HP -- Getting a Life IV: Rue the Day
Title: Getting a Life
Chapter: 4. Rue the Day
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,731
Warnings: the usual...
Summary: Hermione Granger loves metaphors. Draco Malfoy loves Muggle cigarettes. What happens when the king of Slytherin and the queen of the library collide?
Author's Note: No note. Just crappy old fic.
DRACO
When I opened my eyes, it felt like a very long time had gone by. “By now”s started going through my head, as they often did.
Eons might have passed by now. Empires might have risen and fallen by now. Aurora-that was the sleeping one’s name, wasn’t it?-might have yawned her way out of bed and wandered off to find her charming prince.
I looked over. There was a girl sitting in a chair not far away. The rosy pink glow of the sunset painted her skin delicately, like a watercolor, and dark eyes, smoldering like coals from the depth of the shadow, considered the window. I thought giddily that an angel had heard my mumbled, stilted prayers-or perhaps that a demon had finally tallied my list of transgressions and taken the elevator up to collect me. And then the figure turned, and it was Hermione Granger.
What a tremendous disappointment.
I thought she’d immediately start off by calling me on my debt. “I saved your life, Draco Malfoy, and now you’d better start treating me like a human being, bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan.” I wondered whether I would be able to stifle myself with my pillow.
But, as it turned out, she didn’t say any of those things. She said, “Where are your friends?”
I glanced at the window. Six-thirty, maybe. That was probably a little late of an estimate, given the season. “It hasn’t been long,” I noted.
“A few hours,” she countered.
“You think they follow me around like hungry puppies, or what?” I snapped, flicking an eyebrow up derisively.
She shrugged, not deigning to take the bait. “Harry and Ron would be here if it was me.”
I smirked. “Harry Potter and Ron Weasley juxtaposed with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. That’s a pretty shi-” I saw Pomfrey give me a glare. “-poor comparison,” I corrected.
Granger shrugged again, as if the topic of our discussion was quite trivial. I couldn’t decide whether or not it was.
“I doubt that was what you came here to say, Granger,” I remarked, putting into my voice that ooze of acerbic indifference that I’d practiced so often. “So what was it? Come to censure me roundly for my long history of bad behavior? To write a few thousand pages on why I’m a prick and a prat, and sell copies in Diagon Alley? To lay the guilt on thick for all the times I’ve done you wrong?”
She looked at me for a moment. I had begun to open my mouth to motivate her with a bit more sarcasm when she spoke, refusing to answer my question. Typical Granger-after all that, she wouldn’t even offer the common courtesy of a “Yes, Malfoy; you’re a total ass” like everybody else.
“You’re very smart,” she told me instead. “I think you might be pleased with the results if you started acting like it every now and then.”
Slowly I raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s why you’re Gryffindor,” I said. When she merely looked confused, I accentuated my habitual drawl and folded my hands behind my head to add to the appearance of utter disinterest. “You’d think you’d be a Ravenclaw, given your absurd study habits, but none of those idiots would have the gall to say something like that to me, knowing the consequences like you do.” It was my turn to shrug-just to show how little I cared.
Granger arched an eyebrow. “Are you calling me brave?” she asked.
“No,” I replied equably. “I’m calling you stupid.”
Granger opened her mouth to protest, but Pomfrey was faster with a snippy and borderline-incensed “Mister Malfoy!”
Not to be outdone, Granger stood abruptly. “Well, Malfoy,” she concluded, “that’s about as much of you as I can take for today. Good luck with those-” She placed a sneering emphasis on the next word. “-friends of yours.”
I smiled-or, rather, smirked-at her kindly. “Good luck getting that life,” I responded.
She slammed the door on her way out.
I let Pomfrey glare at me for a minute or two to give Granger time to leave before I got out of bed and stretched. “Think I’m cured,” I announced.
The hundred and twenty seconds that had passed had not inclined Pomfrey to like me any better. “If there’s any other problems, come back,” she told me, all business and curt dismissal.
I could have said “Yes, ma’am” like a good boy, but I decided against it. Good boy was so boring.
Speaking of not being a good boy, later that night, the solemn moon and the few wispy clouds clinging to its glowing coattails bore witness to me standing alone outside the school, looking down at the lake and reflecting upon the orange embers at the end of my cigarette. There was silence for awhile, kind, charitable silence but for the breath of the wind that played with my hair and my cloak, and then there were footsteps.
