All of This | By : Hypersomniac Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 6266 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 7 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
All of This
Hypersomniac
Chapter Two: Faint, Fight, or Flee
AN: Thanks to everyone who read the last chapter (wow the hit count surprised me), and to the lovely Lydia, for reviewing! :D I understand that the last chapter was like, all narrative and no dialogue and that can be a bit hard to read, but rest assured the story will start moving from here on out. I hope some of you are still with me!
Draco woke up slowly on Monday morning, cursing the light that filtered through the uncovered bedroom window. The ministry had only recently released the manor back to the Malfoy family after inspecting it thoroughly for the better part of two years, and he hadn’t gotten around to replacing the curtains that were missing from the windows. A lot of things like that had disappeared, and Draco hadn’t bothered to ask what they thought was concealed in the drapes. He had just been lucky that the manor and parts of Malfoy Industries had been returned to them. The bad news was that most of the more lucrative – and illegal – businesses under the umbrella were disbanded. So that meant that Draco could no longer sit around idly, simply enjoying himself. It was Monday, and that meant he had to go to work.
This Monday in particular was something that he wasn’t really looking forward to, as it involved the beginning of his new job. He had been given, under Professor McGonagall’s recommendations, the post of Ministry Ambassador to Hogwarts. He had been surprised when he had first heard the title, surprised that anyone would give him such an important job, given his history. He had realized quickly, however, that the title meant almost nothing, and he was little more than a glorified gopher between McGonagall and Kingsley Shacklebolt.
Today he would begin the long process of travelling across Britain to inform new muggleborn witches and wizards of their magical abilities and their invitations to Hogwarts. He was sure that this was McGonagall’s own private revenge against him, sending him to talk to the people that his side had actively tried to destroy for their possession of magic, and invite them into their world.
He nearly groaned at the thought as he sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed, stretching and running his hands through his hair as he yawned. He heard Pansy shift behind him and felt the bed shift. She rose up to her knees and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissing his shoulder lightly.
“Come back to bed,” she murmured against his skin. He rolled his eyes. The Parkinsons had gotten off much lighter in the wake of the war, and she didn’t have to go to work. She could spend the whole day in bed if she wanted to.
“You know I have to go to work,” he said.
“Skive off,” she said simply, moving to kiss his neck. He sighed, leaning his head to the side to allow it. “I’ll make it worth it,” she purred.
“Go back to bed,” Draco said, unwrapping her arms from around him and stood up, heading towards the bathroom. “You can stick around while I’m at work, if you want. I’ll be back around four.”
“It won’t be much fun if you’re not here,” she pouted.
“Then go home.”
“That’s sweet, Draco,” she scoffed. Draco shrugged, starting the shower. He had known Pansy far too long to waste his time on sweet words that meant nothing. She would come and go as she pleased, no matter what he said, no matter what attitude he took with her. Maybe that was the fatal flaw in each of them that stopped them from progressing in their relationship – or even really making it a relationship. While they both cared for each other, neither of them could seem to find it in themselves to care enough. It didn’t hurt, it had always been that way, and they were content.
“Have you found out what Ministry goon they’re sticking you with for the next few weeks?” she called to him as he stepped into the shower stall.
“No,” he said. “Probably some simpering idiot from the Department of Muggle Relations,” he said. “Hopefully someone who knows how to use their underground. I’m not looking forward to that.”
“I don’t know why you can’t just apparate. You could have all of this done in half the time,” she answered, and Draco noticed that she was a lot closer, probably just outside the shower.
“McGonagall reckons it might panic the more muggle idiots,” Draco said, scowling. “I also have to dress as a muggle. Although I don’t really get the point of pretending we’re like them. I’m pretty sure the whole point of going is to explain to them how they’re different.”
The stall opened and Pansy stepped in, smiling slyly at him.
“You could go like this,” she teased, running her eyes over his naked body. “I’m pretty sure that the girls would be excited to go to Hogwarts if they saw this,” she said.
“They’re eleven, Pansy,” Draco sneered.
