Sucker Love

Disclaimer: Yeah, no. I don’t know it. Shut
up. Go away. Or read. Whatever.

 

Rating: R – for
language, sexual situations. [Kids – please vacate the premises.]

 

Characters & Genre: Romance – Draco/Hermione

 

Summary: Seduction
is a game. Games are meant for players. And in this game, you don’t want to get
played. [Based pretty firmly on Cruel Intentions.]

 

Note: This used
to be up on FF.net and used to have a prologue. They took it down (the
bastards) and I didn’t save the prologue. Luckily, it sucked and it was
pointless. However, it explained that Pansy is Head Girl. So there you are.
Pansy is Head Girl.

 

______________________________________________

 

Chapter 1
• Hermione

 

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I felt sick. Not physically sick although some days it had
come to that. I guess I should have been used to it by now, but I wasn\'t. I
couldn\'t accept this crooked, unfair deal I was getting nothing out of. Denial
was really my loss.

 

I shifted my head\'s position to lean it against the
magically enhanced shiny surface of the Knight Bus window. There was that sick
feeling again as I remembered where I was. I was heading for Hogwarts on the
Knight Bus - a very Harry and Ron thing to do - with my trunk tucked securely
between my unmoving legs. They felt glued to the ground. I felt the same way.

 

Sighing, I realized that getting to Hogwarts shouldn\'t be
as depressing or terrifying as it was at that moment. It was Hogwarts. School
of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Not home. Not CHHS.

 

I grimaced. It
could have been the semi-foul, semi-sweet unknown smell from the Knight Bus
that reached my nose at that moment but I highly doubted it. It definitely had
to have been the mention of CHHS.

 

Crepes Hills High School. That name really didn\'t make me
shudder so much as want to shout interesting obscenities in return. Crepes
Hills was in California City, California. Ironic how small and little known
that city could be with such a name as that but that really wasn\'t the point.

 

Hermione Granger, daughter of two dentists, bookwork and
master of most things magic attended a Muggle high school. For a year.

 

Naturally, I rebelled when I heard about that plan. I was
a Hogwarts girl, mascot of it all. At first, however, my rebellion had nothing
to do with the alleged Muggle learning institute. This whole thing had started
with my parents. Or, more accurately, my parents\' divorce.

 

I could have never seen it coming. I always thought myself
to have a dull, old run-the-mill nuclear family. I even had a white picket
fence at my Muggle home. Picket fence my ass. I guess not being at home for
more than half the year really blinded me to my home life; my home problems.
Maybe people wished me to be blind to them. Who knows? Who cares? Not I. My mom
and dad still split up.

 

Apparently, my father had air quote \'met someone special\' unexpectedly.
It made me sick remembering the beautiful dinner he\'d prepared for my mother to
\'let her down easy\' about the news. I wasn\'t supposed to find out until later;
probably from my broken-hearted mother. I walked in on it all accidentally. I
wish I hadn\'t.

 

My mom was more than heartbroken. She was pissed. It\'d
been his secretary. Some bubble gum-chewing, air-headed bitch drove my mom to
kicking my dad out of the house. Then she picked up and made us leave, too.
Pretty counterproductive if you\'d\'ve asked me. But no one asked. And no one
cared. And no one noticed.

 

The former Mrs. Harold Granger told me that we needed a
fresh start; a new life. Sixteen years into my life and thirty-eight years into
hers I felt that wasn\'t entirely possible to achieve. Plus, I liked my old
life. Hell, I probably loved it and just took it for granted like having water
to shower with. But my mom would have none of this \'old life\' talk. Our
conversations had somehow divided into two categories: old life and new life. I
much preferred the old life. My mom was keen on the new one.

 

So, I started the school year at Crepes Hills High School.
Lord, did I not know what the fuck was going on half the time. Muggle high
schools couldn\'t be more different from Hogwarts. And I hated it. I kept asking
my now single, \'new and improved\' mother why I couldn\'t spend my \'Junior year\',
as Muggles called it, in Hogwarts. Sixth year was supposed to be gravy for me -
I\'d already planned it out over the summer when my life was devoid of \'old\' and
\'new\belsbels. I was going to take Advanced Arithmancy and Enhanced
Transfiguration, among some other less challenging but still desired classes
while performing my duties as a Prefect for the second year in a row. Yes, I
was supposed to be a Prefect again.

 

Hastily, I changed my sitting position from having my
right leg under me to my left. The Knight Bus seats weren\'t especially
comfortable. My right leg was asleep.

 

Closing my eyes, I ignored the world and remembered. I
tried to do that as seldom as possible nowadays. It still happened from time to
time. I didn\'t savor it like I once used to.

 

Hermione Granger was a no-show for the sixth year of
Hogwarts. That was as unexpected as Dumbledore secretly listening to Muggle rap
in his office. No one knew what happened. How ironic. I hardly did either. I
was supposed to be preparing to be Head Girl seventh year - this year - but I
ended up barely touching my beloved wand for nine months.

