Fic: My Best Mistake, Challenge #16
Title: My Best Mistake
Summary: Draco is ruining Hermione's dream job in the Law Enforcement Department and she decides to take revenge. She soon finds out she made one giant mistake. Not beta'd, so it's probably rough in places. Sorry! Also inspired by a prompt from the Puff House "Draco/Hermione, Veritaserum".
Characters/Pairings: Draco/Hermione
Genre: Romance/Drama
Rating/Warnings: PG-13: some language
Word Count: 3,113 (according to Word)
Ever since Hermione had figured out what she wanted to do with her life after Voldemort, this had been her dream job. It had taken a lot of hard work, dedication and sacrifice to get where she was in the Department of Law Enforcement. The ultimate sacrifice had been her own relationship with Ron, a fact that still haunted her. The fact that their relationship failed because of her career was something that she was having a hard time getting over, but in the end she had set her career higher and she supposed that said something about their romantic relationship in the first place.
The fact of the matter was that she had sacrificed a great deal for this job and now he was ruining it. He made all of her work days a living hell; picking fights any chance he got, mocking her in front of co-workers and belittling her work. Draco Malfoy was a bloody pain in her arse just as he had been since the day they met, but she flat out refused to let him ruin her dream job. She wouldn’t stand for it, not when she had worked so hard to get where she was.
As it were, he was sitting right opposite her at the table in the meeting room making rude gestures to make her uncomfortable. He always knew she was early to meetings and that he’d always be able to pick the seat opposite her just to bother her. Once she’d tried asking their co-worker Mary to take the opposite seat, but Malfoy the slimy little weasel had charmed her into moving. He was an irritating git all around and despairingly, he knew exactly which buttons to push.
He smirked at her and she realised he must have noticed her intense glaring. She looked away and tapped her self-inking quill against the parchment as she tried to focus on her boss talking. Paying attention to him was just letting him win, but she couldn’t help it. He just got under her skin somehow. If it had been anyone else being this childish, she would’ve just ignored it until they got bored, but he just got to her.
But she was done tolerating it now. She was going to put a stop to it and she had a plan. He was going to regret ever getting in her way; however reformed he was or pretended to be. She looked over at him and grinned gleefully at the thought of the vial of Veritaserum waiting on her desk. He looked taken aback and his smirk faltered slightly. Oh, she was going to wipe that smirk away entirely.
[---]
He was there like clockwork just as she bit into her lunch. Every day, he showed up during the lunch break to stop her from having a decent lunch. Usually he sat down with his own lunch and stole her drink. He was so predictable. Her pumpkin juice stood on the desk, opened as if she’d drunk from it. It was too easy.
“Hey, Granger,” he beamed, pulling up the other chair in her office and sat down.
He put his feet up on her desk, his shoes covering the parchment she had been working on earlier. Her jaw clenched in anger as she reached over and pushed his feet off of her work and tossed the parchment into an open drawer. He grinned. She glared. All was as it usually was.
“Mmm, you have pumpkin juice!”
She had to fight to not laugh with malicious glee. He was so easy to trick sometimes. She watched as he reached in for the bottle of pumpkin juice and drank eagerly from it before he sat it down on the desk and smacked his lips in contentment. She allowed herself a smile finally and flicked her wand towards the door, locking it with a spell that wouldn’t allow anyone but her to unlock it.
His content smile faltered as he realised something was wrong. As his disappeared, hers widened.
“Did it taste good?” she asked sweetly.
“It tasted funny,” he said, his eyes widening as he spoke. “You bitch.”
She laughed, tapping her fingers against the table as she weighed her options. She knew she wanted to use the time to ask him why he was going this. And she wanted to dig out some dirty details that she could use against him. She could visibly see fear spread across his face.
“So, Malfoy,” she began, leaning back in her chair. “You spend every day at work torturing me. In fact, you spend more time doing this than you do anything else. Why?”
She watched him as he seemed to fight the potion, his face turning red from the effort.