“Well, I’m not saying shag them,” Pansy huffed. “You’re ruining my advances, Draco.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing?” Draco asked, feigning ignorance. He glanced through the glass of the stall at the clock on the wall. “I don’t have much time.”
“You can be a bit late,” Pansy dismissed, running her hands up his chest to his shoulders to twist into his hair.
He laughed as he let her pull him down to kiss her. Sometimes when he was with Pansy, he felt like he was allowed to be happy again, like any normal person.
Sure, he could be late for that.
Hermione paced back and forth by the entrance to the underground, checking her watch so often that time seemed to stop. Leave it to Draco Malfoy to leave her waiting on their first day of working together. As if she wasn’t nervous enough at being forced to work with one of her least favorite people, then he had to be late and leave her to dwell on it.
It would be just like him to skip out on this. It was no secret that Draco considered his job to be beneath him, although Hermione personally thought that he was lucky McGonagall had vouched for him. She knew it was only because of Harry and Hermione’s testimony at Draco’s trial that he had tried to avoid Bellatrix’s questioning at Malfoy Manor as to Harry’s identity. It hadn’t been much of a good act, and it hadn’t changed much of anything, but it had shown enough integrity and unwillingness to follow the Death Eater’s orders for them to find him innocent on the basis of coercion by his family. For Hermione, Ron, and Harry, it didn’t change much of their personal opinions of him. But it had been enough.
She checked her watch again. Draco was now nearly an hour late. The sun was beginning to rise high in the sky, the summer sun beating down on the London streets. Hermione set her bag down and pulled off her jacket, shoving it into her bag unceremoniously. She double-checked that her wand was still in her pocket, within reach and out of sight of muggle eyes.
“Granger,” a smooth voice acknowledged her as she checked her watch again, making her jump in surprise. “I hope that this is nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence and that it is not you that I am supposed to be meeting.”
Hermione nearly rolled her eyes. She had hardly expected Draco to keep a civil tongue in his head for the month that they would be working together, but she had hoped that he wouldn’t be combative right from the start.
“Of course it’s me,” she snapped. “Who else?”
“I don’t know; isn’t this task a bit below your job description? Surely the department undersecretary has bigger issues to deal with. You could have sent out one of your muggle-loving underlings to do this,” Draco pointed out. Hermione gritted her teeth, determined not to allow Draco to read it on her face: that her boss had said the same thing, albeit in nicer terms, that many of the department workers had volunteered, eager for the guarantee of a month out of the gloom of the office. She had insisted on going herself, however, privately for the same reason. The fact that Draco would be her partner for the task had not even been enough to deter her.
And more than that, she was eager to spend time with people who, though they would still be some of the newest members of the magical world, would not expect much of her. They would not know what she and her friends had done, would not expect her to fix their endless supply of problems. They may expect her to provide answers, to prove her claim of their world’s existence, or possibly even be grateful to her, as she had been herself to the pair who had visited her just nine years ago, for finally providing an explanation for their strange nature, the odd occurrences that were becoming increasingly commonplace in their lives as they got older.
But that was all. They would not feel that she personally owed them anything for the state of their world. They would not see her as a hero, as someone to lean on.
“Malfoy,” she said, a thought suddenly occurring to her. “Let’s not mention the war to the new students.”
She saw him consider this, saw the wheels turning in his head as his gray eyes locked with hers, hard and calculating. Finally he nodded, and even managed a bit of a knowing smirk.
“Don’t worry, Granger. I don’t want to explain who I was, either,” he said. “It doesn’t matter – they’ll come to love and hate us in turn before long, just like the rest of our world.”
Hermione nodded, and she couldn’t help but think that though he was right, and though he and his family probably deserved much worse than simple ill-wishing from the world, that it was still a very sad prediction nonetheless.
Draco did not think much of muggle methods of travel. He had gotten caught in the turnstile at the train station and had to wait for Hermione to pay more fare before it would turn again, all the while hissing at him like an angry cat about acting normal and attracting unwanted attention, which, had the turnstile no caught him in an unfortunate and painful place, he would have found amusing. She was certainly attracting more attention than him.
