The Rape of the Lock
Chapter Ten: Gotcha
This story's rated 'R' because it's the only letter that Harry, Ron, and Hermione have in common. (Draco too!) Also for sex, violence, and language (which strangely enough don't have any 'r's).
____________________________________________________________
Although it was all that everyone was waiting for, when Monday came nobody was prepared.
Hermione, for the first time in a week, went down to breakfast with everyone else. Ron, Harry, and Ginny felt like their guts itched and they weren't allowed to scratch. No matter how much they knew that what they were doing was for Hermione's good, if she found out she would murder them.
Mindy sat next to Draco. He had been in a good mood lately, better and better as Monday came closer. The night before he had given her another present, slipped it under the door to her dormitory so that all the other girls would see. A little silver box with a green bow, almost too pretty to open. But the squealing dorm-mates looked over her shoulder and were so pointedly curious that she opened it immediately, and looked upon the bracelet inside with shock.
It was his. A dragon wrapped into a circle. She'd seen him wear it before; he'd said it was from his father when he was small. What did that mean? Trying to delay saying anything to the little crowd of girls gathered around her bed, she turned it over in her hands. 'To my little dragon,' it was engraved. The note inside the box was short. "It doesn't fit me anymore. Thought you might fancy it. --D.M."
She put it on, and it kept sliding up her arm until well past her elbow. This must have been how he'd worn it as a child.
"It's so pretty," April whispered, in awe.
Mindy turned it around on her arm, still silent.
"I don't think it's all that great," Moira said haughtily. "It looks old."
Kayla sidled next to Moira for a better view. "You're just jealous. That was his, wasn't it, Mindy?"
Mindy nodded.
"See?" Kayla looked proud of herself. "He really likes you."
"What's he like, when you're alone?" April was Mindy's disciple. She worshipped Draco. But that didn't make her different from any other girl in Slytherin.
Mindy wanted to laugh morosely, and say, 'hard.' She wanted to tell April and Kayla and Moira that he liked it rough and didn't give a shit about what she liked. That his parents and his attitudes had trained him into a life where he had no idea how to love, and that he was passing it on to her.
"Different," she finally said. It wasn't exactly a lie. She slipped out to go see him, to prove to him that she deserved his castoffs.
But after she stripped down to her skivvies and he sat on the side of the bed, he stopped her from even undoing his tie.
"Let's talk, Min."
She was stunned, positive that he was about to let her go permanently. But 'Min' was something new and unusual. He barely ever called her by her real name, let alone a pet name.
"All right." She settled down and stretched out on the bed with her head in his lap. It was almost subconscious, but maybe if she looked this submissive, displayed his favorite parts, he would reconsider.
To her amazement, he was almost smiling down at her. "Look at you," he teased. "All dressed up and no place to go." He touched the dragon bracelet. "It looks good on you."
She grinned at him weakly, still unsure of the direction this was going. "I like it. It reminds me of you."
"It's meant to. It was mine. But I'm not anyone's 'little' dragon anymore."
They both smirked at the impropriety of the statement. "I suppose not." She stared up at the ceiling, a whirling mass of mythology with sparkling dragons cutting swaths through the imaginary sky. "I wish I were a dragon."
"But you are." He trailed a hand down her arm from her shoulder, finally grabbing hold of her wrist possessively. "You're mine."
He'd never spoken that way before. Mindy didn't know how to react, where to go. It felt so nice to hear the words that she didn't want to think about where they came from or what they meant. Being Draco Malfoy's little dragon was certainly better than being Mindy Kilbourne out on the street, and she just wanted to revel in it.
She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed the inside of his wrist as he beamed down at her.
------------------------------------------------------------
And Monday morning at breakfast, she refused to catch Ron Weasley's eye as he searched for hers across both their tables. The bracelet around her arm felt good, like having Draco's hand on her back all the time. The hand that had apparently beaten that Gryffindor seventh year into unconsciousness. But she was his.
Gods, she was gorgeous. And four years younger than he was. Ron stopped trying to get her attention and focused back on his friends. "You guys looking forward to the Cogito tonight?"
When there wasn't an answer, he glanced at Harry, who was staring across the table at Ginny, who was returning his gaze. "Oh, for the love of--"
"Come on, Ron, let them enjoy it," Hermione chided him.
