AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've been too busy with editing, and re-editing, then re-re-editing, before giving it a final brush-up, after getting it polished by a WONDERFUL (swoons) beta - and finally touching it up with HTML formatting - my entry for the HP-DRIZZLE fest, or else I'd have posted this earlier. Anybody participating in that fest, by the way?
Gallons of THANK YOU to all of you for the reviews, favorites and follows. A guest complementedme with a, "you have a way with words," and I've been dancing about in clouds, ever since. JKSHDBECJK - THANK YOU, DEAR GUEST!
Rest, I've mentioned Goo Goo Dolls' number Iris, here, simply because I was listening to it. And also because it fits into the timeline, having been released in 1998.
PS. Happy 15th August, fellow Indians! Jai Hind!
This one's shorter, but enough to blow the fuse off your brain. Hermione's POV, y'all
2: The Situation Changed
Meeting Ginny for lunches is such a colossal stress relief to Hermione that she cannot begin to describe. Not even to Ginny, herself.
"No, but, that prat is going to take up their offer, right? If he gets voted for, that is."
Hermione sighs. "I honestly don't know, Gin. I'll ask Draco." She pauses, groaning miserably. "Not that that is going to be of any help."
Ginny chuckles, taking a sip from her Butterbeer. "Why? Draco doesn't like to talk about business with you?"
Hermione smiles, tiredly. "Yes, and no. I mean, that is true, at times, yes. But that isn't the reason why I think he won't tell me about this," she says, glumly. "Draco's not exactly taking any interest with this whole plan of advertising that's gotten his father so excited. I talked to Lucius, day before yesterday. Draco's been throwing a tantrum, this entire week, and not attending any meetings until they're board meetings."
Ginny shrugs. "I think it's fair. He's the Head Potioneer of the firm, the topmost Potioneer - after Slughorn, of course - of our time, today," she says, scooping up a spoonful of her chicken soup. "I think he's earned the right to throw a tantrum."
Hermione chuckles, rolling her eyes. "And what's new? You're again taking his side!" Ginny grins cheekily, to which Hermione harrumphs. "No, really, Gin, he's not taking this seriously, at all. Lucius asked me about Rogers because he knows that Rogers is a - well, what he is," Hermione adds in a whisper, not really wanting to call the Head of her Department a 'squib' - in the Ministry Cafeteria, no less - and inviting unnecessary trouble on herself. "Apparently, Lucius shares Shacklebolt's line of thinking. You know, that Muggles have a better knowledge of advertising?"
Ginny hums thoughtfully. "Does Papa Malfoy know, though, what mess he's about to deal with if Rogers joins him?" she asks with a shit-eating grin.
Hermione chuckles. "I tried warning him, yes, but…" She sips up a hefty mouthful of her vegan steak. "I don't think Lucius won't be able to deal with whatever color Rogers flashes him."
"Talking of, I heard people gossiping about how he's been pressuring you guys about agreeing to his layouts of redecorating your Department." Ginny grimaces, as if appalled at the prospect. "How far's that true?"
Hermione scowls, darkly. "He's an absolute ass, and a damning idiot," she states, her voice nearing a growl. "His ideas - the ones not concerning advertisement - are utter shit, that we can't protest against. Because, guess what? He's a patient of A-class self-obsession, and…" She sighs, shaking her head as frustration overpowers her senses. "He's such a righteous git, I tell you!" she finishes, sniffing petulantly.
Ginny rolls her eyes. "I didn't mean for you to explode, 'Mione, relax," she says in a futile attempt to calm the brunette.
"No, really, Gin, I swear to God, I regret putting in that sodding petition for this job! I won't have even met him, in the first place, had I not done that!" Hermione continues, heatedly.
Ginny scoffs. "Oh, come on, 'Mione, you love - "
"No, Gin, I don't! I mean, not anymore," Hermione murmurs, feeling oddly guilty about bad-mouthing this job that she'd, once, wanted with all her might.
"Hermione!" Ginny gasps, obviously not expecting such a blatant confession from her.
"No, Ginny, I'm serious. I mean, than sodden, blonde git is following me everywhere!" Hermione fumes on, savagely taking a huge gulp from her Butterbeer mug.
"Hermione, please - "
"Hear me out, Ginny!" Hermione cuts the redhead, because she needs to let all this out. "That - that bastard, that clingy idiot," she barks, venomously, "I tell you… So we do have a reason to stick close. But that doesn't give him rights to pop out of thin air - literally, too - in my office, as and when his bloody, blackened heart desires!"
"What do you - "
"Don't even get me started, Ginny," Hermione cuts her, again. "I so regret smiling at him that first time I did!"
