Repercussions

“What!? What are you staring at?” Hermione glared at Harry across the table, he kept shooting glances at her all morning and she was quickly losing her patience with him.

“Nothing…. Well actually, it’s just that you have a umm… dent on your head. You probably just slept on something, but it looks kind of funny.” Harry shrugged and grinned apologetically, as Hermione reached up to touch her forehead. She could feel a vertical indentation from her hairline to her eyebrow. ‘Could this day get any better?’

“Oh yes I slept on the edge of my pillow, I didn’t realize it left a mark.”

“It’s not so noticeable, well it is, but I’m sure it will go away soon,” Ron said while reaching across the table to pat her hand. Hermione just rolled her eyes and returned to her breakfast in a grumpy mood. As if she wasn’t already embarrassed enough by what happened that morning, now a reminder of it was stamped across her forehead.

McGonagall eventually came around and handed out schedules to all the Gryffindors. Hermione was relieved to see that she actually had a free first period before Ancient Runes, and DADA followed by Potions after lunch.

“Yes! We have all morning off, and we get to check out both the new teachers today. I don’t care that Snape is supposedly a good guy, I’m so glad he’s gone. Slughorn wasn’t that much of an improvement on him either, so I wonder how this guy will be.” Harry contemplated enthusiastically.

“Yeah, and the view won’t be so bad in DADA anymore, even if she is a piece of work.” That earned Ron a swift kick to the shin from Hermione, and he shoved a large amount of eggs in his mouth to stem further conversation. The fact that he was checking out other women didn’t bother her, she just didn’t appreciate it when men judged on looks alone.

“Honestly, I think I’ve had all I can take of this lovely morning. I’ll see you guys in class, I need to go to the library.”

Hermione was just out the door when McGonagall called her name.

“One minute Miss Granger, I just need a word with you and Mr. Malfoy, hold on while I get him.”

“What is it, professor?” Draco asked, walking towards them from the entrance hall.

“Oh, hello there Mr. Malfoy, I’ll make this quick so you can get some breakfast. I just wanted the two of you to know that you need to have a meeting with the prefects tonight about the patrol schedule, and you can listen to ideas or share yours about improving inter-house relationships. Here are the rules you need to lay out for them before they start patrolling,” she said as she handed each of them a small pamphlet.

“Also, the two of you need to decide on the time for the next meeting and let them know. I have already informed them of this one, and they will meet you at 5 sharp in the old transfiguration classroom on the second floor. I’ll check back with you after dinner to see how it went.”

“Thanks Professor,” Hermione replied, doing her best to look straight at her so she wouldn’t catch Malfoy’s eyes. Both students nodded at the older woman before retreating to their desired destinations.

Hermione could feel her cheeks burning just from being in his presence, and almost ran to the library. She was in desperate need of a distraction from the sexual images of Malfoy’s taut body once again running through her mind. She found a book entitled “Blistering, Bubbling Body Burdens: Not for the Faint Hearted” and figured the disturbing curses would be enough to drive the even more disturbing images from her mind.


***


Ancient Runes was by far Hermione’s favorite class, and she spent the period decoding a script from the earliest wizarding civilization in history. The ancient Mesopotamian writing was unlike anything she had ever seen so far, but by the end of class she had earned 10 points for Gryffindor for already having translated the first page. The rest was given for homework, and Hermione skipped lunch to get started on it.

Professor Anastasia Figg was a vast improvement on Umbridge, and much nicer than Snape (not that that was saying much). She started the class off with everyone going over the basics such as stunning spells and disarming. Most of the class were pro’s at these, as almost all of them that had made it this far were members of Dumbledore’s Army. Only Malfoy and Blaise Zabini had continued to NEWT level from Slytherin house. The class went by fairly smoothly, the only incident being when Neville accidentally disarmed the professor. He walked to the front of the class to hand back her wand, but went in a sort of daze when she touched his hand to take it, and didn’t let go until Harry rushed over to lead him away.

The new potions teacher may have been as handsome as Lockhart, but it was obvious that was the only similarity between the two. He immediately put them in groups of two, and set the class on the extremely difficult task of brewing a fever reducing draft. Hermione and Draco were paired together since they were supposed to be presenting an example to the rest of the students. They spent the class in forced politeness bordering on slight hostility. Hermione was still using all her effort towards not looking at him, and it was starting to take affect on their potion.

