UNFORESEEN LOVE
Chapter 1
Shackled Granger
It was a beautiful morning at Hogwarts and Hermione Granger was reading a book of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore. All students were having their Christmas break and celebrating it with a week off classes. She was at the Gryffindor Common Room lying comfortably on thesoft red couch near the fire and eyes glued onto the book. Realizing that she was unaccompanied by Harry and Ron, she closed her book and stood up to go and find the two. She figured that it would be best for her to spend her Christmas break with her two best friends. Therefore, she chose to go in search for them.
Hermione walked out of the common room causing her robes to drift from the speed she was going. Scurrying along the corridors of the castle, she thought about all the different plans she had thought of doing with Harry and Ron for a memorable Christmas and hoping Draco Malfoy getting in their way. However, abruptly out of the blue, Malfoy was right in front of her and collided into another. Forehead-to-forehead, they both were knocked down to the ground. Books, papers, quills, and other items were flying everywhere and falling back down on Hermione and Draco.
On the floor, Hermione and Draco rubbed their foreheads from the impact of the crash that left red marks on their skin. "Oh no, my papers! I've been working all night to write it! Oh my…" she yelled as she crawled around looking for her papers and rapidly organized it.
Coming from the Great hall, Harry and Ron ran towards Hermione helping her to locate the rest of her papers.
Ron glared at Draco, "What a pathetic dimwit, Malfoy!"
On the other hand, students were immediately calling for Professor McGonagall. A few seconds afterward, Hermione saw the Professor running towards her and Malfoy, still on the ground, with a surprised look. She had her usual dark green robes with her black hat with a long green feather on her hat. "What happened? Can someone please explain!" she yelled realizing that no one had wanted to speak up and instead her eyes were glued to Hermione and Draco. "Malfoy, Granger! To my office immediately! Quickly!" she yelled one more time in an angrier tone.
Hermione was speechless as her eyes widened at McGonagall. Not even a goodbye to Ron and Harry, she followed McGonagall. On the other hand, Malfoy's face turned pink and left with McGonagall cursing the whole way.
Also on the corridors of the castle, Luna Lovegood was exploring the grounds when she spotted Harry and Ron. As usual, she had her blond hair down, holding a copy of 'The Quibbler' in one hand and her wand placed behind her ear. "Hello Harry, hello Ron!" she called out as she approached them and giving a curious look on her face as her head tilted towards the side on which her wand was behind her ear.
"She was just sent to McGonagall's just a minute ago." Harry replied as he thought about how it was so close to actually being rare for Hermione to cause such trouble and have her sent to Professor McGonagall's office.
"Hermione? In trouble? Now that's odd. First, the long lost three-winged Gargel Hounds show back up after years of being missing and now this? Here, my dad's new article will explain everything." Luna snapped warmly as she pulled out and unfolded a recent copy of 'The Quibbler'.
"How could you read such trash!" Harry exclaimed as he refused to take the parchment.
"Now Harry, how could you say such a thing!" yelled Ron accepting 'The Quibbler'.
A hurt and angry look came into Luna's eyes. She walked up standing on her tiptoes just to look Harry in the eyes. "Harry what's wrong with you? You're acting like a Snargle Fanged Blatherhorn, or are you just that big of a jerk!" she snapped, turned around, and started walking away. Tears began running down her face.
"Oh…umm…I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way." Harry replied feeling like an idiot to what he just said.
Turning back to look at Harry, Luna snapped, "What, you let something slip that you normally just say when I'm not around? Save it Harry, I see you think yourself too good for 'Luny Lovegood' as well!"
At McGonagall's office, Hermione took a seat on one of the chairs as she gave Malfoy a mean look. She was so disappointed that her work was ruined. On the other hand, Professor McGonagall took a seat in her chair, hands on the table, and began to speak. "Hmmm…Hermione, first time I actually called you in. However, I'm not surprised with you here, Draco. So, tell me what happened." she exclaimed.
