Slaughter

AN: Hey guys... oh God it's been awhile hasn't it? Look, long story short I've been in the middle of Exams, and I dont know if any of you are third year law students too... but I have been in hibernation for the last month or so. Just finished them the other day, and so now here I am back with two chapters for you to apologise for the horrifically long time since I last posted. THings start to get a bit messy... so I hope you enjoy it! And dont forget to review... its what I live for :)



She was doing it on purpose, the bitch.

She was sitting there, at the front of the classroom, pretending not to notice him, and she was doing it on purpose.

Her hand was in the air, begging for someone to pay her attention, for someone to tell her she was good. Fucking know it all.

Draco glared at the back of her head, willing her to turn around and look back at him. In his arrogance, Draco refused to believe that she couldn’t feel the intensity of his stare weighing on her shoulders. So that meant that she was ignoring him, and she was doing it just to infuriate him. Pansy’s hand snaked up along his thigh, tickling it gently as she smiled coyly at him from beneath eyelashes caked in mascara. He let her continue, her gentle massage an annoyance, but only a minor one in comparison to the Granger problem, as he’d come to think of it.

After ‘the dream,’ he’d woken with a hard-on, his body trembling and sweaty from the dream, the nightmare. Refusing to jerk off, a stinging cold shower had done little to ease his problem. Regardless, he’d stood there until his skin wrinkled and pruned, the white flesh beginning to look like a corpse that had been soaking in formaldehyde for too long, his head bowed, the platinum hair hanging limp over his face. He’d been late to class, he’d stood shivering under the pounding stream for so long, but it was worth it. Finally, finally, he’d gone soft. A quick drying spell, and he’d slipped into his school uniform, taking his time. Charms would wait; he was getting straight O’s in it anyway. The little bitch was somewhere in his thoughts the entire time, though he tried to push them down, ignore them. She wouldn’t get out of his head. Why?

A week later, and Draco had accepted the truth. He was obsessed with the mudblood. He watched her in the common room, in classes, between them, and the little bitch was completely oblivious to it. Or she was pretending to be at least. Draco had seen her watching him out of the corner of her eye while he was pretending not to stare. It was like a game of cat and mouse. She was the mouse, and him the cat, toying with her. Except this wasn’t a game, and it had stopped being fun almost before it had began. Draco was driving himself mad, disgust mingling with desire, following her around like a puppy dog, and bullying her even more than usual when she noticed so that she wouldn’t realise. He could see the cracks starting to show, she seemed more tense than usual, her back ram-rod straight as she walked, alert and ready for confrontation. She spoke only in monosyllables, in notes left on his doorway when she could. Which brings us back to the here and now. She was ignoring him.
This was the last class of the day, of the week. There was barely ten minutes left before they were all freed to go off and do their own thing. By 7th year the teachers mostly left you to your own devices in the weekends. As long as you didn’t cause a rukus you could do what you wanted. There was a party in the Slytherin common room tonight, there usually was, and though they were against the rules, Everyone would turn a blind eye. The Slytherins threw the best parties, the things of legends, of American teen movies. Firewhiskey, butterbeer and agave tequila flowed freely thanks to a student with a parent that ran an alcohol distributor, more ‘illicit’ substances where always available if a few discreet enquiries were made and the girls who attended where always willing.

Pushing Pansy’s hand off of his leg finally, she was squirreling a little too close to his manhood for his comfort. Lately he’s lost all interest in her desperate advances, the moans that were a little too calculated, china eyes that through no fault of their own weren’t a warm, melting chocolate. And so, with that dealt with, her disappointed little grumble ignored, Draco continued to stare at the Mudblood.


He was staring at her again, Hermione thought as she shifted slightly in her seat. He’d been doing it for a week now, his eyes boring into the back when she was in class, following her as she walked from the common room to the great hall, staring out at her from the dark corners that he skulked in, trying to hide from her. She didn’t know why he was doing it, all she knew was that it was getting to her. He must have been planning something, that was the only explanation she could think of for why he was doing it. Whenever they crossed paths, he was even more vicious than usual. It was getting to her. For all she was trying to take the high road, set a good example for the students that looked up to her as Head Girl, it wasn’t working.

She was just constantly tense, stretching thin, about to snap at any moment. The boys hadn’t seemed to notice anything was wrong, which just goes to show you how dense some boys could be. Not that she’d been willing exactly to share the source of her tension. Harry was so busy trying to enjoy just a little bit of normalcy, and Ron... well Ron was enjoying his new status as a dateable male with as many girls as he could. Hermione didn’t begrudge them their happiness, she just wished that she had a few more girls who she was close too that could pick up the slack so to speak.

