Disclaimer (for entire story, will not be repeated to save boring you): - characters, save Professor Tam, not mine. Duh. Otherwise, a work of art! Lol.
Xia
Nothing But Trouble - Chapter OneHermione grimaced as she crossed out an error on the Potions homework they had been given that day, the first of the September term. Professor Snape was irritated by leniency.
Hermione dislike intensely the experience, with special regard to the subsequent aftermath of, making mistakes – which was why she was grimacing. That and the thought that she would have to look at that scribble for the rest of the essay.
It disagreed with her love of control – which would explain why she was still here, sat up late on the first day back at Hogwarts after a strange summer, and trying to regain some sense of normality.
So, lists, then.
Things Hermione Liked included:
- Doing Things Right
- Organised chaos
- Knowledge – particularly the hidden kind, of late
- The thought that maybe Ron and Harry would buckle down and she wouldn't spend this year studying alone
- Coffee – which she was thirsting for now, as it happened.
Oh coffee, God of my sins.
Wherefore art thou, coffee? The unholy lack of the aforementioned substance screamed at her – so she fell out of the chair – quite a feat given that the chair in question was one of those located in the Gryffindor common room, so large that some people had been know to attempt to take out real-estate claims on them.
These people of course, being known to some as 'those lads who enchanted a headboard emblazoned with 'Die insert obscenity here die!' to attack anyone who voiced the words 'Filch' and 'nice guy' in the same sentence' (many kind-hearted Hufflepuffs had suffered – for they had been the only ones nice/stupid enough to ever put the two together. Even Slytherins had enough sense to distinguish between someone they enjoyed to see torturing others, and someone who was in fact a 'nice guy')'. They were known to Professor McGonagoll mostly as Another Migraine, to the general student body as 'Uh ohh - here comes trouble' and to their mother as 'Fred! GEORGE!' Or to a confused Harry during Christmas in first year as 'Gred and Forge'.
Hermione's love affair with the caffeinated one had begun during the lead-up to her third year exams – or more specifically the incident where she had fallen asleep and missed Charms – which had been on Cheering Charms, which had been on the exam, on which she had only gotten 110.
She had vowed never again to fall asleep during the school day.
So, coffee. Rubbing the small of her back – an unfortunate side effect of the fall from the chair-cum-mansionwithfourstoreyroofgarden, Hermione half-walked, half-floated on the wings of blissful caffeine hallucinations towards the kitchens.
Please let Dobby have coffee…
She tickled the pear to open the kitchen's painting, and waited for it to swing open.
It didn't.
Frowning, Hermione tickled the pear again, somewhat more insistently.
Still nothing happened.
Tenativeley, she knocked on the painting – a hollow echo sounded beyond its wooden back, confirming the continued existence of the passage (you can never be too careful with these things in an enchanted castle).
'Dobby?' she called.
Suddenly the painting swung open – but it was not Dobby's pair of bulging eyes that materialized.
Hermione blinked. Twice.
Winky blinked back. And then the former Crouch household's servant (or as SPEW would have it – slave) curtsied to Hermione, and asked:
'Is there something Winky can do for Miss Granger? She is very sorry, but Dobby is not here – he is cleaning the classrooms with the others. Winky has been left to look after the kitchens!'
Winky actually went a bit pink at this last statement – pride? Thought Hermione.
'Oh, yes, sorry Winky – I wasn't expecting you – not that it isn't a nice surprise–'
Hermione felt a little taken aback, considering the last time she had seen Winky, the house-elf had been, well, a little the worse for wear… Maybe Dobby had managed to bring her round after all.
'Would you happen to have any coffee, at this time of night?' she enquired.
'Of course, Miss Granger!'
Then Winky looked startled, and stricken:
'Oh, Miss Granger – Winky is forgetting the manners – please come in and Winky will make Miss Granger's coffee most well!'
Still faintly bewildered, Hermione followed the bustling Winky into the kitchens – past a large hearth to a slightly larger, darker, and even more battered version of The Burrow's oak kitchen table.
'Which would Miss Granger like?'
