One might think that an occurrence of blatant sexual manipulation such as the one to which I'd been subjected would make me more cautious, and it did, although probably not in the ways most people might have expected. It didn't keep me out of bars and clubs, that's for sure. Instead, I wracked my brain for days, trying to remember the charm that my mother had once taught me to render one's food and drink impervious to poisons. Since there was a remarkably broad array of such dastardly material available in the wizarding world, I made the logical leap that any counteracting charm would also be effective against Muggle concoctions. If only I could remember it. The very fact that I couldn't was troubling; I'd cast that charm hundreds of times while old Snake-face and his band of miscreants were "visitors" at my family home. I never trusted any of them. It had been quite a number of months since I'd used that particular spell, but one would think it should have become well-cemented in my magical repertoire. Was I losing my magical skill by virtue of not practicing my craft with regularity, or was I just losing it?
I remember scoffing over the whole thing, adding another weight on the scale of all the things I needed to worry over. My strategy, though, was not to stop going out. There were highs to be reached and birds to be fucked, after all. I was perfectly eager to do that, but on my own terms. So, my drinks at the bar were consumed quickly, as shots, or on the rare occasions when my booze of choice for the evening wasn't conducive to that method, I placed my hand over the top of my glass at all times, as I'd seen many ladies do, finally understanding why. Someone would have to dislodge my hand or find a way to pour something directly through it. Even magic couldn't accomplish that without notice.
I was also a bit more mindful about hooking up with ladies who were not so completely drunk when they gave consent to a sexual encounter that there'd be any question about willingness. If we both got stinking high after that agreement was reached, so be it. All the better, in my opinion. High upon high upon fucking high was, without question, still my goal. My experience, however, now required that there be absolutely no guilt to be assuaged over potential misunderstandings of who had said "yes" to what. That all made me wonder when this drunk had become a moral person, and what that might mean for my life after I stopped freaking out over my terrifying past, if I ever made it to that point.
I slowly came to understand that I spent so much time with my head in a fog so that I didn't have to spend time in my head, if that makes sense. I didn't want to think, ruminate, consider. All of that led to memories and conclusions that were traumatizing on emotional, physical, and psychological grounds. A Mind Healer probably would have been the better choice than drugs and alcohol, but I didn't want to deal with it; I wanted to do nothing less than forget. If I'd been able to find a way to Obliviate myself, I surely would have done it. One can "remove" memories to some degree, but even if I could rid myself of the worst of them, there were so many that layered upon each other that I had no hope to cleanse my brain of them, and that led me to inaction. Yes, there it was in a nutshell: no hope. Thus, for months on end, I drank, took drugs, and fucked any willing person. Therein was my escape. I didn't think about being forced to cast Unforgiveables when I was downing my sixth double Scotch of the night. I couldn't be haunted by the screams of Professor Burbage when a snort or two of coke had me euphoric. I was unable to worry about whether my failures would cause my "Lord" to kill my mother in cold blood when I was balls-deep in a pretty little blonde.
Developing a more cogent awareness of why I did what I did was not a path to changing my behavior. If anything, it spurred me on. If two mollies made me forget life under Snake-face, four would make me forget more, or for longer, I reasoned. I was self-enabling with every orgasm, every pill, every potion, every snort, and every drink. I was spending more money on booze and drugs than I was on food or rent. I'd managed to blow through (almost literally) nearly £3000 in six months, a little more than a third of the Muggle cash I'd brought with me. And I'd come no closer to even considering what I might do to replenish my funds. I knew I had a safety net with my Galleons, but at that point, I wasn't even close to contemplating a trip back to the wizarding world, regardless of how far from Diagon Alley the nearest branch of Gringotts might be. I wasn't ready to know. Blissful ignorance and blissful oblivion were marvelously compatible bed partners.
There, though, was one of those loose ends in the form of Granger. It had been six, maybe seven weeks since I'd abandoned my search for the woman I'd seen, nearly convincing myself that I'd been mistaken. I had, after all, been spectacularly high and still shuddering in the throes of one of the most intense orgasms I'd ever had. Maybe it was my overactive imagination all along. Something in my subconscious, however, just couldn't let it go. After having left the whole idea behind me for a number of weeks, it had come back with a vengeance, for no conscious reason.