Girls would know what to do about Draco staring at her. Other than just beat him up or hex him, like she knew Ron and Harry would want to do. With a little sigh, Hermione turned her thoughts away from Draco and his ‘plan,’ whatever it was. She still had five minutes left of Ancient Ruins, and thinking about her nemesis was no reason not to take proper notes. Her hand scribbled furiously over the parchment, the reassuring equations and pictures calming her, the way that school always had. Knowledge was power, and power meant that you never had to be weak, didn’t have to fear bullies like Malfoy. Hermione was determined never to be scared of people like him, as she’d always promised herself since pre-school when the other kids had teased her for her buck teeth and frizzy hair.

Class ended too soon, and Hermione rolled up her parchment reluctantly, wondering what the boys were doing. They had Divination last, and were probably sipping at cups of tea making up signs of doom in Harry’s cup, much to the delight of Trelawny. She snorted once in jest at the thought of Trelawny. Normally Hermione wouldn’t disrespect a teacher by laughing at her, but really, Trelawny was barely a teacher, a pretend ‘seer’ who got her jollies off predicting students horrible demises. Shouldering a leather messenger bag straining with the weight of her books, she navigated her way through the maze of chairs and desks to the door, her thoughts absent as she did so.

She never saw it coming. The impact sent her sprawling to the ground, her books flying out of her bag and scattering around her. Muttering a curse word, she looked up with a frown, ready to blast whoever had walked into her for not being careful. He was, in a word, gorgeous. Black hair cropped close to his head, tan skin, a look of apologetic concern plastered on his face.

“Oh Merlin, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you. Here let me help you up.”

Hermione wasn’t usually one to let a pretty face distract her, so she was almost horrified when she found herself blushing. He held a hand out to her and she took it gratefully, surprised by the strength in his lithe body.

“That’s alright, I wasn’t looking where I was going either.”

Still blushing, she busied herself with picking up her books and shoving them back into her bag. One, two, three, four... wait, where was the fifth one? She looked around the floor for it, amongst the students milling in the hallways. The sound of a throat clearing made her look up, and there it was, in the hands of the boy who’d knocked her down.

“You have my book.”

“Yes, yes I do.”

He smiled at her, no hint of a smirk, unlike how a certain someone else would smile at her. She stared at him, unsure of what to do now.

“Well, can I have it back?”

“I tell you what, you give me your book bag, because honestly it looks like it weighs about the same amount as you do, and me and the book will walk you back to your room.”

“I can carry it, it’s okay.”

“How ‘bout I do it anyway?”

He winked, that smile still dancing around his lips. He really was beautiful, and it was nice of him to offer to carry her bag. And it wasn't as if she had boys lining up to carry her, admittedly very heavy, bag. Deciding to take him up on his offer (what could it hurt?), she let the annoyance go from her face and replaced it with a reciprocal smile.

“Alright then, lets go. I’m Hermione...”

___________________

His name was Michael Brotier, and he was a Ravenclaw. He was a 7th year, not a prefect, but he studied hard and wasn’t much interested in quidditch. That was a positive as far as Hermione was concerned. He loved to read, was interested in music, and had muggle parents just like her. And he’d asked her to go out with him the next day.

Hermione fell backwards onto the couch, a smile widening across her face as she thought about it. A boy had never asked her out before, excluding Viktor, and that hadn’t really counted she was only fourteen at the time and they’d just been friends really. But this was an actual boy who had actually asked her out. She felt like a proper girl for once, like someone had thought of her as more than just a brain, someone who knew it all and was there to write essays for you when you didn’t have time.

Suddenly a thought came to her, she had no idea what to wear or how to act or what to say. So Hermione decided to do what she did best, research. Standing, she skipped into her room, pulling off the constricting tie from around her neck, and unbuttoning her shirt. She changed into a pair of worm skinny jeans and a grey, flannel sweater, tying her hair into a thick ponytail as she pulled out what few books she had on the subject of dating. There were a few magazines that her mother had slipped into her luggage, one or two ‘chick-lit’ books, and one copy of ‘The Human Body and You.’ She gathered all of them into a stack and took them out into the sitting area, curling up on one of the couches where she began to read. Conjuring a self-inking quill and some parchment, she made notes where she found something she thought would be useful.