Now, two trains later, they had boarded a bus that would take them further into the suburbs. From there they would walk nearly two miles to the new student’s house. The first name on Hermione’s list was Jack Harwick.
“I don’t see what the harm would be in Apparating,” he said under his breath to Hermione, who was seated beside him. She continued to appear absorbed in her book, but he could see her eyes darting about through the curtain of her hair, surveying the people around them. “No one’s listening,” he sighed, stretching out his legs. “The man’s asleep and the girl has something jammed in her ears.”
He sneered at the small black objects protruding slightly from the teenager’s ears, a thin black cord attaching the two and then running down her chest to disappear into her jacket pocket. A faint tinny melody was issuing from them.
“Earbuds,” Hermione muttered distractedly.
“What?”
“The things in her ears are called earbuds. They let her listen to music without the use of speakers that would disturb others, or be inconvenient to carry with her,” she said, snapping her book shut and leaning back to survey the girl. “Either way, you’re right, she can’t hear us.”
“So then, care to answer my question?” Draco asked, slightly irritated that she had ignored his first inquiry but launched into a full explanation of sodding earbuds.
“Apparating is too risky. There are few wizarding towns in Britain, and really Hogsmeade is the only entirely magical community. We could be seen, and the Department of Magical Transportations couldn’t be hassled to set up twenty-some Apparition points just for our use,” she explained as though it should be obvious, the question itself tedious.
“So if a muggle sees us, we just modify their memory.” Draco shrugged.
“Right,” Hermione scoffed. “They can be bothered to set up Apparition points, but they’ll give us an Obliviator.”
“I heard you’re pretty good with memory charms,” Draco said evenly. Hermione’s eyes snapped to his, the color rising in her face.
“Some of us,” she hissed pointedly, “don’t prefer to trespass on the non-magical community and perform magic on them at will, as though they have no rights and are—”
She stopped her tirade when Draco nudged her pointedly. She followed his gaze to the sleeping man, who had begun to stir when the bus rolled over a particular violent bump in the road.
They spent the rest of the bus ride in silence.
They stepped off of the bus into scorching heat. It was nearly noon already and the July sun was high in the sky, setting tiny beads of sweat along their necks. It was going to be a long walk in this heat, Hermione observed.
“Don’t see why the Ministry couldn’t have given us a car,” Draco grumbled. Hermione didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to admit that, despite the hard lessons learned in the war, her department was still greatly overlooked and vastly lacked necessary resources everywhere she looked. She also didn't want to admit that she had never learned to drive.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes when Draco suddenly laughed shortly.
“Fancy a bet, Granger?” her asked.
“What are you on about?” she asked suspiciously as they turned onto Elizabeth Lane, which Hermione recognized as the halfway mark.
“I was just thinking about how all of these parents are likely to react to our news. I bet that Jack Hawkin’s mother faints when we tell her,” Draco said. “Two galleons. What do you think, Granger? Faint, fight, or flee?”
“Harwick,” Hermione corrected him automatically. “And don’t you think that’s a bit distasteful, Malfoy? And what if she’s perfectly accepting and understanding?”
Draco turned his pale eyes to her, raising an eyebrow. “I very much doubt that. How did your parents react?”
“Well, honestly, Mum couldn’t speak for a bit, she had to sit down and just sort of gawked at the woman. Dad thought they were both mad and tried to throw them out of the house.”
“I’d count that as a fight, since your mother didn’t actually faint,” Draco said thoughtfully. “I don’t think flee is likely in general, so what do you say, Granger? Bet two galleons that they’ll fight it?”
Hermione stared at him as they continued, amazed at how comfortable he seemed. But then, she thought, his life in the wizarding world since the end of the war had probably been just as hard as hers, but in different, and often worse, ways. Perhaps he was just as glad as her to be away from it. Perhaps even more so.
“Sure,” she said, wanting to keep the balance of this new and odd truce. “Two galleons that they’ll fight – and that includes calling the police.”
“You’re on,” Draco said.
The Harwick household was a handsome two-story affair, with a great wrap-around porch and hydrangeas blooming on either side of the stone walk that led to the front door.