“Granger!” Draco snapped and hit her hand away from the cauldron. “We don’t add that until the powdered unicorn horn has been simmering for 10 minutes! We haven’t even added the horn yet!!”

“So sorry oh perfect one.” She replied through gritted teeth. “It’s not like I couldn’t have fixed it further on.”

“You know, it seems to me that I have been the brains of this operation so far, which is odd because you’re the one who has probably already read the book cover to cover. Is something big on your mind, or are you just having a hard time concentrating today?” He purposefully emphasized the words to get her to blush, which she did right on cue, muttering under her breath about his immaturity.

“You’re potion should now be turning a light shade of orange. It needs to brew for at least 24 hours before you can finish adding your ingredients, so we will continue during Friday’s double period. One member of each group will be given a potion that will give them a high fever, and if your potion is correct, it should reverse it. If not, well…. I’ll warn Madam Pomfrey and she can fix you up. See you all later!”

“If he thinks I’m drinking that after your performance today, he’s got another thing coming,” Malfoy stated before covering their pot and collecting his things. She did the same, setting off to go meet up with Harry and Ron and listen to them take pity on her for having such an asshole for a partner.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Oh nowhere in particular, just as far away from you as I can get,” she spat back sarcastically, quickly checking for any sign of the teacher.

“Suite yourself, I’ll just tell the prefects that the Head Girl couldn’t get off her high horse for long enough to do her job. I’m sure they’ll understand.” Hermione inwardly groaned and took off after him up to the second floor. She had completely forgotten about the meeting, and wasn’t in the mood to spend more forced time with the blonde man in front of her. They reached the classroom to find it already full of the prefects awaiting their arrival. They stared open-mouthed at Draco when he entered, and were guiltily looking at each other, as if they had just finished talking about him. Malfoy chose to ignore it to get this over as fast as they could. He was about to start the meeting, but Hermione was a second ahead of him.

“Hello everyone, I’m Hermione and this is Mal- Draco. I’m sure you know we are here to go over the patrol schedule, but there is one other thing I don’t know if the professor told you about. This year she wants us to plan something to encourage friendships between houses, does anyone have any ideas?” Hermione looked around encouragingly, but they all just stared at her, and then looked down nervously, as if they were trying to avoid being called on.

“Ok well I was thinking maybe we could organize a book swap. You know where everyone picks their favorite book and exchanges it with someone else.” Two prefects snorted at this, and Malfoy was just staring at her with a cocky smirk. ‘At least she was trying; she didn’t see him coming up with anything,’ she thought angrily.

“That would only work in a made up place called Grangerland. We need something that people will actually want to go to. Like a dance or something, only better.” Hermione was grinding her teeth and scowling at him for undermining her in front of everyone, and opened her mouth to retort but she was interrupted just in time.

“Ooo a dance! Let’s do that!” the Gryffindor prefect, Anna, piped up. The rest of the girl prefects were all nodding happily in agreement, while the boys looked indifferent.

“Err... yes we could have a dance if Professor McGonagall will let us. We need some sort of theme though, and we’d have to make it a rule that everyone has to go with someone from a different house. So any theme ideas?”

“Let’s do a Hawaiian dance! All us girls can wear coconut bras and little grass skirts it would be perfect! And the boys can go around ‘laying’ us. Ha ha it would be so much fun!” Hermione stared in disgust at the Slytherin prefect, Victoria. The boys however seemed a little more inclined to a dance after hearing that.

“I don’t think the Professor McGonagall will let us, sorry. Any other ideas?” she looked around hopefully, but everyone seemed to be getting over the luau idea. She wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts because they were supposed to have something good by Halloween, which really wasn’t that far ahead. ‘Wait a sec…’ she thought as a light bulb went on in her head.

“What about if we had a costume party on Halloween?” Hermione watched as everyone took in her idea. Their faces didn’t seem to be immediately turned off by it, which she took as a good sign.

“Can I dress as a Hawaiian dancer?” Victoria asked. Before Hermione could say no, Draco interrupted her with an “of course you can,” and the little Slytherin girl squealed in delight.

“So that’s settled. We will talk it over with the Headmistress soon so we can get started on planning it.” The prefects looked on excitedly, and Hermione felt proud of herself for her idea, and relieved that everything was going so smoothly. She let Draco explain the patrol schedule. She and Malfoy were supposed to oversee them every night for the first two weeks, but after that they were allowed to rotate along with everyone else. McGonagall had specifically requested that the pairings be from different houses, but that they were the same sex. Hermione wondered how many times prefects had been caught snogging each other while they were supposed to be on duty, to instigate this rule.