Expecting the worst, I threw the cigarette to the ground and put my shoe over it, hopefully crushing the end out, and put my hands in my pocket, arranging an innocent expression on my face. I didn’t turn around sharply, as one might expect, because that would look far too suspicious.
My caution was vindicated by the identity of my visitor-Professor McGonagall.
“Mister Malfoy?” she prompted.
“Professor,” I returned, evading the unspoken question.
“It’s late,” she declared then, as if I hadn’t known. The only way to be alone in this place was to go outside at an unpalatable hour of the deepening evening. “It would be my advice to you to go back to your dormitory.”
‘It would be my advice to you to be a whiny bitch good boy like all the rest of them, Mister Malfoy,’ I mocked in my mind.
Despite my relegating the words to within my brain, she looked suspicious. Perhaps she’d seen the smoke.
“What have you been doing out here, Mister Malfoy?” she inquired next.
I shrugged and attempted to continue looking immaculately innocent. “It’s nice out here at night,” I said.
She continued to consider me shrewdly. “It would put my mind at rest if you’d try to stay inside,” she informed me.
It’d put my mind at rest if you stopped telling me what to do, ya fuckin’ hag, I thought vindictively.
Outwardly, I shrugged again. “All right,” I conceded. I turned on the heel that concealed the cigarette butt, hoping to hide it more completely in the grass, and then strolled off towards the castle entrance. There was nothing McGonagall could do. She had suspicions, perhaps, but no proof, and without proof, there could be no detentions, no reprimands, and no arbitrary points taken from Slytherin-not that those mattered anymore, since Harry “The Demigod” Potter had arrived at Hogwarts and started sweeping the annual competition every year with an act of well-timed heroism.
The bastard.
I wandered awhile before heading back to the dorm, where I skirted around the edges of the drunken party working its way up to a full-fledged ruckus and went up to my room, where Crabbe and Goyle were involved in a nail-biter of a round of their favorite game-marbles. Sophisticated, to say the least. For my part, I tossed myself down on my bed and grudgingly did some homework, fuming a little every time I thought about what Granger had said-“You’re very smart. You might act like it.” Presumptuous bitch.
I put my hand on auto-pilot, and as it wrote about one sort of Transfiguration or another, I tried to think of a way to grind Granger’s smirking, holier-than-thou face into the dust-figuratively speaking, at least at this juncture. “Mudblood” seemed to be losing some of its power. I considered some alternatives. Her-my-GOD-what-is-that-THING-o-ne was unwieldy to say the least. Hermionit Crab? Didn’t cut it. Mangy Granger had some promise, but it was a little childish. Deranged Granger followed much in the same pattern. No, that wasn’t enough. For her, for that self-proclaimed pinnacle of wit and worldliness and wisdom, I had to come up with something truly and indisputably brilliant. It was a challenge-bringing her down was a challenge; she was a challenge. And anyone who had rested a mere moment in my proximity knew exactly how I felt about challenges.
I was going to destroy her. Maybe when she screamed, maybe when she howled, maybe when she sobbed, maybe when she cried for mercy on her knees, her hands clasped as in prayer, the tears running down her face, I would yield. Maybe. Or maybe I would crush her under my foot like that cigarette, until the individual grains of dirt were buried indelibly in her pale, fragile skin.
There was a mirror in our room, and around the grimy coat hung from a corner of it, draping over a good third of the glass, I saw my reflection, shadowed almost gracefully by the indigo bruises that Hermione Granger, know-it-all extraordinaire, had slapped on me like an award. I saw my face darken around the contusions-figuratively this time. I was going to have the last word here, as I always did. Hermione Granger was going to bleed for those bruises. She didn’t know it yet, but she would, soon. Soon enough. I could wait.
There was no question of if, but when. When, and how-how to drown that stupid, ugly, uppity, self-important Mudblood in her own complacence; how to hold her head under the surface of it until her lungs filled and the feeble struggling stopped.
And then I thought of the rosy glow of twilight on her face, and I knew.
Crabbe and Goyle looked up sharply as I tossed my Transfiguration book aside and started scribbling madly, trying to transcribe my ideas as fast as they came, like bailing water out of a sinking rowboat. When I was finished, I had an entire piece of parchment blanketed in untidy notes outlining my newest plan. It would have taken a real moron to fuck this one up. It was virtually foolproof. And damn, would it be good.
Hermione Granger, queen of the library, teachers’ favorite, with that track record clean and slick as a sheet of ice, was going to rue the day that she’d been born.
