Sing Me Spanish Techno by antijuicy
Summary: Hermione promises Draco something she knows she won't be able to get. And he gets angry. Very angry.
Disclaimer: Title and lyrics are from the New Pornographers. Characters by J.K. Rowling. I own nothing.
A/N: No Britishisms, pop culture references, mild to middling swearing. The story format of Draco and Hermione talking to each other is copied, yes, COPIED from bk11's Hermione Marries Rich. I guess I'm a bad person. The only thing I can say in my defense is that the plot is entirely mine.
Traveling at godspeed/over the hills and trails/I have refused my call/Pushin' my lazy sails/Into the blue flame/I want to crash here right now/For listenin' too long/to one song/listenin' too long/to one song
Sing Me Spanish Techno
This is the truth. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Go on.
She said that she'd always be faithful to him and never leave him. She promised him this. And then she broke her promise. And how!
Er…
Yeah. By sending him the invite to her wedding. By mistake. Oooh, classic soap opera, right? Sometimes it really pissed him off that whoever was writing his little life up there seemed to have no sense of humor at all.
Well, what can I say? She's sorry. She's SORRY.
But he's really, really angry. Like scarily angry. Because he'd really, really liked this girl, you know? She was just—special. Like a sunset in violets and pinks and oranges, and you feel bad because you wanted to take a picture of it but you don't have your camera with you so you can't save it forever and ever for posterity amen. That special. And it hurt that she'd chosen to do this, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You used to cry into your pillow at night with all the heartfelt angst of the dump-virgin. Save me the oh-such-a-tragedy-please-feel-sorry-for-me-shit, please.
Well, what can I say? It HURT! Like agh! The PAIN. The PAIN! Now where was I?
You couldn't eat, couldn't sleep…
Oh, yeah. Now most guys in this situation, they'd go completely ape-shit. Tearing chunks of wallpaper off the walls, throwing vases at the cheating bitch, hunting down the partner in crime and nailing his motherfucking head to the wall. Etc.
But, you know, he's a decent kind of guy, born without the diva gene, and he doesn't really want to go in for that kind of Neanderthal macho craziness kind of thing.
And I'm supposed to say thank you here.
If you'd like to, yeah.
Eh, whatever.
Oh-kay! So he watches her while she's putting all her expensive useless hair-conditioning stuff into her frizzy birdwig at night. And he wants to talk to her about it but he can't.
I mean, what's he supposed to say? It's so hard to find those words. If his life was—was a book, or a movie script or something, he'd be able to march up to her and throw her leave-in gloss product in her face and say cooly and threateningly, "it's over, bitch." But his life isn't a book, or a movie, and so he sits on the fucking bed trying to read a fucking Thomas Harris and not really seeing the sentences right. And for once Hannibal can't distract him from real life, so he just watches her comb her hair and thinks of the things he can't say but would.
Deadly one-liners that'd make her go down on the floor and BEG for forgiveness.
But he can't say them, not really.
And so he thinks of that old moralistic shebag – "actions speak louder than words."
Exactly. So he waits until they're up on a cruise ship together. Actually, "waits" isn't the right word. It's a God-given opportunity. And no, that totally doesn't mean that he didn't plan it in advance.
But you-
Don't interrupt me here, woman! I'm getting to the fun part! Okay. The wind's blowing, the happy dolphins are jumping up and down and following the boat and generally being adorable. And people are going, "awww, look at the dolphins!" Because that's what people do.
And he kind of looks sideways at her. And she's looking at the dolphins and going, "awww, look at the dolphins!" And he looks down at the water. It's cold and blue.
He notices that the railing's too short, really, to support a person who's leaning far out…
You despicable bastard.
See? A God-given opportunity.
To make a long story short, he pushes her overboard. There's a small splash, and nothing much happens. She doesn't rise to the surface. There aren't even any bubbles.
And he goes back to his cabin, satisfied.
Satisfied that you drowned someone?
This wasn't a someone. This was my ex-girlfriend.
So. Now, it's my turn?
Go ahead.
Okay. So, down in the water with all the little fishies looking at her, she's totally regretting ever going out with him in the first place.
