Chapter 8- MISSION: COMPLETELY STUPID
A/N: an OOC warning for this chapter. And I seem to be making a lot of words up for this fic, or that's what my spell check reckons. So, please tell me if I'm making up new, nonsensical words.
As it turned out, Ron did actually get the courage to ask out Lavender, in what was apparently the funniest moment of the year by far. But that unfortunately is another story; the bottom line is that Ron and Lavender was now a couple, stuck in that place where happy couples go: the Land of Happy Coupledem Where Everyone Ignores All Other More Important Problems. This leads us to Harry, Dean, Ron and Lavender sitting together in the Great Hall for breakfast.
Harry and Dean were talking about what would happen now that 'Willow' was going out with someone. Ron and Lavender were making baby noises at each other.
The reason Harry and Dean were worried about Hermione was because they pretty much knew what would happen when Hermione's own invented world crumbled around her; she would have a complete melt down. Both Harry and Dean wanted to lessen the amount of embarrassment that was involved in this melt down by making sure she was not in the middle of the Great Hall at the time. But before they could find some course of action, in walked Hermione, her head high, searching for Buffy, Xander and Willow.
Hermione walked over, sat down and said to Dean, "Buffy, the weirdest thing happened last night. I was in the library when Cordelia came up to me. Well, that wasn't too bad as she forgot what she was going to say to me, which was really stupid of her. Anyway, Spike came in and started talking to me. He asked me what I'd been up to and then he asked me why I was all of a sudden scared of him."
Dean looked at her with a frown on his face, and then checked Harry's reaction as well. Both were thinking along the lines of 'why would Draco be talking to Hermione like that?' Draco, after all, was the guy who got her into the state that she was in. Dean pressed her for more details, "So then what happened?"
"Well, he was going to say something then Drusilla and Angelus walked in, the weirdest thing was that they didn't even cast two glances at me, they just wanted to get Spike to go with them somewhere. And, just before Spike left he said to me that Drusilla and Angelus wouldn't hurt me." Hermione looked at both of the boys and then at Ron, who was still enraptured with Lavender. Harry and Dean waited impatiently for Hermione's reaction to 'Willow's' sudden attachment.
Hermione said to Ron, "Hey Willow," she then turned to Lavender and greeted her, "Hey Oz, you were out of it for a while there. Was the last cycle a tiring one?"
Lavender absent mindedly turned her head towards Hermione and said, "Oh, yeah."
Hermione smirked at them both and said teasingly, "I'll just leave you two to it."
Harry and Dean looked at each other incredulously, but their expressions of triumph soon turned to ones of dread as Hermione turned to them with a love struck look on her face and said, "Look! He's here again."
They both turned around slowly and saw the egotistical and sadistic Draco Malfoy saunter into the Great Hall, and to everyone's surprise, he was alone. Hermione turned to Harry and Dean, scandalised, "Where do you think Angelus and Drusilla have gone? This must mean something Buffy, and we have to find out what it is before it happens."
Dean sighed under his breath and again presumed the role of the one girl in all the world who had the power to stop the spread of evil, "There's no way we could find out what's going to happen, the entire under-world of Sunnydale is in one big fat glitch. Nothing's happening out there, no one's got any information on anything."
Hermione looked at them slyly, "We could go see Giles."
Harry nearly jumped down her throat, "There's no way that's going to happen, you know he's still.uh. dirty with us for what happened."
Hermione looked down at her plate, defeated and then stood up with the rest of the crowd and mumbled to them, "Let's go to class."
That day was another turning point in the twisted world of Hermione Granger. Hermione had a little talk to the guy who had her so enraptured with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the first place.
Hermione drifted into arithmancy after a double lesson of transfiguration with her mind filled with all sorts of worries and doubts. Hermione wanted to talk to Giles about the problems they were having with Spike and his gang, it's not that they were being terribly threatening, it was just that they were being just that: they were being to, for lack of better word, kind. On top of that she was worrying about Giles, who still seemed to be smarting over Jenny's death. Not to mention all the weird stuff that was happening with Spike.
So, I guess you can see how Hermione wandered into arithmancy and sat down next to the one and only Draco Malfoy, the guy she thought was the rather sarcastic and completely evil Spike. Hermione settled into her seat, took out her books and waited for class to begin, all the while not taking in anything around her, which she appears to be very good at.
