Chapter 12
The Truth Comes Out
"Well what if I told you that I do like you?" Blaise questioned shyly to the redhead right in front of his face.
"I would have to say that that is splendid." Ginny replied with a huge smile upon her lips. "I guess our evil attempts to get Draco and Hermione together have brought us closer."
"What about Potter? Aren't you two still together?"
"Don't worry about him; he'll be taken care of. Now about me and you, how far do you think this fling will get?" She said flirtatiously.
"Maybe we can get a good shag later on. But I do think it might last awhile, at least I hope. Wait, hold on did you shag Potter?" He asked while Ginny put some space in between the two of them.
"No, he's too much of a saint."
He sighed with a happy relief and said, "Good. Yuck."
"What's that supposed to mean?" She asked, "You don't believe that I could have gotten down and dirty with the boy who lived?"
"No, no, no... that isn't what I meant! There is nothing that would give me the thought of you not being able to get down and dirty, which by the way I just volunteered you prove to me later on, it's just the when I said that it put the image in my head. Let me tell you, the image of Potter going at it with somebody, let alone you is just... well let's just say it's not very picturesque."
Ginny let out a burst of laughter to this, "well when I break up with him, I will be sure to let him know that you are thinking of him in that way. I'm sure he'll need a pick me up after I... let him down gently."
"You tell him, and I might just have to hold out on you tonight." Blaise threatened slyly.
"You hold out on me, and you will know the meaning of the phrase PMS." Ginny laughed, and he put on a pouty face. "Oh suck it up. I won't tell Harry, and you don't have to worry about me and him, nothing happened... but I bet me and you could have…" She was cut off by a certain brunette's entrance.
Hermione's POV
Hermione was pouring the orange juice into three goblets with the magic of her wand, while she rummaged through the refrigerator for something to munch on. Her mind was racing and she couldn't stay still because she was scared about what her friends would say when she told them about what happened about a year ago. She wasn't paying the slightest attention to what she was doing while staring blankly into the abyss of the fridge, and just then orange juice dribbled over the sides of the goblets.
A not-so-friendly word escaped from her mouth while she realized her ignorance. With yet another flick of her wand, the mess was cleaned up and her favorite skirt was stainless. Her mind once again fell on her dilemma. Would it really be a huge deal to tell them what happened? After all, they were her friends. If they would have any reaction to her story, it would be to comfort her, not reprimand her. Her mind was made up: she would tell them the truth without holding back.
With all of her mentality, she tried to figure out how she would start it off, but figured it would be best to not think of it and just… how do the muggle say it? Oh yeah, 'go with the flow'.
She swished then flicked her wand and with a Wingardium Leviosa, the tray of drinks and food was floating back to the common room. Her mind was concentrating on the spell she had conjured, but she couldn't help but notice that a bundle of red hair was not where it had been before she left.
"So Ginny, I see you and Blaise are actually getting along. What are you two talking about?" Hermione said with a raised eyebrow and a look of suspicion in her eyes.
"We were just talking about our Prefect duties and what might be coming up this year." Ginny replied with such an innocent smile. "When are we going to have our first meeting?"
"I'm not too sure; I still have to talk to Draco about that. Maybe the four of us can have a little meeting of our own; you know, come up with some ideas." Hermione suggested while the flying tray took a jet landing on the table in between the couches.
All three of them agreed to have a "private" meeting with just the two Heads and their best friends. Blaise didn't let Hermione forget that she still needed to tell a certain story. Regretfully, she went to call Draco so he could hear about it. She wanted to make sure that he knew the whole story and didn't misjudge what happened.
"Well Draco, you know what happened, but only from a third person view. Earlier you said that you wanted me to recount the story to you so you could fully understand what happened. Well this is your chance to listen. Now, I don't know how long this will take, but I don't want either of you three to interrupt me, do you understand?" She said while looking very McGonagall-like.
All three nodded while Draco said, "Yes Professor" with an added trademark smirk.
Hermione scoffed at his remark and started, "Okay, where to begin… Well last summer, about two weeks before we were all leaving for our sixth year here, I received a pretty large bruise on my shoulder, remember that Ginny?" The redhead replied with a shy 'yes'. "Well I told you that it was just from a near-fatal fight with my darned closet. Naturally I lied about it. Soon, the whole school knew about how the bookworm lost a fight with an unbearable closet doorknob. Of course I didn't care what anyone said and since I ignored it, it blew up soon enough. Draco, you don't even know how I truly got the bruise, but you soon will.
"So last summer, like every summer, my cousin and best-muggle-friend Damien came to visit me. He's only about a month older than me, but he's more into the whole rebellious thing. So for his birthday in August, he suggested we go to this stupid muggle bar where he wanted to get some drinks. He had no idea about me being a witch, so I didn't think about bringing my wand along with me. Yes, I now know that it was a dense thing to do on my part."
FLASHBACK
"Damien, I don't really know if we should be going out to a bar for your birthday. Won't your parents get mad?"