Draco rang the bell, one short buzz, and they waited. After a few minutes they heard the sound of feet thumping towards the door. A small boy with sandy hair opened the door a crack, peering out at them cautiously.
“Jack Harwick?” Hermione asked, trying to smile reassuringly. They boy just stared at her. “My… colleague and I,” she said, shooting a glance at Draco, “would like to speak with your parents.”
The door snapped shut suddenly, and they heard the boy retreating at a run. Hermione and Draco exchanged befuddled glances, and Hermione was just about to ring the bell again when they heard footsteps once more, and the door opened.
Instead of Jack, they were met this time by a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, petite, dressed in a pair of lounge pants and an oversized tee shirt. She had the same fair hair as the boy, and warm brown eyes.
“You’ll have to forgive my son,” she said. “He can be a bit shy around strangers.” Though she was apologizing, Hermione was sure she put a fair emphasis on the word strangers.
“My name is Hermione Granger,” she said before motioning to Draco. “And this is Draco Malfoy. We’ve actually come to speak with you about your son.”
The woman’s eyes widened as she looked from Hermione to Draco and then over their shoulders to the deserted street. She stepped aside and motioned for them to come in, snapping the door shut quickly behind them.
“What’s he done now?” she asked anxiously, motioning for them to sit down in the living room. “I swear I don’t know how he does these things, and he always swears that it wasn’t him but really, who else could it be? Whatever he’s done—”
“Does he do odd things, then?” Draco asked, interrupting her string of explanation.
“Hasn’t he?” Mrs. Harwick asked. “I thought perhaps that was why he shut the door on you – I thought he might have done something again.”
“What’s he done before?” Hermione asked. She didn’t want to make the woman uncomfortable by prying, but any magic Jack may have already displayed may help her explain the reason for their visit, and convince the Harwicks of the unbelievable.
“Oh, all sorts of things,” Mrs. Harwick said, unabashed. “Little things, strange things… Well, big things maybe, but given the circumstances…”
“Do tell,” Draco said, sounding bored. Hermione glared at him.
“Old Mrs. Foster down the street – she shouldn’t even be driving anymore, bless her soul. Jack was out riding his bike, and she nearly ran him right over. Would’ve done too, I think, except…” she trailed off, looking from Hermione to Draco and back. She looked unsure about telling them the rest.
“Go on,” Hermione said gently.
“Well, the whole front of the car crumpled around him, like it had hit a pole. The car was completely wrecked, poor Mrs. Foster had to go to hospital, and not a scratch on Jack! No way to explain it.”
Hermione nodded. Self-preservation was guaranteed to bring out involuntary magic in children.
“And then there was the incident at the grocery store,” Mrs. Harwick continued. “I sent Jack to get a gallon of milk and suddenly I hear all this shouting. I run to the back where they keep the dairy, and there’s this great flood of whipped cream! And Jack, standing at the edge of it, calm as anything. And I asked him what happened, and the manager is pulling a woman from the mess, and she’s covered head-to-toe in the stuff, and Jack just points at her, and says the stock boxes were about to fall on her, and he tried to save her. And they cleaned the mess, and they couldn’t find a single one of the boxes or empty cans.”
Hermione nodded again, but before she could say anything, Mrs. Harwick continued, as though encouraged by Hermione’s acceptance of her tales.
“And there was the dog, a few years back. Might’ve been the first of the incidents, actually. The neighbours down the road had this ancient grumpy bulldog, and it would snap at Jack’s ankles when he’d come home off the school bus, and he was always terrified of that dog. I asked the neighbours to perhaps keep it inside around three, to let Jack walk home, and that lasted for about a week before they began leaving it out again. And then one day they found him at the top of the tree in their front yard. No idea how he got up there, certainly he didn’t climb. It took half the fire department to get him down, snapping the whole time. And then for the next year, every day around three, the dog would be back in that tree.”