[Chapter III] [Chapter V]
Chapter: 4. Rue the Day
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,731
Warnings: the usual...
Summary: Hermione Granger loves metaphors. Draco Malfoy loves Muggle cigarettes. What happens when the king of Slytherin and the queen of the library collide?
Author's Note: No note. Just crappy old fic.
DRACO
When I opened my eyes, it felt like a very long time had gone by. “By now”s started going through my head, as they often did.
Eons might have passed by now. Empires might have risen and fallen by now. Aurora-that was the sleeping one’s name, wasn’t it?-might have yawned her way out of bed and wandered off to find her charming prince.
I looked over. There was a girl sitting in a chair not far away. The rosy pink glow of the sunset painted her skin delicately, like a watercolor, and dark eyes, smoldering like coals from the depth of the shadow, considered the window. I thought giddily that an angel had heard my mumbled, stilted prayers-or perhaps that a demon had finally tallied my list of transgressions and taken the elevator up to collect me. And then the figure turned, and it was Hermione Granger.
What a tremendous disappointment.
I thought she’d immediately start off by calling me on my debt. “I saved your life, Draco Malfoy, and now you’d better start treating me like a human being, bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan.” I wondered whether I would be able to stifle myself with my pillow.
But, as it turned out, she didn’t say any of those things. She said, “Where are your friends?”
I glanced at the window. Six-thirty, maybe. That was probably a little late of an estimate, given the season. “It hasn’t been long,” I noted.
“A few hours,” she countered.
“You think they follow me around like hungry puppies, or what?” I snapped, flicking an eyebrow up derisively.
She shrugged, not deigning to take the bait. “Harry and Ron would be here if it was me.”
I smirked. “Harry Potter and Ron Weasley juxtaposed with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. That’s a pretty shi-” I saw Pomfrey give me a glare. “-poor comparison,” I corrected.
Granger shrugged again, as if the topic of our discussion was quite trivial. I couldn’t decide whether or not it was.
“I doubt that was what you came here to say, Granger,” I remarked, putting into my voice that ooze of acerbic indifference that I’d practiced so often. “So what was it? Come to censure me roundly for my long history of bad behavior? To write a few thousand pages on why I’m a prick and a prat, and sell copies in Diagon Alley? To lay the guilt on thick for all the times I’ve done you wrong?”
She looked at me for a moment. I had begun to open my mouth to motivate her with a bit more sarcasm when she spoke, refusing to answer my question. Typical Granger-after all that, she wouldn’t even offer the common courtesy of a “Yes, Malfoy; you’re a total ass” like everybody else.
“You’re very smart,” she told me instead. “I think you might be pleased with the results if you started acting like it every now and then.”
Slowly I raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s why you’re Gryffindor,” I said. When she merely looked confused, I accentuated my habitual drawl and folded my hands behind my head to add to the appearance of utter disinterest. “You’d think you’d be a Ravenclaw, given your absurd study habits, but none of those idiots would have the gall to say something like that to me, knowing the consequences like you do.” It was my turn to shrug-just to show how little I cared.
Granger arched an eyebrow. “Are you calling me brave?” she asked.
“No,” I replied equably. “I’m calling you stupid.”
Granger opened her mouth to protest, but Pomfrey was faster with a snippy and borderline-incensed “Mister Malfoy!”
Not to be outdone, Granger stood abruptly. “Well, Malfoy,” she concluded, “that’s about as much of you as I can take for today. Good luck with those-” She placed a sneering emphasis on the next word. “-friends of yours.”
I smiled-or, rather, smirked-at her kindly. “Good luck getting that life,” I responded.
She slammed the door on her way out.
I let Pomfrey glare at me for a minute or two to give Granger time to leave before I got out of bed and stretched. “Think I’m cured,” I announced.
The hundred and twenty seconds that had passed had not inclined Pomfrey to like me any better. “If there’s any other problems, come back,” she told me, all business and curt dismissal.
I could have said “Yes, ma’am” like a good boy, but I decided against it. Good boy was so boring.
Speaking of not being a good boy, later that night, the solemn moon and the few wispy clouds clinging to its glowing coattails bore witness to me standing alone outside the school, looking down at the lake and reflecting upon the orange embers at the end of my cigarette. There was silence for awhile, kind, charitable silence but for the breath of the wind that played with my hair and my cloak, and then there were footsteps.
