Disclaimer: I don't own, except Christian who will play a pretty minimal role in this story.
xx It Takes Two to Make Love xxxx Chapter Two xx
Hermione paced back and forth, or would have been that is, if she could stay standing up. Her legs were shaking and Hermione swore she was asphyxiating at that very moment. Thank God for private rooms. Yes, she was indeed made Head Girl. It was no surprise to anyone that she became Head Girl; it would have been a crime if she hadn't been.
Professor McGonagall looked as though she was about to levitate with pride and excitement when Dumbledore presented her with the Head Girl badge in front of the faculty. She looked especially pleased (Hermione half expected her to start purring like her Animagi counterpart would have done) because of the sour look on Professor Snape's face. Head Boy hadn't gone to a Slytherin like he had hoped to (and quite frankly, how everyone had expected to) but in fact to a Hufflepuff boy with a sweet demeanor. He had a cherubic face, good grades, and was adored by the majority of the faculty. Sans Snape of course but he's just contrary like that.
Hermione was lying on the bed, clutching a velvet pillow to her chest. She felt full possibly from the tempest of emotions that were raging in her chest, but more likely because of the enormous dinner she had just had, hoping to drown her sorrows in food. Unfortunately, that hadn't worked and while the skewered chicken and garlic-lemon tarts and the sweet corn tamales tasted good at the time, now, lying miserably in her room, she just felt sick.
She knew how pathetic her situation was. She was quite aware of the fact that she was being fully...well, out of character. She'll just have to put an end to this. The longer she stays in this room wallowing in self-pity, the worse.
Well, she just had to go out there and face it, her apocalypse. And if everything went to hell after that, well, then let it! She was a strong girl; she could become a hermit and study. There's only eight months left of school anyway and after that she would never have to see anyone in this god-forsaken school ever again. Except possibly Harry and Ron and Ginny, the first two extremely bemused about what's gotten into their usually sensible, levelheaded friend. But they wouldn't abandon her just because of her moment of insanity...hopefully.
Okay so there, she had decided she would do what she has to do. She will go right up there, right up to Draco Malfoy, the devil himself, and...and... oh. Hermione hadn't quite decided yet what she would do when she approached Malfoy. She would talk to him of course. Hermione briefly, and sadistically, considered hexing him and she chuckled to herself, imagining him breaking out into green boils. Wait, that wouldn't do any good. And if anyone deserved to be hexed, it's her.
Hermione shook her head to clear the image of a hexed Malfoy. She forlornly told it goodbye and concentrated on what she really could do. Well okay let's see...
She stood up and stood up the pillow on the bedside table, imagining it was Malfoy. No, that wouldn't do, he had to be taller. She stacked her schoolbooks on the table (well of course she had done her homework before wallowing in misery, she hadn't completely lost her mind) and set the pillow on top of it. It was a bland color of cream and white, much like Malfoy's coloring.
Hermione retrieved a quill and some ink from her book bag. She added two eyes, a pig-like snout, and a leering smirk on the square pillow. Okay, perfect. It was easy to imagine that was Malfoy standing before her now. So now...she can practice.
"Hello Malfoy," she said. Er- what could she possibly say?
"You might have heard a strange rumor floating around about me claiming that we..." Oh my, she couldn't do this! She couldn't say it. If it was this embarrassing with a pillow that she scrawled on a face, then imagine how bad it would be with a real person. Hermione could feel her cheeks turning red but felt a flare of determination. No, she got herself into this and she'd have to finish it.
"You might have heard a rumor and it's true!" Er, no, that wouldn't do. Now she just sounded fanatical.
"Hi Malfoy, I know we haven't really been the best of friends..." Well there was an understatement. She just had to say it, get it out there.
"Malfoy, I said I've slept with you because of a boy I liked and now I have to make that true before he finds out that I'm a liar." Malfoy, I said I slept with you because I'm psychotic's more like it, Hermione grumbled to herself. In a fit of frustration, she punched the pillow and it fell off the stack of books, off the bedside table, and onto the ground. Hermione satisfied herself in giving it a kick.
"Uh, Hermione?" Hermione's head snapped up at the sound of the tremulous voice. It was Blair at the door, looking severely confused and, to be completely truthful, more than a bit frightened. He looked as though he firmly regretted sticking his head of buttery, yellow curls through her door. His gaze was on the mangled pillow. It was still smirking in a grotesque sort of way. Hermione kicked it back out of view.
"The door was open and I just wanted to tell you that, um, the faculty meeting is canceled this month?" He was an up-talker. Hermione detested up-talkers but she had to make an exception for the boy at the door. She found it hard to believe that he was in the same year as her, nevertheless the same age.