“I like to rile you up,” he blurted, and looked slightly relieved. “This is illegal, Granger!”
“I know it is,” she said and sighed slightly. “Look, I’m at my wits end here. I’ve asked you to stop multiple times. I’ve asked you why a million times. I can’t take this anymore, it needs to stop. Part of my job is to control the use of the Veritaserum, I know how to cover my tracks.”
He just looked at her darkly, his posture revealing how uncomfortable he felt.
“So, you like to rile me up. Why exactly?”
The panic was evident in his eyes and once again he fought the answer to the point where she was debating giving him the antidote because he almost seemed to be in pain.
“Because you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
The sentence hung in the air between them and crackled with energy. She was staring at him as if he was sprouting tentacles.
“I’m sorry, what?” she squeaked, feeling smaller by the second.
“You always react to my taunts by flushing red and you give back with equal energy,” he blurted, clearly horrified by his own words. “You get so passionate when I bother you; it gets under your skin. It’s the only way I get you to notice me.”
She had never in her life felt like a worse human being. Yes, he had bothered her to the point of driving her insane, but he was right. When he had started working here he had acted like any other one of her colleagues and she had ignored him, because it was just easier that way. She had only started talking to him when he’d started bothering her.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” she asked, almost more to herself than him.
“It’s not like it would have made any difference. You’ve never showed an interest in me, I wasn’t about to bare my soul to you about my innermost feelings, was I?”
She looked at him with a pained expression and felt as if she was physically shrinking in her chair. She’d taken it for granted that his taunting had been with malicious intent and that when she asked why he was doing it, he’d tell her it was because she was lesser than him. This was so far from anything she had expected.
“Not that you’ve given me a choice on the matter of baring my soul,” he said bitterly.
She had so many other questions popping up in her head that she knew she would never get any answers to if she didn’t ask them now. But as she looked into his face, she knew she had already done him too much wrong. She didn’t have it in her to force him to spill things he wanted to hide. Blinking back tears of shame, she reached into a drawer and put the antidote on the desk in front of him.
“Malfoy, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“I don’t want your fucking pity,” he snarled and threw back the contents of the antidote.
“It’s not pity, I’m just apologising for my actions.”
It wasn’t entirely the truth. It was an apology for her actions, but it was also pity for what she’d forced him to admit.
“Fuck you, Granger,” he said, getting up from the chair.
She unlocked the door for him and watched as he grabbed his lunch and left.
[---]
She had expected to feel such bliss when he finally left her alone, but bliss wasn’t even one of the emotions she felt. During the meetings he sat on the opposite end of the table never looking in her direction. The fact that he didn’t acknowledge her existence distracted her even more than his antics had used to. Her lunch breaks were long and tedious as she ate alone in her office in complete silence. And worse than anything, she was losing focus because she had no one to take her stress out on.
She was ready to tear her hair out. Never once had she considered that she needed him to bother her because it gave her an outlet. Now she was going insane from pent up stress and the added burden of a nagging conscience. She couldn’t even recognise herself in the situation. Hermione Granger followed rules and broke them only when it was necessary. Hermione Granger did not break rules for her own benefit or to ruin someone else.
Their colleagues were obviously noticing it too. Yesterday, Mary had asked her if everything was all right, since she and Malfoy never participated in the good-natured teasing anymore. It had never struck Hermione that everyone else viewed it as good-natured teasing. For her, it had only been his way of terrorising her, but maybe even he hadn’t meant it as such.
The terrible conscience was eating her alive. She had been looking for a way to corner him for the past couple of days, since she realised her conscience wouldn’t improve until she’d spoken to him again. But it had been no use; he’d been too good at avoiding her. Until now. He was standing alone in between two aisles in their archive and he would have nowhere to run. She stopped outside in the hall and watched him for a while as he flicked through a file.
Nervousness was creeping up on her and she felt like running off, but she got herself together and forced herself to step inside.
“Hey,” she said quietly as she came up beside him.
He jerked slightly in surprise, but didn’t look up at the sound of her voice.
