I understand that this is fanfiction and an alternate universe (AU), so Malfoid can behave differently. But to understand my point, you need to put yourself in her shoes.
Imagine hating someone so deeply that you would rather see them lose in every situation. You despise them, and everything about your upbringing, your family, and the world you know reinforces that hatred. From your perspective, it isn’t unfounded. Your hatred is righteous. Your hatred is correct.
And yet, for some unfathomable reason, your heart begins to fall for this person, someone who is practically your antithesis.
At first, you dismiss those feelings, just as anyone might. But your heart refuses to listen to your mind. The feelings grow stronger and heavier with each passing day, until the mere sight of this person is enough to leave you struggling to collect yourself. It makes no sense. No medical knowledge or wizardry seems able to explain it, and you’re certain there’s no love potion or foul play involved. So why is this happening?
Through all of this, you still have to pretend that everything is fine. You carry on as usual, but the realisation slowly dawns on you: what you’re feeling is love. And you can’t control it.
The moment you understand that, everything changes. Of course, you keep lying to yourself, but your heart knows what it wants. Somewhere deep inside, you can feel your resistance beginning to crumble. As though under a curse or a spell, you find yourself behaving differently. Your eyes seek this person out more often. Their jabs and comebacks no longer bring the familiar satisfaction of a fight. Now, each one cuts.
But what can you do? You can’t simply stop playing your part. If you change the way you treat them, someone might notice. Someone might understand. So you keep up appearances, even as doing so becomes harder to bear.
Eventually, you can’t deny it any longer. Everything builds until you finally allow yourself to be honest, if only in the privacy of your own mind. You surrender to this spell called love and let yourself feel everything you’ve been trying to suppress. You begin arguing against your own convictions, entertaining possibilities you once would have dismissed. And once you allow yourself to imagine them, they become irresistible.
You find yourself sitting in bed for hours, daydreaming and wondering whether things could ever change.
But all of this happens in private. In front of that person, you fall back on the same behaviour you’ve spent years establishing. You don’t know how to undo it. Still, somewhere deep inside, you hope that the person you love might love you back. (1/2)