"It's hard, you know. She's my sister, so I have to hate her boyfriends. But he's Harry."
Hermione laughed. Then her face went blank for a moment. "Do you think Draco's kind of handsome?" She immediately put her hand over her mouth in surprise.
Ron dropped his fork. "What? How the hell should I know?" He was probably a little louder than he meant to be, as people were turning in their seats to see if something good was going on.
"I didn't mean to say that," Hermione said quietly, "I--" she fell silent.
It was too bad that Ron had stopped scanning the Slytherin table, because he would have noticed Malfoy staring directly at Hermione with a satisfied expression.
"Did you hear what she just said?" Ron asked Harry.
"What?"
"Never mind. You two would make the sop Olympics, really."
"Jealous?" Hermione's lips curled into an evil grin.
"No. You?" He matched her expression. They held serious faces for about a microsecond before breaking down into laughs. Ron was relieved that she was acting so normally. "Augh, Harry, that's not Ginny's foot."
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Harry suggested that he and Hermione go to the contest early, so that she wouldn't notice when Ginny didn't attend. "It's History tonight," Harry said, hoping to get Hermione talking.
"Yeah," she said airily. Her mind was entirely on the contest, on what would happen, what would come out of her mouth standing in front of the entire school. Malfoy was too smart to give it away, but apparently he wanted to win this contest enough to kill. There was nothing doing. If he was willing to kill, she should at least be about to embarrass herself. She took a deep breath, preparing to do something so uncharacteristic as to admit her mistakes. "Harry, I-- something's happened." She paused, waiting for him to prompt her on, to approve of her.
Harry, who had been staring at his lap, kept his slouch but turned his head up to her. "What?"
"Malfoy . . ." suddenly she couldn't speak. She scanned the room and saw the blonde bastard walking toward the stage staring straight at her.
"What, Hermione? Please."
"Nothing."
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Draco narrowed his eyes at Granger. He wasn't doing his job if she felt comfortable confessing all her sins to Potter. Trying to run a hand through his hair, he remembered he was holding hands with Mindy.
It was the flip side of the power. He could devastate all those girls, leave piles of rubble in his wake and stride on to the next stop. But he could elevate, too. Build things. He had felt her slipping away. She was the smartest he'd ever . . . And maybe she was figuring it out. That she could be the first to leave him in the rubble. So he had to keep her, to bind her, lock her into his life. Now she would not leave. And that was kind of exciting as well.
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Sitting in the audience alone, Ron could concentrate on what was going on onstage. Hermione kept glancing over at Malfoy nervously, but the villain was preoccupied with Mindy. He wished he could figure all this out. 'Lay down one head forever from the pride . . .' What Harry had told him about the poem kept running through his head. When he wasn't entangled with all his friends, caught in between Ginny and Harry, Hermione and himself, it all became clear. Pour veritaserum down Hermione's throat and shake her until she talked. Do something dark and painful to Malfoy. Save Mindy from Slytherin. But it became so much more complicated in the real world. Malfoy held all the cards: the queen of diamonds and the queen of hearts. Ron was left bluffing with the Jack of shit while his best friend was under the table boffing his sister.
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Ginny sat on a stool in the potions laboratory waiting for the boys to figure out what the hell was in the vials.
A bespectacled blonde boy leaned on the counter with his sleeves rolled up, making charts on a piece of parchment. "I've never seen anything like this. Where'd you get this?"
"Does it matter?"
The fourth year Ravenclaw kept making notes. "I suppose not."
"These two test positive for everything in the two parts of Amicus Juice," the older boy said, frustrated. But they're red and purple. They're supposed to be yellow and green."
"Well, what could make them change color, then?"
"That's what we're working on." He sighed. "It seems like raspberry leaf tea."
Ginny squinted at them. "You're joking."
"No." the fourth year kept scribbling on the parchment.
The little scratching noises were grating on Ginny's nerves. "Will you stop that and figure out what the hell they are already?"
"This blue one's healing potion and coagulant, simple enough."
"Okay," Ginny said. That made some amount of sense. "But what does tea have to do with anything?"
"It's kind of . . . An unusual theory, but . . . There are things you can do to tea. Just some incantations."
"To do what?"
