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Atonement	By : absumoaevum Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 13720 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor to I make any money from this story. These characters are JKR's, I just play with them.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
Chapter 7

You Could Be Happy

Hermione woke up with the rest of her dormitory on Sunday morning for breakfast, feeling bedraggled but happy as she got dressed and slipped Ron’s letter into her jeans pocket. She reminded herself to bathe later. Ginny had promised to tell her the new password to the Prefects’ bathroom, but up until now Hermione was either too rushed or too preoccupied to think about long, bubble-filled baths. Today seemed like a good day for it, though.

As Hermione, Ginny, and Vicky headed down to breakfast, she noticed the windows were misted with rain. “Good thing we had our tryouts yesterday,” Ginny said.

Vicky agreed. “Yeah, I’m not one for getting soaked if I can help it.”

“It’s going to be a good year, though. I think we’ve got that Cup in the bag,” Ginny said.

Great. They were talking about quidditch again. Hermione trailed along a little behind them.

“Hey, Hermione, wait up!” It was Natalie Fairbourne, one of the girls in Ginny’s year with whom Hermione now shared a dormitory. Hermione slowed and Natalie ran down a few steps of the staircase to catch up to her. “Thanks,” she said, before continuing, “I was wondering if you still kept in touch with Viktor Krum.”

“Viktor?” Hermione asked, caught off-guard.

“Right. Well, I’m a big fan of his,” Natalie explained.

“Oh. Right.”

“Anyway, do you?”

Hermione had to suppress the urge to ask why exactly Natalie wanted to know. Instead, she said “Not really. I saw him at a wedding last year, but that’s the last time.”

“A wedding?”

“My boyfriend’s brother’s wedding,” said Hermione vaguely.

“Your boyfriend? Is that Ron Wealsey?”

Had she really just called Ron her boyfriend? Hermione supposed that he was. But she’d never actually said it aloud before. “Yes,” she answered slowly. The thought of Ron being her boyfriend had her smiling in spite of herself and she lost the thread of the conversation.

They had reached the marble staircase that led to the Entrance Hall before Natalie spoke again. “So, Viktor—”

“I don’t really know, Natalie. I’m sorry,” said Hermione quickly, cutting Natalie off before she could continue. She couldn’t believe how annoyed she was. All she wanted to do was escape this prying girl and eat breakfast in peace. “See you,” she said, then sped up to join Ginny and Vicky, leaving a disappointed-looking Natalie behind.

Ginny was just saying, “Well, I for one have got a ton of homework to catch up on for Potions. Hermione, do you think you could…” They’d made it to the entrance of the Great Hall, and Hermione noticed right away what had made Ginny stop in her tracks.

There was Malfoy again, in the middle of the Hufflepuff table. But no longer was he sitting in hunched silence. Far from it! He was standing up at his seat and tossing a quaffle over the heads of several breakfasting Hufflepuffs to a younger boy, who caught it then passed it back down the table to Cadwallader. Cadwallader stood on his seat and pointed at a laughing girl in a purple sweater with one hand, brandishing the quaffle in the other.

“Better not miss this, Carolyn!” he called before chucking the ball at her. Quick as lightning, she stuffed a piece of bacon she’d been about to eat into her mouth and caught the quaffle. The Hufflepuff table cheered, with the exception of Zacharias Smith. He sat moodily at the end of the table nearest Hermione pushing a fried egg around his plate.

“What is going on with them?” Vicky whispered to Ginny and Hermione. They started walking again and joined their fellow Gryffindors at their table a moment later.

“No idea,” Ginny said. “Mental, that lot.”

+++

Draco’s feet squashed into the soggy grass as he made his way to the Quidditch Pitch with the other Hufflepuffs. About half of them had broomsticks over their shoulders, and Prescott was dragging a bag of quaffles. Usually, Draco hated playing quidditch in the rain, but with the Hufflepuffs it was less of a problem and more of a perk. The light sprinkle of cold water on his cheeks felt good; the smell of wet grass hung thick in the air.

Most everyone in his new House had turned up for the game, and those who weren’t interested in playing found good spots from which to watch in the Hufflepuff stands. Everyone else came to a stop in the middle of the pitch and looked to Prescott for further instructions.

Prescott dropped the sack of quaffles at his side as the crowd formed a semi-circle around him. “Alright, listen up! We’re going to play six on six. No seekers, no live bludgers. I brought some extra quaffles—” he leaned down and dug around in the bag, producing two shiny, slightly mud-spattered balls “—so the Beaters can throw them instead.” He took out his wand and tapped each quaffle in turn. They turned bright blue and deflated a little.

“So,” he continued, “two Beaters on each team, three Chasers, and a Keeper. Who wants to be a Beater?”

At once, the fifth-year boy Draco had thrown the quaffle to during breakfast stepped forward, followed closely by another boy who looked to be in the same year. They grinned at each other and bumped elbows. “Alright, Owen and Kevin, you’re on Yellow team. Who else?” Three more people moved to the center, and Prescott chose two to be Beaters for the Black team.

“Great! Keepers?” Carolyn Stump was chosen for the Black team and very young boy, a second-year by the look of him, for the Yellow team.

“Chasers?” Almost everyone left stepped forward. Prescott laughed. “Well, yeah, obviously. Ryan and Rory, why don’t you and Isaac take the Yellow team?” The three of them nodded and walked over to where the rest of the Yellow team waited. “James, you and take these two and join Black.”

It took Draco a moment to realize that Prescott was looking at him expectantly. “What, me?” he said, pointing at himself.