"It's canceled?" He nodded and looked desperately back outside at the common room that connected their bedrooms together. It was a nice room made public to the rest of Hogwarts after, rumor has it, that one too many impromptu parties had broken out there. However, few people really visited the room. It still had the air of being off-limits despite the fact that anyone could waltz through that double doorway.
"So, just to tell you," he said, and whisked himself out. Hermione sighed and sat on the bed. She scared the Head Boy again. He was timid and shy and well liked but there wasn't any connection made between her and him. Hermione found it absolutely frustrating to talk to Blair since he was soft-spoken and had little to say. She needed someone who would talk back to her and hold up a good fight. He was neither of those things so they remained acquaintances at most. Hermione was sure he was sorely wishing that he hadn't been made Head Boy now.
She gave a sidelong glance to the pillow, severely rumpled, lying on the ground. Hermione scowled at it.
"I'll get to you later," she said and checked her watch. It was only ten; perhaps the dining hall would still be open. Despite her many attempts to bring up vending machines at the Hogwarts faculty meetings (she and Blair were only invited the one at the beginning of each month) she never really got around to it. As convenient as they were in the Muggle world, Hermione could hardly imagine it in a Hogwarts setting.
She slipped her feet into shoes, wondering if the elves had left any food out for the late stragglers. She hoped so.
Hermione padded around the corner to the Gryffindor common room and just as she approached it, the portrait swung open and Harry almost seemed to fly out.
"Going somewhere?" she asked, wryly. Harry jumped at the sound and turned to face her.
"What? No. Well maybe. Yes. Parvati's after me." Hermione frowned.
"After you? Why? I thought she hates you," she said.
"Uh, I think so too but I don't know," he said, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. Hermione had met him over the summer and taken him shopping to get clothes that actually fit and weren't falling off his thin frame.
Drat Dudley and his weight problem. Or you could just think he was horizontally gifted. That is if you were blind and generous. It honestly couldn't be healthy for that boy to be that size.
The worst part was, Harry protested every step of the way and said he was quite happy in Dudley's oversized clothes. Boys, Hermione thought, her mind clucking its tongue at Harry's stubbornness.
"And because of the Winter Ball," Harry was saying.
"Oh, sorry what?" She had been too lost in thoughts of Harry seemingly drowning in folds of Dudley's clothes that she had forgotten to listen to Harry. Harry looked mildly uncomfortable and said, "No, forget it." He was too nice to tease Hermione about her spaciness and short-attention span. Ron, however, wasn't. Speaking of which...
"Where's Ron?" Hermione asked. Harry blanched, if it was even possible.
"Uh, out. With Padma. That's why Parvati was after me. She wanted us to join them."
"Wow, sounds serious," she teased.
"It's not, really!" he said, vehemently. Hermione chuckled to herself; she really had to leave Harry alone one of these days.
"Then care to join me? I'm going to the Dining Hall to see if there's anything to eat." Harry's grateful expression was all the answer she needed.
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It didn't take very long at all for the news of Hermione's outburst to travel so quickly. This was unfortunate for Draco since if one more person came up to him to ask him if it was true that he had slept with the Gryffindor bookworm he was going to hex their head off.
"Everyone's talking about it. Do you know how aggravating it is?" Draco demanded to Crabbe and Goyle. As conversationalists, they weren't much. But to rant to, they were ideal. They both shook their heads hurriedly.
"You would think people would have a little more sense don't you think so?" Draco continued. "If anyone had half a brain, it would be clear, crystal clear, that this is just a lie made up by a sad little person who has no life!" He looked at his friends and right on cue, they started nodding again.
"You would think that they have better things to do with their time than to gossip about me, don't you think so?" More fervent nods. "Don't they have their own pathetic lives to talk about?" Draco swore he felt a breeze from the enthusiastic nods from his two companions.
"You can stop that now," he said, dryly. Crabbe and Goyle had gone on nodding longer than it was really necessary. Draco sighed.
"It amazes me. Absolutely stuns me how stupid people are in this damn school. I can't wait until this year is over and I can finally do what I want," he said. He fell back onto the green and silver striped chair and put his feet up on the ottoman. To be quite truthful, he was a little worried about the future. He had no idea what he was going to do. His father for sure wanted him to work at the Ministry but he'd rather count chicken eggs than work at the Ministry.
But that was still a good eight months away and he planned on cruising through these eight months. Honestly, what more work was there to be done? All he had to do was smile properly to the professors and do some work and he'd graduate from this school with honors. Draco sighed contently at the though.
So what if there was another rumor floating around about him? He could just ignore anyone that tried to ask him about it. And it'll eventually die down, probably pretty soon. He'd just wait it out, nothing to get worked up over. Now that he was calm and peaceful, Draco remembered something.
