Disclaimer: I gain nothing but SATISFACTION and maybe a score of kind REVIEWS.
"avoiding emerald pansies"
weep little lion man
you're not as brave as you were at the start
/Little Lion Man – Mumford & Sons/
-:-
There are certain people in attendance at Hogwarts whom every professor knows by sight and name. Cedric Diggory, Percy Weasley, and, of course, Hermione Granger have all been favourites of the teachers, but it is a decidedly less perfect lot (students described most suitably, perhaps, by the adjective 'infamous') whose names float along the student grapevine, whispered between the friends as they pass through the hallways, becoming legendary, sticking with an aggressive adhesion not unlike the consistency of Hagrid's treacle fudge.
These students include the likes of pranksters George and Fred-may-he-rest-in-peace Weasley, Sirius Black, Terry Boot and Draco Malfoy.
Now, one could be excused for thinking the last's infamy arose out of his role in the Second Modern Wizarding War, but, in actuality, his lasting commemoration in the minds of Hogwarts students, current and future, is due to the extensive and arduous severance of his romantic entanglement with a Slytherin female by the name of Pansy Parkinson.
||1||
"Psst!"
The corridor had, to all appearances, been empty when Blaise decided to re-route in an attempt to avoid the giggling troupe of Hufflepuffs on the first floor (the group of four girls and one very shy boy had taken to stalking him throughout the school, and though initially flattering, it was now awfully close to becoming a nuisance).
But it seemed that, despite the Italian-born's sneakiness, his effort had come to nought; he wasn't alone in this usually abandoned Potions' corridor.
"Psst!" the voice hissed again more determinedly.
A shock of blond hair half hidden behind a suit of armour caught the Slytherin's attention and he exclaimed incredulously, "Malfoy?"
"Shh!" the blond admonished. "She'll find me!"
"What are you on about?" Blaise asked in bafflement. "Who's going to find you?"
"Pansy!" Draco informed him, gazing around nervously. "She's been after me all morning."
Blaise placed two fingers against his temple. "That's because she's your girlfriend, you idiot."
"That's the point though – I'm trying so, so hard to end it with her, but she just doesn't seem to care!" Draco whined piteously. "She's like a leech; once attached, she'll never let go!"
The click of heels echoed down the stone hallway, and Draco's look of pain increased to a heightened panic. "Oh, shit!" He turned his face beseechingly to Blaise. "Come on, Zabini. Help a bloke out, here."
"What? No!"
"Come on!"
"No! Get yourself out of this mess."
"Please!" Draco begged. "I'll give you Father's Von Pinkelson vase."
Sufficiently tempted by the promise of a quality antique, Blaise finally agreed. "Alright, but you better follow through."
The clicking heels were now joined by a shrill, nasally voice calling Draco's name and an assortment of horrific endearments and pet names which began to fill the stone corridor with horrendous, lingering echoes (Draco winced as the voice wondered loudly where 'darling Drakey-wakey' was hiding).
Quickly, Blaise flicked his wand, lengthening the blond locks of his housemate by almost six inches, and then, with barely two seconds to spare, he clutched the other boys face with both hands and pressed his lips forcefully against Draco's unsuspecting mouth pushing him up against the wall. Draco released a strangled cry of surprise, the sound muffled by Blaise's insistent, very unchaste kiss.
"Dra- oh! Blaise," Pansy exclaimed, noting unenthusiastically: "It's you."
With Blaise's body effectively shielding Draco from view, the Italian separated their lips by a half-centimetre and responded, "Really, Pansy – I'm a little busy for chatting." He closed the distance again, and Draco, feeling mildly dazed, let him have his way, the Italian's hands roaming to caress non-existent breasts.
"Fine," Pansy sniffed imperiously, averting her eyes from Blaise and who she assumed to be his latest conquest. "Only I'm looking for Draco. Do come and find me if you see him. Honestly, it's almost as if he's avoiding me, the silly boy! Though I can't imagine that would be the case. He must be in the library; Merlin knows he's been working so hard to pass his NEWTs this year."
She trotted off, her shoes tapping out a staccato on the flagstone floor, but Blaise only pulled away once all evidence of her passage had been muted. Draco was still somewhat stunned, and he sagged against the wall when Blaise stepped back, straightening his robes.
"You owe me," Blaise told him frankly. "That vase better arrive before Christmas or next time I'll give you over to Pansy – Drakey-poo."
"Alright," Draco agreed hastily, feeling much more composed now that Blaise had put some distance between them. When he'd asked for help, a quick snog wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind. "Thanks again, Zabini."