Draco, being the kind of person who craves attention and likes to annoy people sat there and stared at her, and stared at her and stared at her. Hermione, being the smart little spark that she is turned in her seat to see who exactly was so amorously staring at her and received a shock when she saw Draco there.
Draco said to her, "Finally, welcome back to the land of the living. Where were you? La La Land?" Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but quickly pulled it shut and nervously gave him a slight smile. Draco raised his eyebrows, "Still afraid are we? Look, I'm not going to say or do anything to you, we're in the middle of the school day and I have to sit next to you for the rest of class. I'd rather sit next to a scared Hermione than a crying Hermione."
The girl in question cocked her head to the side and asked him, "How do you know my name?"
This just confused Draco, "I go to school with you, do I not?"
Hermione nodded and said to him very quietly and sarcastically, "Yeah, of course you do." She looked up as the door of the class room was flung open and a flustered looking professor walked in.
Hermione turned her attention to the Professor who was now standing at the front of the class, waiting for silence. The woman smiled at them and then began to address them, "Unfortunately class, your normal teacher could not make it to class today, so I will be supervising you," she looked around at the students who had begun to whisper to each other, "The reason I will only be supervising you is that I will only be with you for this lesson and I know absolutely nothing about arithmancy. So, you can talk among yourselves quietly or continue on with work from other classes," the class paused, as if waiting further instructions, she smiled at them again and said, "Off you go."
The class broke out in conversations as the students quickly became used to the idea of not doing work. Hermione nervously turned to Draco, gave him a tentative smile and then put away her books.
Draco smirked evilly at her when she caught his gaze and said, "So now I've got you all to myself for the rest of class." Hermione just nodded. Draco frowned at her, "You haven't been very talkative as of late, usually you're just full of witty comments."
"Umm.I have nothing to talk about."
"Well, let's find something to talk about then," Draco offered and leant back in his seat, as if thinking, "Okay, how about your new friendship with that blonde headed kid, what's with that? All of a sudden you and the dream team are all buddy-buddy with him."
Hermione unconsciously and quickly translated what Draco just said to Buffy terms and answered slowly, "Well, we just sort of drifted towards her you know? It's not like we just made an executive decision to be friends, it just happened; it wasn't intentional."
Draco nodded his head, ignoring the fact that Hermione referred to Dean as 'her.' He leant a little closer to Hermione, purposely creating tension and trying to get a rise out of her, "Is anything happening between the two of you that no one else knows about? I mean, you two do seem awfully close."
The reaction Hermione had was predictable, "No way! That's sick," she paused, making a disgusted face, "One of my best friends? That's just gross."
Draco just smirked and nodded, earning a glare off Hermione. He moved on to a more interesting topic, "What were you so preoccupied with when you came in here? It must have been something important."
Hermione sighed and looked at Draco, whose face held no traces of cruelty or trickery. To Hermione, Spike looked like a more smiley Angel. She said to him, "Well, it's sort of long winded."
He shrugged his shoulders, "We have the rest of this class to talk about it, and if we don't finish, we could just continue this conversation elsewhere."
"I shouldn't really tell you about it though."
"Why not?"
Hermione picked up a piece of parchment and then looked down at her hands as she fiddled with it. She eventually looked at him and said, "Well, you're the enemy."
"I am not the enemy," scoffed Draco, the idea that Hermione thought of him as the enemy was ridiculous.
"I guess not, you are sitting here talking to me in a relatively nice way."
Draco looked at her, surprised, "Since when am I not 'relatively nice'?"
"Most of the time."
This was Draco's chance to explain the last five and a half years to her, to explain how he didn't really mean to hurt her. He took a deep breath and said to Hermione, "I don't mean to be like that."
Hermione was shocked, he was an evil vampire who had tried to kill Buffy over and over again, not to forget that he had been apart of at least one attempt to end the world. "What do you mean that you don't mean to be like that? You've always tried your hardest to hurt me and my friends."
"I never meant to hurt you," Draco explained looking at her, making sure that he had her attention, "Your friends, yes, I do try to hurt them. But I genuinely don't like them; you can easily say that I hate them. Well, where you're concerned Hermione, I don't mean to do anything to you; I just have to, to keep up appearances. If I don't, things would get very ugly."
"But what about that time." Hermione's protest was cut off by Draco.