No. Wait. I bet – the first thing you thought when those cold, cold waters closed over you – the first thing you thought was that your hair was going to be oh so fucked up.
Shut up.
Just interjecting lively narrative into yours. And what's wrong with the beginning, anyway? You can't start a story in that way. 'She was down in the water with all the little fishies staring at her, and she was getting really pissed off at her stupidass boyfriend.' BOH-RING! Start again.
She was down in the water with all the little fishies staring at her, and she was getting really pissed off at her stupidass boyfriend, WHO'D JUST NEARLY MURDERED HER.
Good thing you'd had ten years of Varsity swimming lessons, though.
Uh-huh. So she summoned her magical Varsity swimming prowess and swam to a shore.
Where she was presented with a blanket by a kind and humble fisherman's wife.
Uh-huh. And she stays in the fisherman's cottage for a while, until she's recovered, from, you know, the tiredness. And she complains. She complains to the fisherman's wife about how her guy couldn't seem to handle all the war shit, about how even some kind of abstract newspaper headline would send him off on a sulk, and about that day when he got drunk and called her a MUDBLOOD—
I'm sorry.
She says that she realized then that maybe it would've been better to give him a little more time on his own before they got together. Because if he's still going to call her—call her—
That word.
—that word, in cold blood, even while he's drunk, yes, maybe it'd be better to, just, wake him up a bit. And so she made a wedding invitation. For the wedding of. Hermione Jane Granger and Ronald Bilious Weasley. And sent it to her guy—
Oh. My. God. You. Fucking. BITCH! BITCHFACE!BITCHFACE!
—which she now realized had been a bad move—
Fuck YEAH!
—if he'd been so affected by it—
Damn right! You did that to me to—
Shutupshutupshutup! I'm telling the story here! Okay, that he'd committed murder—
Objection.
—okay, half a murder—in a way of getting out his feelings about it. And it made her kind of sad. And hopeful. Yes, her boyfriend nearly killing her because she'd implied that she was unfaithful made her hopeful. Because that maybe meant that they'd maybe be able to make it through the—the words and things. If he could get that angry over her.
Bitch. Cold-blooded bitch.
She was doing it for the relationship!
Scary, cold blooded bitch.
Moving on!
She went back to the house, where she found people holding her own funeral. He was pale and kind of stunned looking. He wasn't crying. And there was her photograph on top of a coffin, and lots of people wearing black and pretending to cry. And they were saying all kinds of nice things. It was better than a month's worth of shrink visits, actually.
Yeah?
Yeah. They were saying things like, "She had such lovely clothes. And do you remember the time when she saved that dog from the abusive next-door-neighbor? Such a sweet person. Very, very, sad." Insincere shit like that, because they all remembered her fondly as a slave-driving bitch. She knew. But it made her feel good, so the insincere bit didn't seem too important. Sometimes it's just better to ignore the truth.
So what did she do after the funeral? I remember three boxes of canapés went mysteriously missing…
Oh, the canapés. I forgot. Yeah, she made off with them. She ate them behind the ugly stone statue of the saint with the stomach-cramp expression on his face. She hadn't eaten anything for a week, you know. Epic journey across the countryside to the old home, and all.
And after that, she set his house on fire, right?
Burned it right down to the ground. It felt good. It felt really good.
Yeah, well, sucks for him, actually. I mean, his fucking house'd been burned down; he's got no money, no girl, no family, no house…
What can I say? It felt good.
So he quits his job and kind of wanders. Just wanders. And drinks. Drinks alone, drinks in bars, drinks in the park where people stare at him. Ha! They think he's an alcoholic. Ha! If only.
And one day he's sitting in a bar, alone, and this lady comes and sits down next to him. And since she looks friendly and ok and open-minded and all, and because he's very, very drunk, he starts telling her about himself. And the girl.
"My da always told me to marry a girl that he'd want to marry. Because that would make me more responsible in my choices and shit, because my da knew everything—okay. He knew some things, but not everything. But when I was eleven I didn't know that, you know? My rebellious age, and that epiphany, yeah, it came late. Like, when I was nineteen."
The lady smiles hazily and nods.
