A/N: Hello and welcome! I am really excited to be writing my first Adrian x Hermione. I have been writing Adrian as a side character for a while now, so I hope you like him in a more starring role. This will be about 22 chapters, and I hope to update 1-2 times a week. You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter one and be on the lookout for chapter two in a few days!
Hermione Granger, returning eighth-year student, had thought that coming back to Hogwarts would be an excellent idea. Of course, she had been offered her diploma by the Ministry in exchange for her role in bringing down Voldemort the year before, but it just didn't feel right to accept it without really earning it. And even though she was sure she could sit the NEWTs and pass that summer, Hermione wasn't ready to walk away from her final year at school. She didn't want any suggestion that she was simply handed something that she didn't deserve. As a muggleborn, she had too much to prove.
She couldn't lie...she had expected Harry and Ron to do the same, only to be disappointed by her best friends. It seemed that both of them were keen to join the auror department, not having had enough dark wizard chasing the seven prior years. It hurt to know that they wouldn't be joining her - after all, they had done practically everything together up to that point.
Shaking off the hurt, Hermione quickly decided that it was going to be a good thing for her to return to Hogwarts sans Harry and Ron. For once in her life perhaps she would be seen as an individual and not merely Harry's friend. She would be forced to make some new friends, spread her wings. It would be a good thing, she told herself resolutely as she packed up her trunk.
But, once she was back in the castle walls, the luster quickly wore off. For one, Ginny had been made Head Girl. Hermione tried really hard to be happy for her friend, but she could not deny that it stung that she was passed over because she had been too busy looking for horcruxes the year before. Ginny was an excellent choice, but it didn't make up for the fact that Hermione should have been Head Girl the year before. It was just another thing that Voldemort had stolen from her.
Second, she was the only girl returning to Hogwarts for an eighth year and was therefore given her own room in Gryffindor Tower. She supposed that Headmistress McGonagall had thought that it would be a kindness, but it was hard for Hermione to be reminded of her former classmates who were no longer there. She missed Parvati and Lavender more than she cared to admit, and she loathed returning to a quiet, empty room each and every night.
Not that she would want to bunk with the seventh year girls, though. That would just be odd.
The next slight was something that Hermione was finally forced to acknowledge. She just wasn't very good at making friends. No amount of celebrity status could make up for the slight socially awkward behavior she had. She never quite knew what to say to people and even though she knew that she could come off as brusque and judgemental, she was never able to tamp it down. Sure, she'd had a good chat with Daphne Greengrass once, but it wasn't as if they were best friends now, braiding each others' hair at sleepovers.
Her loneliness was only further compounded by the fact that Harry and Ron just couldn't seem to keep up with letters. She knew that they were busy with Auror training, but surely they could manage to write to her once a month? They had even promised to come out on Hogsmeade weekends, but they had yet to actually make it up to Hogwarts. Hermione had thought that she wouldn't miss nagging them to study, but she would give all the galleons in her bank account to have them asking her to read over their Charms essay just one more time.
Pathetic.
It would all be okay if what she was learning was stimulating, but she hadn't been wrong. She could literally do all of her assignments in her sleep and she was months ahead in every subject. She'd asked for some advanced materials in arthimancy and ancient runes, but she was pretty sure she had reached the limits of her Professors' good will.
All of this made her wonder what the point of coming back to Hogwarts was. To prove herself? To who? To what end? Couldn't she have just completed a self-study and then sat the NEWTs with everyone else? She could be halfway to a mastery at this point.
But the absolute worst thing about coming back to Hogwarts was not her lack of friends, loneliness, or lack of intellectual stimulation. No, it was Adrian Pucey, who seemed to have made it his mission to be a permanent thorn in her side.
Pucey, former Slytherin, had been two years ahead of her, so she hadn't really taken much notice to him. In fact, the only thing that she knew about him was that he on the Quidditch team and played Chaser. He was part of a trio of Slytherin Chasers who were particularly prolific and Ron had gone on rants about them more than once that Hermione was subjected to.
She was surprised to see him back at the school, knowing that he wasn't back to repeat classes. During the Welcoming Feast, Headmistress McGonagall announced that he was back to oversee the restoration of the Library for a part of his apprenticeship. Hermione had frowned, knowing that he would be lurking around in the library, but she knew that he must care enough about books if the Ministry had appointed him for this special task. If they stayed out of each other's paths, she saw no reason why they should have any issues.
Except they did have issues.
Pucey seemed to make it his life's mission to pick an argument with her every time she was in the library. And, even though Hermione tried to be the bigger person, she just couldn't let it go. He could argue with her about anything, and recently it had been the "aggressive way that she turned pages."
Looking at him, she never would have expected him to be so fussy about books. Godric, she was particular about books, but Pucey took it to a whole new level. He looked like a jock with his surprisingly broad shoulders, but it turned out that he was just a big secret nerd underneath it all that lean muscle. Not that she was looking.
