So I decided to stop. It was just too bad. I really wanted to write that plot (although right now I'm just trundling out a list of D/Hr clichés) but I was completely uninspired and it was such torture wringing out sentences upon sentences of nonsense. I'll be taking this fic down in a few days, but maybe in the future, if I feel inspired, I might revamp what I have and put the story up as an AU. If so, I'll probably put it up on under my penname Snooza.
To those who have actually been following my fic, I'm really very sorry, and as my parting gift please accept two partial versions of the first chapter penned at various intervals during the 2 years from plot bunny to plot bastardisation. Completely un-beta-ed and un-read-through (yay for hyphens), so mistakes aplenty. You can probably see why my fic never saw the light of day till now (and so it should have stayed).
THE HOITY-TOITY 'I CAN USE PRESENT TENSE' VERSION
Midsummer madness. There is no other explanation.
She sits up the instant she sees him, hurriedly and without elegance, the flower-printed coverlet scrunching under her heels. The movement takes less than two seconds, but it's like time has stretched and in slow-motion her line of sight grows to encompass his lower torso, then his legs, and finally ending in his socked feet. Her mind compensates by thinking even faster, a hodgepodge maelstrom of whys and hows but with a growing thunder of ohmygodohmygodno threatening to crowd out all independent thought.
Then he clears his throat, and the world snaps back to real-time, because her mind has stopped.
"So you're finally awake," he says neutrally, and she starts, like she has suddenly realised for the first time that he's here.
"What are you doing in my bedroom?" she asks, immediately feeling stupid. What else would he be doing in her bedroom? He was a murderer. Even though he still had no murdered anyone yet, she thought. No, a would-be murderer, that was it, but with or without that little adjective (was it an adjective?) it made no difference. He was still dangerous, he was still a death-eater (was he?), he was Draco Malfoy and he was in her room and she was going to die, she was sure of it.
"Are you listening?" Malfoy said, and this time she actually shrinks back against her pillow because there is a distinct note of exasperation to his voice, and she is suddenly afraid he must have threatened to kill her and she missed it, because she was worrying about his status as a killer or going-to-be.
"Look, I asked you if you could stop staring at me as if I was going to eat you, it's pissing me off," Malfoy said, and she is almost sure she hears the sound of her tension shattering, because suddenly he is not Draco Malfoy the would-be murderer but Draco Malfoy the stupid git.
She mentally chides herself for having been carried away by the adrenaline of fear and locks eyes with Malfoy, but then she notices how white his silver eyes are and she remembers the night Dumbledore died and how the moon had been so round, and then she's confused again, and she has to settle for staring at his mouth.
Her mind is starting to hurt. People always said she thought too much but she couldn't help it, that was what she did...best? That was what she did, yes, and now she was thinking about what the hell was Draco Malfoy doing in her bedroom, was he going to kill her, why had he not escaped London when he was being hunted for everywhere, should she be scared of him, was he really a would-be murderer or did he really have no choice about Dumbledore, was he being in her room to do with a death-eater mission –
"What are you doing in my bedroom?" she says again, and this time she is more accusing, because one minute has passed and he has not murdered her. Still a would-be murderer, nothing more.
He is ignoring her, looking instead at his hands, and she follows his gaze, noticing for the first time he is holding two wands. One of them is hers, she realises with a sudden jolt, and the fear is gripping her again as she sees how he is so very at home in this cramp, marigold-walled room with yellow flowers on the bedsheets.
Oh my gosh he is going to kill me her mind screams while her body remains rigid no sudden movements! and her eyes dart around for help – windows closed probably locked; lamp too far away; his eyes now locked on hers; nothing to be seen from the window except the moon and the tip of her neighbour's house; thin fingers twirling her wand; books? no books on her bed where are all the damn potential weapons?; the door nearer him than her; whose coat was that hanging behind the –
"Oh my gosh. You kidnapped me from the pub!"
Her mind rewinds, and she sees herself in Eldens with her friends, and the stocky man in the brown coat, brown eyes, thinning brown hair whitening at the roots. She hears him speak, hears herself speak. What happened next? What happened to her friends? Her eyes are on his wands again and she wonders whether they were used.
"It was not kidnap. I have better things to do than kidnap people." Malfoy looks annoyed again. He twirls her wand.
Hermione feels her shoulders relax. He can't have done anything, surely.
"Did you take me somewhere against my will? Then you kidnapped me." It is easier to speak now.
"I don't believe you're unwilling to be in your own house."
"Not with you taking me hostage in my own room!"
"A hostage is the term for a person held to ensure that another person meets some specified condition. Please note that that requires at least three people involved."
Hermione is boiling. "I don't have time to discuss semantics with you!" Somehow, it is hilarious to be verbally sparring with a likely death-eater and killer who has her trapped in her own bedroom, and ridiculous that she is actually more concerned with winning this battle than saving her life.
She takes a deep breath. Clearly, she is not going to be able to escape within the next few minutes, so the best thing to do is to get a firm hold of the situation first. From there, she can surely device some opportunity for escape.
"What have you done to my friends? Did you hurt them? How did you manage to bring me back here?"
--
THE CRACK VERSION
Midsummer madness. Definitely midsummer madness. One did not wake up in one's room with a missing archenemy cum possible Death Eater and attempted murderer sitting placidly at one's desk, looking very much at home. The use of 'one's was also highly discouraged in essays, being more apt to cause confusion than anything else, as Hermione recalled her elementary school teacher telling her. Like one could care at this point.
Hermione shook her head ferociously. Obviously the shock had short-circuited one's, uh, her brain.
"Okay, I'm just going to walk out of my window now, fall to my death and wake up from this nightmare in a cold sweat," she addressed the apparition seriously.
