Disclaimer: You know the drill. I own nothing but the plot, so don't Spork me.
A/N: I shall not give away parts of my plot! You will just have to see. ::wink:: Thanks for reviewing my lovelies!
A Duel and the Dreaded Missive
The next morning Draco Malfoy awoke to a shaft of sunlight streaming through the folds of his dark green bed hangings. "Damn sunlight," he muttered to himself as he shuffled over to the window. He threw open the window and was met with a beautiful Sunday scene: blue skies, birds chirping, and a pleasant breeze blowing through the trees. However Draco Malfoy only thought, "Stupid nature. It's sickens me!" He turned away from the window in disgust. He walked to his nightstand.
"Hello, Gill," Malfoy said to his pet goldfish. "How are we today? A goo goo boo boo?" The grey-eyed Slytherin continued to make cooing noises, unbeknownst to him that one of his housemates, Blaise Zabini, was standing in the doorway watching the whole scene. "You are a walking paradox, Draco Malfoy."
The blonde boy tensed, and then slowly turned to face the tall boy. "Hello, Blaise. I was just—erm…"
"Hey," the other boy said, holding up his hands. "I didn't ask." And with that he walked away.
"I must be more careful. I wouldn't want people to think I actually care about something." Draco thought to himself as he looked in the full-length mirror. Then he added out loud to his reflection, "Okay, Malfoy. You are a vicious beast, with a stone heart. You care about no one and nothing other than yourself. And Gill of course. Now give me a flex. Erg!" When the Slytherin King had finished admiring his many muscles, courtesy of Seeker training, he got a shower and then headed to the Great Hall for breakfast.
4.4.4.4
"No!" Hermione whined as she was rudely awoken by Lavender Brown the next morning. "I don't want to go!"
"Hermione," Lavender interjected. "You have to get up. I will not allow you to sit up here and hide from Draco Malfoy all your life. Now UP!" With these last words, Lavender tugged at Hermione's feet as hard as she could. However, at that exact moment, the brown-eyed girl held onto her bedpost with all her might. "I REFUSE!" she screamed.
"FINE!" Lavender screamed back. Then she added in a low tone, "I'll just have to resort to using the bucket on you." Hermione, knowing perfectly well that the bucket was a method of waking up that involved ice cold water being poured all over you. "Okay, okay. I'm up," the girl said as she admitted defeat.
"Great!" the slightly taller girl said. "Now come here." Lavender dragged the brunette over to the full-length mirror and said, "Repeat after me. I, Hermione Jane Granger, am a strong, independent woman. I do not need to cower before Draco Malfoy, because he is just a silly boy with a wand."
Hermione rolled her eyes, but nevertheless she repeated the mantra in monotone. "There, happy now?" she asked. Lavender simply looked at her with eyes full of what seemed to be pity. "The question is, my dear, are you happy?"
"Lavender, it's really too early for reverse psychology right now," the girl said as she pulled her hair up into its usual bun. "I need coffee," and with that she walked out of the room.
"Hermione!" the latter girl called as she walked out too. "One must not run from their problems!"
The brown-eyed Gryffindor grumbled and retorted with, "I'm not running! I am most certainly walking!" With that, she strode out of the portrait hole and to the Great Hall.
4.4.4.4
"Hello, love," Ron gallantly greeted Hermione on bended knee as he kissed her hand. The latter, smiling, shook her head and said, "You're such a dork."
The redhead replied with, "Yes, but you like it." He then presented the girl with one of his lopsided grins.
"This is true," she voiced. Hermione couldn't help but notice that her boyfriend looked incredibly adorable with his red hair still tousled from bed. At that moment, the object of the brunette's affection immediately began devouring everything in sight. "Ok maybe not so adorable anymore," Hermione thought. "Nothing changes."
"S' 'Ermione, d'you fink you can 'elp me wiff ermwork 'onighit?" Ron said thorough a full mouth. Hermione looked utterly confused and said, "Come again?"
The redhead swallowed with some difficulty and repeated, "Do you think you can help me with homework tonight? Please?"
"Oh, all right," the girl acquiesced. "How about around eight thirty? I have to see Malfoy for our project at seven, unfortunately." At these last words, Ron began muttering to himself and buttering his toast a little too violently. Hermione decided to cut in before he ended up hurting himself. "Ron, I'll be fine.Malfoy doesn't scare me, and nothing's going to happen."
"Fine," the tall boy muttered. "But if you're not back by eight thirty, then I'm coming to look for you." Hermione simply nodded, took one last sip of her coffee, gave Ron a chaste kiss on the cheek, and headed out of the big doors. She was in such a rush that she didn't even see that a certain Ravenclaw sat a few tables away and had been observing the whole scene from behind green eyes. The brunette wasn't the only one who thought Ron looked cute that morning.