"I only ever mean to tease you, in good humour, that's all I ever want to do. I wish that I didn't say and do some of things that I have said and done. From now on, you're going to have to promise me that you will take everything I say to you in front of other people in good humour. Can you do that?"
Hermione let out the breath that she had been holding and looked Draco in the eyes, "I can. But what about all the others? What will they do? What will they say?"
"I promise that they won't hurt you in any way, and please, please don't get offended when I call you my little mudblood. It's just that.you ARE my little mudblood. Okay?"
Having heard something completely different, Hermione nodded and agreed with him, "I get you, and don't worry its okay."
With the last statement still lingering in the air, the bell rang and Hermione gathered her bags and said her farewells, but before she could take two steps, Draco stopped her, "Hey, we'll talk about what's on your mind later okay?"
"Right, see you later," with that Hermione walked out of class and not once looked back at the boy with whom she was completely smitten.
The conversation that Hermione had just had with 'Spike' put a whole new spin on her day, she was no longer lamenting over the lack of understanding Buffy and Xander were harbouring and the complete obliviousness Willow and Oz were displaying. Instead, she was replaying the conversation she had with 'Spike' over and over again in her head, needless to say that she was in love.
Hermione decided to skip seeing her friends for the meantime and went to the public library, with the intent of drooling over Spike and pushing all her previous worries into the back of her over crowded skull. But the moment she walked into the library her problems with Giles rushed back to her. She remembered how Giles was, now that she looked at it, being a complete dick head, towards the Scoobies and Buffy. And how it seemed that her friends were not taking her seriously.
That was then our little bright spark Hermione had a revelation. She would go see Giles, alone, without Buffy and see what happened; maybe she could talk some sense into him. So, off went little trooper Granger, with a very dangerous and fickle mission to complete. The mission was: to talk to the inconsolable and rather snappy Giles.
A/N: hope you liked that chapter, please review and I'll give you.happy vibes! Yeah, happy vibes, I can send them over the net. The next chapter will be coming soon as I am on holidays (winter holidays though, I hate winter. Yes, I am in the southern hemisphere for those that were wondering and puzzling) and am completely bored. So instead of doing school work I write fanfic! Yay! Okay, that's enough babble for now.
A/N: an OOC warning for this chapter. And I seem to be making a lot of words up for this fic, or that's what my spell check reckons. So, please tell me if I'm making up new, nonsensical words.
As it turned out, Ron did actually get the courage to ask out Lavender, in what was apparently the funniest moment of the year by far. But that unfortunately is another story; the bottom line is that Ron and Lavender was now a couple, stuck in that place where happy couples go: the Land of Happy Coupledem Where Everyone Ignores All Other More Important Problems. This leads us to Harry, Dean, Ron and Lavender sitting together in the Great Hall for breakfast.
Harry and Dean were talking about what would happen now that 'Willow' was going out with someone. Ron and Lavender were making baby noises at each other.
The reason Harry and Dean were worried about Hermione was because they pretty much knew what would happen when Hermione's own invented world crumbled around her; she would have a complete melt down. Both Harry and Dean wanted to lessen the amount of embarrassment that was involved in this melt down by making sure she was not in the middle of the Great Hall at the time. But before they could find some course of action, in walked Hermione, her head high, searching for Buffy, Xander and Willow.
Hermione walked over, sat down and said to Dean, "Buffy, the weirdest thing happened last night. I was in the library when Cordelia came up to me. Well, that wasn't too bad as she forgot what she was going to say to me, which was really stupid of her. Anyway, Spike came in and started talking to me. He asked me what I'd been up to and then he asked me why I was all of a sudden scared of him."
Dean looked at her with a frown on his face, and then checked Harry's reaction as well. Both were thinking along the lines of 'why would Draco be talking to Hermione like that?' Draco, after all, was the guy who got her into the state that she was in. Dean pressed her for more details, "So then what happened?"
"Well, he was going to say something then Drusilla and Angelus walked in, the weirdest thing was that they didn't even cast two glances at me, they just wanted to get Spike to go with them somewhere. And, just before Spike left he said to me that Drusilla and Angelus wouldn't hurt me." Hermione looked at both of the boys and then at Ron, who was still enraptured with Lavender. Harry and Dean waited impatiently for Hermione's reaction to 'Willow's' sudden attachment.
