A/N: I have nothing to write! I've been dead tired and stuck in a writing rut, but I felt so bad about not updating for over two weeks. I know some authors go months, but still. So here's something for you, it's chock-full of clichés, and I do point them all out. I do think it ended up better than I expected, though. ~_^
~
Things I Know:
By Hermione L. Granger
Ron is the first true love of my life.
Ron is not, and never will be, the first person I will have sex with.
Ron could quite possibly not be the second person I will have sex with, either.
Draco Malfoy is a stupid git.
Draco Malfoy is an amazing kisser and uses unusually enticing cologne.
I hate Draco Malfoy.
Draco Malfoy is the single most confusing person I have ever encountered in my seventeen years of life.
Ron has a new girlfriend who appears quite airheaded.
I have never met Ron's new girlfriend.
Ron is being quite the prick about 'still being friends.'
I haven't spoken more than two words to Ron in a very long time.
Something about Draco makes it seem like I could talk to him about anything, if we were even remotely close.
I went to bed thinking about Draco last night.
I dreamt about Ron all last night.
"Greeeaatt." Thought Hermione. That really helped.
Okay, bottom line. Ron is an important part of me. I would love to get him back and am not done trying to accomplish this task. Draco is interesting, to say the least, when he desperately needs money. But he's to confusing to ever decipher.
"Augh! I knew all that already!" Hermione exclaimed. She rolled over on her bed, a lazy Friday rain pattering against the windows. The day had slipped by; it was almost time to go back to sleep. A fat moon reflected its light off of her walls.
"I'd just let the moonlight shine through onto my bed…"
"Dammit!" Extracurricular thinking about Draco equaled bad. So what if it was sweet that he liked moonlight? He probably enjoyed it so he could check and make sure he was fucking the right girl.
Hermione was in a period of inner turmoil. She did the only thing she could think of.
"Ahem. Hogwarts is a prestigious school hidden by magical charms and spells to disguise it from outsiders. This enchanted fortress is impossible to see through unless you know what you're looking for, but the real secret to its success and unequaled history lie within its very walls and classrooms."
Hermione slammed Hogwarts: A History shut. What was wrong with her that her favorite book couldn't quell her entanglement of thoughts?
"Oh, right. They say you never can think clearly when you're in love." Hermione thought. A knock on her door disrupted her thoughts.
"Come in."
"Hey Mione!" Dear God. It was Parvati.
"Heey." She said weakly. What did the girl want today? Parvati stepped in, fully dressed. Quite the surprise.
"Oh, sorry to disturb you so late, but a letter of yours got owled to your old room by mistake."
"Oh, thanks." Upon being made Head Girl, she'd received her own quarters and had finally moved out of the room she'd shared with Lavender and Parvati for six years.
"What are you all dressed up for?" Hermione asked, already knowing the answer. "Or uh, I guess, "who are you all dressed up for" would be the better question."
"Oh, I'm just going to meet some guy." Parvati said.
"Who?" asked Hermione, taking the letter from Parvati.
"Malfoy." She said. Hermione spit out the water she'd just taken a sip of.
"Malfoy? As in Draco Malfoy?" she demanded.
"No, his grandfather." Parvati rolled her eyes. "Yeah, as in Draco Malfoy."
"But why? He's despised all Gryffindors since day one." Hermione cried, feeling a bit bad about what she'd said. Who really knew if Draco hated all Gryffindors anymore?
"Um, cuz he's really sexy, in case you haven't noticed. I've noticed him checking me out the past few days, and I thought I'd surprise him with a late-night visit." Hermione felt a small pang of disappointment. Why was it bothering her so much?
"But that doesn't mean you have to go sleep with him." Hermione said.
"Look, Mione, I'm gonna give you a big philosophical speech now, okay?" Hermione's brow furrowed.
"Uh, okay." Parvati sat on Hermione's bed and took a breath.
"I know what people say about me, how I'm a stupid slut and stuff. But it's who I am, you know? It took me a long time to figure out that it wasn't worth changing just to achieve someone else's idea of true happiness. I've realized as of late that life is hardly ever fairy tale endings and happily-ever-afters. You take what you can get, and as long as it makes you happy, why the hell not go for what you want? Or even what you think you want? Sometimes what you need more than anything isn't even what you want, you know? It's confusing and impossible, and I don't have anything truly figured out for my future yet. But in the meantime, I just have a good time. Experience is the best way to learn. Practice makes perfect, you know? I get my heart broken, I have sex a lot, but I don't care about it anymore. It's my own way of learning what I need to learn. The feeling you get is like knowing something about yourself without knowing anything at all. And it's good, Mione. It's so good."