"Tea is a powerful tool. The muggles stole it from the ancient witches and wizards and had no idea what they were doing. Even our kind has almost forgotten everything it's capable of."
"Yes, yes, get on with it."
"Well, you know how you read tea leaves? It works because it soaks up your thoughts. It transmits what's intrinsically you, it's like a conductor for your thoughts, which, taken to their ultimate conclusions, are your future. So, in theory, you can use the tea backwards."
"Backwards?"
"Instead of projecting your thoughts into the tea, you can transmit into someone else's mind."
"Telepathy," Ginny whispered, remembering the books in Malfoy's study.
"Exactly. It's never been done like this, though. Combined with Amicus Juice, this could very possibly be telepathic suggestion."
"So it is possible."
The boy shrugged. "Someone's tried, at least." But he was talking to thin air as Ginny disappeared through the door.
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The contest had ended. Mindy had scored another ten points, but this time Draco had just hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head. He must have been distracted by his own success, two points ahead of Granger.
"I'll see you later." He grabbed her upper arm, checking for the bracelet.
She looked down at his hand demurely. "All right."
He sat back down and she slipped behind the curtain.
"Mindy!" a flushed Ginny whispered, walking up to her. "You'll never believe what he's doing!"
"You'd be surprised."
"We found these potions in his bedroom, and long story short, I think he's been controlling Hermione telepathically."
"Wow, really?" Mindy asked, feeling in her pocket.
"It's what --" Ginny was cut off when Mindy grabbed her, pinched her nose shut, and poured something red in her mouth that tasted vaguely of raspberries. She couldn't scream. If she wanted to breathe, she had to swallow. "Why'd you do that? Did he get you, too?"
Mindy let go of the little red-haired girl and crossed her arms, feeling the little metal dragon underneath her shirt. Ginny ran back through the curtain, unknowingly right into Draco's eye line. Mindy grinned.
"He got me," she said to herself.
__________________________________________________________
Author's note: The end is in sight! Mwahahahahaha! (Sorry Jessie, think you've already read this far) But to everyone, new chapter by tomorrah!
Love, Hale Comet (we rock 'em and we sock 'em and we don't stop rockin the beat)
Chapter Ten: Gotcha
This story's rated 'R' because it's the only letter that Harry, Ron, and Hermione have in common. (Draco too!) Also for sex, violence, and language (which strangely enough don't have any 'r's).
____________________________________________________________
Although it was all that everyone was waiting for, when Monday came nobody was prepared.
Hermione, for the first time in a week, went down to breakfast with everyone else. Ron, Harry, and Ginny felt like their guts itched and they weren't allowed to scratch. No matter how much they knew that what they were doing was for Hermione's good, if she found out she would murder them.
Mindy sat next to Draco. He had been in a good mood lately, better and better as Monday came closer. The night before he had given her another present, slipped it under the door to her dormitory so that all the other girls would see. A little silver box with a green bow, almost too pretty to open. But the squealing dorm-mates looked over her shoulder and were so pointedly curious that she opened it immediately, and looked upon the bracelet inside with shock.
It was his. A dragon wrapped into a circle. She'd seen him wear it before; he'd said it was from his father when he was small. What did that mean? Trying to delay saying anything to the little crowd of girls gathered around her bed, she turned it over in her hands. 'To my little dragon,' it was engraved. The note inside the box was short. "It doesn't fit me anymore. Thought you might fancy it. --D.M."
She put it on, and it kept sliding up her arm until well past her elbow. This must have been how he'd worn it as a child.
"It's so pretty," April whispered, in awe.
Mindy turned it around on her arm, still silent.
"I don't think it's all that great," Moira said haughtily. "It looks old."
Kayla sidled next to Moira for a better view. "You're just jealous. That was his, wasn't it, Mindy?"
Mindy nodded.
"See?" Kayla looked proud of herself. "He really likes you."
"What's he like, when you're alone?" April was Mindy's disciple. She worshipped Draco. But that didn't make her different from any other girl in Slytherin.
Mindy wanted to laugh morosely, and say, 'hard.' She wanted to tell April and Kayla and Moira that he liked it rough and didn't give a shit about what she liked. That his parents and his attitudes had trained him into a life where he had no idea how to love, and that he was passing it on to her.
"Different," she finally said. It wasn't exactly a lie. She slipped out to go see him, to prove to him that she deserved his castoffs.