"Not if they don't find out about it," Damien replied while winking back at Hermione.
She was sitting in the passenger seat of Damien's new car he had received as a gift from his parents. It was a long ride to London so Hermione decided to make some small talk to make the wait go by faster.
"So Damien, where are we going after we leave the bar?"
"Maybe to this one club my friend told me about. It's supposed to be a blast, so I hope you don't mind."
"No not at all. So what do you want to accomplish today, on your birthday?"
"Maybe I'll try to snatch a girl to get a good shag."
Hermione just rolled her eyes at her cousin's pathetic attempts to run his life. Small talk just doesn't seem to hold well with her, so she turned on the muggle radio in his car. When they finally arrived at the muggle bar, Damien went over to the other side of the car to open the door for Hermione, showing that he still had a gentleman side.
Half an hour had passed by slowly while Damien was trying to chug down his third beer. He slammed the bottle down onto the counter before he left to go talk to a blonde girl he spotted earlier. Hermione didn't feel comfortable following him, so she sat quietly in her seat, awaiting Damien's return.
Suddenly, she felt the presence of two older boys, about 19 or 20 years old, on either side of her. She turned around in her seat and quickly got up. Her attempts to escape had failed as the two boys ushered her to stay. Now, realize that they didn't use any sweet charm to accomplish this, but they had pulled her down using force; which they both had quite a lot of.
"Can I please just go and talk to my cousin now?" Hermione asked with fright visible in her voice.
"How about we have a few drinks while we all get to know one another?" The boy on her right asked after he ordered three drinks.
She was too scared to reject his offer, so she shyly nodded and took a sip of the Coke the boy had ordered her. This didn't taste normal and she instantly knew that he had put some alcohol into her drink. She didn't want the boy to resort to any violence, so her drink didn't go unnoticed as she sipped at it.
Before she knew it, her body had been filled with too much alcohol that she wouldn't be able to handle. Damien still hadn't come back, so Hermione figured he was still shagging girls in the bathroom stalls.
The boy on her left bent down and whispered something in her ear. It obviously had offended her because she pushed him away and attempted to smack him; another failed attempt as he grabbed her wrist before she could touch him. He twisted her arm behind her and then the other boy whispered in her ear, "If you don't cooperate with our wishes, we will have to force it upon you."
She was wondering how they could get away with this while there were tons of others in the bar. But apparently this must happen a lot due to the fact that no one would give a second glance to where they were.
"Fuck you asshole." Hermione retorted back before she spat in the other boy's face. He put his hand up to her throat before yelling some nasty words at her. The boy that was holding onto her wrists finally let go. Before long, the boy that had spit into her face took a hold of her arm and dragged her to where the bathrooms were. Any bystanders, if any were paying attention, now knew that she would not be coming back anytime soon.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom…
"Listen here bitch, if you don't help me out here and be a good little girl, you're going to find that you would wish you were dead. Got it?" The boy said with no sorrow in his eyes.
Tears were now hurriedly trailing down her red stained cheeks. She knew that words wouldn't make any sense if she said anything at that moment, so she just nodded hesitantly.
Within the next ten minutes, Hermione experienced the worst pain she had ever felt before in her life, as her innocence was taken from her by force. After the bastard had finished what he has so willingly wanted, she ran out of the bathroom in search for Damien.
She left that night without telling a soul about her terrifying encounter.
END FLASHBACK
Tears were now flowing freely from her puffy red eyes. Out of all people, Draco Malfoy was holding her in his arms as she cried into his shirt.
"My Gods Hermione; that must have been terrible…" Ginny trailed off as she grabbed a hold of her and ran her fingers through her hair to calm her down.
They all sat there in shock of what she had just got done telling them. Ginny just held her until she stopped crying. Hermione lifted her head back up and wiped her tears off her cheeks. Ginny took a hold of her shoulders this time and looked intently into her chocolate colored eyes.
"Hermione, you should have told me about his earlier. I'm so stupid to believe you when you told that stupid lie… How could I have not known? You should have at least come down to The Burrow; Mum could have taken care of you."
"Ginny, don't worry about it. I took care of everything myself, trust me. I found him later on and hexed the living daylights out of him. And there was no possible way you could have known."
Draco then broke the silence. "Hermione, how exactly did you get that bruise?"
"Well, while he was… you know… he pushed me and I hit the sink. It hurt like hell, and he knew it. So while he continued, he kept pushing down hard on it to make me feel even more pain."
Draco then brought his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his hands. He wasn't crying, but for the first time in his life he felt… guilt… and shame. "Hermione, I'm terribly sorry for not stopping them. I should have done something. I feel terrible for letting them do that to you. I had no idea that the bastard took your virginity from you."
"It's not your fault, Draco. There was nothing you could do, they were too strong, and if you had used magic, the Ministry would have taken your wand away. It would have been worse off for you."
"No, Hermione. Nothing could possibly be worse than what happened to you. That shouldn't have to happen to anyone."