The blond scouted the general area for signs of Pansy and then sprinted away in the opposite direction, leaving Blaise to hide from his fan-club in peace.
He'd made it to the fourth floor without encountering anybody at all, but as he turned a corner at speed he found himself suddenly with a face-full of bushy-haired Gryffindor. The impact threw both students backwards, a loud clutter accompanying them as the enormous tomes the Gryffindor had been carrying fell to floor in a heap. The girl huffed in irritation and bent to pick them up.
"Watch where you're going, mudblood," Draco reproached, before flinching; old habits die hard.
Hermione seemed unperturbed. "Sorry, are you talking to me?" she asked glibly. "I don't respond to 'mudblood'."
"Um, yeah, sorry about that. I meant Granger," Draco apologised awkwardly, and that properly caught the Gryffindor's attention.
"Wow," she said in astonishment, "I wasn't expecting that, Malfoy! You must be out of sorts."
"More like out of energy," he replied. "Avoiding Pansy is more tiring than a week-long Quidditch match."
"Isn't she your gir-"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Draco expounded, looking to the heavens. "Yes, we dated for a while, but now I want out – have wanted out for nigh on six weeks! – but she just won't let go! It's as if she has selective hearing and every time I mention splitting up she suddenly falls deaf." He looked pathetically at Hermione. "I can't escape!" he moaned pitiably.
"So, what?" Hermione demanded cynically. "You've taken to evading her?"
"What else am I supposed to do?" he protested.
"Stage a public break-up?" Hermione suggested, hefting her books to rest against one hip.
"That could work," Draco considered thoughtfully. "In the Great Hall at dinner, or lunch…"
Hermione sighed, and was about to add something when the ominous click-clack of Pansy's shoes interrupted what had turned into an almost-friendly situation.
"Save me," Draco pleaded, and then he darted into a nearby alcove, disappearing into the shadows. To be honest, Hermione hadn't intended to side with him, knowing of his play-boy reputation, but when she heard the appalling pet-names coming from Pansy's mouth her intentions did a rapid about turn. No one should have to endure being called 'darling drakey-wakey-poo'.
The Slytherin girl appeared at the far end, and her pug-like nose wrinkled at the sight of the Gryffindor (as Draco had been Harry's arch-nemesis, so Pansy had been Hermione's) but she walked haughtily along the way until she stood immediately before her, her eye-line decidedly not directed at Hermione, though it was to her she spoke: "Granger, have you seen Our Draco?" she questioned, sounding for all the world like an old biddy comparing grandchildren with her sister. A sister that she hated with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
Hermione gave her a saccharine smile. "Why, yes, I have actually! He went that way," she directed, gesturing for Pansy to continue onwards. "You just missed him."
"Wonderful," Pansy squealed, then recalled to whom she was talking and cleared her throat. "Yes, well, thanks ever-so, Granger," she said and stalked off, her walking pace doubled, and when she turned the corner, Hermione distinctly heard her break into a run.
"I could kiss you," Draco stated baldly, entering back into the open.
"Please don't," Hermione deflected dryly.
Awkwardness descended.
"Well," Draco hedged. "Thanks for that." He paused before adding sheepishly, "And I'm really sorry for my unwarranted nastiness over the last seven years. I'm trying to rehabilitate myself, but I have a feeling it's going to take a long time. Force of habit, you know."
"At least you're trying," Hermione commended with a small smile. "I appreciate it."
"Right."
"I'd best be getting to the library then," Hermione said to him, and he nodded understandingly.
"Sure," he acknowledged. "Well, see you."
She gave a peculiar half-wave and left him standing there, feeling a little foolish and strangely grateful. Merlin knew she didn't owe it to him one bit to stand there and redirect Pansy the Obsessor.
The thought of her benevolence troubled him, and he spent the rest of the day wondering over her goodness as her ran along deserted corridors and hid in broom cupboards to escape Pansy's detection.
||2||
By the time dinner rolled around, Draco had been reflecting seriously on Hermione's suggestion of a public break-up and was determined to end things once and for all with his clingy girlfriend. Like a man prepared for battle, he walked into the Great Hall at exactly six-thirty and took a direct path towards Pansy, seated in the middle of the Slytherin table.
"Draco Malfoy!" she scolded. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you all day," she told him, sounding playfully exasperated. "Honestly, sometimes you make a lousy boyfriend."
"Right," he said. "Well, Pansy… there's actually something I'd like to say to you," he warned her firmly.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Pansy's mind completely disregarded the tone with which he'd spoken and assumed that he was going to ask her something entirely different; something that he was most definitely not considering at all.
