Disclaimer: I don't own except Christian and Blair, both of which will play a minimal roles in this story.
oo It Takes Two to Make Love oooo Chapter Three oo
Hermione was wringing her wrists nervously, preparing herself for it. And by "it" of course she meant this impending talk with Malfoy. Okay here it goes. It's nothing, nothing at all. Since when did Hermione ever start caring about where she stood among her peers and what they thought of her? Right, so it's okay if everything goes straight to hell in a hand basket and she's left looking like a compulsive liar. She could just hear it now, how people would murmur to each other as she passed by about how she was a sexual predator and a pathological liar.
Hermione fiercely shook her head to clear it of the image. No, none of that was going to happen; she was just overreacting simply because she was nervous. How did she know she was nervous? Well easy: her heart rate was above normal, her palms were producing sweat a little profusely, and she couldn't stop shaking her foot in that annoying way that most girls do. Realizing what she was doing, Hermione abruptly stopped, firmly putting both feet on the ground.
"Er Hermione, something wrong?" Ron asked. He was sitting across from her and both he and Harry, who was seated next to Ron, were staring at the table that had been shaking just moments before thanks to Hermione's epileptic movements. Dinner wasn't quite so enjoyable when it was being disturbed by a nervous friend.
"Oh, I feel fine, never been better!" she said, maybe a little too enthusiastically and smiling a little too widely. Ron nodded and Hermione wasn't quite sure if he was convinced or not. It was hard to tell when it came to Ron.
"Oh well okay, just wondering because you were shaking your leg you know? And it's been kind of...disrupting the table, you know?" Hermione glanced at Ron and Harry's plates of food that had been upset by her shaking.
"Er, right, sorry," she said. Eyeing her a little warily, Harry reached for his goblet of pumpkin juice.
"Well I'm going to head on up now," Harry said. Hermione inwardly nodded. There we go, now it's starting and she couldn't go back. Harry would lure Ron away from the Dining Hall and she would go approach Malfoy and hopefully she would somehow fix this mess that she's gotten into.
Harry had asked her why she was even going through all this trouble.
"Honestly, so what if you're found out a liar, Hermione? I mean, it's just Christian, it doesn't really matter," he had said.
"It does matter, Harry!" she cried. "I have to make things right. I've never ever lied for such frivolous reasons!" Harry shrugged slightly.
"I think you're being too righteous; you're blowing this out of proportion. Everything will blow over in a couple of days, just you see."
"But Christian won't forget and, more importantly, I won't forget. I have to leave this school with a clear conscience." Harry still thought Hermione was being a little bit ridiculous but it was Hermione's headstrong, honorable to the point of foolishness personality that put her in the mess and kept her in this mess.
This was why she was sitting here, in the Dining Hall, as Harry, somewhat reluctantly, followed her plan by luring Ron away. Ginny, also knowing what would come, left as well, leaving Hermione sitting at the vast, rosewood table by herself. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them, Draco was still sitting across the room but wait! What was he doing?
He was gathering his things and getting ready to leave. He slung his book bag over his shoulder and was heading out the door. Now this wasn't part of the plan. Hermione had to get up hurriedly, in the process knocking over her chair and Neville who looked a little flustered to begin with, and hurried across the large room and left through the same doors she saw Draco leaving through.
Hermione tried to keep her huffing to a minimum (but it really is hard, especially with a book bag that's filled to the brim with hardcover textbooks) as she chased that flaxen-haired devil down a long corridor.
"Malfoy! Wait just a minute, Malfoy!" Either he hadn't heard her or was pretending to have not heard her.
"Drat it Malfoy! Will you just wait a minute?" Finally, slowly and deliberately, Draco turned and faced her with such a cool demeanor that for a second, Hermione felt a little foolish.
"Right, and pray tell why am I waiting for a minute?" Hermione scowled. She half expected him to pull out a watch and exactly time her for sixty seconds.
"I need to talk, I mean, we need to talk," she said. Hermione dreaded what would come but it's best to get it over with.
"What about?" Draco asked, his lips curving into a sadistic smile.
"You bloody know well what!" Okay, she let her temper escape her just then but she wouldn't again. At least she'll try not to.
"Does it have anything to do with this little... rumor I heard buzzing around the mouths and ears of Hogwarts students for the past few days?"
"Oh stop trying to be so glib Malfoy," Hermione said, irritably. She wasn't about to let him think he had the upper hand, talking as ridiculously as he was right now. Then again, she could only expect to think that he thought he had the upper hand since he wasn't the one panting and red-faced and absolutely mad by the way of making up crazy lies.
"I had a slight slip of the tongue-"
"Oh what you said hardly constitutes as slight," Draco interrupted. Hermione ignored him.
"And I was wondering..." Her voice trailed off. What was she going to ask him to do?
"What, Hermione? Do you want me to tell everyone that I made up the rumor? Do you want me to go and tell your beloved Christian that oh, it was my fault that you randomly spurt out lies? Or do you just want me to make this rumor a reality so you won't have to deal with being branded a pathological liar?"
"Thank you, Malfoy, for the array of choices you presented," Hermione said dryly. "But none of those is really what I had in mind." Draco shrugged.
"Then I can't help you. What do you expect me to do, turn back the time so that you don't act so stupidly every time you're around that Ravenclaw?" Hermione frowned.
"How do you know about Christian anyway?"
"Everyone knows about Christian," Draco said, airily. Hermione reminded herself to unclench her fists; it wouldn't do anyone good (well except herself) if she punched him right now.
"And now everyone knows that you lied to impress him," he added. Hermione pressed her lips together.