After the meeting, Hermione and Draco just had time to run to their room to drop off their books before dinner. They walked together in silence, making Hermione wonder why he wasn’t using this time to call her a mudblood or say something about her looks. She guessed he was taking his position as Head Boy much more seriously than she had given him credit for, and decided to put forth an effort as well.

“Err.. the meeting went quite well. They seem like a pretty good bunch, except that Slytherin girl. She kind of seemed like a scarlet woman if you know what I mean. I wonder why she was chosen as prefect, I’m sure there were much more err… conservative choices.” Hermione nervously took a stab at starting a conversation. Draco snorted at this and looked at Hermione with a bemused expression.

“Scarlet woman, Granger? What are you, a hundred years old? If you were, it would explain a lot actually. Like how you must be blind to think that any girl in Slytherin is ‘conservative.’ Honestly, you never noticed how all the uniforms in my house seem to have shrunk, and that they wear scarves when it isn’t even cold out? They aren’t making a fashion statement, they are hiding all the hickies on their necks.” He shook his head in disbelief that she could be so smart and so oblivious to her surroundings at the same time.

“I’m sorry I don’t spend all my time checking out other girls and what they’re wearing. I have a life that doesn’t revolve around sex, unlike you.”

“Well that’s not much of a life now is it. I can’t even respond to that, because you didn’t really insult me.” They had reached the Great Hall, and Hermione watched as Draco headed off towards his table, then she slowly walked towards hers. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. They had had an entire conversation that didn’t include the words mudblood or ferret. She joined Ginny, Harry, and Ron at the table feeling strangely content. Even though she was sure he was only acting civilized towards her because of what McGonagall had said to them the night before, it was definitely an improvement, and she was going to take what she could get. Her friends instantly started on how sorry they felt that she had to spend so much time with Malfoy, and for some reason she just went along with it. She was positive he was over at his table, bad-mouthing her to all his friends, so she couldn’t bring herself to defend him.

***

Malfoy had arrived at the Slytherin table for dinner with an odd feeling in his stomach and unwanted thoughts in his head. He was strangely turned on by the way Hermione had taken charge during the meeting, and had come up with an idea that even he thought was good. He couldn’t quite figure out why she effected him so much now, when he had loathed the sight of her his first six years at school. Well no, that wasn’t entirely true. He had to admit that sometime during their fourth year she had become attractive. Her teeth didn’t stick out so much and her hair slowly became less frizzy. So he hadn’t always loathed the sight of her, more like the idea of her. She was a muggleborn after all, and she had always gotten higher marks than he did. Maybe he was just jealous? He used to think of himself as superior for having pure wizarding blood, which was rare and set him apart on many levels in his mind. After seeing what his father had become by living off those beliefs, he was starting to doubt them. He didn’t think he had, or would ever, turn over an entirely new leaf, but he couldn’t help but to start to rethink his previous prejudices.

Now on to the bigger dilemma of his extreme sexual attraction to her. He could understand why he wanted her when she arrived in his cell over the summer. After all, she was the first female being he had seen in over two months, and being locked up like an animal did not make him any less of a man with needs. He remembered how she lay there completely helpless, and yet she still stood up to his father, who was standing over her with a wand. He wasn’t even chained in his cell and still cringed when his father would enter. Then she had been brutally raped by the most evil wizard in existence, and she had tried to comfort him and tell him that he would be leaving. She was unlike any girl he had ever known. All the girls he had been with were always out of sexual needs more than anything else. He figured half of them were using him for sex, and he was using the other half. He probably slept with Pansy the most, because she was always hanging on him and it got her to shut up. She would probably do anything for him, and yet he never felt a fraction of the feelings for Pansy that he was now feeling towards Hermione. He hated himself for it, but at the same time it felt right. Plus there was the whole problem of her probably carrying his child and not knowing it. That complicated things a bit. He wasn’t even going to begin to figure it out, but even if he couldn’t tell her, she would notice eventually.

He gave up on his thoughts, and drifted back into the present, which consisted of Goyle and Bullstrode feeding each other cream puffs, and Pansy telling the beastly girl about some new lingerie she bought. Draco could tell she was purposely talking loud to get him to hear, but he ignored her and turned to Blaise for a chance at an intelligent conversation. Zabini was wealthy, handsome, and highly respected in the wizarding world. Draco and him had grown quite close over the past couple years. He liked that Blaise was much more open minded than himself, so Draco could talk to him when he needed an opinion that wasn’t his father’s.

