"Hermione... what was... that?"
He could tell she had no answer. Her lips still tingled with the feeling of him on them, and her arms ached to hold him once more. She was biting her lip fiercely and looking down at her feet, one of which she swivelled uncertainly. "You needed something happy, and so I... kissed you. Oh, Merlin, I kissed you!"
And then she bolted.
She bolted away from the confused boy she'd left behind, away from the place of the traitorous act, away from the startled silver orbs that would gaze into hers and make her melt internally. She ran, and she had no idea where to - she passed portraits that were startled by her loud presence, passed classroom doors she'd been in and out of several times, even passed the other couple patrolling (Deam and Seamus) before her feet dug their heels into the floor and she skidded to a stop outside David's door, which stood slightly ajar. She opened it enough to allow her in, and entered, noticing how the snow's radiance bent as it went through the window, casting an iridescent white light over anything it touched. There were slants of this light everywhere, scattered amongst desks and chairs and flooring, even on his desk - but one ray of light found itself lying upon her face.
The more she looked, she realized it wasn't a mirror, and not really her face. For one, her hair was down today, not pulled back into a mass of a fuzzy ponytail; for another, she was wearing a red polo shirt, not a white button-down. But her eyes looked exactly like hers, and her skin had the same soft tone that came when she'd been in the sun lately and had just come inside. Her eyelashes were thicker, though, and slightly longer - her jaw was set, ready. This Hermione looked determined, not distraught. The Hermione in front of her was prepared for anything; the Hermione she was clearly hadn't been.
She drew closer to it slowly, her footsteps oddly quieted. Her portrait was framed in an easy, wooden frame, simple, with little leaves painted on each corner. She thought it looked perfect. Simple, not intricate, with a cute little detail that sweetened it - it was exactly what the girl in the picture looked like. Hermione reached out with one hand to touch it, an then brought it back to her side, not wanting to shatter the illusion.
"That's one of my best," said a voice from her right.
She turned quickly and saw David, his hair ruffled, his eyes looking where hers had just a moment ago; he was in an old t-shirt and striped pajama pants. "It's a remarkable likeness," he said.
Hermione smiled. "She's too pretty."
David sighed and shook his head. "She's not pretty enough. But then again, I shouldn't say that." his eyes turned onto her face, one half-way closed, ready to wink, and then he saw her pained expression. "What is it?"
She opened her mouth to answer, to lie, but no sound came out.
"Is it the second task?" he asked. "Did you find out? Is it bad -?"
"It's not the task," she said, her voice straining to be loud enough to hear, but he seemed to have no difficulty.
"What is it?" he asked, real concern flowing from his mouth as he moved across the room and put his hands gently on her shoulders, his eyes looking into hers.
"I... I... Well, I -" she couldn't think of how to explain it without telling him everything. "I -"
"Hermione," he muttered in exasperation, pulling her tightly into a hug.
Her resolve broke. Tears flowed freely, along with the tale. She told him. She told him everything. Every thought, every feeling, every second of what she'd done. About her breaking Malfoy's nose, about kissing him, about the lethifolds and how worried she was about them, about the first task and how awful it had been and how he'd been the one to get her through it, the second task and how anxious she was because she didn't know what it was yet and it was in a little under a month, about everything. She told her tale of woe to her teacher, her partner, her friend. All while her face was burried in his shoulder as he held her, murmuring soft, soothing words when she got too upset to be understood. Her face and his shirt shoulder were wet, very wet, and Hermione's throat was dry and scratchy. Even after she'd told him everything, he continued to hold her, to let her spill out all the insecurities that had flooded her system. He held her until it was impossible to see outside the window, unless you wanted to see white - the snow came down in one massive, never-ending sheet that coated the ground heavily, like the salt water from her eyes had covered her cheeks.
Finally pulling back, his thumb brushed away one drop of water on her cheek that hadn't soaked through anything or joined a streak. He pressed his lips delicately to her forehead in a fatherly fashion.