“Look, I know you’re upset,” she began, running her finger over the spines of the files on the shelf. “And you have every right to be. What I did was unacceptable and illegal and I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply and she sighed in defeat, not knowing what to say next. She looked over at him and noticed he wasn’t reading the file, he was just staring blindly at it.
“Malfoy...”
“Sod off, Granger!” he exclaimed suddenly. “What do you want? Do you want more of my secrets? Do you have some kind of perverse joy in seeing me embarrassed?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he didn’t give her any chance.
“You got what you wanted; I’m not bothering you anymore. And I’m not going to tell anyone you used Veritaserium illegally, so just back off. Whatever you want to achieve by cornering me in here, just give it up. I’m not interested.”
He stumbled slightly over the last statement and he turned away from her, taking off down the aisle to the opposite end to get away from her. She could have followed him as there was no exit at the other end, but she didn’t know what to say to him. He was obviously angry and he had every right to be.
Hermione shuffled back to her office and sat quietly and still in her chair for almost half an hour just thinking about their exchange. Analysing was what she did and it always calmed her down, because it gave light to new details. It had struck her that he was indeed angry, but what she hadn’t considered was that he was more embarrassed. And their exchange also made her realise he was hurt. The anger was justified, but it was also hiding what she suspected was his two primary feelings right now: shame and hurt.
She didn’t know if he was as angry about what she has did as he was embarrassed that she now knew what he felt about her and that she didn’t reciprocate them. At least she had thought that she didn’t.
[---]
Harry had started to worry about her now. He’d given her third degree at the pub last night and she didn’t feel like discussing it at all, for many reasons. One of them being that she was a criminal and he definitely wouldn’t approve. And she doubted he would approve of the fact that she was missing Draco Malfoy.
She felt like an idiot. How many times had she tried to get him to stop bothering her? And now that she’d finally accomplished it, she wanted nothing else for him to keep bothering her. She liked their banter. And he never minded being her punching bag when she had rough days. That he came in to steal her drink had been a cover up for them sharing their lunches together. She had been so preoccupied with him stealing her drink that she hadn’t realised they actually ate their lunch together every day and discussed everything between heaven and earth in the process. Anyone else would call that friendship, she had called it terrorising. If anyone was a giant git in this occasion, it was her.
She had tried so many times to stay back after meetings or find excuses to be around him, but he managed to avoid her every time. It was frustrating and she was running out of ways to get him to talk to her. She was even debating doing something ridiculous again, but had to remind herself that’s how she got into this mess in the first place.
When their last meeting for the day was over, she hurried out and stood outside the door waiting for all the others to pass her. This way he couldn’t avoid her and she would see where he was heading. But for some reason he managed to sneak out unnoticed and she cursed herself. She peered inside the room, but he wasn’t back there either. With a sinking heart, she turned around to go back to her office when she almost ran into Mary.
“Draco went towards the lifts. If you hurry you can catch him,” she whispered and took off.
Hermione yelled ‘thanks’ after her and scurried off towards the lifts. She hoped she wasn’t too late, as it was impossible to know which lift he’d gone into or where he’d gotten off. When she spotted him he was standing inside the lift, pushing the button frantically to make the doors shut before she got there. The sight almost made her laugh and she got there just in time to pull the doors apart and step inside.
“Thanks for holding the door for me,” she commented in amusement.
He stared off in another direction.
They were the only ones in there and she knew this was her time to say something: anything. The problem was that she hadn’t prepared anything at all. She watched the light move slowly towards the floor he’d chosen and she was completely blanking on anything to say. She swallowed heavily and rubbed her palms on her skirt nervously.
When the lift was almost at the floor he was getting off at, she panicked and made her decision. Turning towards him, she reached up and cupped his face. He was so surprised that he turned his head towards her and stared. As her heart raced, she tilted her head and pressed her lips softly to his. He was too stunned to respond at first, but suddenly he gripped her around the waist and his kiss was warm and soft.
The door opened with a sharp sound and he released her before she even realised what was happening. She stood in the same spot, dazed and dizzy, as he stepped out of the lift.