Hermione should have felt like she was living in a huge cliché soap opera. On one level, that speech was as cheesy as a dairy farm. But on another surpassing level, the thing hit home directly. This whole "Parvati Epiphany" was been out of place in her crazy life right now. But wasn't that exactly what Parvati had been saying? Things don't make sense, but sometimes you just know it's supposed to fit? Hermione shook her head.
"Mione, you okay?" She blinked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks, Parvati. For the letter I mean. And great speech, I mean it. It was real Hallmark card material, truly."
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Have fun with Malfoy."
"Oh, I will. And thanks for listening. I've been planning that thing in my head for months now."
"Sure, anytime." Hermione said quietly. She was still sort of taking it all in.
Parvati had been gone for several minutes before Hermione remembered the parchment clutched in her hand. She shook her head and unfolded it.
Dear Hermione:
Hey there! How's Hogwarts been? I've been dying to talk to you for months; there are SO many things I have just got to tell you. You have to come down to Manhattan for a few weeks this summer so we can do some serious catching up! In the meantime, there are just a few little tidbits I can't keep to myself. First, we moved into this awesome new loft. There's a balcony outside my bedroom window so we can watch the sun set without having to sneak into a park and get reprimanded by the police! The next is, and I hope you don't mind, but I've been seeing Chuck for a while. I know he's your ex, and please tell me outright if this is a problem and I'll stop seeing him. It's just that, he was so sweet about the whole thing! And pretty soon I think I might even have sex with him… AHHH! But neither of us have ever done it before, so I won't feel too bad. It's strange, he has this whole player rep, but underneath he's so soft and sweet! I'm sorry, I'll stop rambling. I feel bad that I'm seeing your ex, I really do. Please write back soon to tell me if you're okay with this, and about when you're coming down to visit (because you absolutely have to!!)
Lots of Love,
Anna
Hermione put her head in her hands. What was she going to do? She couldn't tell Anna about her and Chuck after all this time. But Anna could not stay with him under any circumstances.
"Just one more huge problem." First Ron, then Ron's girlfriend, then Malfoy, now this? Plus, she still had a Potions project to do with Pansy and two months to decide what do to with her life when she graduated.
Perfect.
Hermione desperately needed to talk to somebody. Somebody she could tell her entire Ron/Malfoy story to. But who? Not Harry, definitely not. Anna? No, Anna wouldn't understand, having never met neither Ron nor Malfoy. Hermione was quite embarrassed to admit she only had two people she felt close enough to share her personal life with. What was up with that? Besides all of her burdening problems, there was also the small issue of convincing her innocent cousin what a jerk her boyfriend was without revealing her own past.
"Why didn't I just tell Anna about Chuck in the first place?" she groaned and fell backwards onto her bed.
"I hate being such a confused teenager!" Hermione cried. What to do when problems without answers abounded?
~
Ah, the good old North Tower. Always there when you needed it. Hermione looked out the window and gazed up at the sky. Yes, the second extraordinarily cliché thing she'd done/heard in the past hour. But sometimes it's the clichés you need the most.
She was just noticing how a certain patch of stars resembled the freckles on Ron's nose exactly when the door burst open. In the dark, it was impossible to say who it was.
"Hello?" she said. There was no response. A glint of sudden moonlight exposed the person's face.
"What are you doing here?" Hermione cried.
(Yes, you'd THINK it's Draco. But come on, three clichés in under three pages?)
"What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?"
"I have just as much of a right to be here as you do." Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Um, this is stupid. I came up here for some quiet reflection and to look at the view."
"Well, Granger, I came up here to look for Malfoy, okay? Not stare at the stars like some lost, lonely castaway."
"Pansy, why on earth would Malfoy be here?" Hermione demanded of the other girl.
"I don't know." She sneered. "He once mentioned that he liked looking at the moonlight, or something stupid like that. Since there's obviously no moonlight in the dungeons, I though he might be up here, okay?"
"Fine." Hermione said. There was a long pause, which Hermione used to suppress a small smile. Moonlight, huh? He must not have been kidding about his fantasy.
Hermione glanced around. "I don't think he's up here, Pansy."
"Well, that much is obvious!" she cried, obviously lost in her frustrations. She was almost bordering on civility towards Hermione. "Almost" being the key word, of course.
Suddenly, Pansy did an extremely unorthodox thing. She crumpled to the floor, crying like the first runner up of the Miss Universe Pageant.