4.4.4.4
The rest of the day passed rather slowly, and without incident. As it was Sunday and the students were free from classes, almost everyone endeavored to take advantage of the sunshine and ventured outside. Harry, Ron and Ginny took this opportunity to get some quality flying time. Hermione decided to go down to the pitch too, although she spent her time rereading Hogwarts, A History. When the sky started to darken, the foursome begrudgingly headed back to the castle.
At six forty-five, Hermione got up from her comfortable spot in an armchair by the fire and the pleasant conversation she was having with Harry and Ron, and went upstairs to get Betty from under her bed. Upon her return, she said, "I have to go meet ferret boy now, I'll see you guys later," said the brown-eyed prefect with a sigh.
"Don't forget about tonight, Hermione." Ron said, looking as though he would rather Hermione be going anywhere but where she was. "I won't," she replied with a smile that said, Don't worry about me. With that she left the common room and headed to the Charms classroom, ready for anything. Well, or so she thought.
4.4.4.4
"Hey, Granger," Malfoy said as he strode into the classroom. "So, shall we start? Oh, and the same rules apply as last time."
"Well, it's a slight improvement I suppose," Hermione thought as she looked at Malfoy. "Yes, we can start with simply taking some notes tonight. You know, studying behavior, taking her weight and maybe we can even see how many babies she'll be having." She said out loud.
Malfoy looked slightly surprised and voiced this by saying, "You can tell how many are in there?"
"Sure, I've read all about it," Hermione replied. "You just feel her stomach and basically try to count the little lumps."
The grey-eyed boy seemed a bit disturbed by this, but said "Interesting," nonetheless. The two sixth-years worked in an almost comfortable silence for the next hour, the only noise being Hermione voicing measurements, weights and other behavior habits to Malfoy, who would write them down.
Towards the end of the hour, Hermione looked up excitedly and said, "I can't be sure, but I think Betty is going to have seven babies!" Her chocolate eyes met Draco's grey eyes for a fraction of a second, until she looked down again. "I can't believe we survived this whole time acting positively civilly to each other! Maybe Malfoy's changed?"
"Why is she so excited?" Draco thought to himself. "Seven kids, sounds absolutely dreadful to me. Oh, no! I haven't made a snide remark yet tonight. I better do that now." Out loud, Malfoy said, "Now I know what the Weasleys must feel like. It's too bad they aren't animals though, then they wouldn't know the difference about being poor. Although, some could argue that the Weasleys are animals, Merlin knows they act like it."
"Maybe not," Hermione thought bitterly before the rounded on the blonde boy. She pulled out her wand and strode right up to him. She got so close to his face that Malfoy could have counted the freckles on her face, had he not been so scared (and trying hard not to admit it to himself.)
"I'm sick of this Malfoy," the brunette said in a low voice, her eyes that had previously been warm were now cold as ice. "We are going to finish this. Stay here, I'll be right back." Whatever Malfoy had been expecting her to say, this most certainly wasn't it. He watched dumbfounded as she stalked out of the room.
When Hermione returned, she was carrying something in her hand. But before Malfoy could figure out what it was, she threw it at his feet. He looked at it, then at her, then at it again. Then he looked around the room, as if utterly confused. Finally, he said, "What the hell just happened?"
"I threw a gauntlet at your feet," the girl said matter-of-factly.
"Yes," Malfoy replied slowly. "I can see that. You know that's defacing school property."
Hermione suddenly looked timid and replied, "Oh, well, yeah, I know. I'll put it back though…" Then she seemed to realize what she was saying because she burst out, "But that's not the point, Malfoy!"
"And what, pray tell, is the point?"
"The point is that I'm tired of you. We're going to settle this in a way I'm sure you can understand. We are going to duel."
The boy regarded her for a moment from behind stormy eyes. Finally he said, "Are you joking? You want to duel—with me?"
"Yes," Hermione said. Then she added in a pouty voice, "Are ya scared?"
"Me, scared of what? Certainly not a Mudblood with a piece of wood." Draco sneered.
"Shall we begin then?" Hermione said, but before he could answer, both teens pointed their wands at each other and screamed, "Stupefy!" The effect was rather interesting; both spells hit midair and then ricocheted off towards opposite walls.
Draco recovered quickly and yelled, "Petrificus Totalus!"
But it seemed that Hermione refused to be beat this time. She screamed, "Protego!" and the spell simply bounced off of her. Then, before Draco could get a word in otherwise, the brunette shouted, "Reducto!" This spell sent Malfoy flying into the back wall, and then slumped to the floor, where he now lay unconscious and not breathing.
"Yay! I won!" Hermione thought. "But crap, now what?" The brunette was so caught up in thinking about what to do and, respectively, freaking out just a bit, that she didn't notice that someone else had joined them in the room. When they spoke, the prefect jumped.