But after she stripped down to her skivvies and he sat on the side of the bed, he stopped her from even undoing his tie.
"Let's talk, Min."
She was stunned, positive that he was about to let her go permanently. But 'Min' was something new and unusual. He barely ever called her by her real name, let alone a pet name.
"All right." She settled down and stretched out on the bed with her head in his lap. It was almost subconscious, but maybe if she looked this submissive, displayed his favorite parts, he would reconsider.
To her amazement, he was almost smiling down at her. "Look at you," he teased. "All dressed up and no place to go." He touched the dragon bracelet. "It looks good on you."
She grinned at him weakly, still unsure of the direction this was going. "I like it. It reminds me of you."
"It's meant to. It was mine. But I'm not anyone's 'little' dragon anymore."
They both smirked at the impropriety of the statement. "I suppose not." She stared up at the ceiling, a whirling mass of mythology with sparkling dragons cutting swaths through the imaginary sky. "I wish I were a dragon."
"But you are." He trailed a hand down her arm from her shoulder, finally grabbing hold of her wrist possessively. "You're mine."
He'd never spoken that way before. Mindy didn't know how to react, where to go. It felt so nice to hear the words that she didn't want to think about where they came from or what they meant. Being Draco Malfoy's little dragon was certainly better than being Mindy Kilbourne out on the street, and she just wanted to revel in it.
She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed the inside of his wrist as he beamed down at her.
------------------------------------------------------------
And Monday morning at breakfast, she refused to catch Ron Weasley's eye as he searched for hers across both their tables. The bracelet around her arm felt good, like having Draco's hand on her back all the time. The hand that had apparently beaten that Gryffindor seventh year into unconsciousness. But she was his.
Gods, she was gorgeous. And four years younger than he was. Ron stopped trying to get her attention and focused back on his friends. "You guys looking forward to the Cogito tonight?"
When there wasn't an answer, he glanced at Harry, who was staring across the table at Ginny, who was returning his gaze. "Oh, for the love of--"
"Come on, Ron, let them enjoy it," Hermione chided him.
"It's hard, you know. She's my sister, so I have to hate her boyfriends. But he's Harry."
Hermione laughed. Then her face went blank for a moment. "Do you think Draco's kind of handsome?" She immediately put her hand over her mouth in surprise.
Ron dropped his fork. "What? How the hell should I know?" He was probably a little louder than he meant to be, as people were turning in their seats to see if something good was going on.
"I didn't mean to say that," Hermione said quietly, "I--" she fell silent.
It was too bad that Ron had stopped scanning the Slytherin table, because he would have noticed Malfoy staring directly at Hermione with a satisfied expression.
"Did you hear what she just said?" Ron asked Harry.
"What?"
"Never mind. You two would make the sop Olympics, really."
"Jealous?" Hermione's lips curled into an evil grin.
"No. You?" He matched her expression. They held serious faces for about a microsecond before breaking down into laughs. Ron was relieved that she was acting so normally. "Augh, Harry, that's not Ginny's foot."
--------------------------------------------------------
Harry suggested that he and Hermione go to the contest early, so that she wouldn't notice when Ginny didn't attend. "It's History tonight," Harry said, hoping to get Hermione talking.
"Yeah," she said airily. Her mind was entirely on the contest, on what would happen, what would come out of her mouth standing in front of the entire school. Malfoy was too smart to give it away, but apparently he wanted to win this contest enough to kill. There was nothing doing. If he was willing to kill, she should at least be about to embarrass herself. She took a deep breath, preparing to do something so uncharacteristic as to admit her mistakes. "Harry, I-- something's happened." She paused, waiting for him to prompt her on, to approve of her.
Harry, who had been staring at his lap, kept his slouch but turned his head up to her. "What?"
"Malfoy . . ." suddenly she couldn't speak. She scanned the room and saw the blonde bastard walking toward the stage staring straight at her.
"What, Hermione? Please."
"Nothing."
--------------------------------------------------------
Draco narrowed his eyes at Granger. He wasn't doing his job if she felt comfortable confessing all her sins to Potter. Trying to run a hand through his hair, he remembered he was holding hands with Mindy.