"I just don't know anymore!" Pansy wailed. "It's all so confusing! I don't think Draco loves me anymore. I mean, I just wanted us to finalize our itinerary for before, during, and after the Springtime Ball, and he claims that he never even asked me to go, which of course he did." Pansy's triple coated mascara slid down her face, with some tears mixed in, too.
"Pansy must really be in distress if she didn't even remember to put the right charms on her makeup." Thought Hermione. This was all taking her by EXTREME surprise, and she wasn't sure how to handle it, exactly.
"Um." Hermione cautiously bent down and placed a reassuring hand on the girl's long, dark hair. "There there."
"But I mean, I've gotten a lot prettier in the past six years, and if Draco Malfoy can't see that I'm such a changed woman, he shouldn't deserve my time, right? But he doesn't notice and I still love him. And now he keeps talking about this girl he's been seeing, and how at first he really hated her for being so stuck up and all, but now he keeps saying that something about her just makes him want to get to know every aspect of her personality! And that's stupid, too, because he can't know her THAT well because he says she goes to Beauxbatons!" Pansy wept into the embroidered handkerchief Hermione offered her.
"Well, at least you've got no other Hogwarts competition, then." Hermione said.
"I mean, he tells me all this personal stuff about him, too. Like you'd think it was weird he told me all about this girl when he really seems to like her and he knows I like him too, right?"
Pansy was speaking so quickly Hermione could just barely catch her words.
"But if you ask me, I think he's just making her up, right? Yeah, that's what he's doing." She brushed her eyes with the hem of her shirt.
"How did he say they met?" Hermione asked quietly, not wishing to spur another dizzying speech from the babbling girl.
"I don't know! Oh! His father knew her parents and supposedly over spring break he tutored her in something or another. But its' not fair! I'd let him tutor me!"
Hermione finally put together fragments of Pansy's rapid chatter.
"Hated her for being stuck up? Wants to get to know her personality? Tutors her in something or another?" This time, the smile was impossible to hide.
So Malfoy wanted to get to know her personality, huh? Okay, so right now, he was probably doing her ex-roommate. But still. Draco cared more about her mind than what color her underwear was.
It was flattering, to say the least.
Pansy had since stood up.
"You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna march down there and tell him that he can have his little Beauxbatons whore if he wants over the summer, but for now he can have all the 100% grade-A woman meat he can handle, straight from the Pansy Parkinson Slaughterhouse. I have no competition. I am the prettiest, the most graceful, most dignified girl ever to walk the corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I'll go to any, and I mean absolutely any means to show him he doesn't have to settle for less as long as I'm around."
Hermione stifled her laughter as best as she could manage.
"Well uh, good luck with that. I'm glad I could help you work out your problems." Hermione said. Pansy looked down at her.
"Um, I don't think so. The day Pansy Elizabeth Parkinson gets help from a lowly Muggle-raised Gryffindor is the day pigs fly."
"Would those be the same pigs you kill at you slaughterhouse?" Hemione asked.
"Huh?" said Pansy vacantly. "Whatever, Granger. You tell a soul I conversed more than necessary with you, and you're dead meat, you hear me?"
Ah, it would have been so easy. But Hermione let the whole "meat" joke die. At the hands of the butcher…
"Bye Pansy." She said, as the girl triumphantly marched off to claim her sexy beefcake.
(I'm done now, seriously.)
Hermione let a smile spread across her face as she curled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. It was always the same with girls. No matter how bad they feel, something good, anything really, could alleviate the bad feelings. Temporarily, anyway.
"So it may not even be true." She thought. "And in Draco-speak, wanting to get to know me is basically his way of saying he doesn't find me physically attractive at all."
But that was okay.
Hermione took out the list she'd brought up with her and added one more thing she knew.
"Draco Malfoy is worth a shot."
Hermione put her quill down, unable to stop smiling. Why in God's name was this making her so giddy?
Hermione leaned back and rested against the Tower wall. After a while, she closed her eyes; something had made the moonlight shining in drastically, but certainly not unbearably, brighter.
~
Ahh, good times abound.
Thanks to everyone for helping me to be my review record!
*Jenie, Alanna Roseguard, IvoryClover0, Laurie, Anne, silver darkness, Femme Fatale, Coffee, Muffy, lolo, Sila-chan, christine, bumblebee, mimi, Sucker For Romance, Sakura1287, sAi, goldenstar555, fang, TheBlindAssassin, Glossy, Anita Blake, Calypso in Love, Maura, *beth*, MangaPixie, Silent Sirena, krista, jepa, LadyJenn, Key, & Archangela.*
All you guys are so awesome! The feedback has been amazing.