"'Mione?" Ron said as he came in. "Is anything wrong? I mean I told you I'd come looking for you if you weren't…" the redhead suddenly stopped, however, upon seeing Malfoy crumpled on the floor. "Bloody hell, what did you do to him?"
"Oh, well, I just couldn't stand him anymore. So I challenged him to a duel…it sounded like a good idea at the time," Hermione replied timidly.
Ron looked shocked for a second then said, "You challenged him…to a duel…" He considered this then started laughing. "That's brilliant! He finally got what he deserved! Come on, let's go."
"But Ron," the brown-eyed girl interjected. "We can't just leave him here. I mean, he's not even breathing! What if someone finds him? He could say it was my entire fault and then I'll get in a lot of trouble!"
The latter seemed to be thinking about the situation. "Well, we could take him to Madam Pomfrey. She'd know what to do with him," he said finally.
"No! We can't. She'll want to know what happened to him. Ron, dueling is against the rules. I could lose my prefect badge!" Hermione was getting close to borderline hysteria. But after a few moments, her eyes cleared and she started muttering to herself. "Yes…it could work…though it would be rather disgusting, to say the least…but what other choice do I have?"
Ron rolled his eyes. "Hermione, you know I hate it when you do that. What are you talking about?"
The girl went about wringing her hands, and then said, "Well, I once took a Muggle class on resuscitation methods. I could use CPR on him…"
Ron was must've seemed bewildered, because Hermione clarified, "Well, it's when you get someone to start breathing again through mouth to mouth…"
The redhead didn't need to full understand this to know that his girlfriend's lips were going to be on ferret-boy. "Hermione, no! There's no way! Just leave him."
"I don't like the idea of this either, and you know I can't leave him. I'd rather just get it over with."
The two didn't notice that the blonde boy was now stirring in his corner. Malfoy managed to hear the last few exchanges in their conversation—enough to know what Hermione was planning on doing. "Ew! I have to get up before she even comes close enough to do that to me," Malfoy thought. "On the other hand…could this be an opportunity for my revenge? Sure, it would require a great sacrifice on my part, but I could piss off the Mudblood and the Weasel in one fell swoop. Here she comes, ok play unconscious."
Hermione walked over to where Malfoy lay and muttered, "Here goes nothing." She leaned down, pinched the boy's nose, and opened his mouth. Cringing, the girl took a deep breath, closed her mouth over Malfoy's, and breathed. Quickly, she pulled away and listened for any signs of him breathing on his own. There were none, so she took yet another deep breath, and put her mouth to his. "Now," Malfoy thought. At that moment, the Slytherin wrapped his hand around the girl's neck and pulled her into a very rough kiss. ("This magic moment…." Wait, wrong story.) Hermione seemed too shocked to do anything for a fraction of a second, but she finally pushed the boy away, and then slapped him across the face, much like she had in third year.
"You dirty—you filthy! ACK!" With these few fragments, Hermione ran out of the room, spitting and scraping at her tongue. "I'M DYING! I'VE BEEN POISONED!" She irrationally thought as she wove her way through the corridors.
Ron, left behind, was, needless-to-say, fuming. He whipped out his wand and pointed it at Malfoy's throat. "I told you I would kill you if you tried anything!" The redhead was about to curse Malfoy into oblivion, when he heard a teacher approaching. Ron narrowed his eyes and said "This time you got lucky. Stay away from my girlfriend, Malfoy." With this, he picked up Betty and ran out after Hermione.
Draco, still on the floor, was tracing over the red mark on his face from the slap. "That was worth it, just for the look on Weasel's face," he thought. Finally he got up, brushed off his robes, and strode out of the room, licking his bottom lip and thinking, "Hmm. Vanilla-y."
4.4.4.4
As soon as Hermione got back to the Gryffindor common room, she ran up to her dormitory before anyone could ask questions. Once she got there, she grabbed her shower bag and then ran to the prefect's bathroom. She took a long shower, trying to wash away the dirty feeling that clung to her skin. "Ew. I have been DEFILED by a git!" She thought as she scrubbed herself raw. After her shower, Hermione went to brush her teeth. Following this, she gargled water and then spit. She repeated this again—brush, gargle, spit. The brunette commenced to do this for twenty more times.
When Hermione returned to her dorm that night, all of her thoughts kept leading back to Draco Malfoy and, respectfully, how much she hated him. At one point, Ginny came in to hear firsthand what happened. When Hermione finished her account, the redhead looked repulsed for a moment, but then her face broke into a sly smile. "So, how was it?" she asked.
Hermione looked up and said, "Pardon?"
"The kiss. How was it?" Ginny repeated.
"Ginny! Ugh! I don't want to even think about it!" the brunette shouted as she covered her face.