Winky invited Hermione's gaze to a row of glass jars with contents in varying hues, russet-brown to jet-black. Hermione scanned the various labels – which read things like 'South Africa', 'Himalayas', 'Cuba' and 'Jamaica', as Winky prepared a kettle of water.
Coming to a decision on a jar called 'Eastern Asia' with a rich chocolate colour, Hermione reached up to it. Winky fairly fell on her –
'No, no, Miss Granger! No-one but the house-elves touches the food and drink before it is sent to the tables!'
The elf let out a large breath and took down the jar. Hermione watched her intently as she tapped the lid of the jar, sending a crackle of blue light around the seal, which duly popped open.
Some kind of preservation charm? Clearly a house-elf thing, she thought.
She was curious as to the reason for the house-elf's change of heart – Hermione had thought Winky would never come to terms with the loss of her former household – but here she was, contently brewing coffee.
Only one way to find out.
'Winky,' Hermione began, with slight hesitation
'I was just wondering- and tell me if it's impolite to ask, why it is, that, um, now, that is.. after, I mean…'
Winky saved her the embarrassment of more fumbled words by cutting in:
'Why Winky is now doing her duties?'
Hermione looked up into a pair of wide and not unkind eyes.
'Well, yes' she said.
'Winky is a house-elf again'
She smiled and put the made coffee on a tray with a sugar pot and a small, turquoise jug of milk.
'But surely, you never stopped being a house-elf – I mean, isn't that what you are?'
Winky added a plate of biscuits to the tray and carried it over to her charge, laying it in front of her before popping herself on the stool opposite.
'No no, Miss Granger – I had no family to work for, so I was having no work to do, Miss! Because – ' a momentary shadow passed her face 'because the old family had gone, Winky could do nothing – and wanted to do nothing, Miss! Winky was nothing more than a creature, then' Her face broke into smile.
'But I thought Professor Dumbeldore had offered you a job?' Hermione frowned in puzzlement.
Winky actually giggled.
'Oh no, Miss Granger, that would not have been a home! Later in the summer – Professor Dumbeldore came to Winky again, and offered Winky a new family – the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!'
'Oh, Winky! So you're a slave again?'
'No no, Miss Granger! Winky has a home again now, and she will like serving her new masters and mistresses!' She beamed.
'But, erm, Winky, what about the, err, Butterbeer?'
Winky's look darkened for a moment.
'Professor Dumbeldore said Winky must not drink butterbeer again, because it makes her 'funny'. Just in case, he turned all the Butterbeer into – ugh - 'She shuddered
'Lemonade.'
Hermione frowned for a minute, before remembering that Dobby had once said that house-elves hated carbonated drinks – so Dumbeldore preferred that they should serve pumpkin juice instead.
She added sugar to her coffee and took a sip, sighing with blissful relief.
The house-elf beamed at her pleasure, and began to tell her about the coffee's origins, and where one could find Ginger Crackers at this time of year.
So Hermione spent a fair hour, and afterwards migrated up to her bed – to dream of deep Arabian nights and Winky making beds of Egyptian cotton.
Draco Malfoy opened his eyes. And closed them again – silently rolling over. A knock at the door broke through the thick black curtains of his bed (green was supremely distasteful to him this season).
'Wake up, Malfoy. That animal of yours, Goyle, has been through my trunk looking for food and if you don't deal with him then I will – and I'm warning you now, it won't be pretty. If I have to curse him into next Thursday you'll be one goon down on your next run-in with Potter – and I'm not filling in – so I'd advise you to sort it, and quickly.' Nott's barely strained voice cut off the idyll.
Draco sighed and sat up, drawing his long legs up in front of him and leaning his head on one side on his knees.
He had been dreaming about a princess whose eyes burned like fire, somewhere in the East. He remembered the way her hair had smelled like jasmine… It had been a good dream. How laughable, a Malfoy dreaming of fairytales!
Well, he supposed he'd better extract Goyle from yet another grubby little mess before Nott dismembered him – though it might be a little too late from that, considering the measures Nott took to protect his personal belongings, let alone the nature of those belongings themselves.
