Chapter 10: Bullet On The Tracks
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, JKR is the genius.
Warnings: Lots of naughty words, mild smut…
"Harry, you have detention tonight, with McGonagall. Eight o'clock,"
"What?!" Harry spat his orange juice halfway across the breakfast table and glared up at Hermione, "What'd I do?"
Ron looked equally indignant, but was unable to speak owing to the large amount of scrambled egg occupying his mouth.
"Oh, honestly, Ron, that is disgusting," Hermione wrinkled her nose and turned back to Harry, "You haven't done anything, yet, but you need to get detention tonight, in front of Malfoy so he knows where you are. Parkinson is in the hospital wing – Quidditch accident – and I'm going to take her place tonight. I doubt he's suspect me, because…well, because-"
"You're the Prefect Hermione Granger, Miss I've-never-broken-a-rule-and-the-day-I-do-will-probably-bring-the-apoclaypse?" Ron finished for her. Harry snorted into his breakfast.
"No…or…yes, just…oh, Ronald!" she hit him upside the head and slid into her seat. Harry shook his head, subconsciously wondering when they were going to get over themselves and admit that they were made for one another.
Harry spent the rest of that day wondering what he could possibly do to land himself in detention. He didn't want to be rude to McGonagall, or start a duel in class, or suck anyone else into it with him, but the opportunity presented itself on a golden platter. When the stern head-of-house called for their latest essay to be turned in, Harry found that it had abstrusely disappeared from his bag. A quick glance at a smirking Hermione told him all he needed to know.
"Potter? Do you have your essay?" McGonagall peered at him over her spectacles.
"Er. No, Professor," he stammered to a chorus of the Slytherins' snickers.
"Very well. You will do it in detention tonight, 8 o'clock,"
He nodded meekly and returned to attempting to turn his parrot into a hat.
"How'd you know she'd give him detention?" Ron asked incredulously as they made their way down to dinner, "Are you sure you dropped divination?"
Hermione tossed him a reproachful look, "She gives detention to anyone who misses a major essay like that, and she has all five of our years here, and here's your essay, Harry, so you don't have to rewrite the whole thing. But you might want to look over the part about Gamp's second law, it doesn't look quite right,"
For the second time that year, instead of going down to the Great Hall after lessons, the trio snuck into Moaning Myrtle's third floor toilet to retrieve their stash of Polyjuice Potion. Hermione grimaced before gulping the violently pink mixture down as quickly as she could. Almost immediately, her skin began to bubble and stretch grotesquely, her hair lightening to a lustrous blonde, her limbs elongating and her face rearranging into the elegant, haughty structure that in itself flaunted ancient and perfect pureblood lineage.
"Bloody hell," Ron murmured, "She's not half bad looking, is she, without that idiotic simper mutilating her face…"
Hermione-as-Pansy glared at him, "I've got enough with me for two hours. Harry, you had better get to detention, and Ron, make sure Parkinson doesn't get down to the Slytherin common room before half past nine at the very earliest,"
They nodded grimly and parted ways, all three hearts hammering uproariously.
p—a—g—e—b—r—e—a—k—p—a—g—e—b—r—e—a—k—p—a—g—e—b—r—e—a—k
Hermione was teetering on the verge of having a full-blown conniption. This rangy, porcelain-skinned, smooth-haired body felt about as alien to her as failing an exam would have, let alone the blatant rule – maybe even law – breaking activity. She stumbled, stiff-backed and sweating, down to the dungeons on a pair of high-heeled shoes of the ridiculous kind she'd seen the real Pansy Parkinson wear and slipped into the common room behind the burly figure of Millicent Bullstrode.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light – or lack thereof – in the emerald-colour room. Illumination appeared only in pockets around a few torches fastened to the walls, bringing into light a few groups of students having raucous conversations, laughing tumultuously, or sharing bottles of firewhiskey, and in the very centre of the room, beneath a chandelier of verdant crystal on a velvet-covered sofa, lay the objects of Hermione's pursuit, thoroughly tied up in one another. Well, she thought, I've always known the Slytherins to be…bizarrely affectionate.
However, it was then that they started necking rather more voraciously than just friends, or even those involved in that ludicrous "friends with benefits" nonsense, could ever managed. She gulped.
"Pansy!" a particularly drunk elfin girl with raven-coloured hair appeared out of nowhere and snaked an arm around Hermione/Pansy's waist, "Gods, I am so sick of them. They've been there for hours. Skipped dinner and everything,"
"You mean Malfoy – er – Draco and Blaise?" Hermione stammered, knowing her assailant to be none other than Eleanor Finch.
"Who else has she been ranting about ever since holiday ended?" another girl – one Hermione recognized from Ancient Runes but whose name was slipping from her mind,
"Er. Right, well. I have to…oh, hell-" for the first and probably last time in her saintly life, she gulped deeply from Eleanor's proffered bottle of firewhiskey, before walking in what she hoped was a bold manner straight up to the two entwined Slytherin princes, and perching on the end of their sofa.
"Do you mind, Parkinson?" Draco drawled lazily as Blaise continued to lick his elegant neck, "We're rather busy, if you hadn't noticed,"
"Oh, no. I had," she said airily, trying desperately to sound as though this was absolutely in every way typical, when nothing was farther from the truth, "I just…need to talk to you,"
As soon as the words fell from her lips, she realized she had no idea where she was going.
Hermione Granger was brilliant at a great many things, but improvising was not one of them. She was well aware of this, and found herself longing for Malfoy to tell her clear off, or else.
"Oh, fine," he sighed and wriggled out from underneath Blaise with apparent great effort, "What is it?"
She beckoned him to a deserted corner; with a slightly disturbing lusty glance at Blaise, he followed.
"Look," she began, feverishly wiping her drenched palms on her robes, "Something's going on, something's gone wrong…with…you know,"
"No, Parkinson, I don't know," he sighed with great exasperation and studied his manicured nails, "Care to enlighten me?"
Gods, was he always such a petulant prat? "The thing, you know…for…Vol- the Dark Lord?"
Bipolar as always, Malfoy's languorous, ardent air vanished in an instant and was replaced with a baneful snarl and an unusually sharp wand at her gut, "Who told you about that?" he hissed venomously.
"No – I – you were-"
"Who?"
Hermione shuddered, but said nothing. A split second before Malfoy cried out some undoubtedly vicious curse, she had shouted "Protego!" and was gone, vanished out the common room door before the rest of Slytherin house was anything the wiser.
Her heart pummelled her rib cage with such ferocity that by the time she reached the common room – Polyjuice effects fully worn off – she thought it might actually shatter her ribs and burst free.
"Hermione!" Ron burst out, pulling her towards the armchairs he and Harry were situated in, just beyond the reach of the fire's light, "What happened?"
She related the story as fast as she could, finishing wrathfully, "And to top it all off, I found him snogging Blaise Zabini!"
Harry started. There was something terribly ominous about the serpentine jealously that coiled to life within his chest.
p—a—g—e—b—r—e—a—k—p—a—g—e—b—r—e—a—k—p—a—g—e—b—r—e—a—k
A/N: Title is also a song by The Vincent Black Shadow…I'm currently in a state of deep and intense mourning because my lover Lestat is effectively dead, and I just realized that the entire 23-year extremely detailed calendar I laid out as an outline for my Renaissance death fest novella is useless because I did it in the Julian calendar, when at the time the story takes place, they were still using the Gregorian! Kill me, please. Love/Cake