“Quit playing these fucking games with me, Granger,” he growled, before turning his back to her.
“I’m not playing games!” she called out. “I miss you.”
“Just stop it!”
The doors of the lift slammed shut again and he disappeared from view before the lift continued upwards.
[---]
She couldn’t get the kiss out of her mind. He was a stubborn git, but the feeling of his lips on hers lingered in her mind. He could believe whatever he wanted about why she had kissed him, but it was no doubt in her mind that she had wanted to. And right now there was nothing she wanted more than to do it again.
Her pulse was racing as she stood outside his office holding her lunch. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other for a while before she finally gathered the courage to open the door. He looked up from his own lunch when she entered and his lips pursed in annoyance when he saw it was her.
“Peace offering,” she said lightly.
She closed the door behind her and put her lunch on the desk before she pulled up a chair. With a careful smile she got out a second drink from her pocket and placed it on the desk between them.
“Do you really think a little pumpkin juice makes up for everything?”
“No, of course not,” she said softly.
He looked at her for a few seconds before he reached out and took her offer.
“I really am terribly sorry,” she said, looking down into her lap where her hands were folded. “I really thought you were torturing me because you hated me and I wanted to teach you a lesson. It’s not an excuse, but I took everything the wrong way and I admit I was hurt by it.”
“So you tried to make it up to me by kissing me,” he said flatly.
“No,” she answered vehemently. “I kissed you because I wanted to. I’ve realised I was looking at everything the wrong way. I thought I wanted nothing more than for you to leave me alone, but I...I’ve missed you.”
He opened the bottle of pumpkin juice and drank slowly from it. Their eyes met and an entire unspoken conversation seemed to pass between them.
“I’ll never accept another drink from you unless it’s unopened.”
She laughed in surprise, seeing no animosity in his eyes.
“Deal.”
If I understand this correctly, the points should be:
3113/50 = 62,26
+3113/500 = 6,22
= 68,48
= 68 points
I think? XD
Ing//Hufflepuff
Summary: Draco is ruining Hermione's dream job in the Law Enforcement Department and she decides to take revenge. She soon finds out she made one giant mistake. Not beta'd, so it's probably rough in places. Sorry! Also inspired by a prompt from the Puff House "Draco/Hermione, Veritaserum".
Characters/Pairings: Draco/Hermione
Genre: Romance/Drama
Rating/Warnings: PG-13: some language
Word Count: 3,113 (according to Word)
Ever since Hermione had figured out what she wanted to do with her life after Voldemort, this had been her dream job. It had taken a lot of hard work, dedication and sacrifice to get where she was in the Department of Law Enforcement. The ultimate sacrifice had been her own relationship with Ron, a fact that still haunted her. The fact that their relationship failed because of her career was something that she was having a hard time getting over, but in the end she had set her career higher and she supposed that said something about their romantic relationship in the first place.
The fact of the matter was that she had sacrificed a great deal for this job and now he was ruining it. He made all of her work days a living hell; picking fights any chance he got, mocking her in front of co-workers and belittling her work. Draco Malfoy was a bloody pain in her arse just as he had been since the day they met, but she flat out refused to let him ruin her dream job. She wouldn’t stand for it, not when she had worked so hard to get where she was.
As it were, he was sitting right opposite her at the table in the meeting room making rude gestures to make her uncomfortable. He always knew she was early to meetings and that he’d always be able to pick the seat opposite her just to bother her. Once she’d tried asking their co-worker Mary to take the opposite seat, but Malfoy the slimy little weasel had charmed her into moving. He was an irritating git all around and despairingly, he knew exactly which buttons to push.
He smirked at her and she realised he must have noticed her intense glaring. She looked away and tapped her self-inking quill against the parchment as she tried to focus on her boss talking. Paying attention to him was just letting him win, but she couldn’t help it. He just got under her skin somehow. If it had been anyone else being this childish, she would’ve just ignored it until they got bored, but he just got to her.