She whimpers, recalling the very first time she'd met the Head of the Department of Advertisement of the British Ministry of Magic, and the way she'd been hell bent on impressing the shit out of him. Now, though, she regrets. Man, does she regret!
"I mean, fine so he is an important part of my life, but - come on" - her voice has risen up many debacles, and she's probably attracting attention by now, but she cannot care less - "I've got more important things to do than blink and nod at all the nuisance he spews! I've got a life that so doesn't involve him!" she finishes, guiltily thinking of Draco's crestfallen face when she is made to cancel their nights out together, because her bloody boss has occupied the hell out of her time!
"Hermione, that's enough, okay?" Ginny murmurs, her eyes flicking over to other tables. "I - I guess you should stop - "
But Hermione doesn't want to. "No, Gin, listen!" she urgently shushes the younger witch. "He's went as far asking me if I was free tonight. Tonight? I mean, damn, but I'm not his personal elf - to be at his disposal as and when he bloody pleases! And we met, what - yesterday? Isn't that enough?"
Ginny frowns. "Tonight? But, don't you have - "
"The date Draco's been bugging me about for a week?" Hermione interrupts. "Yes, I do, and that is why I've turned that damned order down!"
"That's like my Gryffindor lioness!" Ginny cheers, clinking her Butterbeer glass with Hermione's, no doubt grateful that Hermione's stopped causing people to turn their heads to their table.
Hermione smiles at the thought, though her mind has already wandered off to all the beautiful expectations she has from tonight.
The door to her office was literally being hammered at. Narrowing her eyes, Hermione shot out a snarling, "Enter!"
Draco Malfoy's blonde hair, squinting eyes, and flushed face were revealed as the door rattled on its hinges.
"Malfoy," Hermione sneered. "I was wondering when you'd show up."
He barred his teeth, upper lip curling in fury. "Don't play with me, Granger!" he hissed, making Hermione's firm, fearlessfront stutter before she strapped it back into place. " I'm having to deal with my father's company because you snatched away the only job they'd have given me at the Ministry! This - this chair you're seated on? I was equally deserving of it! In fact, guess what? I deserved this position of Mascot more than you did! I was - I was a bloody Death Eater, Granger, and - "
" - and what would portray the Ministry's open-mindedness better than an ex-Death Eater being their ambassador?" she sharply, sarcastically interjected, and he shut his mouth.
"Yes," he hissed, then, through grounded teeth. "That is why I'm a better choice, you bitch, because that concept makes more sense than a Muggle-born getting - "
"Malfoy!" she exclaimed, getting up with clenched fists. "Do you even know what advertising is about?"
He scoffed, obviously framing an even foolish response to her rhetoric question, but she beat it to him.
"No, Malfoy, don't answer that, because you don't!" she snarled. "This is a new department where they need experienced people, you idiot! Ricky Rogers is the Head because he freaking knows great deal about advertising. This isn't about being Death Eater, or Muggle-born, or - or squib!"
She immediately panicked when his eyes narrowed. She should've caught her tongue at 'squib'.
"Squib?" Malfoy asked, raising a curious eyebrow.
Hermione signed. Half of the Ministry knew, anyway, what harm could Malfoy cause? "Ricky Rogers - Head of the Department of Advertisement? He's a squib, who's been leading a Muggle life since he was ten."
Malfoy's eyes widened. "He's - damn!"
Hermione shrugged, tucking a curl behind her ear as she flopped back into her chair. "If you're quite done with that dramatic tirade you came here for, you're welcome to leave," she said, picking up the letter they'd received from the Bulgarian Ministry of Magic.
When she didn't hear any sounds for the next few moments, she looked up to find him gone.
Hermione cannot quite read - and comprehend - the obvious lines of distress on Lucius Malfoy's forehead, when she steps through the fireplace of the Malfoy Manor, later that day.
"Good evening, Mister Malfoy," she chirpily whishes the old wizard before making her way towards the gigantic staircase, she knows, leads up to Draco's wing.
She silently climbs up, humming a verse of Goo Goo Dolls' Iris to herself.
She steps into the sitting room, where the staircase ends, and looks around with a smile. Draco hasn't yet changed the décor, here, from the mauve and beige neutrals that she had switched the previous - plum burgundy and black - color scheme with, on Christmas, which was two months back. These colors weren't much appropriate, either, but, because Draco had insisted, then, that the darker shades were 'his thing' - which was, without a doubt, meant to prevent her from replacing those hideous colors - she'd stood her ground, too, and claimed the pastels to have been her thing.
Which they are, she reflects, looking at how she's painted the entirety of her flat in the softest of peach color she could find.
She sighs. They quarrel over tiniest of things, don't they?
