiding in the back of the library to read muggle literature now? Worried what your other snakes would think?” she bit out as she flipped through the pages of his copy of Romeo and Juliet.
“I don’t know how this could possibly be news to you, Granger, but it's the assigned reading for the stupid bloody unity course.” He moved to remove his book from her grip, but she spun out of his reach continuing to flit through the pages, with no regard to holding his place.
He watched the corner of her mouth twitch as she began to read, “O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell…”
He couldn’t listen to another second of her attempted monologue, he grabbed his wand and summoned the text from her hands. He was disappointed when the removal of the script did nothing to deter her from completing the lines without flaw. He glared at her impatiently. Why couldn’t this witch ever take a hint? He wanted nothing to do with her. She wanted nothing to do with him. Why was she torturing them both?
“It’s unsurprising to me that this would be news to you, Malfoy, given the generations of inbreeding in your heritage but basic literacy skills would inform you that at the top of your assigned reading list, it explicitly states that there are different assigned reading lists for those who were born in the magical world and those who weren’t. Romeo and Juliet is an interesting choice for you though. Perhaps they want you to draw some kind of parallel between the Montagues and the Capulets and the pointless political tension and hatred your family has started and fueled for decades, but what do I know?” a saccharine smile crept across her face as she toyed with a curl that had fallen loose against her cheek.
“All I heard Granger was that you think I’m beautiful, angelic even,” he gave her a sarcastic wink before dropping his expression, “Now please, for the love of Merlin, fuck back off to your side of the library,” he growled.
Her smile only grew as she bent at the waist tucking her arm in front of her before leaving his space to return to her own work.
She bowed. She fucking bowed. She was as weird as ever.
With the flick of his wand, he threw up a silencing charm so he couldn’t hear the grating sounds of her existence and flitted through the pages to find where he had left off.