“There must have been a dozen strange things since,” she sighed, finally seeming to lose steam. “I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with him, or how he even manages these things.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Jack,” Hermione said softly, resting her hand on Mrs. Harwick’s shoulder. “Children like him are special, and things like this happen when they don’t know how to control themselves. That’s why we’ve come to speak to you, and offer Jack a place at a school for children like him. You see, Jack is—”
“He’s not bad!” Mrs. Harwick suddenly exclaimed, her eyes wide with fear. “You can’t take him away! He’s not dangerous, or—“
“Mrs. Harwick, we don’t think he’s—“ Draco started, but Mrs. Harwick continued.
“The neighbours will have put you up to this! Well, I don’t care what they think, Jack doesn’t need to be sent away, he’s a good boy! I can’t explain those things, but I know Jack would never hurt anybody!”
“Mrs. Harwick, please calm down!” Draco commanded, and Hermione and Mrs. Harwick both jumped at his tone. The woman’s mouth gaped a bit, her eyes wet with the beginning of tears, but she remained silent.
“We’re not here to take Jack from you. Placement at this school is completely voluntary. But we are going to tell you some things that will be difficult to believe, and you need to keep in mind all of those unexplainable things that happened around Jack,” Hermione explained carefully. Mrs. Harwick nodded, and Hermione reached into her bag to retrieve Jack’s Hogwarts letter.
“The part that you will have trouble believing is that Jack has been, likely without his knowledge or intent, performing magic. I know,” Hermione added quickly as Mrs. Harwick opened her mouth to protest, “that you probably think that’s absurd. But I assure you, Jack is a wizard. Now, our school, Hogwarts, educates young witches and wizards to use their magic properly and appropriately, and to gain full control over it. We would like to invite Jack to start attending this September. This letter will explain everything, and Draco and I will answer any other questions you may have, before we include Jack in this conversation.”
She handed the letter over to the woman, who turned it over, her wide eyes fixing on the Hogwarts crest pressed into the wax seal. She did not open it immediately.
“So then, you two are…” she trailed off, her voice unsteady. Draco nodded.
“Witch and wizard,” he said. “Former students of Hogwarts ourselves.”
“Could you…” Mrs. Harwick seemed to be stealing herself for something horrifying. “Could you prove it? It just seems so impossible…”
Hermione and Draco looked at each other, and finally Hermione nodded and they drew their wands. Hermione pointed hers at a sewing box on the coffee table, which all at once seemed to melt. Mrs. Harwick gave a startled cry as it reformed into a small wooden soldier, which drew a needle from a sheath at its side and brandished it at them, holding a button like a shield. Hermione flicked her wand again and in a moment the sewing box sat innocently back in its original position. Mrs. Harwick seemed quite incapable of speech.
Draco took his turn, making the Harwick’s movie collection fly off of the shelves and spin around the room before gently returning to their places.
“Okay, alright,” Mrs. Harwick breathed. She opened the Hogwarts letter carefully.
The rest of the visit went much smoother, and by the time Hermione and Draco left, they were feeling much more confident about their new task.
“I’d say you owe me two galleons,” Hermione said conversationally as they left the train station.
“How do you figure that, Granger?” Draco asked, smirking.
“Well, she didn’t faint, and she put up a bit of a fight in the beginning,” Hermione justified. Draco shrugged.
“I say we call this one a draw. We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” he said. “See you, Granger.”
They parted ways, and Hermione was left wondering if maybe Draco Malfoy, away from the influence of his family and their name, really wasn’t that bad after all. Maybe this month would be fun after all.
AN: So, a little more interaction in this chapter. Thoughts? Concrit? Anything? :D Thanks so much for reading, see you next chapter!
While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
All works displayed here, whether pictorial or literary, are the property of their owners and not Adult-FanFiction.org. Opinions stated in profiles of users may not reflect the opinions or views of Adult-FanFiction.org or any of its owners, agents, or related entities.
Website Domain ©2002-2017 by Apollo. PHP scripting, CSS style sheets, Database layout & Original artwork ©2005-2017 C. Kennington. Restructured Database & Forum skins ©2007-2017 J. Salva. Images, coding, and any other potentially liftable content may not be used without express written permission from their respective creator(s). Thank you for visiting!
Powered by Fiction Portal 2.0
Modifications © Manta2g, DemonGoddess
Site Owner - Apollo