So, it was unsurprising that on a random January day, Hermione found herself in the library, arguing with Pucey once again, over a book that she wanted to borrow to use as a reference for her Potions essay. Had she written it twice already? Yes. Did it matter? No.
How was it that he always seemed to be in whatever aisle she was currently browsing? She wasn't sure, but all that mattered was that he was in between her and the third edition, rare copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore. She had been ready to take it back to her room when Pucey came out of nowhere and snatched it right off the top of her pile.
"Hey!" she cried out, annoyed that he would do that. "I was going to check that out."
"No, you aren't," he countered, his voice dismissive and disinterested. "This book is not prepared yet for general use."
"Hippogriff shit, Pucey," Hermione cursed back at him. "You've been done with this section now for weeks no. Don't think I've forgotten about the last time that you banished me from this part of the library."
Because Hermione really didn't want to interfere with his work if he was restoring the Hogwarts Library. It was an important thing to do, and it did seem like he was doing a good job, just...why did he always have to single her out? Didn't he know her reputation? She kept excellent care of books...just, she sometimes had a habit of holding on to them longer than was strictly allowed...
"Well, like it or not, what I say goes, and I say that this book is not ready for circulation yet, Granger," he said, puffing out his chest. "In any case, this is a standard book that all second years should have. Just go and read your own copy."
"But the third addition has a special section on aconite that isn't included in any of the others," Hermione whined, hating that she was reduced to practically begging, but she knew that she wasn't going to get the reference that she needed anywhere else. "Please just give me the book, Pucey."
He looked at her, his brown eyes simmering with something she couldn't identify, making her think that maybe, just maybe, he might be persuaded to see reason this time. But then he shook his head. "No, maybe in another month or two, but this book is just too precious for me to let you walk out of her with it."
Hermione let out a little noise of frustration. "You are a tyrant, Pucey!" she shouted, uncaring if Madam Pince would scold her for talking in the library. Perhaps she would be able to get him to see reason.
Before her nemesis could even open his mouth to argue with her once again, though, there came an unholy crash maybe two or three rows over. Hermione made eye contact with him, her eyes widening in concern. "What was that?" she whispered to him.
"I don't know," he answered, equally concerned and with his eyebrows furrowed. "But I am going to find out." He turned on his heel and began striding down the long row of books to get to the end so that he could determine the source of the clatter.
Hermione felt a smirk slip onto her face as she rushed to follow after him. Damn him and his long legs - she was practically forced to jog to catch up with him. Once she got to his side, she looked up at his worried face out of the corner of her eye. "Hopefully you didn't mess anything up and knock over a stack with your restoration methods," she quipped, thinking that it would be a little bit of karma if he got in trouble.
"And you would like that, would you, Granger?" he snarked back. "Priceless and irreplaceable books being further damaged by some unfortunate accident? And here I thought that you were one of the few people in this school who actually appreciated them."
She scoffed at that, thinking that it was the closest thing to a compliment that Pucey had ever rewarded her with. And of course, she didn't actually want any books to be harmed...just, it would be nice to see him squirm every now and again! She hated being treated like a child with sticky fingers who ripped pages. "Of course not, Pucey," she argued back, affronted. "You know how much I love books."
As they rounded the corner, they were surprised to see a boy, perhaps no older than Hermione was, standing in the middle of the aisle, looking around confused. It didn't take a long assessment of him for her to realize that she didn't recognize him, although there was something familiar about him.
He was tall, nearly as tall as Adrian, with slightly wavy brown hair and unremarkable brown eyes. He wore a Slytherin tie around his neck, but the uniform that he had on was nothing like the uniform that she'd worn while a student at the school.
"Excuse me," Pucey said, authoritatively, crossing his arms across his chest. "Who are you and what are you doing? How did you get into Hogwarts?"
The boy looked bewildered and spooked, looking at the pair of them rather like a deer in headlights. He shoved something into his pocket, cagey as ever. When his gaze finally settled on Hermione, feeling like a heavy weight, his eyes widened in surprise. "Mum?" he asked, in a sharp inhalation of breath.
"What?" Hermione said in response, curious as to what he was playing at.
Before she could get an answer out of him, his eyes were rolling back into his head and the mysterious stranger was dropping to the ground in an unconscious heap.
"Oh Godric!" Hermione called, moving to rush to his aid.
Pucey's arm shot out to stop her.
"What are you doing?" she asked, feeling a little bit hysterical. Didn't he see that the young many needed help?
"Do you know him? He seemed to recognize you," he added, accusatory. Pucey always seemed to expect the worst out of her, didn't he?
Hermione slipped under his arm so she could get to the stranger's side. "No, but it's obvious that we need to get him to the Infirmary," Hermione argued back. "He's obviously unwell. Now, are you going to help me with levitating him there or not?"
It did not take Pucey long to waffle and before long, he was using his wand to aid her in lifting the surprisingly heavy stranger. They walked to the Infirmary in silence, their argument over the book as of yet unfinished.