Expecting the worst, I threw the cigarette to the ground and put my shoe over it, hopefully crushing the end out, and put my hands in my pocket, arranging an innocent expression on my face. I didn’t turn around sharply, as one might expect, because that would look far too suspicious.
My caution was vindicated by the identity of my visitor-Professor McGonagall.
“Mister Malfoy?” she prompted.
“Professor,” I returned, evading the unspoken question.
“It’s late,” she declared then, as if I hadn’t known. The only way to be alone in this place was to go outside at an unpalatable hour of the deepening evening. “It would be my advice to you to go back to your dormitory.”
‘It would be my advice to you to be a whiny bitch good boy like all the rest of them, Mister Malfoy,’ I mocked in my mind.
Despite my relegating the words to within my brain, she looked suspicious. Perhaps she’d seen the smoke.
“What have you been doing out here, Mister Malfoy?” she inquired next.
I shrugged and attempted to continue looking immaculately innocent. “It’s nice out here at night,” I said.
She continued to consider me shrewdly. “It would put my mind at rest if you’d try to stay inside,” she informed me.
It’d put my mind at rest if you stopped telling me what to do, ya fuckin’ hag, I thought vindictively.
Outwardly, I shrugged again. “All right,” I conceded. I turned on the heel that concealed the cigarette butt, hoping to hide it more completely in the grass, and then strolled off towards the castle entrance. There was nothing McGonagall could do. She had suspicions, perhaps, but no proof, and without proof, there could be no detentions, no reprimands, and no arbitrary points taken from Slytherin-not that those mattered anymore, since Harry “The Demigod” Potter had arrived at Hogwarts and started sweeping the annual competition every year with an act of well-timed heroism.
The bastard.
I wandered awhile before heading back to the dorm, where I skirted around the edges of the drunken party working its way up to a full-fledged ruckus and went up to my room, where Crabbe and Goyle were involved in a nail-biter of a round of their favorite game-marbles. Sophisticated, to say the least. For my part, I tossed myself down on my bed and grudgingly did some homework, fuming a little every time I thought about what Granger had said-“You’re very smart. You might act like it.” Presumptuous bitch.
I put my hand on auto-pilot, and as it wrote about one sort of Transfiguration or another, I tried to think of a way to grind Granger’s smirking, holier-than-thou face into the dust-figuratively speaking, at least at this juncture. “Mudblood” seemed to be losing some of its power. I considered some alternatives. Her-my-GOD-what-is-that-THING-o-ne was unwieldy to say the least. Hermionit Crab? Didn’t cut it. Mangy Granger had some promise, but it was a little childish. Deranged Granger followed much in the same pattern. No, that wasn’t enough. For her, for that self-proclaimed pinnacle of wit and worldliness and wisdom, I had to come up with something truly and indisputably brilliant. It was a challenge-bringing her down was a challenge; she was a challenge. And anyone who had rested a mere moment in my proximity knew exactly how I felt about challenges.
I was going to destroy her. Maybe when she screamed, maybe when she howled, maybe when she sobbed, maybe when she cried for mercy on her knees, her hands clasped as in prayer, the tears running down her face, I would yield. Maybe. Or maybe I would crush her under my foot like that cigarette, until the individual grains of dirt were buried indelibly in her pale, fragile skin.
There was a mirror in our room, and around the grimy coat hung from a corner of it, draping over a good third of the glass, I saw my reflection, shadowed almost gracefully by the indigo bruises that Hermione Granger, know-it-all extraordinaire, had slapped on me like an award. I saw my face darken around the contusions-figuratively this time. I was going to have the last word here, as I always did. Hermione Granger was going to bleed for those bruises. She didn’t know it yet, but she would, soon. Soon enough. I could wait.
There was no question of if, but when. When, and how-how to drown that stupid, ugly, uppity, self-important Mudblood in her own complacence; how to hold her head under the surface of it until her lungs filled and the feeble struggling stopped.
And then I thought of the rosy glow of twilight on her face, and I knew.
Crabbe and Goyle looked up sharply as I tossed my Transfiguration book aside and started scribbling madly, trying to transcribe my ideas as fast as they came, like bailing water out of a sinking rowboat. When I was finished, I had an entire piece of parchment blanketed in untidy notes outlining my newest plan. It would have taken a real moron to fuck this one up. It was virtually foolproof. And damn, would it be good.
Hermione Granger, queen of the library, teachers’ favorite, with that track record clean and slick as a sheet of ice, was going to rue the day that she’d been born.
[Chapter III] [Chapter V]