Yellow Wood
By Elaina
A rather clichéd sort of tableau was being played out in the cramped powder room on the lower level of The Burrow. Hermione sat at a skirted dressing table, radiant in a silken, cream, wedding dress, staring off into space as her brides maids chatted anxiously around her, unsteady on the folding chairs that had hastily been set up to accommodate them. Everything had gone as planned so far, and she was going to get married that very afternoon. However, she was no jittery, nervous bride, self-conscious of every moment and feeling as though she was going to puke throughout the entire ceremony. Hermione felt fully confident that she was making the right decision. After all, Ron and she made the perfect couple. They loved and trusted each other and had been best friends for quite a while. They almost always could work out their differences and were both loyal and true. Of course Ron hadn't been her first boyfriend. There had been many others, but Hermione had waited until she was sure that she had the right person.
Content, she settled back to enjoy the rest of her life as a single, but suddenly cringed as a wave of guilt washed over her, and that feeling bombarded her, the kind you can only get when you have lied to yourself…
~*~*~*~
Draco sat in the Transfiguration Classroom, scowling hatefully at the world in general. He glanced about the room, and seeing nothing interesting, decided it was a good time to cause mischief. Mischief wasn't a good thing, though. Draco's wayward misdeeds were more aimed to anger and hurt people then poke lighthearted fun. He usually left the April's Fools jokes up to the Weasley twins.
As Professor McGonagall droned on in the background, he drew out a quill and began to scratch graffiti into the well-worn surface of his table with its tip. After finishing a rather decretory comment about Gryffindors, and a gruesome picture that slightly resembled Neville Longbottom, he looked up expecting to meet the icy glare of Professor McGonagall, or the bemused stares of his fellow Slytherins, but was sorely disappointed. It appeared that nobody; NOBODY had even so much as noticed his antics. Heaving a sigh, he cast about for another source of inspiration. Actually, it was really quite lucky that that day the Slytherins and Gryffindors had a double potion lesson. It didn't take Draco long to find his muse. In fact, she was sitting just across the room from him. His scowl replaced with a satisfied smirk, Draco pulled out a scrap of parchment, uncorked his bottle of ink, and got to work.
Hermione Granger held the tattered slip of parchment in her trembling hand, glaring daggers at it, her lips pursed together.
"He's really gotten desperate, hasn't he?" One of her best friends, Ron Weasley remarked, voice devoid of all emotion aside from an occasional tremor. Harry Potter nodded, jaw set, eyes narrowed, infuriated that somebody would have the gall to insult one of his friends.
The trio was in the Gryffindor Common Room, draped across several of the soft, plush armchairs that had been there since they first started at Hogwarts, 7 years ago. Hermione had received a note, 5 minutes after Transfiguration had ended, only to discover that it had already circulated around the entire classroom. The Slytherins had gone into fits of hysteria once they had discovered that the offending document was meant for Hermione. The Gryffindors, however, didn't find it near as amusing as they did.
"You don't even know it was him." Hermione was a strong supporter of the court system. "For all we know it could have been Blaise Zabini." She paused thoughtfully for a moment. "He always has been a rather nasty one."
Harry held out his hand and Hermione reluctantly gave the crumpled, torn piece of paper to him. He unfolded it and smoothed out the creases. Harry grimaced, there was just a single word written, but it was a hideous remark that nobody BUT Draco would dare use:
MUDBLOOD!
"It's Draco."
Hermione sniffed and straightened out her back, nose high in the air. "Well he needs to get some more insults, if he thinks he can hurt me with this old thing."
She lobbed the wrinkled ball over the heads of some first years, and it landed in the middle of the roaring fire. They watched carefully, their faces bathed in the soft orange glow of the blaze, as the wad of parchment flared up and turned black at the edges, crumbling away into a pile of ash…
Draco sauntered down the hallway, a broad smirk stretched across his face. He had never ACTUALLY smiled in his entire life. Some said he was far to full of himself to ever enjoy the world and all the things that were going on in it, and some said that his smug, self-satisfied exterior was just a front made to cover up his depression. Nobody ever dared ask him about it and nobody ever really needed to-everybody had just gotten used to it after 7 years.
