Insomnia (Ch 5)
Disclaimer: Bellybutton lint is our friend.
AN: My network's been down so I've had some internet withdrawal. On the other hand, you all seemed to like seeing Draco getting smacked around… Brilliant.
IMPORTANT Heads up – this story's being moved. When I upload the next chapter in a few days, I'll move the story to R section.
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"Whut do you mean, nuthink?!" Draco hollered, and then immediately wished he hadn't as a fresh stream of blood started down the back of his throat.
"Now Mr Malfoy, what did I say about talking?" Madame Pomfrey leant his head back and securely pinched at the top. With her other hand she was adding herbs to a paste. Satisfied, she folded the towel over the paste, forming a pack.
"You're saying she's not getting expelled? Suspended? Not so much as confined to a dungeon with nothing but stale bread and low-fat yoghurt?" He was disgusted. Indignant, disgusted and in a hell of a lot of pain. The Slytherin messenger nodded meekly and backed away, knowing Draco was at least confined to the bed. Pomfrey slid the pack onto his face and had him hold it while she scurried off to fetch another potion for his nose, a particularly delicate bone to heal correctly. Mildred and Pansy arrived by his bedside, their faces covered in sympathy and not a little morbid curiosity.
"Draco! Are you alright?? We heard you got punched!"
"It sounded horrible!"
"Petra said your legs went right over your head!"
Draco winced at the last statement. "Actually, the 'punch' just aggravated a Quidditch injury from yesterday." He waved his hand dismissively. They cooed at the mention of 'Quidditch' and 'injury' together. Somehow, that was more glamorous to plant your face into a wall when chasing after a tiny flying ball. Draco chewed on his lip thinking that over.
"Umm, Drakey," Pansy started and trailed off, "Uhh, Draco."
"What is it oh heart-of-mine-own-heart?" he muttered.
"They said that…" she took a deep breath. She was wringing her fingers in her robes, obviously not wanting to finish. Draco stared her down and coughed, waiting.
"They said that it was Granger who did it," Pansy finished very quietly.
Draco's jaw tightened and he wet his lips slowly. He looked up at Pansy, fixing storm-grey eyes on her, "And?"
"Nothing," she bleeted, "The bitch," she added as an afterthought.
Mildred had been slowly getting closer to him through all that. She was squinting at him intently and Draco could follow her eyeline to the ice and herb pack, currently covering his injury.
"Oh for the love of…" Draco pulled away his icepack and showed off the violet welt across the middle of his face. Both girls gasped, bringing their hands to clasp their mouths in some tauntingly choreographed melodrama.
"Now, kindly sod off," he rumbled, sick of being a spectacle already and not looking forward to the weeks of taunting ahead. Mildred and Pansy gathered the last mental pictures they needed for which to base their lurid descriptions for the rest of the Slytherin common room. Finally, Draco was left in some peace. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the dull throb through his face but it only reminded him of how it had happened. His mind's eye replayed it all, analyzing the way she'd moved towards him with her gliding walk, her perfectly calm face, the blurred vision of flesh-pink speeding towards his face. The ugly crunch and the explosion of hot pain where his nose had been.
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Hermione rubbed her thumb over the corner of McGonagall's desk. She waited until it felt hot and pushed her nail against it, trying to imprint the thick varnish spread over the ruddy wood. Moving her hand an inch down the edge she repeated the sequence. The whispers behind the office door stopped and the door swung heavily open. Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape all entered, followed lastly by Ginny. She took a seat next to Hermione, while of the teachers only McGonagall seated herself.
Ginny turned to her immediately and scrunched up her forehead, asking with a gesture for Hermione to verify what the whole school had been talking about minutes after Malfoy's shiny blonde head had smacked into the turf. Hermione nodded slightly, and the redhead let out a squeal before enveloping Hermione in a tight hug. McGonagall cleared her throat very loudly and Ginny dropped her arms, returning to sit straight in her chair while her grin threatened to split her face in half.
"What do you have to say about this incident, Ms Granger?" McGonagall's voice offered no levity. Hermione's action, though popular with the students, was obviously not well regarded by Gryffindor's head.
"Malfoy was being a total prat, Ms McGonagall," stated Ginny adamantly.
McGonagall slid her eyes to Ginny coldly and then returned them to Hermione. "What do you have to say about this incident, Ms *Granger*?"
"It would be inhumane if it were any other student than Draco Malfoy," replied Hermione. She could swear Dumbledore was biting down on his tongue.
"And because it was the Head Girl doing the punching, that was judicial do you suppose?" was the grim response.