If I'm to be as unflinchingly honest as I've tried to be whilst sharing my tale, it almost certainly had something to do with a woman I picked up on one of my more blitzed excursions. I'd had four or five double shots in the space of about an hour and a half, which was slightly ahead of my normal pace. I wasn't incoherent, but I sure as hell wasn't sober. A woman at the bar had been making eyes at me – well, at Drew - for a few minutes and I'd been making them right back at her. She was of average height, slim build, big brown eyes, pouty, deep pink lips, and although I couldn't tell immediately because it was captured in a chignon at the back of her neck, long, curly, chestnut-colored hair. This became evident when she pulled out a pin or two and her whole mane came tumbling down over her shoulders. All while she looked directly at me.
Now, it's very possible that my well-pickled brain recognized her as just another Granger look-alike. I may have considered for a fleeting moment that it was Granger, slightly Glamoured much in the way I was, and that she'd caught hint of my magic. Whoever she was, I was intrigued – or possibly just curious - and she was definitely sending signals of similar interest. I had the bartender send her another drink with my compliments, and she smiled at me before finally abandoning her seat to approach me. Did I say that I loved forward birds? Yeah, I think I did.
"Thanks for the drink," she said, sliding onto the empty bar stool beside me.
"My pleasure," I replied. How fucking original. It seemed that her resemblance to my former academic adversary had shaken my game. And up close, the similarity was only slightly less disconcerting. I was reasonably experienced at picking up birdsbints, though, so I gathered my available wits and used a line that had been rather successful for me, and had the additional advantage of being more true than usual. "You look so familiar to me. Have we met before?" I asked, making as much warm eye contact as I was able with my slightly swimming vision. I hoped that my speech was not obviously slurred.
"I don't think so, but I'm sure we can remedy that. I'm Elizabeth," she told me, lifting her glass as though to toast.
"Happy to make your acquaintance. I'm Dra… Drew," I stammered. After so many months using my alter-ego's moniker, I could scarcely believe that I'd almost slipped and given her my real name.
I won't bore you with the details of our exchange, because it really was just two people trying to figure out if the other was up for a fuck. It didn't take long to come to the conclusion that we were both on the same page. Bar tabs were paid, jackets were gathered, and we walked a bit unsteadily out of the place – another club that I'd never visit again – with our tongues down each other's throats.
Her apartment was nearer than mine – thank Merlin, because I still hadn't brought a woman back to my place and never intended to, nor was I eager to spring for a motel room – and when she opened the door, she breathed an audible sigh of relief as she picked up a note on the table addressed to "Lizzie."
"My flatmate's out. Gone to her mum's for the weekend." She smiled wickedly. "We can fuck all over the place, if you want." She shrugged out of her jacket and unbuttoned her blouse, giving me the unambiguous message that she was ready to play.
"Want another drink?" she offered. "I've got whisky, vodka, and red wine."
I hesitated only briefly before making my counteroffer. "I've got something a little more… adventurous, if you're interested." Turned out she was, and we did lines of coke, undressing each other swiftly as the high slammed our bloodstreams.
She was a wild little beast, and we took full advantage of several different surfaces throughout the flat, trying out different positions for each of them. It was one of my better fuck-fests, if I do say so, until I went and ruined it with my big mouth, undoubtedly due, at least in part, to my immense level of substance intoxication.
We'd finally made it to her bed, and I'd bent her over face-down, fucking her doggy-style, her face obscured by her long curls. She moaned deliciously every time my sac hit her clit and I could feel another orgasm quickly building deep in my bollocks. I was hitting her hard and fast and, out of nowhere, I heard myself shout, "Yes, Hermione, yes!"
Talk about a mood killer. In the two minutes or less that it took me to get dressed after she told me to get the fuck out, my mind was racing along with my heart, which still hadn't calmed from the orgasm that had hit while I was calling some other woman's name. I'd never been attracted to Granger. Never. It's not that I didn't think she wasn't reasonably fit; she just wasn't my type. My irrational obsession with finding her most definitely did not include any element of wanting to fuck her admittedly formidable brains out. Truthfully, she'd have been the last twat in which I cared to get my dick wet. (Although at the rate I was using up women, she might just have been the only woman under thirty left on the continent, if I'd kept up that pace for much longer.) Apparently, however, she was on my mind (Lizzie really was a remarkable physical facsimile), and I'd committed the unforgiveable sin of using her name while my cock was inside another woman. Maybe it was, subconsciously, an aggression thing. That probably was worse, if I took any time to analyze it, which I didn't. I swear. Using her given name rather than the "Granger" that I typically did was absolutely immaterial. Really.
