Chapter 1
Pity rose like bile inside Hermione. She put her fork down, unable to take another bite of her plate of trifle. With a certain measure of fascinated disgust, she returned her gaze to the Hufflepuff table, where Hannah Abbott was making her way through yet another triple serving- this time of chocolate cake.
It was a terrible sight. The eating girl looked lifeless, pained almost, as though it was a hand besides her own filling her puffed cheeks with food. Her lips were greasy in the candlelight and she had not bothered to wipe the bits of food that dribbled down her shirt.
Hermione kept her head down, warning herself not to stare obtrusively.
"What is she doing?" Parvati said, in a hushed tone. Hermione, it seemed, wasn't the only one who noticed Hannah's miserable behavior.
"I heard she was dumped," Lavender replied, in an uncharacteristically sympathetic whisper. "Poor thing."
Hermione put her napkin on her table and stood up, drawing the attention of the two boys besides her. Ron and Harry, whom had been engrossed in heated debates on how best to humiliate and defeat Ravenclaw in tomorrow's Quidditch match, had not noticed Hannah swallowing enough food to power the Burrow during Christmas.
"I'll be right back," Hermione told them, and they returned their attention to the scrawled diagrams Harry had spread across his lap. She straightened her skirt and made her way around the table. Although Hannah and she weren't the best of friends, they were good acquaintances.
By now, the people around Hannah had begun to clear out. Hermione's heart went out for the girl. Hermione knew the emotional roller coaster of a bad breakup all too well herself, and her eyes unconsciously lighted on Lavender, still chatting back on the Gryffindor table.
Suddenly, a black-haired boy stood up other side of the hall, and sauntered over where Hannah was sitting, like a lion zeroing in on prey. Several Slytherin upperclassmen boys stood up to get a better view, jeering him on. Hannah paused and slowly, with a certain air of dread, turned her eyes upward towards where Malcolm Wilkes towered over her.
"Hate to break it to you Abbott, but Harper broke up with you 'cause you wouldn't put out." He paused, then added, "Or maybe you were too skinny for him." His House table broke into snickers. Tears glistened in Hannah's eyes and, to the astonishment of everyone around them, she silently turned back to her plate and continued to eat, as if the act would shield her from verbal abuse.
"Quit being a pig," Wilkes snarled at her, in an hate filled tone that sent shivers down Hermione's back. "You're making the rest of us lose our appetites."
Outrage coiled in Hermione and instinctively, she grabbed her wand.
"Stop it, Wilkes. You better watch what you're saying, unless you want to spend the rest of your evenings this week in detention."
The tall, brutish boy turned, his eyes lit with glee. "Why if it isn't the little Mudblood. Playing Professor are we?" He eyed her wand. "Going to hex me? I was only doing the public a service by removing unsightly... objects." Here, he looked down at Hannah.
Disdain and disgust filtered into Hermione's voice. She did not lower her wand. "How can you say that in front of everyone? Did you even consider how humiliating you're making this for her?"
"Oh, cut the shit, Granger. You and I both know you're only doing this for your reputation."
"What?"
"Defending Hufflepuffs, I mean. You don't give a rat's arse about Abbott. You just want to look responsible." He said this as if it was the least desirable thing to be. "Brown-nosing to the Professors."
"That's not true," Hermione replied, affronted.
Suddenly, sniffles sounded beneath them, and both looked down toward the girl who had started the argument.
"Oh, Hannah," Hermione cooed, and reached to help the girl from behind the bench. To her surprise, her arm was thrown off with surprising strength.
"Stop it, Hermione," Hannah said, wiping furiously at her eyes. "Just stop pretending you care. We both know that Wilkes is telling the truth!"
"What? Hannah, no."
"Oh, Hannah's so humiliated. She looks so pathetic. How can you say that in front of everyone, Wilkes," Hannah mimicked Hermione in a startlingly accurate, if high pitched tone. "You're making everything worse. I don't need your help, bitch!" The plump Hufflepuff girl ran out of the room, rubbing at her eyes.
Wilkes snickered. "Looks like you've been dumped, Granger."
Confusion reared in her. She'd never felt anything but wholehearted affection for the girl. What on Earth would cause Hannah to even consider that the cruel Slytherin's jabs were the truth?
