Cappuccino After Eleven
Trigger warning: kiss. Not the kind you want.
chemrunner57: I feel like I'm really testing your patience here. Stay strong3
Kristeen6teen: Thank you, I totally agree! I want them to get that really good emotional connection first. Hopefully this chapter will be the final nail in the coffin for it.
liak3: thank you for telling me, appreciate it!
Guest (new reader): Welcome to the adventure! Thank you so much for your kind words, I really hope you enjoy the continuation as well;)
Decisive review: Thank you so much, I totally agree! Their emotional connection is concluded with this chapter, I'd say;) So prepare for your waiting to soon be over with (as I've said the last, I don't know, five chapters, buuuut I just keep dragging it out hahah)
Casia: Here you go, and please enjoy!
Here are six pages of things that started out according to the plan, then ended up spinning out of control. Once again, IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS DARK. But hehe, this is the final product. Please enjoy, and I'd love to hear your thoughts once you've finished reading!
Chapter Nineteen
Fighting With The Enemy
The party had started out nicely.
Lavender got drunk a bit too fast, hugged Hermione a lot, and suggestively shoved her towards Ron whenever he was near.
Ron, on his part, had automatically shoved her back, and then flushed a deep embarrassing red and apologized.
Harry, who had been lounging in the couch, shifted his eyes from Neville and Cho's dancing and shouting, to roar with laughter at Ron.
He blushed a deeper red, then started a funny playfight with Harry on the couch.
Lavender pointed at them a bit sluggishly, still somehow managing to seem graceful while doing so. With big watery eyes, she slurred drunkenly, "Other students at Hogwarts sometimes spread rumors that they were together. Simply look at them. How could Ron and Harry not understand why?"
Hermione laughed, the feeling bubbly and warm. Just like the wine in her hand.
Suddenly, she was reminded of Luna. Hermione hadn't sent her a letter yet, even though she had been staying in Italy for so long. She really hoped Luna was fine back at Ilvermorny. Luna didn't have many other friends there either, but Hermione had found that Luna really wasn't one to care much.
She took a long sip and sighed.
"So, no shots today?" Lavender teased.
"Hah!" Hermione spluttered, feeling the wine enter the wrong pipe in her throat.
She coughed. It trinkled down nonetheless, stealing her voice.
When Lavender broke out in melodious laughter again, she cleared her throat again and hoarsely replied, "NO!"
She heard a hollow bang from behind, and they both turned to see Harry and Ron, who had just fallen off the couch, bent over in a laughing fit.
Neville and Cho went over to help them, and Harry pulled them both down with him too.
Then the doorbell rang, and like a bunch of excited puppies waiting for their owner to return home, they all ran to see who it was.
Hermione was about to check through the peephole of the door when Neville reached out and pulled it towards him. The door bumped straight into her face.
She rubbed her forehead, muttering a wounded "ouch…"
The door slid open.
It revealed a boy, dressed in expensive sleek black clothes – and even through hazy drunk vision, Hermione could easily tell. He had sleek blonde hair, and he would have been handsome, had it not been for the scowl he wore on his face.
Hermione was immediately taken aback.
"Malfoy," Neville gulped out from beside her.
"Are you going to let me in?" the boy drawled, lazily looking over to Hermione where she stood, still touching the reddening tender bruise on her forehead with her fingers.
He tugged at the girl at his side.
"Pansy?" Hermione exclaimed, baffled.
"Hermione?" Pansy let out, equally surprised.
She wore a nice skirt and black top under a heavy coat. Her mascara brought out the dark brown of her eyes. She looked pretty tonight.
Realization dawned over Pansy's face.
"This is where Windowsill Boy lives?" she asked, looking twice at Neville just to make sure he wasn't the Windowsill Boy in question.
A dull "Yeah," slipped out of Hermione's lips. She still couldn't take her eyes off of the boy beside Pansy.
"And this is…"
Hermione trailed off. She'd almost said 'the grumpy new roommate' but had luckily managed to hold her tongue in the last second.