"You're right, you really can't help me. I'm sorry for taking up so much of your precious time, Malfoy." The name sounded bitter in her mouth.
"My offer still stands," he called after her. Hermione was furious, absolutely livid. How did she even begin to think that talking to Malfoy would have fixed anything? She would never, ever talk to him again.
Famous last words.
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"Malfoy, if I'm ever going to clear my conscience of this lie that was made for trivial reasons...I'm going to need your help," Hermione said. It was only the next day during dinner when she tracked down Draco again and was, quite pathetically, asking for his help. The Dining Hall was relatively empty, seeing as how it was nine in the evening. Hermione noted faintly that they at least had one thing in common: their tendency to eat meals late.
"What do you want me to do, Granger? I'm only human," Draco drawled. He let his eyes slide back to the Hogwarts Student newsletter. She grabbed the glossy newsletter and slapped it against the table, angrily. The group of Hufflepuffs on the cover photograph squeaked in outrage.
"It's rude not to look at people when they're addressing you," she said.
"Only when what they're saying is of any importance," Draco answered. What an ego he had!
"It's important, and I believe it's important to you as well. How much longer can you stand people coming up to you asking for you to validate what I said?"
"Which I wouldn't have to be doing if you hadn't said it in the first place," Draco said.
"What's done is done and now we're both stuck in this together." Draco exhaled, exasperated, and pushed his hair away from his face. She did have a point. He didn't know how much longer he could stand all these people coming up to him and asking him about Hermione. It was enough to drive a sane person up a wall. And there he was thinking so naively that this would all blow over in a week, maximum. He was so wrong.
"Thanks to you," he reminded.
"I know," Hermione snapped impatiently. "But it doesn't matter if it's my fault or not. What matters is how we're going to get ourselves out of this."
"What do you propose?" Draco asked. He set his elbows on the table and leaned forward.
"I...I don't know yet," she admitted.
"Am I hearing this right? That Ms. Know-it-all finally doesn't have an answer?" Draco asked. Calling names as though he had no faults in his own character!
"Your ego could use a bit of work," she informed him. At this, Draco laughed for the first time.
"Perhaps," he said. "But if I were you, I'd be a little more worried about that wayward mouth."
"One slip in seventeen years, an insufferable ego for seventeen years, I think there's a vast difference between the two," Hermione said.
"Ah, but see where this slip has taken both of us." Hermione pressed her lips and settled into her chair.
"So you're going to help me?" she asked. "You did say "both of us" just then."
"Do I really have a choice?" Hermione felt her lips tug at one side into a grin that she wasn't expecting.
"I suppose not," she said.
"Alright then, Granger, we'll see what we can do." As much as Hermione was counting on her own wits to get her out of this mess, she had to admit it was nice to have another brain to help. Draco got up and Hermione followed him to the doors. He seemed to hesitate a little when he saw that Hermione had followed.
"Do you think me silly?" she asked. Draco seemed to seriously consider the question.
"I hardly had a high opinion of you from the beginning," he scoffed.
"Then I'm lucky that I would ruin my reputation for someone to whom I had none," she said. "Are you only helping me to help yourself?" Draco tilted his head to the side.
"Yes." Hermione nodded.
"Okay."
"But you're only talking to me to help yourself," he reminded. Hermione considered this.
"I'll see you later," she said and Draco disappeared through the double doors. Standing there for a minute, Hermione turned and exited through the doors opposite the ones Draco went through. Hermione contented herself in knowing that it could of gone worse.
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"So how'd the second time go?" Harry asked. He was waiting for her in Head Boy and Head Girl's common room. Hermione considered.
"Better," she said. "Much better."
"And to think that you were telling me that you would never see him again last night," Harry said.
"I can misjudge," she argued. "I don't know what I'm going to do though. I mean, now that I see it, having Malfoy as...as an ally doesn't really solve the problem. Come on, you're the Boy-Who-Lived, you help me think of something." Harry's lips curved into a crooked grin.
"I'm sorry, Hermione, but the only thing that I can think of is for you to just sleep with Malfoy."
"You and Ginny, you're all the same, the whole lot of you," Hermione said.
"Hardly. You could ask Ron for his advice." Hermione shuddered.
"I don't think I would ever want to ask Ron that."
"Ask me what?" Harry and Hermione both looked up to find Ron at the entrance of the room. Harry blinked a couple of times.
"Ask you if you'd ever shagged Snape," Harry said seriously. Ron looked from Harry to Hermione carefully.
"Right," he said. "Speaking of shagging, what's this I hear about you and that git?"
"Oh."
"Oh is right, Hermione," Ron said, settling down into the sofa next to her.
"It's nothing," she said, waving it off.
"I hope it is. Every time I hear his name I feel like I'm breaking out into boils," Ron said. "I can't wait 'til graduation when he leaves and I don't have to see him again."
"I heard he got a racing broom," Harry offered.
"What model?"
"Wasn't quite sure. The new Polaris that came out a month ago? Something expensive I bet."
"Polaris," Ron groaned. "There's one brand I'll never be able to afford." Hermione was a little bit...bewildered at how the conversation was going. Something about her situation and dealing with Malfoy made everything seem a little surreal, talking to her friends included.
"I think I'm going off to bed," Hermione said. "Tell Ginny that I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to her today, okay?" Harry and Ron nodded. Hermione left them, a little thankfully, and settled into comfortable pajamas.
She crawled underneath the covers and replayed her conversation of Malfoy in her head, albeit a little sleepily, not knowing that he was doing the same thing in his own bed in the Slytherin dorms. Each thought that they had a good amount of superiority over the other. However, neither of them was prepared in the slightest sense of the word for what would come next.
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