 

Nine months of a Muggle school. I didn\'t make very many
friends. Those that I did, I didn\'t intend to keep in touch with. I\'d lost my
love for life; for studies; for communication.

 

Harry and Ron tried to owl me on several occasions.
They\'ll never know how much that had meant to me to hear from them. Just my
luck that I couldn\'t owl them back. Mom\'s rules; magic was part of the \'old
life\'. Hence, Crepes Hills High.

 

So, after a while they stopped owling. Ginny, Neville and
a couple of others tried to get in touch with me as well, but eventually they
quit, too, and my secluded lifestyle became complete. I kept in touch with no
one. Spent my time writing letters to people who\'d never get them and drawing
depressing, yet meaningful pictures, which did little to aide my mood.

 

My schoolwork was a joke. That - my grades - is when one
could\'ve officially identified the exit of the old Hermione Granger. It was
unfair, my being yanked around the Muggles\' side of the face of the earth just
because my dad was an asshole and my mom refused to believe that he ever
cheated on her. So, I never concentrated on my schoolwork, went to parties and
fell in with \'the wrong crowd\'. I realized it, too. But it was what I wanted.
It was like a form of revenge against my parents.

 

I guessed it worked in a way. After I finished my Junior
year at CHHS - and angered most of my teachers by telling them that I didn\'t
give a rat\'s ass about college applications - my mom, by some unnamed miracle,
recognized my air quote \'cry for help\'. I had to congratulate her on her
detective skills. It only took her nine months.

 

She finally gave in and acknowledged that I was going to
be a witch no matter how hard she tried to block that out. She figured that
once I was exposed to magic there was no going back. I tried to reason that
magic wasn\'t exactly the Black Plague but immediately thought better of it as
soon as I realized that the ultimate outcome of the situation would finally
lead to something I\'d wanted that entire miserable year. I was going back to
Hogwarts.

 

I immediately realized that I wasn\'t going to be Head Girl.

 

Pushing my now miraculously straight hair out of my eyes,
I lazily rose to my feet and proceeded to pick up my heavy school trunk as the
Knight Bus slowed near my desired destination.

 

It took me a while to get over the fact that the chances
of me somehow becoming Head Girl were completely non-existent or severely
microscopic. Either way, my \'good luck\' was nowhere to be seen, so sadly I had
to accept the inevitable: I worked my ass off for five years at Hogwarts and
hadn\'t received zilch.

 

Perhaps I went too far in that conclusion, yes, but it\'s
what it felt like. I also felt my parents were totally and completely
responsible for my predicament. But I had to keep my mouth shut - who knew how
long my mom\'s patience for this magic business would last? I did not want to go
back to CHHS. It wasn\'t all that bad of a school - for Muggles. For me it was
about as interesting as watching a spool of white thread unravel for house on
end.

 

I picked up my trunk and ignored the conductor\'s cheery
goodbye then following snort when he - or she - didn\'t get a response. I
couldn\'t tell the gender of the snorter but I didn\'t care all the same. My
nervousness of being back at Hogwarts was overpowering all of my senses -
including my attention.

 

As gracefully as possible at that moment, I found myself
tumbling headfirst out of the Knight Bus towards the ground with my trunk
keeping good speed as well. I huffed, annoyed, and raised myself from the damp,
recently rained-on ground as I picked up my trunk. I had tripped. What luck.

 

I watched the Knight Bus move away from me and onto its
other stops as I silently swore under my breath. I pre pretty sure I heard the
mysterious breed of conductor laugh at my very sly drop. I didn\'t want to take
the Knight Bus. But I did end up having to.

 

Had my mother not been such a pain in my rear area and I
in hers, I\'d have been on Hogwarts Express just like the rest of Hogwarts\'
students. But no. As my luck had it, my mom had to voice her awe in the matter
that I was taking my beloved Crookshanks with me to school. Like she hadn\'t
known the other five years I\'d taken him with me. We ended up butting heads
about who gets to take him. I never thought it possible but my mom had taken an
unexpected liking to Crookshanks. I had taken a liking to him first.

 

The Hogwarts Express passed us both by as we continued to
argue, my brain barely registering with the happy toot that it gave off as it
took off. My mom suggested that I take \'that Night Bus thingy\'. I sarcastically
suggested that I apparate. Apparently, that comment wasn\'t sarcastic to anyone
who hasn\'t read Hogwarts: A History.

 

I trudged up the castle steps nervously and slowly. Maybe
my speed was due to the weight of my trunk. I doubted it.

 

Taking a few meditative breaths, I rested my trunk on the
ground besides the front door white staring at the large knobs unsteadily. I
run my hands nervously, knuckles turning white. Was I doing the right? I
supposed so. Either way, I wasn\'t taking the Knight Bus back home.

  urniurning the knob, I cautiously let the door of the castle
float ajar and came face to face with a very welcoming, old friend.

 

“Pleased to see you again, Miss Granger. Do come in.”