Fortunately for her, Pansy seemed to take it as a cue to introduce him to her.
Proudly, she introduced him, clutching his arm like he belonged to her.
"This is Draco." Pansy said, and at Neville's speechless expression, added, "Draco Malfoy,"
"Yes, Longbottom," he nearly spat, British accent crisp and not nearly as satisfying to hear as Ron's, "I am also on exchange. I figured you wouldn't know, seeing how dense you can be sometimes."
Neville clamped his mouth shut teeth-shatteringly fast.
Draco Malfoy's tone of voice brought back a flurry of memories in Hermione's head, and she found her chest tightening so fast she lost her breath.
Hermione was eleven, sitting on the 909 Ilvermorny Subway, and Vincent Crawford pretended to stumble just to slip a hand down to tug her skirt up.
You're just a friendless little No-Maj who compensates for friends with your books, Justin Jace'd sneered, Might as well show a little skin, who knows, maybe that's a quality you could use.
A huddle of girls passing her in the hallway, whispering as they trailed past her. Don't talk to her, she's just a freak.
Someone came up behind her, and a warm hand found her shoulder, grounding her.
"Weasley's back, now, is he?" Malfoy's disgusting voice rang out again, "Daddy finally collected enough Sickles for you to make the exam?"
Hermione turned around, saw Ron's strangely expressionless face. His stare was blank and cold, but she could tell that what Malfoy had said had gotten to him by the way his jaw worked, and how his ears were burning red.
"Malfoy," Ron said coldly, his voice weird, "Nice seeing you here."
Malfoy grinned, as if he had just said something extremely pleasing to hear, "Yes. I was very fortunate. Someone went back to Hogwarts, so a spot suddenly opened –"
Pansy's eyes flickered between them, and she tugged at his sleeve, "Perhaps we should leave, Draco."
He didn't even look at her, just shook his head.
"We don't have to leave. I live here."
She could almost hear Ron's teeth gritting and grinding behind her. His hand on her shoulder tightened.
Hermione turned around to see Ron's face split into a forced smile – more like a grimace if you asked her – as he opened up a space for Malfoy and Pansy to enter through.
Pansy locked eyes with her when they passed, and Hermione saw actual remorse in her face. She grimaced apologetically, but still followed Draco, attached at the elbow to his fist.
Malfoy walked a distance into the room before he suddenly halted. With a smug grin, he turned around slowly. Hermione could almost see the gears working in his smug, black eyes.
He sneered, "I'm so sad to hear about your brother, Weasley. What a loss –"
Ron couldn't hold back anymore. The hand on her shoulder dug into her bones.
"Don't you dare, you bloody, fucking –"
Hermione interrupted him, even surprising herself, by slapping Malfoy hard in the face.
The slap had rung through the room, almost as if it had been lightening that suddenly had clapped down in the middle of them, even muting the music for a second by the sheer abruptness of it.
Pansy was ludicrous enough to look mildly offended.
Everyone else stood frozen, Malfoy with his pale fingers held up to his reddening cheek. His mouth slowly formed into an innocent 'o', before his expression suddenly darkened with realization, and he moved towards her like a predatory animal.
He stalked towards her in long strides, until he was just a millimeter from her face. He gripped her hard with both hands, digging bone against bone into her shoulders.
"You bitch!" he spat, face dark and scowling.
In the back of her mind, she registered that Ron had stepped forward, to somewhere just behind her, and just a tad bit too late to stop Malfoy from whatever he had planned to do.
Malfoy's fingernails were long and clipped, and he drove them hard into her shoulder.
Then he leaned forward, grabbed her other shoulder with another hard pull, and kissed her on the lips. Hard.
Ilvermorny memories swirled in front of her eyes, and she felt dizzy.
Justin Jace shoving her into the tiled walls in the girl's bathroom, demanding her to stop being such a prude.
That one girl in her class that had watched, laughing as Hermione tried to squirm away to no avail.
Hermione felt like someone had squeezed out all the air inside her lungs.
