An Honest Face – Chapter Seven

A/N: Well, it's been four and a half years! But I keep my promises, so I'm back to finish this thing! Obviously I've grown up a lot in nearly five years, so I'm derailing this story from its original plotline that I had drawn up and taking it down an entirely new road – well, not entirely new. It's still going to be DM/HG and it's still going to be smut. Just more lady-friendly and much... better informed. And hotter, I think. Stay tuned, here we go!

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Quick as lightning, Malfoy whirled around, wand in hand. "Stupefy!" he hissed, and strode forward to catch Pansy's rigid form before she hit the floor. He shut the store cupboard door with a snap.

Hermione slid bonelessly to the floor, suddenly cold. She scrabbled to put her shirt back and got to her feet, cheeks flushed.

Malfoy turned around and seemed surprised to find Hermione's wandtip in between his eyes.

"Now, now, Granger," he purred, seemingly unfazed by the interruption. "We were getting on so well just now."

Hermione was still breathing hard. "Obliviate her," she forced out through gritted teeth. She was shaking like a leaf, and wasn't at all sure that she could cast a decent spell in this condition. Malfoy didn't know that, though, and given her reputation for spellwork she didn't think he was going to call her bluff.

Malfoy gave a little laugh, glancing at the wand aimed at his head. "Remain calm, Granger, she's seen much worse, I can promise you that."

Sparks flew from the end of Hermione's wand. "Obliviate her," she repeated, deadly serious. "Now." When he didn't move straight away, she added, "I assume you know how."

Wordlessly, Malfoy turned his wand on Pansy again and muttered, "Obliviate." The Slytherin girl's eyes went blank.

Hermione didn't waste a moment, and lunged at Malfoy – and this time it was not in passion, but in fury. She took him by surprise and his wand clattered to the floor along with Pansy's still-Stupefied body. She held him pinned to the wall by the collar, her wand held dangerously close to one grey eye. The purest anger was written in every line of her face. Even now, she could still feel the remains of the damn lust spell – for that was what it was, she knew that now, how had she not realised it before? – urging her to lean in and continue where they left off. But her anger burned hotter than desire at that moment.

"If I were you, I'd do my best to avoid our next meeting," she snarled, and pushed him aside to get out the door. She would have cursed him to a pulp there and then, but she couldn't trust herself to aim straight yet. And besides, she reflected, she really should take the time to look up something appropriately nasty for this one.

By the time that Draco had straightened his Slytherin tie, muttered Rennervate over Pansy's still form, and stepped back into the Potions classroom, Hermione had made good her escape. Harry and Ron were looking concernedly in the direction of the door, and she was nowhere to be seen.

Cussing under his breath, Draco slunk back to his chair in the blackest of tempers, his trousers uncomfortably tight.

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There's an old saying: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Well, Hermione could have had the proverbial woman for breakfast and still had room for seconds. "Hell hath no fury like a witch manipulated" would be a refrain closer to the truth.

When Harry and Ron returned to the dormitory before dinner and asked her if she was feeling better – since she had left Potions and (uncharacteristically) skipped History of Magic on the pretext of sudden illness – she had recovered enough from the after-effects of Malfoy's spell to feel almost normal again. She certainly looked recovered – the high pink flush had faded from her cheeks and she was bent over several weighty library books in the common room as per usual – but although she replied that she was feeling much better, thanks, her mind was full of one thing and one thing only: sweet, timely, undiluted revenge.

The books she was poring over were the nastiest curse books that she could get her hands on without delving into the Restricted Section, but both Ron and Harry were too preoccupied just then with the thought of treacle tart to read over her shoulder. She forced herself to go with them to dinner, to maintain an image of normalcy when in fact she was positively seething with purpose.

If any of the other Gryffindors thought it odd that Hermione was not giving them the usual lecture on the importance of doing their Transfiguration homework that night, they did not show any sign of it. In a testament to her usual single-mindedness when it came to finding information, Hermione had pinpointed the perfect set of curses to use by midnight. Having nicked Harry's Marauders' Map and invisibility cloak from his backpack earlier that evening, she immediately set out to the Room of Requirement for a few hours of practice.

She retired to the girls' dormitories at two thirty in the morning, and set a magical alarm which would wake her at six, the cloak and map stowed within easy reach under her four-poster bed.

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When word got out in the course of the morning that Malfoy had been found unconscious in a corridor, covered in blue tentacles and oozing pus from a hundred or more freshly ruptured boils that covered him head to toe, Harry and Ron, along with plenty of other Gryffindors, could not contain their glee. Colin Creevey had managed somehow to get photographs of the scene (that boy was born to be a journalist, Harry privately thought) and they all gathered around at lunch to laugh helplessly at their old enemy's nearly unrecognisable form twitching in black and white.

Hermione smiled venomously into her coffee, but of course there was nothing to trace the incident back to her. She had made sure of that.

That night in the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Ron were still laughing about it, and Hermione smiled a genuine smile and laughed right along with them, feeling at last that this was just like old times again. Malfoy was sure to be in the hospital wing for several days at least, and Hermione was confident that – despite the hexing that had undoubtedly affected his senses temporarily – he was intelligent enough not to bother her again anytime soon. With that weight off her mind and her vengeance complete, she could relax again.

It was a more jubilant Friday night than usual, aided by the fact that someone had rolled out a crate of frothy Honeyduke's Butterbeer for the older Gryffindors to sample.

"But whodid it, though?" said Harry, musing over his second Butterbeer.

"Mate," said Ron, who was onto his third and lying on his back over one of the common room's large armchairs. "If we ever find out we should get them a trophy or something. That was a golden effort."

Harry raised his bottle. "Seconded!" he laughed.

Sitting on the floor next to Ron's armchair and giggling over her second Butterbeer, Hermione decided it was safe to let the cat out of the bag – at least a little bit. "I'm not sure a trophy is the best idea," she said offhandedly. "I mean, where would I put it, for starters?"

Amongst the uproar that followed and the numerous bottles of Butterbeer being pushed into her hands, nobody thought to ask her why. Which was fine by Hermione, because she was in no mood to be evasive; she'd had enough of that in dealing with Malfoy over the past few weeks. She resolved to put it out of her mind.

The peace lasted until the end of the term.

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A/N: Things are going to heat up next chapter, so consider yourself forewarned. ;) You didn't think I'd promise you smut for all these years and not deliver, did you?

Chapter 8 will go up on Christmas day... if I can wait that long!