Draco separated himself from the cotton sheets – Egyptian, of course, only the best for a Malfoy – and drew himself out of his bed.
Besides, the younger Malfoy mused, he felt no particular desire to hear the dulcet tones of his father reminding him not to offend their favourite Dark Lord's left-hand man – or, indeed, to feel the back of that very same father's hand.
Albeit true that Lucius was more Child of Darkness where Nott was Neighbour Of The Beast; Nott Junior, son of the afore-mentioned terrace-dweller, nevertheless felt a pressing need to pull imagined rank from time to time.
Thinking all this had got him successfully to and from the bathroom, clothed in a more charming black – fully prepared to kick, push, or otherwise violently coerce a dim-witted crock of Butober pus back into line.
Yes, that was Goyle – a great cure for acne (you don't get spots on a face Nature deemed too cruel even to be placed upon and innocent animal – so she chose a Slytherin instead) but stank most alarmingly of dung.
A Malfoy strode from his room, stopped abruptly in the centre of the Common Room, and barked – 'Goyle!'
Something hairy limped from a cloaked recess in one of the room's many corners (Slytherins, Draco had found, are often fond of crannies).
It appeared that either Nott's trunk had had a rather nasty Trolinatus Jinx placed upon it at some point in space or time, or Draco had spent too long picking out a tie to wear stylishly scruffily around his neck.
He had gone for pearl grey in the end.
The man-boy cocked an eyebrow at his hapless henchman and said smoothly:
'Get to the Hag in the Infirmary, Goyle, and as punishment for your greed and utter, utter stupidity, I will not fix your potions when you inevitably cock it up in Potions this week.
You will instead be subject to the wrath of one Severus Snape – nice man, I'm sure you remember him – we have in fact been exposed to him for five years now – and hopefully in future you will learn, with that dust-mote sized cranium of yours, to keep your fat, and henceforth servile, fingers out of things that do not belong to you. Your mantra forthwith will be
"I do not deserve the breath Draco Malfoy has just wasted on me" and you will rile me no further.'
He stressed the last two words so as to avoid any confusion. There was only so much Goyle's elusive 'brain' could absorb in under a minute. Draco looked on in bored disgust.
'Now, get thee to a nunnery or something.'
He waved the unfortunate oaf away, trying to comfort himself with the thought that next time Goyle might at least lose a limb.
Nott emerged from his room – one similar to Draco's in their hierarchical lodging system (another of Salazar's mementoes) – as Draco rubbed a temple.
'Why bother with the eloquence, Malfoy? It's not like he'll a) understand, or b) remember after his natural 33-second memory-expiry anyway. I'd have just kicked him up to the Astronomy Tower and let him find his own way to the Infirmary from there.'
'It all stems from my desire to help those less fortunate than ourselves, combined with my tireless campaigning for world peace and inter-house harmony, Nott.' Draco did not even look up.
'Don't curb your sarcasm on my account.' Was the reply.
'Surely even with your attention span you've grasped from the fact that you see no First, or indeed, any, years in the general vicinity – and from the collective sigh of wind as they all slithered out as soon as I emerged, that I am not a morning person. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and beat my head against the brick wall that is Arithmancy.' Draco said with a visible shudder, beginning to walk out of the Common Room towards the Great Hall, still talking to himself –
'And from there, onto the vast wasteland of Transfiguration, with the miraculously barren-yet-still-a-wet-fish woman (if she could be called that) McGonagall…'
Toast and Marmalade with black tea – Earl Grey – beckoned Draco to his House table as he entered the Great Hall still muttering quietly under his breath.
When two Hufflepuff third years walked by staring, he shut up.
Seating himself at the table a small way off from the giggling girls of a non-specified year group, Draco pulled the Earl Grey and toast towards himself.
One sugar, one slice, thinly spread marmalade and the taking of time to smell the bergamot, listen to the crunch and taste the warmth of the toast.
So he had rituals – what of it?
Draco knew better than some that sometimes that's just what you need to get you through the day.