But she was done tolerating it now. She was going to put a stop to it and she had a plan. He was going to regret ever getting in her way; however reformed he was or pretended to be. She looked over at him and grinned gleefully at the thought of the vial of Veritaserum waiting on her desk. He looked taken aback and his smirk faltered slightly. Oh, she was going to wipe that smirk away entirely.
[---]
He was there like clockwork just as she bit into her lunch. Every day, he showed up during the lunch break to stop her from having a decent lunch. Usually he sat down with his own lunch and stole her drink. He was so predictable. Her pumpkin juice stood on the desk, opened as if she’d drunk from it. It was too easy.
“Hey, Granger,” he beamed, pulling up the other chair in her office and sat down.
He put his feet up on her desk, his shoes covering the parchment she had been working on earlier. Her jaw clenched in anger as she reached over and pushed his feet off of her work and tossed the parchment into an open drawer. He grinned. She glared. All was as it usually was.
“Mmm, you have pumpkin juice!”
She had to fight to not laugh with malicious glee. He was so easy to trick sometimes. She watched as he reached in for the bottle of pumpkin juice and drank eagerly from it before he sat it down on the desk and smacked his lips in contentment. She allowed herself a smile finally and flicked her wand towards the door, locking it with a spell that wouldn’t allow anyone but her to unlock it.
His content smile faltered as he realised something was wrong. As his disappeared, hers widened.
“Did it taste good?” she asked sweetly.
“It tasted funny,” he said, his eyes widening as he spoke. “You bitch.”
She laughed, tapping her fingers against the table as she weighed her options. She knew she wanted to use the time to ask him why he was going this. And she wanted to dig out some dirty details that she could use against him. She could visibly see fear spread across his face.
“So, Malfoy,” she began, leaning back in her chair. “You spend every day at work torturing me. In fact, you spend more time doing this than you do anything else. Why?”
She watched him as he seemed to fight the potion, his face turning red from the effort.
“I like to rile you up,” he blurted, and looked slightly relieved. “This is illegal, Granger!”
“I know it is,” she said and sighed slightly. “Look, I’m at my wits end here. I’ve asked you to stop multiple times. I’ve asked you why a million times. I can’t take this anymore, it needs to stop. Part of my job is to control the use of the Veritaserum, I know how to cover my tracks.”
He just looked at her darkly, his posture revealing how uncomfortable he felt.
“So, you like to rile me up. Why exactly?”
The panic was evident in his eyes and once again he fought the answer to the point where she was debating giving him the antidote because he almost seemed to be in pain.
“Because you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
The sentence hung in the air between them and crackled with energy. She was staring at him as if he was sprouting tentacles.
“I’m sorry, what?” she squeaked, feeling smaller by the second.
“You always react to my taunts by flushing red and you give back with equal energy,” he blurted, clearly horrified by his own words. “You get so passionate when I bother you; it gets under your skin. It’s the only way I get you to notice me.”
She had never in her life felt like a worse human being. Yes, he had bothered her to the point of driving her insane, but he was right. When he had started working here he had acted like any other one of her colleagues and she had ignored him, because it was just easier that way. She had only started talking to him when he’d started bothering her.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” she asked, almost more to herself than him.
“It’s not like it would have made any difference. You’ve never showed an interest in me, I wasn’t about to bare my soul to you about my innermost feelings, was I?”
She looked at him with a pained expression and felt as if she was physically shrinking in her chair. She’d taken it for granted that his taunting had been with malicious intent and that when she asked why he was doing it, he’d tell her it was because she was lesser than him. This was so far from anything she had expected.
“Not that you’ve given me a choice on the matter of baring my soul,” he said bitterly.
She had so many other questions popping up in her head that she knew she would never get any answers to if she didn’t ask them now. But as she looked into his face, she knew she had already done him too much wrong. She didn’t have it in her to force him to spill things he wanted to hide. Blinking back tears of shame, she reached into a drawer and put the antidote on the desk in front of him.
“Malfoy, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“I don’t want your fucking pity,” he snarled and threw back the contents of the antidote.