"And that was when I saw my first dead body. These Auror people came raiding my house, and they blasted a couple of stuff of the walls, just for the hell of it. And dad just came running, and when he saw that the ten-year-old painting of my mum'd been torn in half he ROARED and slugged a plump dark-eyed one in the face. And he'd been telling me for the whole of my life not to engage in Muggle combat, you know? Because it wasn't civilized. Well, the plump dude and my dad started having a fistfight, right over my mum's painting torn in half. And the Aurors stood around and shouted a lot. And then—I don't really know what happened—the plump one was down on the ground. His eyes were really crusty. And bloodshot. And then—he twitched. Three times. And died."
The lady nods again and presses her legs against his.
"And—I don't know. Something just changed in the atmosphere. And the Aurors looked incredibly fucking serious. And they blasted my dad and mum into a closet, and knocked me out. And by the time I came to the closet was there, in front of me, and blood was leaking out from underneath it."
The lady puts her hand on his.
"I just kind of ran wild for a while, then. Lost direction. Lost everything. I'd have nightmares every night about the closet. And the plump dude. And then…and then I met her, in the Death Eater Family Re-Education classes. And she smiled and…this sounds incredibly fucking stupid, I know, but then I felt…I felt like. Like I could put the closet, and the plump dude, and everything behind me, if only I'd follow this girl. And everything felt right."
The lady, she's kind of reaching down. To his thigh. But he doesn't notice. He has a monologue to finish.
"And I followed the girl. But along the way—something went wrong. And now I've—I've…she's…"
His gaze follows hers, down to his thigh. And then to his crotch.
And then he realizes that he's incredibly turned on and he sleeps with her.
Hey, it was just ONCE. A fucking lapse! And I thought you—she was dead.
Huh. This guy— is so, so dead. Is going to be dead, will be dead.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyhoos, he wanders around the city all day. By night he drinks too much in bars and cages more drinks off people who in a week's time will never trust him with money again. It gets so bad that his buddy Goyle says to him, "Dude, Draco? I think you're getting a little…a little…that 'alcoholic' word, yeah? I think you should do something about it."
And he looks back at him with eyes that're misty and drunk and says, "Ithinkawannagotodaloo."
Goyle helps him to the loo. And they're both really glad that he's not so drunk that he's unable to unzip his own pants. So Goyle walks out of the bathroom, and Draco pisses for about half an hour and zips himself back in, and he looks at the person next to him—
Excuse me?
Not there. Jesus, you're sensitive. Just…looks. You know. At general arm length to leg length ratio, face, degree of bowleggedness—just—just the things you look at when you see someone, you know?
Mmmm.
And it's Ron Weasley. Freckles and all. And Draco says, "Motherfucker." And he kind of backs out of the bathroom with his head down, so Weasley won't notice. The last time he saw this dude's name, it was on a wedding invitation that hadn't been meant to be sent to him. And he's kind of shaking all over, right? 'Cause Weasley—'cause Weasley—'cause Weasley'd made off with his girl! And he's still angry! Like he'd just found out yesterday! And he's walking out of the bathroom back into the bar and he sees her. And she sees him.
It was an eye-meet across a crowded room. A soap opera moment.
It was totally a coincidence.
Totally a coincidence. Boy meets girl. After bloody retribution—for her. He doesn't know that she's the one that's burned down his house.
He walks closer towards her.
She stares at him like he's just sprouted antlers and zebra stripes.
He sits down in front of her.
She says, "Draco?"
He says, "Hermione?"
And they both wince, because this situation is just cheesiness piled on cheesiness.
He says, "I've been thinking about you. Sometimes."
She says, "Yeah, me too."
He says, "I've slept with someone, you know." Triumphantly.
She says, "Well? So've I." Liar.
Fuck you. So, yeah. They both kind of giggle. And then he says, "You're the fucker that burned down my fucking house?"
She says, "You threw me overboard that fucking cruise liner?"
She takes a deep breath.
And says, "Tell me what really happened."
Says, "Tell me the truth."
"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
And he sighs, and drums his fingers on the table, and thinks for a while. And begins. Begins with, "This is the truth. The whole truth, and nothing—"
"But the truth."
END