Pansy squealed, "Draco! What the hell!" then pulled him away from her.
Suddenly, she could breathe again.
"Oh my god," Lavender said, stunned.
Neville looked shell shocked.
Harry suddenly leapt forward, then pushed Malfoy square in the chest, causing him to stumble backwards, almost losing his balance.
"What, Potter," Malfoy spat, though some of the maliciousness had disappeared, and his eyes were wide with surprise – perhaps at the realization of what he himself had done, or how pissed off Harry looked, "She got what she deserved."
Harry, red-faced, was about to retort, but Hermione blinked and got to Malfoy first. She slipped out from under Ron's calming hand, leaving a phantom feeling of its warmth on her shoulder.
"You're the one whose father sabotaged Ron's scholarship," Hermione stated, her voice quiet. It had taken a cold and calculated character, which seemed to, to some extent, begin to intimidate Draco Malfoy.
"You are nothing but a weasel," she continued, closing in on him.
He looked at her with wide eyes, perhaps realizing his mistake.
"It's going to be a blistering day in hell when you get what you deserve." she hissed, jabbing a finger into his chest. "Now you can take yourself and your sorry excuse of a person and Get. Out."
He scurried around, realizing that even Pansy had thrown herself away from him.
"But –" he tried to argue, voice small and boyish.
"Now."
And he turned around on his heel and was gone. The door slammed.
The room was quiet.
"I'm so sorr –" Hermione didn't let neither Ron nor Harry, or any of the others for that sake, finish whatever apologies they were starting to clumsily mumble out.
"Where are his things?" she said, straight to the point.
Harry pointed to one of the bedroom doors.
She stalked in, waving a hand casually in Ron's direction. "Would you mind opening the window for me, please?"
He did as he was told and opened the living room window – the same one he had been sitting in back when he had just been known to her as Windowsill Boy.
No one dared break the tension in the room. It was like walking around splintering glass. No one wanted to be the one to deliver the final break to make it shatter.
"Wingardium Leviosa." Hermione said sweetly, waving her wand, then she stalked over to the window.
All of Draco Malfoy's belongings trailed after her in the air, like a dog following its leash.
"Open, please." Hermione asked Ron, who obliged and pushed the glass outward.
The force of the winter breeze pulled it wide open immediately.
"Perfect." Hermione thought.
Then she guided Malfoy's things through the hole in the window frame, and with a twist of her wrist, dropped them all two floors down, and straight into the garbage bins below.
She turned around, and with sickening realization, felt how clarity finally dawned on her.
She had been driven by fiery anger, and now all she could feel was how the shame bubbled and twisted in the pit of her stomach. Had she scared away her friends, now, too?
With a sharp inhale, she pulled together the last of her courage, and turned around.
All of them looked at her, mouths agape.
Neville. Cho. Lavender.
Ron. Harry.
Even Pansy looked shocked.
The bass still thrummed in the background, like a faint memory of the party they had been attending.
Then, Harry clapped his hands together violently, and bent over and started laughing.
"Bloody hell, Hermione." he forced out, red-faced and sweaty, "I didn't know you had it in you."
Ron walked up to her and slapped an arm over her shoulders. He still looked a little shaky.
"Damn." he said after a long pause, "If only you had been on our side during the war, we'd have won it in a day."
Hermione laughed and poked him in the chest.
"You should have recruited me earlier," she winked.
"Yeah." he agreed, and Hermione noticed how he still looked a little pale.
"You okay?" she asked with concern.
"Yep!" he said, then smiled his askew little smile. Mischief twinkled in his eyes, "I just can't wait for Malfoy to explain that to his father."
A/N: This was a long chapter that got sliiiightly out of hand. One of the reasons it took so long was because I was trying to spell this one word, but I just never saw it written before, and apparently, I had no idea how to spell it. I ended up rewriting that part a little bit, sadly. I just really wanted to use that word hahah. BUT ANYWAY, please leave a review and tell me your thoughts about this chapter! Here's a hug for you if you do! Love ya!