“So how is sharing living quarters with little Miss Perfect?” he asked Draco.

“Horrible, well I guess it could be worse, it could be Pansy. McGonagall told us that if she ever sees us fighting though, we will get booted, no questions asked. We are supposed to set an example. It’s bullshit at its finest, but Granger is going for it. I can’t let her win and see me gone, it would make her too happy.”

“Plus she isn’t quite as hard on the eyes as she used to be. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I know you couldn’t possibly be implying that I’m attracted to that little muggle filth, Zabini.”

“Why shouldn’t you be… she’s hot! You need to quit all the pure blood crap, it’s getting old. Even my mother has realized the world is changing, and it doesn’t look good to be badmouthing muggles or Potter anymore. Surely yours has realized this as well if she wants to stay on top.”

“My mother will always be on top.” Crabbe burst out laughing at this and Malfoy hit him hard on the back of the head, although he was semi-impressed that the kid who couldn’t tie his shoes, picked up on a sexual innuendo.

After dinner he caught up with Granger to talk to McGonagall about their idea for a Halloween costume party. She thought the rule about everyone taking someone from a different house was brilliant, but also expected the two Heads to go together as well. He couldn’t say he didn’t expect it, but it made him happy to hear it all the same. McGonagall had said that she wanted them to organize a few more details before she announced the party to the school. Then Potter and Weasel had shown up to walk Hermione back to their common room. He saw Weasley grab her hand and Draco shot him a death look, using all his self control to not curse him right there in front of the headmistress. He grumbled and went back to the Head common room to relax before rounds later that night.

***


Patrolling the hallways wasn’t as glamorous as it was made out to be. For two hours they just roamed the corridors making small but generally polite conversation. They didn’t find anyone out of bed and returned to their dorm after 11 completely exhausted. Hermione didn’t even feel up to starting her homework. She and Draco had discussed plans for the party. The Great Hall was the obvious choice, but since it was going to be a Halloween party, Draco thought it would be better down in the dungeons. They also thought students who were of age would like to be allowed to drink, but they didn’t know if McGonagall would go for that. Hermione felt pleased at the way the evening had went, and was actually disappointed when it was time for it to end. She grabbed her bag off the floor and headed up the stairs. At her bedroom door she paused, having a small battle in her mind; her good side one.

“Goodnight Malfoy.”

“Mmm Hmm.”




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Lina- Thanks for the review, I’m really glad you like my story so far, I hope this update was soon enough!

Tink_tink- I definitely plan on completing this story because I am really actually enjoying writing it. Thanks for the review, and I hope you stick around for the rest!

Sara- Thanks for the review.. I lovvvveee getting reviews lol

Linmo- I’m sorry you thought the dream was extreme. I can see why you would think so, but I hope this chapter helped explain his feelings a little better. I keep forgetting that even though things make sense in my mind because I am writing this story, it doesn’t always make sense to everyone else unless I add it in somehow. In my mind he is so obsessed with Hermione lately because he is the only girl he ever slept with that had brains really. Draco’s not a stupid guy so I can’t picture him actually falling for someone who can’t think for herself. Also he is kind of self-centered, so he can’t be with someone like pansy, who is also self-centered. Too much ego in one relationship is never good lol. Anyways, from what I understood from the books, Obliviate is not reversible. In the fourth one it says how Bertha Jorkins had no brain or whatever after they broke through her memory charm. And then there’s Lockhart. Enough said. That is just my opinion though, and for the purpose of my story I don’t want Malfoy to think there is any way he can break it, it would make things to easy for him. Thanks for the reviews! I hope you like this chapter better.

Please read and review : )

OOh and also, if anyone who has posted a story on this site knows how to make words in italics, please let me know. I write the chapters on microsoft word, and then copy and paste to the site but the italics or bold letters change back to normal once I paste it. I used to upload each chapter, but certain things turned up as wierd letters when it was added and i would have to go through and fix them. Bold or italics didn't work for me that way either. I looked through the site but I didn't read anything about it. So if anyone who knows could help me out, I would really appreciate it!!

P.S. Shrek the Third is amazing!! Seriously I thought it was the best one yet, and I highly recommend it to everyone.