"Hey," Ginny said with her hands up. "Sure, the guy is a git, and slimy, and pure evil. But he's hot. I'd kiss him any day." Then she flounced out of the room, leaving behind a stunned Hermione.
4.4.4.4
For the next week, Hermione Granger returned to her routine of avoiding Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin King, the Son of a Death Eater, the Prince of Evil, the—ok, moving on. So she avoided him at all costs, not wanting to even risk a glance in his direction. As such, the next week passed without much incident, until that one day in the common room, when Hermione's whole world was turned upside down.
The prefect had just settled in to get around to reading her copy of the Daily Prophet from that morning, when a barn owl came in though the nearest tower window and swooped in front her, dropping a letter at her feet. Curious, she opened the letter and read:
Hermione,
This is very hard for us to tell you, but Nana passed away last night in her sleep. I know how close you were to her, so this must be coming as quite a shock to you—it certainly came as one to us. Apparently Nana was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer, but she didn't have the heart to tell any of us. We're sorry you have to find out like this, but we didn't know of any faster means to reach you. The funeral will be in two days, so we'll have Professor Dumbledore send you here via Floo Powder. Until then, please try to be strong.
With boundless love,
Mum and Dad
The prefect sat there stunned. She reread the letter again and then once more. "Nana, dead? But, no. It can't be," she thought to herself as she stared yet again at the piece of paper clutched in her hand. Then suddenly, the common room felt too suffocating, so she ran out of the portrait hole and to the astronomy tower. Once there, Hermione collapsed and started crying uncontrollably. Finally, when the stars came out and the brunettes sobs subsided, she got up and made her way slowly back to the common room. Upon arriving, she had an incredible need to see Ron, so she ran up to the boys' dormitories.
"Ron," she called as she reached the door. "Nana just d…" Hermione, however, was cut short upon seeing the redhead. He was in a current state of shirtless-ness and doing pull-ups from his bed frame. "Oh…look at those abs! He's so hot…" Hermione thought as she stared at him. "Wait, Nana? DIED! Stop thinking about his body!"
"Ron," she started again, a fresh wave of tears reforming. "My Nana just died! I don't know what to do!" Ron looked at her for a moment and then crossed the room in three easy strides and swept her into one of his bear hugs. "I'm so sorry, 'Mione," he whispered in her ear. They stayed that way for a while, until Ron said, "You should be getting back to your room," and started to pull away.
"No," Hermione said, feeling safe in his strong arms. "Ron, I just don't want to be alone tonight," she stated timidly. "Can I stay here with you?"
"Sure. Of course," the latter said as he pulled her towards his bed. Ron climbed in and then Hermione snuggled next to him. Almost immediately, the girl fell asleep with her boyfriend's arms around her.
The next morning Hermione awoke to Seamus Finnigan's voice that was saying, "Ron, get up!" as he pulled back the curtains to Ron's four-poster. Upon seeing him, the brunette blushed fiercely, gave a little squeak, and ran out of the room.
Seamus then gave Ron a knowing look. Quickly, the redhead stated, "Nothing happened! She was just upset that her Nana died."
"Right," Seamus replied. "If nothing happened, then Millicent Bulstrode's a pixie."
"Well, I suppose we'll just have to call her Tinkerbell then!" Seamus simply looked utterly confused at this retort so Ron clarified, "Oh, it's from this Muggle film. It's Hermione's favorite movie and she made me watch it with her…" At this, Seamus just shook his head and walked out of the room, but not before Ron threatened him by death if he spread around the wrong idea.
4.4.4.4
That day Hermione was excused from all of her classes, and for once she took her teachers up on that offer. She was so emotionally drained that she stayed in her room and slept for most of the day. Occasionally, someone would come in and check on her, usually Ginny, and every time she would say that she was fine and only a bit tired.
As Hermione lay there that night, she looked out of her window and saw that it was a full moon outside. She had a brief thought of Remus Lupin, but then thought of her Nana again. Suddenly, she had a crazy idea. "Why not?" she thought to herself as she got up and threw on her cloak. She silently made her way through the sleeping girls, trying not to wake anyone of them up. Hermione ran to the common room and out of the portrait hole as quietly as she could. Once outside, she ran to the front doors and slipped out into the moonlight. Unbeknownst to her, she had been watched.
4.4.4.4
Draco Malfoy had been out for one of his regular midnight strolls when he saw someone moving in the shadows. Deciding that it would be fun to catch a student out of bed, he followed the person all the way until they got to the oak doors. As the door opened, the moonlight from outside caught the face of the violator, and saw that it was none other than Hermione Granger. As she slipped outside, he thought, "Now what is the Mudblood up to now?" Curiosity took the best of him so he slipped out of the doors after her and was met with a decidedly interesting scene.
A/N: The CPR scene was inspired by the movie Sandlot, so I don't take full credit for it.