“Yes, you! Go with James and Laura. You’re a Chaser for Black.” Everyone laughed and Draco felt himself blush. “The rest of you, head over to the stands. We’ll switch out in a bit. I’ll be the referee.”

“Come on,” said James, throwing his arm around Draco’s shoulder and guiding him to the Black team.

“I’ve never played Chaser,” Draco confessed.

“Seems like now is a good time to learn, huh?” James returned with a smile. “It’s not that hard, I promise. If they’ll let me do it, it’s got to be easy!”

The Black team seemed to be taking their cues from James. He showed them all how to turn their sweaters or t-shirts black so that everyone would know who was on what team. Draco saw the Yellow team follow suit a little ways away. Then James suggested that they all introduce themselves so that they’d know whose name to yell if someone dropped the quaffle. Draco chuckled with the rest of his team, but he knew that James had made his suggestion for Draco, so that he would know their names. Practically everyone in Hufflepuff were best friends already.

Yves Slipton and Rundi Muamsted were Beaters for the Black team. Yves was pale and restless; she kept tapping her shoes with her Cleansweep Seven. Rundi, in contrast, looked as though she were carved from wood. Her chocolate brown skin glistened with rain and her damp, jet black hair fell straight down her back. Then there was Laura Lufkin, a third-year playing Chaser with Draco and James. She was tall for her age with cropped auburn hair and many freckles on her nose. Their Keeper, Carolyn Stump, was a carelessly beautiful sixth-year with bright blue eyes, a sinewy figure, and shoulder-length blonde hair.

Draco watched Carolyn smooth her hair back from her face and put it up into a ponytail while she listened to James talk tactics. As soon as he’d finished talking, she said, “Shall we?”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “Remember, Owen and Kevin aren’t going to be gentle with those quaffles. Don’t think for a second that just because they’re a little deflated that they’re not going to sting like a son-of-a-bitch. Better to duck them than lose an arm or something. Okay, Black team, brooms in!” He stuck his broom in the center of their huddle. Everyone copied him. “Black on three. One, two, three…”

“BLACK!”

Everyone was looking very serious as they mounted their brooms. On the other side of the pitch, the other team shouted “YELLOW!” The echo bounced around the stadium, joined by clapping and cheering from everyone in the stands.

The two blue quaffles and the red lay on the ground at the center of the field where Prescott stood. He waved at both teams. James waved coyly back and batted his eyes. Laughter erupted from the stands.

Prescott shook his head but smiled in spite of himself, then leaned down and picked up the red quaffle. He launched it into the air and all the Chasers dove for it at once. Draco didn’t even see Prescott toss up the blue quaffles; he focused all his attention on the red ball, now caught by James who ran headlong into Rory on the Yellow team’s side of the pitch, but recovered with the quaffle still in tow.

“Is that a Nimbus 2001?” asked Laura, flying up next to Draco as they bolted toward the Yellow team’s goal to help James.

“Oh, yeah!” said Draco, but then he had to swerve out of the way because Owen had pelted one of the blue quaffles at him as he sped by in the opposite direction. Draco saw Kevin catch the makeshift bludger about twenty feet below and start off after James with a wicked grin on his face.

A second later, James rolled over sideways, water careening from his drenched clothing, to avoid the ball Kevin had thrown at him. He dropped the quaffle and Ryan caught it. The little boy Keeping for the Yellow team looked relieved.

“What are you doing?! Help me!” shouted James, streaking past Draco and Laura to catch up with Ryan. Draco realized he was hovering in midair and clenched his jaw. Idiot idiot idiot!

He and Laura caught up to James over on the Black side of the pitch, only to watch Carolyn make a spectacular save at the right goal post. She threw the red quaffle to Draco, who caught it and hesitated for the tiniest instant. Rory was on him in a flash, her eyes squinting against the rain, but the next second she’d pulled her broom up vertically to evade a blue bludger thrown by Rundi from above. Owen swept under them and caught Rundi’s bludger. Draco watched him brandish both blue balls very suggestively until Yves rammed into him and stole one back for the Black team.

That was long enough. Draco rocketed off to the Yellow team’s goals, flanked by James and Laura and pursued closely by Rory and Ryan. He zoomed behind the left goal and over the center, hoping to confuse Yellow’s Keeper. It worked. He scored on the left goal post to a round of applause and whooping from the spectators.

“Ten to zero!” Prescott called.

And so it went. The Hufflepuffs were surprisingly good, even for just playing against each other. Draco had never been a part of game play like this, he’d always watched from the outskirts while searching for the snitch. Playing Chaser was a lot harder than it looked.

The rain kept them all cool, but soon Draco was soaked to the skin. His black shirt clung to his chest and his hair hung in clusters, plastered to his forehead and dripping water into his eyes as he whizzed around the pitch after the red quaffle and tried to avoid the bludgers and everyone else. As the game progressed, the weather went from light mist to torrential downpour.

When James scored another ten points for Black, bringing the score to 80-30 with Black in the lead, and they could barely see a foot in front of them through the rain, Prescott shouted for them all to come down.

“I think we’re going to have to call it off, everyone,” he said. The other Hufflepuffs had come down from the stands to join them. “Sorry, guys, but this is getting ridiculous! We’ll try again when the weather’s cooperating.” Everyone was upset, but they clapped all the same. Laughing and wringing water from their clothes, the Hufflepuffs headed out of the pitch and back up the lawn to the castle.
- 6
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- 8
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Atonement