Hermione let a smile slip onto her lips, but McGonagall only sighed. She seemed tired, stretched out beyond what sleep could help.
"It was decided that you would have the Head Girl position long before your," she paused, "special circumstances arose. We decided to keep you because we felt that you were a student of exemplary standards in this school. In issues both scholastic and of conduct. But I'm disappointed today, Hermione." She frowned then, softly enough that only the wrinkles of her face seemed to pull it into something notable. Hermione blinked away the sudden blur over her eyes.
"You know we cannot afford to suspend you, as no doubt Lucius will be calling for," Professor Dumbledore took over, "However Professor Snape has devised a fitting punishment he assures me." Snape nodded at his mention.
"We will consider removing your position of Head Girl, but that has yet to be given appropriate address," Dumbledore finished with a harumph noise.
"Now that we've covered as much of the punishment as we shall right now, I think it's time we addressed how you're going Hermione."
Hermione pulled herself up higher in her chair, happier to be talking about this than the Malfoy incident. She could still picture his face screwed up in the leer that had finally snapped through her self-control. "The training is going well. I'm learning faster than Professor Errat thought I would, but I still have a long way to catch up," she looked thoughtful. She didn't want to know how Errat would handle this news.
"That's not what I meant," he smiled, "How are you coping?" His camel-wide eyes flicked to Ginny for a moment before going back to Hermione. She sunk her face towards her lap, before she lifted it slowly back to the three professors. They waited for the response. She wanted to say she felt like a junkie on permanent withdrawal, or a tightrope walker with pins and needles… or just a tired, confused girl. But not to them.
"I'm fine," Hermione smiled dully. Maybe she was daring the teachers to challenge her, by the cruel twist in her eyes. Dumbledore's expression was considerate but sad as he nodded, accepting her response as all he was likely to receive.
"And Virginia," McGonagall looked at the other student questioningly, "As Hermione's assistant, how do you feel she's coping?"
Ginny couldn't help flicking her eyes to Hermione, but Hermione fixed her gaze ahead of her. The kid had to make her own choices.
What's it gonna be today, Gins? Hermione thought ruefully. The insomnia, the bruises… or the fact that we both know what happened with Draco was just a pluck in the string of a wire that's twisting tighter and tighter.
Ready to snap.
Ginny squeezed her palms between her knees, rocking forward on her chair, "She's fine."
Hermione was surprised, but she was too tired to show it. It was amazing how easy it was to lose all facial expressions when you were just too wasted to care.
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"Well this just brings a ray of sunshine to my heart," announced Professor Snape drily.
Hermione sat on one side of the room, Malfoy on the other.
"Both of you – here!" he tapped the desk in front of him and neither moved.
"Now."
Hermione pushed herself up and sauntered over into a seat, but Malfoy still didn't budge from his window seat. She sighed and dropped her face into her hands, taking the opportunity to rest while Snape dealt with him. He could be such a child, she murmured to herself. But the bandages over his head did a little to ease her irritation.
"Mister Malfoy, please take a seat over here."
"So I can be in arms' reach of that savage?" Malfoy shook his head firmly, ruffling his ice-blonde hair. The chair under him lurched up, pushed by an unseen hand, and Malfoy toppled against one side. The metal legs gleaned unnaturally, and the chair shifted as it learnt to balance his weight on its new legs. The chair was coming to life underneath Malfoy
"Granger!" roared the Slytherin angrily, his knuckles whitened around the sides as he clung on, while the chair wobbled quickly over to where Snape was standing. The Potions Professor waved his wand at Malfoy and clucked.
"Good of you to join us, Draco," he snipped. Her head resting on the desk in front of her, Hermione smirked at him before burying her face in her arms again.
Snape walked back and forth across the dull floor, swiping his dress robes around him in a way that reminded Hermione more of Count Duckula, than Dracula. She watched him dazedly as the black of his robes and the red of the floor spiked in to eachother, the edges of the world becoming fuzzy. His footsteps were a perfect four-four thud of a lullaby that slipped over her mind. She felt it happening, felt her thoughts trailing away from whatever Snape was on about, felt the light in the room melting over her like honey. Not quite there, but not quite anywhere else.
"Miss Granger," Snape's voice brought her mind sluggishly back to the moment. She found herself handing him his wand, and he took it happily. Apparently, it was what he'd been asking for. It freaked her out when she did that. While she'd lost her touch with the world, her body kept the show going for the outside world.
"One hour," stated Snape.