It was the flip side of the power. He could devastate all those girls, leave piles of rubble in his wake and stride on to the next stop. But he could elevate, too. Build things. He had felt her slipping away. She was the smartest he'd ever . . . And maybe she was figuring it out. That she could be the first to leave him in the rubble. So he had to keep her, to bind her, lock her into his life. Now she would not leave. And that was kind of exciting as well.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sitting in the audience alone, Ron could concentrate on what was going on onstage. Hermione kept glancing over at Malfoy nervously, but the villain was preoccupied with Mindy. He wished he could figure all this out. 'Lay down one head forever from the pride . . .' What Harry had told him about the poem kept running through his head. When he wasn't entangled with all his friends, caught in between Ginny and Harry, Hermione and himself, it all became clear. Pour veritaserum down Hermione's throat and shake her until she talked. Do something dark and painful to Malfoy. Save Mindy from Slytherin. But it became so much more complicated in the real world. Malfoy held all the cards: the queen of diamonds and the queen of hearts. Ron was left bluffing with the Jack of shit while his best friend was under the table boffing his sister.
--------------------------------------------------------
Ginny sat on a stool in the potions laboratory waiting for the boys to figure out what the hell was in the vials.
A bespectacled blonde boy leaned on the counter with his sleeves rolled up, making charts on a piece of parchment. "I've never seen anything like this. Where'd you get this?"
"Does it matter?"
The fourth year Ravenclaw kept making notes. "I suppose not."
"These two test positive for everything in the two parts of Amicus Juice," the older boy said, frustrated. But they're red and purple. They're supposed to be yellow and green."
"Well, what could make them change color, then?"
"That's what we're working on." He sighed. "It seems like raspberry leaf tea."
Ginny squinted at them. "You're joking."
"No." the fourth year kept scribbling on the parchment.
The little scratching noises were grating on Ginny's nerves. "Will you stop that and figure out what the hell they are already?"
"This blue one's healing potion and coagulant, simple enough."
"Okay," Ginny said. That made some amount of sense. "But what does tea have to do with anything?"
"It's kind of . . . An unusual theory, but . . . There are things you can do to tea. Just some incantations."
"To do what?"
"Tea is a powerful tool. The muggles stole it from the ancient witches and wizards and had no idea what they were doing. Even our kind has almost forgotten everything it's capable of."
"Yes, yes, get on with it."
"Well, you know how you read tea leaves? It works because it soaks up your thoughts. It transmits what's intrinsically you, it's like a conductor for your thoughts, which, taken to their ultimate conclusions, are your future. So, in theory, you can use the tea backwards."
"Backwards?"
"Instead of projecting your thoughts into the tea, you can transmit into someone else's mind."
"Telepathy," Ginny whispered, remembering the books in Malfoy's study.
"Exactly. It's never been done like this, though. Combined with Amicus Juice, this could very possibly be telepathic suggestion."
"So it is possible."
The boy shrugged. "Someone's tried, at least." But he was talking to thin air as Ginny disappeared through the door.
----------------------------------------------------------
The contest had ended. Mindy had scored another ten points, but this time Draco had just hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head. He must have been distracted by his own success, two points ahead of Granger.
"I'll see you later." He grabbed her upper arm, checking for the bracelet.
She looked down at his hand demurely. "All right."
He sat back down and she slipped behind the curtain.
"Mindy!" a flushed Ginny whispered, walking up to her. "You'll never believe what he's doing!"
"You'd be surprised."
"We found these potions in his bedroom, and long story short, I think he's been controlling Hermione telepathically."
"Wow, really?" Mindy asked, feeling in her pocket.
"It's what --" Ginny was cut off when Mindy grabbed her, pinched her nose shut, and poured something red in her mouth that tasted vaguely of raspberries. She couldn't scream. If she wanted to breathe, she had to swallow. "Why'd you do that? Did he get you, too?"
Mindy let go of the little red-haired girl and crossed her arms, feeling the little metal dragon underneath her shirt. Ginny ran back through the curtain, unknowingly right into Draco's eye line. Mindy grinned.
"He got me," she said to herself.
__________________________________________________________
Author's note: The end is in sight! Mwahahahahaha! (Sorry Jessie, think you've already read this far) But to everyone, new chapter by tomorrah!
Love, Hale Comet (we rock 'em and we sock 'em and we don't stop rockin the beat)