Hermione noticed Hannah's bound sheets of essays and homework were left abandoned in her seat at the same time as the boy.
"Oh, she won't be needing these. Hufflepuffs don't take intelligent notes anyway." The last comment earned him a couple of glares from the surrounding students, which the boy shrugged off. He raised his wand, and Hermione realized what he was about to do a second before it happened.
With a wave, he Vanished the contents of the pages. All of Hannah's hard works, what looked like days of assignments, were gone in a blink. If public humiliation in front of all her friends was bad, this would only add to the blow.
"No!" Hermione said. "Aparecium!" But nothing happened. The parchments appeared as blank as the day Hannah purchased them from the stationary store.
Wilkes began to laugh, and to Hermione's chagrin, many Slytherins joined in. Hermione needed to restore the essays and talk to Hannah.
She stalked over to the jeering table, Hannah's vanished essays in hand, and the noise quieted in her wake.
"Malfoy!" The blond boy, who was currently talking with Zabini, looked up. Everything in his posture- from his tipped back chair to his hand stretching behind his head- indicated he'd taken no heed of the previous events. But Hermione knew he was faking. His reaction was just a little too anticipated.
"What's wrong, Granger?" He said mockingly, imitating her urgent tone.
"Do something about Wilkes."
Malfoy raised his eyes to a point over Hermione's shoulder, where she assumed Wilkes was standing, and said, "Why should I?"
"You're Head boy."
"And?" He raised an eyebrow. Ok, so he had a point. It appeared that the Head badge pinned to his chest had little effect on his behavior. Except perhaps that he now went out of his way to find excuses to dock points from Harry and Ron.
"The least you could do," Hermione said, bracing both hands on the table between where Parkinson and Bulstrode sat, "is manage your own House properly." Her tone insinuated his incompetence.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair further, putting distance between himself and the brunette girl. "You and I both know that nothing is going to come of this. I don't assist you when it comes to clearing up these stupid arguments and I'm not about to start now. No, put that wand away. You wouldn't dare hex me. Now, why don't you run off after the Hufflepuff? Much more productive."
Hermione scowled, and summoned her bag from across the Hall. "This isn't over," she told him, already headed for the door.
He rolled his eyes. "It never is."
Draco leaned back on his bed, kicking off his shoes. They slid along the floor and knocked over a pile of homework he hadn't done. Fucking Flitwick and his foot long essays.
"Yo, Malfoy!" Draco looked up to see a bottle sailing at his head. He snatched it just before it broke on his face.
"Nice catch," said Malcolm as he tossed more bottles at the other three boys in the dorm. Draco popped the cap open and drank, the firewhiskey burning a straight path of fire down his throat.
"Ogden's Old, sweet! How'd you get it?" asked Theodore, sitting up now and uncapping his own. Blaise and Thomas mimicked his actions.
"Confundus charm on the waitress at the Hog's Head," said Malcolm, grinning, as he clinked bottoms with the boys before taking a swig.
"You are one brilliant bloke, Wilkes. You know that?" Blaise said, and Draco laughed in agreement, toasting Malcolm with a swig of his own bottle.
"Well, I had to get something for Malfoy," the boy replied. "Thank you, merciful Head Boy, for saving my fragile soul from the all-consuming wrath of Granger," he simpered sarcastically, and Draco punched him in the arm.
The boys sat, getting substantially drunker off their individual stolen bottles. Malcolm had begun to sway precariously from his perch on the desk. After a couple minutes, everyone was pleasantly buzzed and the conversation turned, inevitably, to girls.
"Romilda Vane," Theodore said.
"Six," Thomas replied, wiping residual alcohol off his lips.
"Minus one for being Gryffindor," Draco added.
"Plus one for tits." Everyone laughed.
"Astoria Greengrass," Malcolm said.
"Gross, man. Don't be a fucking pedo," replied Thomas.
"She's fifteen!"
"She looks like she's twelve," Draco said.
"Fine. You pick." Malcolm looked put out at being shot down, but turned to Thomas.
The dark haired boy looked thoughtful, then turned a gleeful look that was distinctly Slytherin to Draco. "Hermione Granger."
A chorus of laughs and "ohhs" sounded around the room. Annoyingly, all the gazes turned to Draco. "I thought we were rating chicks," he said.
They all grinned, but after a moment of quiet pensiveness, Blaise said, "Eight."