"You know," he said, "I thought when you started crying that you'd seen the Prophet article."
"What article?"
"Don't you read the Prophet?"
"I always borrowed Ron's and he won't speak to me."
"I see." His eyes searched her face, his hand cupping her cheek gently, smoothing out all tear stains and rubbing them onto his hand. "I think you should see it."
"See what?"
David looked pointedly toward his desk and inclined his head to the Daily Prophet, which was laying face-down amidst various sketches of hills and trees and stationary and pachment and quills and ink... wait, those last four were actual things, it was so difficult to tell because his drawing were so life-like...
She ever-so-slowly untangled herself from him and glided in an almost ghost-like fashion towards the paper.
Looking back, she never could remember what she screamed, exactly, upon seeing the picture on the front page under the headline Viktor Krum - One Famous Boy, Two Famous Witches, but she could remember it was particularly foul. Her stomach churned and her breath flew like fire from her mouth, scalding her tongue and, she wished, setting the paper aflame. There were two pictures, merged into one, with a black line between them. The first was the one was the one taken after Hermione, Brant and Simis had all passed the first task and she'd kissed Viktor in celebration, captioned Viktor Krum and Hermione Granger. The second was a picture of a bleach-blond, half-starved, scantily-clad young lady smooching Viktor in an inappropriate way, captioned Viktor Krum and Genevieve Grevantile. Hermione knew the name Grevantile. It was in a lot of later chapters in Hogwarts: A History. She remembered the passage perfectly.
Averich Grevantile was first to discover three more of these uses for dragon blood, bringing the total up to six. He was naturally gifted wizard, but not in the magical sense - many people swear he was the most charismatic person they'd ever met. They never categorized him as manipulative, but he could get what he wanted by whatever means necessary; after discovering these three uses, he boasted of and sold the rights to the information for several hundred dollars, translating losely into several billion today. He secured the hand of the woman he fancied in marriage and they had a small, tightly-woven and proud family. [For more on the Grevantile, see page 678]. Throughout the generations, more discoveries were made - several more, including the beginning of Apparition.
There had been more, but what she remembered next was flipping to page 687, which happened to be towards the end of the book and had a long, long, tiny-fonted six pages filled with the most memorable magical families. Grevantile had been among the batch on the first page. The notes next to the family 'tree' had mostly been of monetary accounts throughout the family, getting larger and larger with each new generation. A very rich, powerful, old and pure-blooded family. Whereas she had no magical connections, no discoveries, no money, and only had power because her best friend was Harry Potter.
She grew red in the face, her eyes bluged, her nostrils flared in fury.
And then she remembered she'd kissed someone else, too.
Her anger deflated and the guilt attacked again, taking advantage of her momentarily let-down defenses. Her mind wracked her with the memory of the feel of Draco's lips, how his arms had been relievingly cold when wrapped around her waist, how that one elated moment had felt when her lips had been preoccupied with his. When she'd kissed Viktor lately, it had been happy, but not like it had when she'd kissed Draco. It was a comfort, not a stimulant; it was a pleasantry, not a vivaciousness. But she did not feel that way about Draco. He was an acquaintance, and an unsteady one at that. They still lapsed into fights, into brief flashes of hatred. Viktor wasn't like that, always in control, satisfied when she said she wasn't ready to go as far as she wanted...
She realized now it was probably because he was being 'satisfied' by someone else.
She choked back a hot sob of regret for not seeing the warning signs sooner.
David's hand was on her shoulder again. "I'm sorry," he said.
"It's... I'm... I'm not good enough," Hermione whispered, staring at the picture of him with the girl, looking ten times happier than he ever had with her.
"Oh, no!" David cried in surprise. "No no no, don't think that, 'Mione."
"But I'm not good enough, Dave, that's the only explanation -"
"No, it' that you're too good-"
"How does that make sense?"