Draco rounded a corner and ran down a flight of stairs, taking the steps 3 at a time. He finally arrived at the foyer in front of the Great Hall, flung one of the large, double doors open, and swaggered over to the Slytherin table. One always had to make a grand entrance. His classmates greeted him warmly, and Pansy Parkinson slid over to make room for him next to her. Draco sat down, greeted her with as much warmth as he could muster, then wished a good morning to Professor Snape, his favorite teacher.
"I heard that Hermione burned the note you gave her," It was Crabbe. Draco shot him a withering look, and returned to eating his bacon. He let several minutes pass, slowly, deliberately chewing his food, then turned to face the perpetrator, his face a mask of mock disappointment.
"Crabbe, listen to me. You can't just walk around exclaiming things like that. You'll give away my little game, and that isn't very tactful. Why don't you say that GRANGER burned THE note instead? Oh, and don't use her first name. Mudblood slime like her doesn't deserve it."
Crabbe's dim face lit up once Draco had finished talking. It didn't matter that he had been totally humiliated; he had gotten less of a punishment then he deserved. The other house members tittered, receiving some sort of sick satisfaction from one of their ranks being shot down. There was that smug half-smile again, and the whole table settled back down to their breakfasts.
The Gryffindors weren't near as calm as the Slytherins. In the corner of their table that was reserved for 7th years, there was a blazing row brewing, and it promised to be a good one.
"I say we get revenge!" Harry cried pounding his fist. The dishes jumped, and a pitcher of hot maple syrup tipped over. Everybody ignored it. Their faces were close together, and they were hunched low, trying to keep their voices down in an effort not to be heard by any of the other houses. It wasn't working to well. Harry's violent outburst of rage caused most of the other houses to look up at them. Harry blushed and leaned back in to the huddle, ignoring Hermione, as she rolled her eyes.
"You know what? I really don't care anymore. It's gotten really old, and I've grown immune to the word Mudblood." Several of the new first years (who were eavesdropping) gasped and scooted their chairs away.
"You may not care, Hermione, but we do." Seamus whispered, "He's not only insulted you, our friend, but the entire Gryffindor house. We need to defend our honor and yours."
"Yeah," Ron chorused, "One big, group prank should do the trick."
"Yeah," Neville repeated, not sounding near as enthusiastic as the others did.
"I'm all for teepeeing the Slytherin Common Room," Dean's suggestion aroused a round of cheers from most of his fellow conspirators, and the stares of the rest of the Great Hall. Everybody retreated to whispers once more, their faces guilty.
"We could steal some of their underwear, and float them around the Hall, or…"
"Or something equally childish, I'm sure, Lavender." Parvati's tone was rather exasperated. "Listen, I agree with Hermione. After all, Malfoy insulted her, so shouldn't we listen to her ideas?"
Hermione relaxed a bit, visibly relieved that somebody else agreed with her on the course of actions that should be taken. "We shouldn't even let them know that we noticed it. Being ignored always seems to aggravate Draco." Several loud snorts clearly stated what the others thought of her plan.
"We've ignored him in the past, and has that helped any? I don't think so." Harry's voice had risen to a considerable notch above a whisper. Professor McGonagall whirled around, her face livid. She stood up, and began to clomp over towards them, each angry stamp seeming to ring echo inside their heads. Ron trembled, having not gotten over his fear of the formidable professor's wrath. Peering at her, his head cocked to one side, he almost thought he could see steam coming out of her ears.
"What is the meaning of this? Your noisy, bickering outbursts are an embarrassment to all Gryffindors."
Silence.
"We were just discussing the merits of modern day education and our undying faith in the discipline system?" Ron's hesitant reply was more like a question then an answer.
She snorted, narrowed her eyes at him and stood silent for a few seconds obviously trying to decide his fate. Mind made up, she finally stomped back towards the other end of the table, her manner much like what it had been when she had come, muttering under her breath. A collective sigh of relief was heaved around the table, and everybody returned to eating, the problem at hand forgotten for the moment.
A/N: The way this is looking, it's going to be a looooooooong fic, so I just hope you'll bear with me and follow up on it as often as you can * snort * (Yeah, like that's going to happen…) Oh well, please review, otherwise I'll come after you in the night and chop off your head. ~: P (I love to make idle threats) (EXTREMELY idle, extremely STUPID threats) I just realized that I can make this be in a different color because it's in html format, so expect to see me messing around with all the different colors for awhile…