"Oh, Draco," she gushed, "you can't – not here!"
"What? Why not?" he asked. "And why are you smiling?"
Now Pansy was just as confused as Draco.
"I'm breaking up with you," he said loudly, ensuring the surrounding students could hear his words. Ravenclaws turned around to witness what would surely become an entertaining show, the Hufflepuffs sneaked glances, and the Gryffindors all stood up to watch the event with a keen eye and an unspoken but perfectly visible desire to see either Malfoy or Parkinson taken down a notch.
"No, you're not," Pansy answered, as if he were a few twigs short of a broomstick. "Come and have some dinner, Drakey."
"I mean it, Pansy. I'm breaking up with you," he repeated. "I don't want to date you. You're clingy and temperamental and you mutilate my given name more than is humanly possible."
"But, Draco, we're so hap-" she started to say, when Terry Boot over at the Ravenclaw table interrupted, yelling out, as was his wont, "Put a cork in it, Parkinson. He's already proved he isn't happy; otherwise he wouldn't be demanding permanent separation from you."
Something changed in her expression then, and she stood daintily, a dangerous glint in her eyes. Draco gulped and took a small step backwards.
"Surely he doesn't mean what he said," she purred, and Draco was quite certain that he'd just signed an agreement to all-out, anything goes warfare with the ebony-haired girl. She stepped out of her place and smiled unnervingly at him for a long minute where the room held its collective breath, the teachers only half-aware – or, at least, only half-caring – of events unfolding before them.
Draco looked across the room to Hermione, who shrugged and raised an eyebrow, clearly telling him to make his own decision. He bucked up and said with finality, though his voice trembled minutely, "I mean it, Pansy."
Her expression darkened and in a blur of unexpected movement she swung her leg back, and with an almighty force let fly at his crotch, catching him cleanly in the gonads. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, to a soundtrack of compassionate groans from the males in the room, not to mention a number of protective stances and sympathetic flinches.
But Pansy wasn't done; she fell upon in him in a whorl of punches and scratching nails and Draco screamed girlishly, trying vainly to shield his family jewels. Everybody around them seemed too shocked to intervene, but Daphne Greengrass, a dorm-mate of Pansy's, finally pulled herself together, unhooking a sparkly clip from her hair. "Shiny things distract her," she explained to Theodore Nott, who was sitting on her right looking thoroughly amused by events. He'd never been a fan of either student, preferring the company of Blaise or the studious Ravenclaws. "Pansy!" she cried out, waving the object in front of Pansy's face. "Look at the shiny shiny!"
Like a magpie, the dark-haired girl's attention was caught and Draco made the most of the diversion, diving underneath the table, intent on making a getaway by crawling between a barricade of legs and chairs. However, the distraction only lasted for a half minute and then Pansy was after him again.
"Do you think we should stop her?" McGonagall asked Flitwick as she buttered her bread-roll. Her colleague, heartily demolishing a plate of roast lamb and Yorkshire pudding, took a moment to reply.
"Give them a few more minutes," he decided. "Tire them out, and all that."
Meanwhile, Draco made the brave decision to break cover and aim for the Ravenclaw table. Pansy, seeing his blond hair emerge on the opposite side of the Slytherins, let out a squeal of rage and clambered over the top, knocking plates and jugs asunder.
She practically launched herself over Malcolm Baddock's head and managed to grasp Draco's foot before a well-aimed stunner from McGonagall halted her in her tracks. Draco wrenched his trouser leg free and crawled away, re-appearing at the end of the table to limp awkwardly out of the hall. Gazes returned instantly to Pansy once he'd retreated, so nobody saw Hermione slyly exit after him.
She found him with his hands over his package some three corridors away, sitting on the stone floor.
"That went remarkably well, I thought," she said jokingly and he glowered. "Here, let me help," she offered kindly, warning him, "This might hurt, but it'll feel better in the long run."
Her wand aimed at his privates, Draco couldn't help balking as a white light emerged from the wand tip to settle over his crotch – even if it was intended to heal him.
"Ow, ow, ow, OW!" he yelped as the spell did its work. "Careful!"
"Hey, don't hex the healer," Hermione retorted. "No pain, no gain."
Indeed, the pain did dissipate faster than he'd anticipated, and he grudgingly offered her thanks.
"You know, I like you more when you're on your own. Much more courteous," she told him with a smile. "Of course, it helps that you don't scowl so often these days. Not to mention the effort your making in minding your manners around me. I can understand now why Parvati and Lavender used to say you were attra-" she stopped short, a light blush staining her cheeks.