"Well, I won't begrudge you up to the 'fall to my death' part, but I don't think you should place too much hope in the last bit," the apparition replied with equal gravity.
Hermione blinked. Okay, this was a greater case of midsummer madness than she thought. Since when was midsummer madness in her vocabulary, anyway! Or that of any respectable, well-read individual? She must have had too many drinks back at the bar…the bar!
She remembered now; she had been at Eldens, sipping her beer tentatively and chatting with her friends, basking in the exhilaration of her first time sneaking into a bar. There had been a guy next to her. Sandy brown hair peeking out from behind a bandana, rectangular-framed shades and a long black coat with the collar upturned and poking against his ear. She hadn't noticed him at first, but when he spoke, with that lulling, yet loftily authoritative drawl – she knew.
And, she, obviously gripped in the unforgiving thralls of this midsummer madness malady, turned to him and said –
"Bloody hell!" Hermione said graciously, jerking upright in bed, trying to get rid of the figurative cotton wool that seemed to be firmly intent on jamming up her cognitive functions. "How did you get from the bar to my room? How did I get from the bar to my room? Where are my parents? What the hell were you doing there anyway! Shouldn't you be dead, dying, or being tortured to death by Voldemort? Are you here to kill me? Who paid the bill at the bar? My wand! Where's my wand!"
Hermione patted her pockets wildly, a sinking feeling growing as she realised her pockets were empty. She looked up slowly, noticing for the first time the hand resting on his crossed legs held her wand, and it was pointing directly at her.
She expelled her breath slowly, forcing her tense shoulders to relax. Think logically, she ordered herself, you can handle this. "Oh, uh if you were going to be predictable and ask me which question to answer first, I don't really care – just start from the first question and work from there."
She paused for thought. "But skip the last question, I'll take it as your treat."
"Uh I meant the second last question, the last was rhetorical," Hermione amended, mentally screaming at herself for even bothering to say such inane things.
"I was just going to say that I do not believe our relationship is of the stage where I feel compelled to answer such questions," Malfoy said with some primness.
A sudden knocking on her door froze Hermione in the midst of formulating a witty retort.
"Hermione?" a worried voice issued through the door. "Are you okay? Were you shouting just now?"
Hermione stared at the door, willing herself not to leap for the window, this be a nightmare or not. How the hell was she going to explain to her mother that she had a boy in her room in this ungodly hour of the night?
"Sorry Mrs Granger," Malfoy called pleasantly. "We're still discussing the project."
The door opened and Jean Granger stuck her head in, thick brown hair curling messily about her sleepy face. "I hope it's not my overzealous daughter keeping you up," she said, stifling a yawn as she beamed at Malfoy. "Do get to sleep soon, dears, or the sun will rise soon."
"No problem," Malfoy said, his smile mirroring hers. "Goodnight, Mrs Granger!"
"Goodnight," she echoed as the door closed.
Project? Hermione thought confusedly. What project? Wait, of course there was no project! The last tendrils of fuzzy sleepiness diffused as Hermione's mind went into overdrive. Remember who this is, Hermione told herself coldly. This was the boy who killed Dumbledore, sort of, and very possibly a Death-eater. She couldn't believe she'd almost forgotten this; he'd seemed so normal, so nonchalant. There was none of the coldness and wariness she'd felt from Lucius Malfoy and Karkaroff…and Snape.
He'd killed Dumbledore. Suddenly Hermione was very wide awake, and very scared. He may not have done so directly, and it had seemed he hadn't wanted to, but it couldn't be denied that he was very much connected to Voldemort, and now he was sitting in her room sometime past midnight, pointing her wand at her.
He looked the same. He didn't look any more evil, any more like a Death Eater than he had in the past six years she had known him
All part of the act, Hermione told herself, to lull her into a sense of security. She had to tread carefully.
"What do you want with me? What have you done to my parents?" Hermione asked in as measured tones as she could muster, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice. Her eyes roved around the room in search of a defensive weapon within reach.
Malfoy shrugged. "I just told them we had a holiday arithmancy project."
Hermione couldn't help herself. "That is so uninspired. Besides, my parents would never let a guy stay overnight in my room."
Malfoy smiled. "A little magic is always useful," he said, twirling Hermione's wand in his left hand.
Hermione gasped. "You Confunded my parents!?" A sudden fear gripped her. Malfoy was more powerful than she thought. It appeared he knew spells beyond their ministry-regulated seven-year syllabus. Even she, in her extra studying, had taken a few months to be able to use the Confundus charm accurately. She wondered, chillingly, if he knew the killing curse- but of course he did. From the way Harry had described it, it seemed Malfoy was going to kill Dumbledore with Avada Kedavra. Poor, righteous Harry, Hermione thought bitterly. He made it a point to mention specifically that Malfoy had hesitated, had looked like he would withdraw. Did he want to give Malfoy a chance, she wondered, or was he just trying to convince himself 16-year-olds couldn't kill? She was a little cynical about this 'inherent goodness' Harry seemed intent on seeing in everyone, though. Since she was still alive, Malfoy probably had some reason for keeping her alive. Perhaps it was just too troublesome to deal with a dead body? Whatever the case was, as long as she took care not to push his hand, she should be alright for the moment. And moments could mean the difference between life and death, and not only for her, but her parents as well.
"…I don't even think you're listening to me."
"Sorry?" Hermione said. Way to go, Hermione! She thought derisively. The first step to gaining a kidnapper's (well, he was, sort of) trust is to ignore whatever they're saying, of course. "Why didn't you Confund me too?" she added, by way of getting him to talk more. Maybe he'd get so caught up in rambling she could think of some intelligent escape plan.
"It's much easier to Confund muggles than wizards," he said. "Most of them have zero magic tolerance.
Thanks for sticking it out with me till now, and have a happy HP7-release day. Finally, the ride is over. :)