He bound her wand with Malfoy's in a glistening bubble of magic that hovered over their table, and then he strode from the classroom, his robes sweeping out behind him. Must save a fortune on vacuum cleaners, she smirked inwardly. Beside her, Malfoy was muttering dark words under his breath while he took out his textbook.
Oh yes, it swam into her head, her punishment was to tutor the platinum rodent. She placed her hand on his book, moving to pull it towards her and his own hand slammed onto the opposite page. Malfoy's eyes were hard glass as he stared her down. Hermione curled her fingers up and drummed them over the book. So that was the way he wanted it.
"Does your face hurt?"
"Yes, thank you very much," he snorted, then winced.
"Good, cause it's been killing me for years," she smirked.
Draco shot her a withering look, "That was cheap. Even for you."
"You being the authority on cheap women, I'll bare that in mind." Hermione tried pulling the book towards her again and again he resisted, holding it doggedly on his side of the desk.
"Malfoy," Hermione gave him a cracked smile, "You've reminded me. There was something I wanted to show you."
"I'm flattered Granger, but I've already had that show and tell," he flipped his hair back from where it was trailing over his eyes. He was staring at the page with a fixed resolution on his face when Hermione slammed her palm onto the book, dead in the centre.
"My hand," she stated.
"It certainly is," Draco replied, and his eyes flickered to the wand-bubble above them. But he wouldn't be able to get his wand for at least another fifty minutes. Not that that particularly affected Hermione.
She grated her fingers on the gritty parchment, drawing his attention back to it. Her nails had been hacked back to unfeminine shortness, but apart from that there was nothing for Malfoy to fix on.
"I don't see anything," he muttered. His voice was tenuous as he waited for her to clarify her point. She tried to stop it, but she felt the malicious way her smile lit up. She noted a tremble run through him in response.
"Exactly. This is the hand that made this," she traced her finger feather-light over the bandage on his face. Draco pulled his face away belatedly.
"What's your point, mudblood harpy?"
"While you've been impersonating our reindeer friend Rudolph, and while every facial expression on your pointed little face wracks you with pain, my hand – the same that caused your problem – is entirely unmarked," She flexed all the fingers in demonstration.
"Did you know that if you punch someone hard enough, just here," she tapped his bandage again, just over the bridge of his nose, "You can actually snap the bone off, and push it back into the cerebral hemispheres? And if you hit just around here," she ran a nail across his neck and Draco flinched away, "You can crush their windpipe, or their carotid arteries. And," she lowered her gaze conspiratorially, "If you want me to name every bone in your body and just how to break it, I can do that too." Hermione smiled like an air-hostess.
"So Malfoy, a question you might want to ask yourself is just how much damage do you think I could do to you before I broke a nail?" She laughed innocently, imitating Pansy's flirtatious girly pitch. The laughter stopped and the look on her face sent another shudder through him, turning his face ivory.
"Now, give me the book."
He did.
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Welcome back to the review-grovelling section :)
Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!!!
tainted black – brown eyes…? aww - I suspected as much. I actually have typed at the top of my page "Check on Hermione's eyes" but was too lazy… will go back and change it now.
Adel – Empire Records! Couldn't remember where I knew it from. Fantastic film :)
Ghetto Superstar – 'That is what you are, coming from afar, reaching for the stars…' That's gonna be stuck in my head for hours.
T.C. Vincent – Draco's a lot of fun to write, and he's even more fun to beat up *grins*
Serpent du feu – Pervy? Bah, that's half the fun of fanfic. Unfortunately… I warn you that the next chapter, though R, is still quite tame and this whole fic probably won't go too kinky. Have you tried www.snitchfiction.net?
couch-potato01 – regarding ratings I'm kinda confused too - as I'm australian we use a different rating system and I would've put this in M but you don't have that. And… hehe, I tried using tv shows/movie as a broad comparison, with mixed results. I think rating writing is a difficult process generally, due to a lot of the graphic nature lieing in the exact phrasing. You can describe the exactly same scene in very different ways, each of which would deserve different ratings… Anyhow, that said, I'm moving this story to R for coming stuff and in mind of your concern. Anything else confusing you that I can answer? :)
Jack Nolan – This is an adult approach? Hehe, thanks man. Sorry I got you in trouble. :( I remember computer classes, I spent them creating about 50 of those x-men-the-movie website characters… oh, and doing all those personality quizzes on thespark.com… But I digress. Thanks!
I'd give you all more lollipops, but they're bad for your teeth… Thankfully I've got some fruit cut into nice little Potter figurines.