"He can't take -"
"Can't take?" she screeched. "Can't take what? How amazing I am? Yeah, well, how am I amazing? Harry's the Chosen One, Dumbledore was Dumbledore, for Merlin's sake, and Ginny is extremely prodigious when it comes to spells, and Ron is loyal and Viktor plays Quidditch and I'm just some girl that knows nothing besides the theories of how to perform magic nobody cares about!"
"People care about the magic you can do -"
"Outside the classroom I'm useless!" she shrieked, covering her face with her hands. "I can't do half the stuff I know how to because I'm weak! I'm lame and I'm -"
He sighed and hugged her again.
Her father couldn't be there, but she was glad David could be. He was her father in a sense she hadn't ever known. Mrs. and Mr. Weasley had aways been civil toward her, polite, warm and inviting, but he really treated her like family, not like 'oh, it's his friend, we better be nice'.
"Would you believe me," he muttered through the thickness of her hair, "if I told you that you are amazing?"
"No," she muttered back. He chuckled.
"Viktor?" Hermione called out, walking into breakfast the next morning. People gave her quizzical looks and returned to their meals. David smiled supportingly from the
Viktor smiled at her. The smile was normal, usual, but she knew now it was hiding a secret. She frowned back at him, confusing him thoroughly. "I need to talk to you."
"Well, talk."
"No. In private."
He seemed to get defensive very quickly. "There's nothing to be said in private that cannot be said out loud right here."
Hermione lsot control of her temper. Her sight went red and her senses lost reign over her mouth. "You cheated on me!" she screamed, almost as loudly as she had when she'd had her image conjured.
Everybody stared now.
There were whispers flying through the air as quickly as time could. People's eyes all over the oom were trained on them; Hermione's eyes trained themselves in a brief wave over everyone looking, stopping quickly at David, who begged her silently not to go overboard, because she was, in all liklihood, just as guilty. She took a long, deep breath, and looked into his eyes.
"How did you know?" he asked, his voice bitter.
She had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming again. "I saw the article."
"I paid the Prophet to keep from delivering that paper to any students!"
Now he was shouting. She strained her voice so hard trying to keep from yelling back that her next sentence came out a broken whisper. "Fat lot of good it did."
And then Harry was at her side, his hand grasping her wrist tightly. "I think it's time you go," he said, completely in control.
And then Ron was in front of both of them.
"You ignorant little..." he seemed incapable of finishing the sentence. his face was as red as his hair, his hand shaking firecely in his hand as it pointed itself at the broad chest of the internationally famous Seeker. "How dare you even begin to think of betraying her like that? She's the best girl you'll ever mee-"
"Then why did you let her go?" Viktor challenged, jabbing his fingers into Ron's chest, making him stumble backwards.
The effect was immediate.
Harry's wand was instantly pointed at Viktor's head. Everybody in the hall had actually pulled their wands out, Slytherins included. Even the teachers had their wands trained on Viktor, who seemed to realize he had several hundred wands pointed at him at once. Simis was at Hermione's other side and Harry moved in front of her, next to Ron, allowing Brant to fall to her flank. But Hrmione's own wand was also out, and she shoved her way through the people, its tip reaching his temple.
"You know what I can do," she said softly. "Leave now, and don't you dare ever come back."
David appeared behind Viktor. "I'll escort you out," he offered, his tone anything but civil.
Hermione lowered her wand, enjoying herself as the look of terror on his face diluted to fear.
As soon as the wand was once again at her side, Viktor was pushed rudely through a stream of free space between individuals who glared at him, the boy who had dared to cheat on the only female in the Golden Trio and the only girl in the Triwizard Tournament. To them, he was the worst villian they could imagine, in that moment; as the doors shut behind him and people swarmed her, she wondered what they'd think if they knew of her kiss with the boy whose eyes she met from down the table - eyes of confusion and slight hope.