The other three just kept looking at her with pity. Blaise couldn't think of anything to say at this point, and was scared that he would end up saying something that would make her bawl again. So he got up from the other end of the couch and walked up to her, and embraced her in a nice warm hug.
Hermione finally had a huge weight lifted off of her shoulders as her friends comforted her. She was glad that they didn't say she was some sort of slut or whore. Now there was just one thing left to talk about.
"Draco, now that you know about all of this, I just have one thing to ask." He nodded ushering her to go on. "What were you doing in a muggle bar?"
He was scared that she would eventually ask her this, so he just sat there puzzled at to what he would tell her. "Well, I was there waiting for a friend."
"You have a muggle friend?" Blaise asked a bit confused. "You were scolding me when we went to the club about having friends that were muggles, so you're just a hypocrite."
"Hold onto you pants, Blaise. First of all, I don't give a flying hippogriffs arse that you have muggle friends. Second, I was not meeting a muggle, but a wizard. And third, I was there to congratulate him a 'Happy Birthday'."
"Wait a minute, that's a strange coincidence. Two people in the same bar having the same birthdates…" Hermione trailed off. "You're not saying that Damien, my cousin is a wizard, are you?
All Draco could do was laugh. "No, but it is a strange coincidence, isn't it?"
They all just sat around for a while joking and getting to know each other a bit better. Draco was trying to get used to the fact that he would have to see the Weaselette around his common room a lot. After an hour of small talk and playing around, they decided it would be a good idea to get started on talking about prefect information.
Hermione and Draco drew up a weekly schedule of patrol duty that everyone liked. The two Heads would patrol on Monday and Wednesday nights while Blaise and Ginny would work together on Tuesday nights.
Before long, Ginny asked if there were to be any balls this year. Hermione told her that Draco and she were to plan out a Halloween Ball that would take place on the night of the 30th. The prefects were to help them out with any ideas, and help with decorations and such.
Ginny squealed and squirmed around in her seat. She was too excited about having to attend another ball. This would be the first once since the Yule ball in her third year, and she was overly ecstatic. Soon enough, the topic changed to the dance competition that Dumbledore had mentioned to the Heads the day before.
"Ginny and Blaise, this is very important so I trust that neither of you will tell any of the other prefects that you two are helping us plan this." They both agreed. "Good. Now we need to set some limits on this, or else Draco and I are going to have to judge practically the whole school."
"How about we make it for fifth years and up, that way we won't have to deal with the clumsy younger kids." Draco suggested.
"Sound fair to you guys?" She asked while pointed towards Ginny and Blaise. "Well now that the age restriction is set, what kind of dance should we limit it to?"
"I don't think that there should be a rule about what kind of dance they could do. We should leave it to their imagination." Ginny replied with a gleam in her eye quite similar to the one that Dumbledore usually has.
Draco started laughing out of nowhere.
"What's so funny Ferret?" Ginny was mad because she thought he was laughing at something she had said.
"Don't worry mini-weasel, it was nothing you said. I just started imagining Finnegan doing some sort of step dance or an Irish jig with some silly green, skin-tight outfit on. He would just be making a fool of himself."
All four of them suddenly erupted in a loud laughter.
"Well at least it would be something different to watch, instead of the usual waltz or ballet most people would do." Hermione said after the laughing died down. "Should we make it so it's couples only, to make the competition fair?"
"Or we could have two separate competitions. One for the couples, and then another for the ones doing it by themselves." Blaise suggested.
Draco obviously thought it wasn't a good idea by the way he shook his head like a lion tearing up his prey. "That would make it too long of a competition and too many people to judge. Plus I don't think that the students want to see that many of their friends making fools of themselves."
"Hey, you and I have to compete in this too, don't forget that." Hermione seemed offended. "Well at least I'm assuming you're the one I have to do this with, seeing as Terry really isn't Head Boy."
"Yes, we both have to do this together. How about we make it a limit of ten couples, and only couples? Sound like a fair number to you?"
"Sounds like a plan. Now all we have left to do is set a date for auditions and then make posters to put up in all four common rooms."
"Maybe we should make the auditions sometime after the ball, that way we can worry about one thing at a time. It would also give everyone enough time to practice and decide what type of dance they want to do." Blaise recommended yet again.
"Good Blaise, you're on a roll…" Ginny commented while letting off a slight blush.
"Why, thank you my fair lady." Blaise stood up and gave a slight bow and placed a kiss on Ginny's hand, the gesture, however, just made her blush even more.
Draco and Hermione both rolled their eyes at the same time. "How dramatic…" Hermione said at Blaise's stupid attempts to capture Ginny's heart.
It might be awhile until I post chapter 13 of this story. Since I'm on break from school and I'm home for the holidays, I have to spend Riddikulus amounts of time with family. I also have an appointment on Saturday for my ankle, and my old High School football team is going to play at State for the first time in 14 years, so I'm going to that. I just have a busy week ahead of me, and I also need to work on being able to update Dear Diary. So if you want an update, check out that story.