“It’s not pity, I’m just apologising for my actions.”
It wasn’t entirely the truth. It was an apology for her actions, but it was also pity for what she’d forced him to admit.
“Fuck you, Granger,” he said, getting up from the chair.
She unlocked the door for him and watched as he grabbed his lunch and left.
[---]
She had expected to feel such bliss when he finally left her alone, but bliss wasn’t even one of the emotions she felt. During the meetings he sat on the opposite end of the table never looking in her direction. The fact that he didn’t acknowledge her existence distracted her even more than his antics had used to. Her lunch breaks were long and tedious as she ate alone in her office in complete silence. And worse than anything, she was losing focus because she had no one to take her stress out on.
She was ready to tear her hair out. Never once had she considered that she needed him to bother her because it gave her an outlet. Now she was going insane from pent up stress and the added burden of a nagging conscience. She couldn’t even recognise herself in the situation. Hermione Granger followed rules and broke them only when it was necessary. Hermione Granger did not break rules for her own benefit or to ruin someone else.
Their colleagues were obviously noticing it too. Yesterday, Mary had asked her if everything was all right, since she and Malfoy never participated in the good-natured teasing anymore. It had never struck Hermione that everyone else viewed it as good-natured teasing. For her, it had only been his way of terrorising her, but maybe even he hadn’t meant it as such.
The terrible conscience was eating her alive. She had been looking for a way to corner him for the past couple of days, since she realised her conscience wouldn’t improve until she’d spoken to him again. But it had been no use; he’d been too good at avoiding her. Until now. He was standing alone in between two aisles in their archive and he would have nowhere to run. She stopped outside in the hall and watched him for a while as he flicked through a file.
Nervousness was creeping up on her and she felt like running off, but she got herself together and forced herself to step inside.
“Hey,” she said quietly as she came up beside him.
He jerked slightly in surprise, but didn’t look up at the sound of her voice.
“Look, I know you’re upset,” she began, running her finger over the spines of the files on the shelf. “And you have every right to be. What I did was unacceptable and illegal and I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply and she sighed in defeat, not knowing what to say next. She looked over at him and noticed he wasn’t reading the file, he was just staring blindly at it.
“Malfoy...”
“Sod off, Granger!” he exclaimed suddenly. “What do you want? Do you want more of my secrets? Do you have some kind of perverse joy in seeing me embarrassed?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he didn’t give her any chance.
“You got what you wanted; I’m not bothering you anymore. And I’m not going to tell anyone you used Veritaserium illegally, so just back off. Whatever you want to achieve by cornering me in here, just give it up. I’m not interested.”
He stumbled slightly over the last statement and he turned away from her, taking off down the aisle to the opposite end to get away from her. She could have followed him as there was no exit at the other end, but she didn’t know what to say to him. He was obviously angry and he had every right to be.
Hermione shuffled back to her office and sat quietly and still in her chair for almost half an hour just thinking about their exchange. Analysing was what she did and it always calmed her down, because it gave light to new details. It had struck her that he was indeed angry, but what she hadn’t considered was that he was more embarrassed. And their exchange also made her realise he was hurt. The anger was justified, but it was also hiding what she suspected was his two primary feelings right now: shame and hurt.
She didn’t know if he was as angry about what she has did as he was embarrassed that she now knew what he felt about her and that she didn’t reciprocate them. At least she had thought that she didn’t.
[---]
Harry had started to worry about her now. He’d given her third degree at the pub last night and she didn’t feel like discussing it at all, for many reasons. One of them being that she was a criminal and he definitely wouldn’t approve. And she doubted he would approve of the fact that she was missing Draco Malfoy.
She felt like an idiot. How many times had she tried to get him to stop bothering her? And now that she’d finally accomplished it, she wanted nothing else for him to keep bothering her. She liked their banter. And he never minded being her punching bag when she had rough days. That he came in to steal her drink had been a cover up for them sharing their lunches together. She had been so preoccupied with him stealing her drink that she hadn’t realised they actually ate their lunch together every day and discussed everything between heaven and earth in the process. Anyone else would call that friendship, she had called it terrorising. If anyone was a giant git in this occasion, it was her.