"There's no reason for me to be here this time, Professor." Draco complained rather huffily ", she just ran into me out of the blue!"
"Though this is my first time in here, you know I wouldn't do such a thing. Well you see what happened was, I was just minding my own business and looking for Harry and Ron, when all of a sudden it happened!" Hermione said as she spotted Malfoy pointing at his red mark right on his forehead, as if to prove that he was the victim before shooting a glare back at her.
"It was an accident," Draco stated forcefully "If I wanted to do something to her, I wouldn't let myself get injured in the process! Deduct points or whatever it is you do and let me be on my 'merry' way." The venom in his voice seemed more intense as usual while he finished the last sentence.
McGonagall's eyes grew big after hearing Draco's reason. Not even one bit did she like the behavior Draco had presented to her. "No points will be taken out. As I see it, you and Granger does not get along that well. There fore I have decided to order you two to be together until you two have befriended each other." she said as she took out her wand. She gave a quick flick and Hermione's wrist was handcuffed to Draco's wrist. As a result, Hermione and Draco had seen that the handcuffs had no key hole.
"As you can see, there is no key hole on it. The 'key' to free yourselves is, once again, been befriended." Professor McGonagall informed them.
Hermione was stunned to what she just heard. Draco Malfoy had always been her archenemy and always wanted it to stay that way. "But Professor, what about if we need to be in our Common Rooms…or…need to use the bathroom?" Hermione hesitated.
"The handcuffs will come off only when you are in your common rooms and bathrooms of course! But other than that, you two will be stuck together." McGonagall replied.
"No bloody way!" Draco began to seethe ", no way am I going to be staying with this…this…Gryffindor! And Granger, did you forget that she is a witch? So much for being the smartest witch of your age…"
"All I can say is good luck. You two may go off to your business now." McGonagall interrupted.
Draco stood and briskly walked out of the office, half-dragging Hermione behind him. His face was paler than usual out of sheer annoyance. Quickly, he stopped and turned to face her. "Listen you; don't think I'm going to turn nice, or even civil because of this." he exclaimed.
"Know what Malfoy, I just want to get this over with, and so I'll be nice this time. Nevertheless, I don't care if you're going to act like a pathetic dim wit as you have always been. So…hmm…what to do?"
"First, I want to make it clear that you are not to call me anything like 'pathetic dim wit' as long as we're stuck together, or I won't hold accountable for my actions." He told her casually ", and I feel like going outside for a breath of fresh air, so let's get a move on."
"Fine…" Hermione replied with a sigh. Though she was very curious how Draco and she were going to handle each other. Therefore, she decided to follow what Draco wanted to do.
On the way to the Court Yard, Hermione met up with Luna, who had just stopped crying, but was still hurt inside. "Hermione there you are!" she exclaimed cheerfully as she approached her wand still clenched in her hand from earlier and ignoring Draco. ", where have you been?"
"I just got out of McGonagall's office. There was turmoil this morning, which brought us here handcuffed. Now we're stuck together until we get along. Actually, we were on our way out. Draco here wanted to get a breath of fresh air. Oh Luna, I forgot to mention, did you happen to see where Harry and Ron gone off to?"
"You…in trouble? So it is true…" Luna replied suspiciously, as she gazed into Hermione's eyes after taking a few steps closer, as if she was looking for something. "This wouldn't have anything to do with the reappearance of the three-winged Gargel Hounds would it? 'Bout Harry and Ron, I saw them earlier. But…" she started as a flash of anger and a quick hurt gaze passed through her eyes. "I guess they went to the Common Room." she added slowly as her sadness and depression was caught by Hermione.
"Umm…ok? Anyways is there something wrong?"
"I'm fine, it's just…the smell of Slabernakels make my eyes water sometimes." Luna lied. "Can't you smell them, they stink worse than the boogie-face's breath over there." as she gazed at Draco.
Hermione laughed, "Well Luna, it's nice to see you but I have to go. Draco might complain."