From the Gryffindor House table, Hermione drained the last drop from her coffee cup and casually scanned the other tables. She didn't think it was co-incidence that her coffee was the same luscious one she'd had last night, and made a mental note to thank Winky.
Ginny sat with of her own year looking a little the worse for wear at being back at school and thus not allowed to sleep in until noon everyday.
Hannah Abbott and Justin Finch-Fletchley looked solemn in conversation at the Hufflepuff Table, until Hannah suddenly burst out laughing. Apparently it was the wrong thing to do as her outburst was quickly covered by a 'coughing fit'.
Hermione smiled and glanced at the Slytherins – observing in the process a rare sight: Draco Malfoy with his eyes closed.
He appeared to be inhaling deeply. As his white blond eyelashes fluttered ever so gently over what Hermione could only assume was the smell from the china cup in his hands, a tiny smile played on his lips.
Hermione's curiosity was caught.
He slowly opened his eyes – and it was a considerably softer shade of grey than she'd seen there before.
His gaze slid in her direction – and she found, to her intense discomfort, she could not meet his eyes.
Switching her gaze downwards, she stood hastily. Picking up her bag an Arithmancy textbook, she made her way to the door – absolutely not thinking about whether he'd noticed her looking at him.
Past the one eyed witch and up the two right-angled (sometimes) staircases, Hermione opened the door to her Arithmancy classroom – and groaned, remembering that he sat behind her in this lesson. Now she just knew she'd be paranoid about his eyes boring into her back.
She was first there, as usual. Truth be told, Hermione actually found Arithmancy quite difficult – not boring, but no longer easy either – and the last thing she wanted was another distraction. Padma Patil's shrill exclamations that she 'got this bit!' were to say the very least overrated seeing as Padma was a Ravenclaw and in truth 'got' everything about the class – she just like to boast about it so Blaise Zabini would notice her.
Hermione snorted as she set her book down on her desk and began to unpack her quill.
'Attractive.' Remarked a dry voice from the doorway.
Hermione turned to see one Draco Malfoy, hands in pockets, posing on the oak frame.
She thought about saying something – and then decided against it.
Let the git get his satisfaction somewhere else.
Turning her back, she returned to her Quest for the Inkpot, thinking that for once she'd actually quite like it if Harry would cut the moralistic crap and give The Git what he thoroughly deserved.
Mental note: next time, do not restrain Ron when in carpe jugulem mode.
Alternately visualising Malfoy-blood splattering the floor and Professor Tam observing that someone would have to mop that up, and experiencing crippling paranoia about whether the said Malfoy was really staring daggers at her back or whether she was just imagining things ensured she learnt nothing about Protection Polygons all lesson, and left her totally frustrated.
Professor Tam was talking:
'…that concludes our first lesson on Co-ordinate Charms. There will be a test on everything you have learnt the fortnight before the first Hogsmede visit, so I hope you've been paying attention!'
Hermione blushed involuntarily.
'Since we've finished before time, I see no reason why you cannot leave early – but be careful not to disturb other classes.' She continued.
In other circumstances Hermione would have stayed behind to catch up on what she hadn't heard during the time she'd been daydreaming – but today she welcomed the chance to escape any room with Draco Malfoy inside it.
It had been an odd sort of morning – maybe it wouldn't hurt to take Ron and Harry's advice just this once and 'let it slide.' She could always catch up from the textbook later, she supposed.
Sighing, Hermione trudged to Herbology, in somewhat lower spirits than the previous night.
Damn Malfoys – nothing but trouble.
Fin
Well there it is! Hope you like, do review (be gentle, this is my first foray into so called 'dramione' territory!). Oh, and I forgot to say at the beginning – this fic in its entirety (and should I ever get it finished) is for my darling Becki, who has educated me, for better or for worse, in the ways of the sacred dramione fic :) much with Australia love, my friend!
Coming Up:
Philosophy from Hermione Granger
Nott plays a game
Draco has a bad day
Hermione has Herbology
Two run-ins and a memory.
Be excited!
Xia