She had tried so many times to stay back after meetings or find excuses to be around him, but he managed to avoid her every time. It was frustrating and she was running out of ways to get him to talk to her. She was even debating doing something ridiculous again, but had to remind herself that’s how she got into this mess in the first place.
When their last meeting for the day was over, she hurried out and stood outside the door waiting for all the others to pass her. This way he couldn’t avoid her and she would see where he was heading. But for some reason he managed to sneak out unnoticed and she cursed herself. She peered inside the room, but he wasn’t back there either. With a sinking heart, she turned around to go back to her office when she almost ran into Mary.
“Draco went towards the lifts. If you hurry you can catch him,” she whispered and took off.
Hermione yelled ‘thanks’ after her and scurried off towards the lifts. She hoped she wasn’t too late, as it was impossible to know which lift he’d gone into or where he’d gotten off. When she spotted him he was standing inside the lift, pushing the button frantically to make the doors shut before she got there. The sight almost made her laugh and she got there just in time to pull the doors apart and step inside.
“Thanks for holding the door for me,” she commented in amusement.
He stared off in another direction.
They were the only ones in there and she knew this was her time to say something: anything. The problem was that she hadn’t prepared anything at all. She watched the light move slowly towards the floor he’d chosen and she was completely blanking on anything to say. She swallowed heavily and rubbed her palms on her skirt nervously.
When the lift was almost at the floor he was getting off at, she panicked and made her decision. Turning towards him, she reached up and cupped his face. He was so surprised that he turned his head towards her and stared. As her heart raced, she tilted her head and pressed her lips softly to his. He was too stunned to respond at first, but suddenly he gripped her around the waist and his kiss was warm and soft.
The door opened with a sharp sound and he released her before she even realised what was happening. She stood in the same spot, dazed and dizzy, as he stepped out of the lift.
“Quit playing these fucking games with me, Granger,” he growled, before turning his back to her.
“I’m not playing games!” she called out. “I miss you.”
“Just stop it!”
The doors of the lift slammed shut again and he disappeared from view before the lift continued upwards.
[---]
She couldn’t get the kiss out of her mind. He was a stubborn git, but the feeling of his lips on hers lingered in her mind. He could believe whatever he wanted about why she had kissed him, but it was no doubt in her mind that she had wanted to. And right now there was nothing she wanted more than to do it again.
Her pulse was racing as she stood outside his office holding her lunch. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other for a while before she finally gathered the courage to open the door. He looked up from his own lunch when she entered and his lips pursed in annoyance when he saw it was her.
“Peace offering,” she said lightly.
She closed the door behind her and put her lunch on the desk before she pulled up a chair. With a careful smile she got out a second drink from her pocket and placed it on the desk between them.
“Do you really think a little pumpkin juice makes up for everything?”
“No, of course not,” she said softly.
He looked at her for a few seconds before he reached out and took her offer.
“I really am terribly sorry,” she said, looking down into her lap where her hands were folded. “I really thought you were torturing me because you hated me and I wanted to teach you a lesson. It’s not an excuse, but I took everything the wrong way and I admit I was hurt by it.”
“So you tried to make it up to me by kissing me,” he said flatly.
“No,” she answered vehemently. “I kissed you because I wanted to. I’ve realised I was looking at everything the wrong way. I thought I wanted nothing more than for you to leave me alone, but I...I’ve missed you.”
He opened the bottle of pumpkin juice and drank slowly from it. Their eyes met and an entire unspoken conversation seemed to pass between them.
“I’ll never accept another drink from you unless it’s unopened.”
She laughed in surprise, seeing no animosity in his eyes.
“Deal.”
If I understand this correctly, the points should be:
3113/50 = 62,26
+3113/500 = 6,22
= 68,48
= 68 points
I think? XD
Ing//Hufflepuff