Now, I definitely didn't go out from that night on looking for Granger-substitutes to fuck. If anything, I conscientiously avoided having sex with women who had curly brown hair. A repeat of the fiasco with Lizzie was not in the cards. I did, though, renew my search to determine once and for all whether it actually was the swotty former Gryffindor whom I had seen that night some three months earlier. This was the one thing that I just had to know. It was becoming a fixation, nearly as much as my unceasing quest for intoxication and orgasms.
Therefore, I created a new plan. Looking back, it was at least as shitty as the first one, but it renewed my focus and gave me something to do that had at least the appearance of being productive. I got up every morning no later than nine o'clock, showered away whatever bodily fluids I'd managed to collect on my person the night before, consumed a hangover relief potion and the remains of a crumbled lemon scone or some similar chunk of carbohydrate-rich victuals for breakfast, and headed out into the world to continue my hunt. For Merlin knows what reason, I did begin to think of Granger as my prey or quarry. What I'd do with her if, or when, I found her still never crossed my mind. I remember searching through the odd array of items I'd brought with me to see if, by some bizarre and improbable stroke of luck, I had a photograph that just happened to have captured her image. Of course, I didn't – that would have just made my life way too easy – but it had been another mini-project that had occupied an hour or two of my time with something other than wanking.
Another three weeks passed in a slightly lesser haze than the one in which I'd lived for the previous seven or eight months – time was rather irrelevant and I'd only kept loose track of the passage of days – and my lack of success hadn't had much effect on my enthusiasm for my mission, such as it was. My evenings were still full of plenty of debauchery, but I'd been conscious of the need to keep a clearer head if I was to avoid pointlessly chasing my own proverbial tail. I made every effort to be back in my own bed no later than two, any partner for the night left to her own devices after we'd finished whatever decadence we'd started. Some nights were more successful than others in achieving the goal I'd set for myself.
On one of those nights, two o'clock had come and gone long before, and I was still in some bird's bimbo's bed, on the receiving end of some truly remarkable head, and whatever high I was experiencing was now of the purely physical variety, the cocktail of chemicals I'd ingested having worn off at least an hour earlier. (I'm embarrassed to say that as memorable as the act was, I don't remember her name, but she wasn't the first for whom that would be true, and certainly wasn't the last. What a man-whore I was!) Anyway, I recall that I was practically shaking with the effort to avoid coming until I was good and ready, but she had other ideas and did this little trick with her pinky in an especially sensitive spot that sent me over the edge regardless of any attempt I might have made to delay the explosion. I remember that she was licking her lips while my eyes were rolling back in my head and using her fingers to get herself off. When I regained enough of my composure to lean over with the intention of returning the favor, she slapped me away, apparently intent on finishing the job on her own. Reaching the conclusion that I'd overstayed my welcome, I started gathering up the clothing that I'd stripped off. That next ten minutes got very strange, and the ten after that were positively surreal.
"You don't have to go," I remember her saying.
Glancing pointedly at her crotch where her fingers were still stroking, I said in my most patrician drawl, "It seems you've got things well under control."
She laughed. "Oh, it's nothing to do with you. I just really like it when a guy watches while I get myself off. A little exhibitionism, I guess."
I smirked and sat back down on the bed, leaning forward to get a better view. "By all means, then, don't let me stop you." Since I'd come just a few moments before, I didn't think I could get it up again quite so quickly, but I was willing to try. I licked my palm and stroked my cock in time with the motions of her hand, practically staring right into her kitty. There was enough visual stimulation that I managed to stroke out a passable orgasm. Nothing in comparison to the one she'd coaxed from me with her mouth, but it was better than not having one. So, about six or seven minutes had passed and we'd both managed to recover sufficiently that it was now getting awkward. A glance at the clock revealed that it was nearly half three, and I renewed my earlier attempt to get dressed and make my retreat. This time, she didn't protest. I managed to make my escape in another two minutes flat, offering my excuses about the need to rise early.