Hermione said to Ron, "Hey Willow," she then turned to Lavender and greeted her, "Hey Oz, you were out of it for a while there. Was the last cycle a tiring one?"
Lavender absent mindedly turned her head towards Hermione and said, "Oh, yeah."
Hermione smirked at them both and said teasingly, "I'll just leave you two to it."
Harry and Dean looked at each other incredulously, but their expressions of triumph soon turned to ones of dread as Hermione turned to them with a love struck look on her face and said, "Look! He's here again."
They both turned around slowly and saw the egotistical and sadistic Draco Malfoy saunter into the Great Hall, and to everyone's surprise, he was alone. Hermione turned to Harry and Dean, scandalised, "Where do you think Angelus and Drusilla have gone? This must mean something Buffy, and we have to find out what it is before it happens."
Dean sighed under his breath and again presumed the role of the one girl in all the world who had the power to stop the spread of evil, "There's no way we could find out what's going to happen, the entire under-world of Sunnydale is in one big fat glitch. Nothing's happening out there, no one's got any information on anything."
Hermione looked at them slyly, "We could go see Giles."
Harry nearly jumped down her throat, "There's no way that's going to happen, you know he's still.uh. dirty with us for what happened."
Hermione looked down at her plate, defeated and then stood up with the rest of the crowd and mumbled to them, "Let's go to class."
That day was another turning point in the twisted world of Hermione Granger. Hermione had a little talk to the guy who had her so enraptured with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the first place.
Hermione drifted into arithmancy after a double lesson of transfiguration with her mind filled with all sorts of worries and doubts. Hermione wanted to talk to Giles about the problems they were having with Spike and his gang, it's not that they were being terribly threatening, it was just that they were being just that: they were being to, for lack of better word, kind. On top of that she was worrying about Giles, who still seemed to be smarting over Jenny's death. Not to mention all the weird stuff that was happening with Spike.
So, I guess you can see how Hermione wandered into arithmancy and sat down next to the one and only Draco Malfoy, the guy she thought was the rather sarcastic and completely evil Spike. Hermione settled into her seat, took out her books and waited for class to begin, all the while not taking in anything around her, which she appears to be very good at.
Draco, being the kind of person who craves attention and likes to annoy people sat there and stared at her, and stared at her and stared at her. Hermione, being the smart little spark that she is turned in her seat to see who exactly was so amorously staring at her and received a shock when she saw Draco there.
Draco said to her, "Finally, welcome back to the land of the living. Where were you? La La Land?" Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but quickly pulled it shut and nervously gave him a slight smile. Draco raised his eyebrows, "Still afraid are we? Look, I'm not going to say or do anything to you, we're in the middle of the school day and I have to sit next to you for the rest of class. I'd rather sit next to a scared Hermione than a crying Hermione."
The girl in question cocked her head to the side and asked him, "How do you know my name?"
This just confused Draco, "I go to school with you, do I not?"
Hermione nodded and said to him very quietly and sarcastically, "Yeah, of course you do." She looked up as the door of the class room was flung open and a flustered looking professor walked in.
Hermione turned her attention to the Professor who was now standing at the front of the class, waiting for silence. The woman smiled at them and then began to address them, "Unfortunately class, your normal teacher could not make it to class today, so I will be supervising you," she looked around at the students who had begun to whisper to each other, "The reason I will only be supervising you is that I will only be with you for this lesson and I know absolutely nothing about arithmancy. So, you can talk among yourselves quietly or continue on with work from other classes," the class paused, as if waiting further instructions, she smiled at them again and said, "Off you go."
The class broke out in conversations as the students quickly became used to the idea of not doing work. Hermione nervously turned to Draco, gave him a tentative smile and then put away her books.
Draco smirked evilly at her when she caught his gaze and said, "So now I've got you all to myself for the rest of class." Hermione just nodded. Draco frowned at her, "You haven't been very talkative as of late, usually you're just full of witty comments."
"Umm.I have nothing to talk about."
"Well, let's find something to talk about then," Draco offered and leant back in his seat, as if thinking, "Okay, how about your new friendship with that blonde headed kid, what's with that? All of a sudden you and the dream team are all buddy-buddy with him."
Hermione unconsciously and quickly translated what Draco just said to Buffy terms and answered slowly, "Well, we just sort of drifted towards her you know? It's not like we just made an executive decision to be friends, it just happened; it wasn't intentional."