Dragging Draco along, Hermione headed towards the Court Yard. Before they got any further, Luna stopped them. "Oh before you go…" Luna chimed and stood with her wand pointing at Draco. "Aquia Erecto!" she announced and a jet of water flew out of her wand at Draco, targeting his blond greasy hair. "Now at least somebody washed the greasy head of his."
Sam, a new Ravenclaw girl with a long black hair and hand-me-down robes couldn't help but let out a small giggle. She covered her mouth and looked at Draco. Hermione laughed and saw a student that she hasn't seen before. "Hello, I'm Hermione. What's your name? I don't think we've met." Hermione greeted her as she took her hand out for her to shake.
"I'm new this year at Hogwarts. I'm Sam."
"Oh Sam, well nice to meet you I'm so sorry but I have to go. Have fun here at Hogwarts!" Hermione replied as she was tugging the handcuffs to get Draco's attention. "Draco, do you want to go now?"
"I'm guessing I'll probably see you around a lot, bye!" Sam replied and giggled at the sight of Hermione and Draco handcuffed together.
Draco began pulling Hermione after catching a sight of his friends, Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe had his usual confused look as he came in to Malfoy and Goyle following him. "We, Go. NOW!" he yelled and pulled out his wand uttering a spell. But he bolted backwards from a counter spell along with Hermione. Dazed and confused, he kept quiet.
"Do you really have to yell! I'm like right next to you!" Hermione yelled back and really wanting to go see Harry and Ron once more to explain the whole situation. "Hey, if you get to hang out with Crabbe and Goyle and I have to take all the torture, then how 'bout the next day, you have to hang out with Harry and Ron?"
"One word. NO. I hang with my friends, you don't. Understand?" Draco replied.
"Well too bad. You are going to; no one like you is going to stop me from doing what I want to do. This is just pathetic. And if you act more like a nitwit as you are now, the more we'll be stuck like this. Don't be an idiot!" Hermione yelled back.
"Draco, why are you tagging along with this mud blood!" asked Goyle.
"Oh, Goyle you brute," Draco exclaimed. He was lost with words and worse, he was with a Mud blood Gryffindor. "She got into trouble, so I was asked to make sure no funny business went on out here with her." he lied quickly.
"Ugh! Excuse me! That is a lie. If that is so, then why is it that I'm handcuffed to you? Huh! Answer that Malfoy! What really happened was that Professor McGonagall didn't like the way we behaved. Therefore, she handcuffed us until we get along. "Hermione exclaimed doubting that they would even listen to her.
"Like that would ever happen," Draco muttered under his breath. "So Goyle, Crabbe? Did you get the secret operation underway?" He winked at them.
"Uh, you mean the one with Potter and Redhead? Goyle asked but was interrupted by Malfoy.
"YES, YES I mean that one."
After hearing Malfoy's little conversation with Crabbe and Goyle, Hermione wasn't sure to believe it or not. Instead, she stuck with it being a joke. It was obvious, if Malfoy wanted to do something to Harry, he wouldn't have told it when I was there. Hermione thought to herself. "Malfoy, can I pleas go back to my common room? I assume that you're going to have to walk me there." Hermione laughed.
"Fine, if it will shut you up." Draco said dramatically. "Crabbe, Goyle meet me by the Fat Lady's portrait I five minutes. Come, mud blood." he spat.
"First of all, can you please not call me mud blood? I mean, not even one bit did I name you a pathetic dimwit."
"You did now. And besides," Draco said smiling, leading her up the flight of stairs. ", mud blood is a true statement for you, just so you know."
Hermione ignored Malfoy's reply but was hurt inside and continued walking. As they reached the Fat Lady's Portrait, she stared at the Handcuffs. In a second, it just disappeared. "Well before I go, I just wanted to say…I hope you think about all this Malfoy and change." Hermione said as she opened the portrait door.
"Yeah right, and maybe you could stop being a mud blood, become an actual witch, and even possibly look nicer…," he said as soon as Hermione shut the portrait closed, noticing that Crabbe and Goyle were giggling about behind him.