Draco goggled. She been about to say attractive, he was beyond sure. Well, well, well, he thought. How times change.
He was about to comment when he had an entirely unanticipated vision of himself holding Hermione Granger, muggleborn extraordinaire, in what could only be a lovers' embrace. And it didn't disgust him. If anything, it made him crave it in reality.
Oh boy.
"Draco?" Hermione prodded tentatively, leaning over to wave a hand in front of his face. "Hello?"
He looked up at her, seeing only her big brown doe eyes and then, without really thinking what he was doing, he pulled her forward and kissed her. She stumbled against him, landing astride his lap, steadying herself on his shoulders, and for a moment seemed as if she was going to wrench herself out of his grasp, but then she relaxed into him; her lips moved hesitantly against his as her hands slowing migrated from his shoulders to his chest.
Eventually, she unlocked their lips and said breathlessly, still somewhat overcome, "Wow."
He smiled shyly up at her. "I'm all for staying like this, but I think Potter and Weasel might have noticed you missing by now," he said to her, and she quickly stood up, the light blush having reappeared at a much more furious concentration. She was really quite pretty, he realised, and before he could stop the words from escaping his mouth, he said: "I must have been stupid and blind. Have you always been this pretty?"
She smiled in spite of herself.
||3||
With Pansy heavily sedated, she was removed to the Hospital Wing for several days of intensive counselling to make absolutely certain that she understood the status of her romantic relationship with Draco as being non-existent.
In the meantime, Draco and Hermione were taking things slowly, putting off informing Ron and Harry as long as possible, and sneaking off to the library, sequestering themselves in the far corners where only Hermione ever ventured, for heated snogging sessions and poetry readings that almost always ended in more snogging because Draco was blessed in his adulthood to possess a voice that ran like velvet over the ears of females.
They were snogging on the sixth floor one afternoon through lunch, completely unaware of the time, when suddenly they heard a gasp, followed by chattering of astonishment. Turning around, they found themselves as the unfortunate focus for the entire of Ravenclaw house and, to Hermione's despair, a large number of Gryffindors.
Ron's voice stood out above the rest. "Oi, what's going on?" he called out, elbowing his way to the front, where a dishevelled Hermione stood in the embrace of Draco Malfoy. Ron looked between the pair and then dropped to the floor in a dead faint. She smiled guiltily at his prone form and moved to enervate him, the chattering of their audience increasing in volume as the story was passed back through the crowd.
In less than an hour, there was no student, nor teacher that wasn't aware of the budding (and utterly astounding) relationship between Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger. A forlorn Pansy Parkinson announced to the Slytherin Common Room that she was moving Peru to live in a Wizarding Community away from the distressing English lifestyle, and McGonagall surreptitiously checked her favourite student for Imperius and love potions. When none were discovered, she informed Hermione stiffly that she wished her well, and warned her not to let her marks slip, even whilst in the throes of young love (however inexplicable her choice of beau may be).
Hermione had agreed, left with a stunning composure that evaporated the moment she'd exited the office, and spent the five minute walk to the library laughing hysterically. Draco had watched, bemused, as she recounted the tale to him, and then silenced her intermittent giggles by grasping her chin in one hand and pressing a demanding kiss on her lips.
He transferred his soft, warm mouth to the juncture between jaw and neck and she sighed pleasurably, bringing him to smile against the pale column of her throat.
"I think I love you," he whispered next her ear, and then there was a click, a bright flash and the voice of a young boy saying, "Brilliant!"
Dennis Creevey, having picked up his brother's camera after the war, stood with the offending equipment in hand, a beaming smile in place. "This one'll go for twenty galleons at least!"
"Dennis!" Hermione yelled, and the little boy scarpered exuberantly, still pleased with his shot.
Draco dropped his head to Hermione's shoulder resignedly, but she pushed him back with a loving disposition. "Don't fret, Draco. I love you too," she told him before adopting an impish smile, whispering, "And I know where Dennis keeps his camera," before grasping his earlobe in her teeth.
"Yep," Draco confirmed, wrapping his arms about her waist. "I love you."
Hermione laughed merrily.
-:-
And that, dear readers, is how Draco Abraxas Malfoy became entrenched in the folk-lore of Hogwarts; estranging himself from the strangulating clutches of Miss Pansy Parkinson and stumbling into the arms of the clever muggleborn, Miss Hermione Granger.
End.
Well, that's a bit of randomness on a rainy day... Please, Read and Review Responsibly (or the gremlins of fan-fiction will become angry!)