Smiling to herself, she crosses his study - absently noticing how he's deposited his jacket haphazardly over a lamp hung on one of the bookshelves.
"When everything feels like the movies," she sings to herself, "yeah, you bleed, just to know you're - "
She stutters to a stop and strains her ears. Was that a feminine voice she just heard?
Heart thumping in her chest, she races through the study - straight up to the door of Draco's bedroom.
She's just about to push at it, when -
"...no, are you absolutely sure, sir?" a meek, scared, very much feminine voice falls into her ears.
Hermione's breath falters. What on earth?
"Absolutely, Laura. Do you need me to seal it with a fucking Unbreakable Vow?" Draco's sarcastic drawl - and was that a drunken slur she caught? - pierces through her senses.
Laura. Laura Caterina, Lucius Malfoy's very young, and very uptight assistant is with Draco, in his bedroom? Something tells Hermione that this isn't a business meeting happening, in there.
Gathering her courage, and not waiting to eavesdrop any further, Hermione pushes the door open, and -
Gasps.
Draco's looks her in eye from his position beneath a half-naked Laura Caterina, his gaze bored. "No one taught you how to knock?" he snaps, harshly, making a gaping Hermione stumble a few steps back.
"D - D - Draco… wh - what…" she sputters, a hand clutching fiercely at her chest, right above her heart, while she blindly reaches behind herself for something to lean on with the other.
Draco rolls his eyes, sweeping his hands over the frozen blonde's naked waist whose back is to Hermione, and -
And so she can freaking see when he reaches with a hand to unclasp the strapless bra of the girl straddling him.
"Draco!" Hermione shrieks, tears of agony rolling down her cheeks as he forces Laura's body down to latch onto her nipple. "Oh, God - Draco, no! I… what - don't - don't - stop it!" Hermione whimpers, sliding down the wall she had leant against.
Letting out an exasperated singh, Draco takes the blonde witch off his shirtless body and dumps her in a pool of sheets which she swiftly covers her modesty up with. Then he sits up, and the calm, cold nonchalance in his eyes has been replaced by raging anger and fierce hatred. But Hermione can still recognize, distinctly, that distinct redness that has rimmed his eyes.
"You - you're drunk," she breathes out, still gasping for breath over the painful weight that has settled over her chest.
"Drunk," he retorts, some very, very misplaced hurt skimming in his eyes for a moment, "but not stupid."
Hermione flinches.
"What are you doing here?" he snarls, glaring at her huddled form from beneath the fringe of white-blonde hair that she's spent so many hours on so many days of her life, rifting her fingers through.
"Y - you'd said to come here after - after my shift was o - over," she stammers between hiccups, "a - and - "
"Had I?" he hisses, eyes narrowed to slits. "Well, my bad. You see, I hadn't known about the depth" - he spits with malice - "of your dear feelings for me, before."
Frowning, Hermione rises on shaky legs. "Wh - what are you talking - "
"What am I talking about?" he asks, furiously. "I'm talking about your fucking hypocrisy, Hermione Granger!" he yells. "I - I overheard your conversation with Ginny Weasley," he finishes, bitterly, as if that explains this devastating tornado that has suddenly gotten caught in their relationship.
Hermione's frown deepens. So he heard them. So what?
He smirks, humorlessly, sardonically. "Yeah, I had. And you know what else did I do? I thanked Merlin that I had. Saved me from making a fool of myself, it did. Proposing to a witch who's been playing with my heart for so bloody long." He shakes his head. "Thank Salazar, I heard you."
This time, the hurt that fills up his eyes stays. Hermione sits frozen on the ground.
Propose? He was going to propose to her?
Her body shakes, vehemently, as a fresh course assaults her tear-ducts. She doesn't know what's happened - what sort of Imperio has been cast upon her Draco that he's gotten so many misconceptions - ridiculous presumptions - wound about his brain.
She drops her face into her palms, taking deep breaths to gather her senses before she can investigate if there's really something that is magically wrong about this situation.
"Draco - "
"We're over, Granger," his voice cuts her, and her head snaps up. He's trailing his fingers over the curve of a visibly horrified Laura's hip, eyes focussed on some far away spot in space.
Hermione shuts her eyes… and the world blackens.
Hey - hey - hey - DON'T MURDER ME! I did place this in the Romance/Drama genre!
Laura Caterina's an odd name, I know, but I wanted to drag in a wierd name for a pure-blood, like JK does. And Caterina, instead of Katrina, because - Weasley instead of Wesley. So...
Not that I'm trying to copy the queen! I just wanted a dash of JK-ness. But... Whatever.
Kindly review!
xo,
Aishwarya!