"So anyway, didn't one of you guys say you had something to ask me?" he asked. Crabbe and Goyle nudged one another and finally Goyle cleared his throat.
"Uh, so is it true that you slept with Hermione Granger?"
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"They're staring at me," Hermione whispered to Harry. Harry, bemused, looked around.
"Who?"
"Them." Following Hermione's eyes, Harry saw a small group of Ravenclaws chatting at a table a little ways off. So maybe they did avert their eyes a little quickly when he looked over, but he would have been more inclined to believe Hermione if shehadn't said this about every single person that chanced to look in their general direction.
"You really have to be less paranoid," Harry said, amused. "None of these people are staring at you and they aren't talking about you."
"On the contrary, Harry. They are, I can tell," Hermione said, tugging at her left ear. She left her slice of cherry pie uneaten in front of her and Harry eyed it wistfully. With an exasperated grunt, she shoved the plate towards him.
"Thanks." Through a mouthful of grenadine and bread, Harry said, "So why do you think they're all talking about you anyway? Even if they are, you never cared before."
"I didn't care because I knew that what they were saying about me was bogus! That it wasn't my fault so I might as well not care because I can't stop people from talking about me!" she hissed. The last thing she needed was for people to overhear her heatedly confirming that she did indeed claim she had slept with Draco Malfoy. Hermione glared at a group of Hufflepuff fourth-years walking and it wasn't Harry's imagination that they squeaked, frightened, and hurried away.
As he watched them trip over one another as they hurried away, amused, Hermione's words sank in.
"Wait what? You mean you did whatever they're talking about? What are they talking about anyway?"
"You don't know? I would think that even Dumbledore knew by now," she grumbled. Harry shook his head.
"Well I don't know. What is it?"
"I don't want to say," she answered sulkily. Hermione reached across the table and took the pie back and stabbed it with her fork, cherry syrup oozing out of the fork holes. Harry winced.
"Come on, Hermione, I'm not going to laugh or anything."
"But you might question my sanity."
"Aw come on, you're being really weird." Hermione slammed her fork down at the table, causing the table of Ravenclaws to jump.
"I know I am! I swear to God, Harry, someone's hexed me! I'm ruined!" Hermione covered her face with her hands. What was the matter with her? When did she turn into a soap opera queen anyway? She had to stop this immediately.
"Uh Hermione?" Hermione uncovered her face and smiled brightly, which seemed to scare Harry more than reassure him.
"You know when you're put on the spot?" she asked, trying to turn back into the sensible Hermione. "And you end up saying really stupid things? Well I said a really stupid thing and now I'm screwed because of it." Harry just watched her, waiting out what she was really going to say.
"Christian asked me who was my all time best shag. And I said Draco Malfoy, Harry. And that is why everyone in this dratted school is looking at me like I've suddenly become a porn star!" Harry looked startled.
"Draco Malfoy, eh?" Harry said. Hermione's eyebrows raised.
"Well you don't seem too surprised." Harry shrugged.
"I always knew you were going to crack one of these days," he said, with a lopsided grin.
"Thank you," she said, dryly. "Honestly, though, it's scaring me how I'm not scaring anyone else but myself."
"Do you want us to be yelling at you? Telling you that you're a horrible person and you ought to be hexed for one minor slip of the tongue?" Hermione shrugged a bit forlornly.
"Okay, fine, maybe not minor," he amended. "But you should know better, Hermione, that we're not going to hate you just for making a mistake." He had a point. Since when was Harry the level-headed one? And since when had Hermione turned into such a masochist? She internally wailed.
"Well what're you going to do about that? You're in a pickle, Hermione."
"I don't know." She finally took a bite of the pie since Harry no longer seemed interested in it. "Talk to him? Ginny was no help. She told me to go and sleep with him so it wouldn't be a lie anymore." Harry chuckled.
"And you didn't take that so well."
"I'm not the one mooning over him."
"Well have you got a better plan then?" Hermione sighed and mashed the pie into a messy pulp.
"No, which is precisely why I am screwed." Hermione didn't want to mention that that was why she was also considering taking Ginny's advice... Hermione smiled to herself. No, just because she was being a little out of character lately didn't mean she would lose her head completely. Ginny was wild; Ginny was different from her. She couldn't very well take the redhead's advice, though they were given with the best of intentions. She would just give herself time to mull this over; her brain never let her down before.
"Oh, and Hermione?" She looked up.
"What?"
"Maybe it's best we didn't tell this to Ron just yet," he said, hesitantly. "At least not until he's in a good mood." Hermione nodded sagely.
"Until he's in a very good mood indeed."
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