It was when I made it to the street that the world decided to shift on its axis. I'd heard something like scuffling in the darkness, followed by a woman's terrified shriek. My knees might have been a bit wobbly from my recent orgasms, but my brain was as clear as it was apt to be in that moment. I squinted, trying to make out any shapes or movements in the shadows, palming my transfigured wand (I'd settled on a Muggle biro as its disguise, its inherent magic allowing me to tell the difference between it and an actual writing instrument) in the event that I needed to defend myself. I heard the sounds of a struggle and another scream, this time distinguishable as the word "No!" and a male voice responding with a malicious sound of derision. A second male voice, much lower-pitched, joined the din immediately thereafter. I'd crept closer to the scene of the altercation without having specifically intended to do anything, at least not on a conscious level. The headlights of a passing auto suddenly revealed the situation, and it answered as many questions as it presented.
There she was, the woman for whom I'd been searching for weeks, her back against a brick wall. It appeared that her blouse was torn and the two men who'd cornered her clearly had sinister intentions. She was wobbly, but whether that was because of an injury or a state of intoxication was unclear. What was no longer in dispute was the fact that Hermione Granger was definitely the woman who'd witnessed my most unexpected foray into sexual experimentation. It was also eminently obvious that she was in immediate mortal peril, if the blades glinting in the moonlight were any indication. Her feeble attempts at self-defense did not seem to include her wand, and she was outweighed and overpowered by a long way. Before I could even fully process the thought, I'd stepped into the breach, casting a spell to hold the two assailants immobile and reaching for Granger's arm to tug her away.
From that close proximity, I was then able to draw the conclusion that she was plastered – barely able to maintain balance on her own two feet. The stench of alcohol mixed with weed was only too familiar to me. Her state of inebriation didn't seem to deter her for very long. She tugged her arm from my grasp and, without a word of thanks or more than a vacant stare, she staggered off into the night. She displayed no indication that she'd had any comprehension that she'd been rescued by an application of magic, either. Was she so far gone that she'd failed to recognize an Immobilus spell when she saw one, or was she deliberate in ignoring the fact?
I remember being particularly indecisive. Should I have followed her? Although I'd extracted her from her obvious predicament, she didn't know "me" – Drew. It took me those few seconds as I watched her sway unsteadily to allow it to register that she wouldn't have reacted to Drew in the same way she might have reacted to Draco. It may have been a blessing in disguise. Having another stranger follow her could have made the situation worse, I suppose. She couldn't trust my motivations any more than any other man's. While the debate played out in my head, she managed to slip away, so it became a moot point. At least I now knew that I hadn't been crazy. She was here in Liverpool, and at that moment, seemed to be in worse shape than I was. Now that that part of the mystery had been solved, I had a new one to ponder at deeper levels. It had crossed my mind more than once, but only in a thoroughly hypothetical sense. Now it was real.
Why was she here, apparently alone, and in such horrific condition? I now had some information about the area she seemed to frequent – we were only two blocks from the gay club I'd patronized – so I was feeling more certain about the probability that I'd see her again. If I'd been smart, I'd have walked away and never looked back, but I was then and always will be a sucker for a mystery. In my subconscious, I'm sure that I recognized that whatever her story was would probably solve other mysteries that had been tugging on my brain for many months. As much as I told myself that I didn't want to know, some part of me needed it.
Before I left the scene, I turned back to the two blokes I'd immobilized and cast a targeted Obliviate; they'd have no memory of their assault on my former classmate nor of my intervention. For good measure, I hexed the bastards. Neither would get a good stiffy for weeks. They could stand there for another hour until my original spell wore off, finally allowing them freedom of movement. I'd be long gone by then. At the time, I failed to even consider whether the magic I'd cast against a couple of Muggles would have been tracked. An hour later, as I was settling in for some sleep, the realization of my mistake brought me fully alert. I stared at the ceiling until dawn, hoping that the signature of my magic had been small enough to evade notice. Since no one had come knocking and there had been no Howler (how the old men at the desk would have explained that to themselves might have been amusing!), I was marginally optimistic that I'd gotten away with my impromptu defense of Miss Granger unscathed.