Draco nodded his head, ignoring the fact that Hermione referred to Dean as 'her.' He leant a little closer to Hermione, purposely creating tension and trying to get a rise out of her, "Is anything happening between the two of you that no one else knows about? I mean, you two do seem awfully close."
The reaction Hermione had was predictable, "No way! That's sick," she paused, making a disgusted face, "One of my best friends? That's just gross."
Draco just smirked and nodded, earning a glare off Hermione. He moved on to a more interesting topic, "What were you so preoccupied with when you came in here? It must have been something important."
Hermione sighed and looked at Draco, whose face held no traces of cruelty or trickery. To Hermione, Spike looked like a more smiley Angel. She said to him, "Well, it's sort of long winded."
He shrugged his shoulders, "We have the rest of this class to talk about it, and if we don't finish, we could just continue this conversation elsewhere."
"I shouldn't really tell you about it though."
"Why not?"
Hermione picked up a piece of parchment and then looked down at her hands as she fiddled with it. She eventually looked at him and said, "Well, you're the enemy."
"I am not the enemy," scoffed Draco, the idea that Hermione thought of him as the enemy was ridiculous.
"I guess not, you are sitting here talking to me in a relatively nice way."
Draco looked at her, surprised, "Since when am I not 'relatively nice'?"
"Most of the time."
This was Draco's chance to explain the last five and a half years to her, to explain how he didn't really mean to hurt her. He took a deep breath and said to Hermione, "I don't mean to be like that."
Hermione was shocked, he was an evil vampire who had tried to kill Buffy over and over again, not to forget that he had been apart of at least one attempt to end the world. "What do you mean that you don't mean to be like that? You've always tried your hardest to hurt me and my friends."
"I never meant to hurt you," Draco explained looking at her, making sure that he had her attention, "Your friends, yes, I do try to hurt them. But I genuinely don't like them; you can easily say that I hate them. Well, where you're concerned Hermione, I don't mean to do anything to you; I just have to, to keep up appearances. If I don't, things would get very ugly."
"But what about that time." Hermione's protest was cut off by Draco.
"I only ever mean to tease you, in good humour, that's all I ever want to do. I wish that I didn't say and do some of things that I have said and done. From now on, you're going to have to promise me that you will take everything I say to you in front of other people in good humour. Can you do that?"
Hermione let out the breath that she had been holding and looked Draco in the eyes, "I can. But what about all the others? What will they do? What will they say?"
"I promise that they won't hurt you in any way, and please, please don't get offended when I call you my little mudblood. It's just that.you ARE my little mudblood. Okay?"
Having heard something completely different, Hermione nodded and agreed with him, "I get you, and don't worry its okay."
With the last statement still lingering in the air, the bell rang and Hermione gathered her bags and said her farewells, but before she could take two steps, Draco stopped her, "Hey, we'll talk about what's on your mind later okay?"
"Right, see you later," with that Hermione walked out of class and not once looked back at the boy with whom she was completely smitten.
The conversation that Hermione had just had with 'Spike' put a whole new spin on her day, she was no longer lamenting over the lack of understanding Buffy and Xander were harbouring and the complete obliviousness Willow and Oz were displaying. Instead, she was replaying the conversation she had with 'Spike' over and over again in her head, needless to say that she was in love.
Hermione decided to skip seeing her friends for the meantime and went to the public library, with the intent of drooling over Spike and pushing all her previous worries into the back of her over crowded skull. But the moment she walked into the library her problems with Giles rushed back to her. She remembered how Giles was, now that she looked at it, being a complete dick head, towards the Scoobies and Buffy. And how it seemed that her friends were not taking her seriously.
That was then our little bright spark Hermione had a revelation. She would go see Giles, alone, without Buffy and see what happened; maybe she could talk some sense into him. So, off went little trooper Granger, with a very dangerous and fickle mission to complete. The mission was: to talk to the inconsolable and rather snappy Giles.
A/N: hope you liked that chapter, please review and I'll give you.happy vibes! Yeah, happy vibes, I can send them over the net. The next chapter will be coming soon as I am on holidays (winter holidays though, I hate winter. Yes, I am in the southern hemisphere for those that were wondering and puzzling) and am completely bored. So instead of doing school work I write fanfic! Yay! Okay, that's enough babble for now.