"You're fucking wasted, Zabini," Draco declared. "This is Granger we're talking about here." He thought about the girl's mass of brown hair, short stature, and obnoxious motherly tone and shuddered.
"Have you seen her legs?" Blaise shot back.
"Or her ass?" Theodore supplied.
"Or her eyes?" Thomas added. "… What?" he asked defensively when the others shot him weird looks.
Ignoring Avery's disturbing comment, Draco said "This is because none of you have had a conversation with her for more than two minutes. She's completely unbearable."
"How would you know, Malfoy? You don't even live with her," said Blaise, referring to the fact that Draco had adamantly refused to move into the Head dorms after he found out that the Head Girl was going to Granger. He hadn't though he could've stand to be in proximity with her for that long.
Sprawling back on his won bed, Thomas said, "Yeah, man. Why the hell are you sleeping here?"
"I didn't want to catch a Muggle disease and die."
"You don't have to talk to her to appreciate," and here Theodore leered, "that body." Draco was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable with the boy's sleazy tone.
"Why the fuck are you hanging around this sausagefest when you could be with a girl that hot every night?" Blaise added. "Unless you're homo or some shit."
"I'm not a faggot, okay?" Draco punched the Italian boy, who shrugged.
"Just saying."
Draco looked at the group of boys and wondered what had changed. "She's a Mudblood," he argued, as a last resort.
"It's not like you're going to marry her or anything." Blaise rolled his eyes.
Maybe it was just the firewhiskey clouding his mind, but he was starting to see their point. Sharing a room with three other boys could get mildly disgusting at times. Even with the nightly cleaning from the elves, the four of them managed to keep the room in a constant state of mess. Living in a room with a visible floor would be nice. Plus he heard rumors that the Heads' bathtub was so huge someone'd once drowned in it. And their comments about Granger did have some merit...
"You know what, assholes? Fine." Draco drained the remains of his bottle. The other boys whooped and Blaise clapped him on the shoulder. "You're all grown up, Drakey," he said in a high pitched voice, and Draco kicked him off his bed.
"I shot Malfoy's desk!" Thomas called.
"Then I get his space," Theo said, to the protests of the other boys. As they drunkenly divided up Draco's section of the room, the blond boy waved his wand and packed his trunk. The firewhiskey made him a bit light on his feet, but he wanted to piss in the legendary Heads' bathroom before he went to sleep.
Malcolm stared. "You leaving now?"
"Yeah," Draco responded. "Why the hell not?"
Blaise grinned. "Have fun."
"Later," Draco said, and kicked open the door to their dorm. Along the way, he summoned his stuff from the bathrooms. The Common Room was deserted and no one saw him leave the dungeons, luggage in tow.
His trunk and supplies floating behind him, it didn't occur to him how late it actually was. He realized the only lights on in the whole castle were the single torches lighting the corners.
He made his way to the Head portal, which consisted of a portrait of a King and a Queen, sitting on thrones of gold.
"Draco Malfoy?" the King asked, raising an eyebrow. "And where have you been?"
"None of your business," he sneered.
"It's definitely him," said the Queen to her husband, unfazed. "Let him in. We should let the girl know."
The portrait swung open to reveal a large room, and Draco saw the queen moving through a series of blank portraits lining the walls before disappearing before a door labeled "Head Girl".
Then he saw the size of the room and dropped his trunk, cackling manically. It was fucking huge. Not nearly as big as his room at the Mansion, but it was Gringotts compared to the dorm he'd shared with the boys. He couldn't understand why he had deluded himself into staying in that tiny dorm when all this could've been his.
"Albellia, what are you talking about? I-"
Draco heard her come out of her room, and saw Granger's jaw drop. The sight filled him with a sort of triumph.
As she studdered in disbelief, he began to lug his trunk manually towards the door marked as "Head Boy". In his absence, it seemed Granger had used the room as a personal library, it being filled with stacks of books. Draco gestured with his wand and the books sailed out of the room and landed in a messy stack on the floor outside. He replaced the stacks with his own things, and turned to the still shocked girl through the threshold.
Before she could get a word out, he said, "Sort your shit in the bathroom, Granger. I'm moving in," and slammed the door in her face.
A/N: BSed a couple of names in there, and I didn't bother too much with British speak. Hope you don't mind