Page Turner

Chapter Four
In Which Hermione is Mistaken


It didn’t work.

Not the way Hermione had hoped anyway.

Ron swallowed thickly. “I think I just puked a little.”

Harry cringed as well. “You got naked with the Ferret? You actually let him touch— You touched—”

“Ew,” Ron agreed.

“Why did you have to tell us it was under the table in your store? Now I’m never going to be able to step foot in there again without picturing you and Malfoy doing the bunny hop. I’ve sat at those chairs! I’ve had my feet on that carpet!”

“I’m scarred for life!” Ron wailed.

“But Ronald, you’ve only been in Hermione’s store the once, and afterwards you told me you were never going back because it was such a geekfest,” Luna reminded helpfully. Ron winced. Hermione tactfully ignored the comment, too busy being relieved that no one’s face was to be punched in in the near future, and too busy being mortified by the boys’ expressions of horror to really care that Ron still thought she was a nerd. Everyone still thought she was a nerd.

Though Malfoy hadn’t seemed too concerned about that when he had his hands full of her butt.

They had gathered at the coffee shop down the street from Luna’s. Hermione hoped that the din and the crowding and the jostling by angry young people in black turtlenecks and plastic glasses would distract everyone enough that they wouldn’t think to rush off to do the bunny hop, as Harry had so vividly called it, while still leaving them with enough concentration to discuss her situation like normal people.

Fat chance.

Of course, the paparazzo with his face smooshed up against the window wasn’t really helping matters. At least this one had muggle clothes. It was hard enough getting groceries with the run-of-the-mill paparazzi. Put a few in robes and pointy hats, though, and the grocers started looking at you funny.

Harry sighed mournfully. “You know we’re going to have to kill him now, right?”

Hermione’s relief vanished. “What?!” she shrieked. “You can’t do that! That’s not why I told you.”

“I know,” Harry allowed.

“But Hermione, he defiled you,” Ron insisted.

Hermione muttered, “I’d like to defenestrate you.” Not quietly as she thought, though, because Ron’s eyes went wide.

“She didn’t say what you thought she said,” Ginny assured her brother with a smirk.

“Well then, she should clarify,” Ron grumbled.

“What I will clarify, is that you two will not be breaking the fer—Malfoy’s face. Do you hear me? Ron? Harry?”

“I hadn’t thought of his face,” Harry murmured thoughtfully. “Just his solar plexus.”

“And his balls!” Ron crowed.

Ginny snickered. “You would think of Malfoy’s balls, Ron.”

“I think he meant hitting them,” Luna explained unnecessarily. She turned to her fiancé. “Although, if you were thinking of the other way, I should hope that I would get to—“

Ron turned purple behind his freckles. “No!”

Hermione pounced, since the power in this conversation seemed to be on the women’s side at the moment, anyway. And because Ron was flustered and Harry was nearly choking, he was laughing so hard.

“Does that mean you promise to leave Malfoy alone?” she asked, trying to sound arch and not anxious.

“No!” they snapped in unison.

Hermione sighed. “Would it make a difference if I told you I liked him defiling me?”

Ron’s face flashed from purple to green. Even Harry, whose face couldn’t hold a tan even after a month in Cairo, managed to blanche further. “It wouldn’t make a difference,” Harry gritted.

His grimace said otherwise.

“Oh, so it wouldn’t matter then if I told you that your bunny analogy is more accurate than you probably imagined. I mean, with him being all pale, and behind me . . .”

Ron seemed to wilt, while Harry let out the tiniest whimper.

Ginny laughed. “Oh Hermione, you’re good at this. I’m surprised you let them get away with as much as you did at Hogwarts.”

“Do you give up?” Hermione pressed on.

Ron whipped his head from side to side, trying to simultaneously answer his friend and wipe his brain clear of the image she’d planted there.

“No? Ah well. Anyway, I’m sure you’re both aware that the male rabbit will occasionally bite his mate on the neck to add to his stimulation and her own.”

“Ack,” Harry said. Ron seemed to have gone into a slight coma and didn’t snap out of it until Luna stuck her tongue in his ear. The paparazzo was going to have quite the sale for that photo, Hermione was sure.

“And that, of course, would make the female rabbit scream…in a good way…”

“I give up! I give up! Dear Merlin in a hockey helmet, I give up!” Ron cried.

“Can I just break one tiny finger? He could do without one measly pinkie finger,” Harry tried.

“No. If anyone is going to beat the crap out of Malfoy, it’s going to be me. Now shut up.”

Harry heaved a huge sigh and capitulated. Silently.

“Super!” Ginny chirruped. “Now we can start planning the baby shower!” Her brother looked ready to bolt at that.

“Actually, I’ve got to take inventory yet today at the shop, and finish placing my orders for next month, so we’re going to have to put that little project on hiatus, Ginny,” Hermione said, not really looking forward to that at all. Good heavens, a baby shower would entail invitations to people like Narcissa Malfoy and Hermione’s mother.

Reasonably certain her friends entertained no thoughts of gifting her with a baby album made from the beaten pulp of Draco Malfoy, she scurried out of the coffee shop. Since she had finished her ordering last week and the bit about inventory was flat-out fiction, Hermione had time to spare and took the Tube home. She may have had other, more efficient, magic ways to travel, but she liked to stay adept in the muggle world. Her parents didn’t send her to wizarding school to lose the ability to cope in the rest of the world, after all. And she always tried to make them proud.

Huh. Good job with that, Hermione, she thought as she got onto her train. She sat near the back of the car, near the door where the morning’s edition of the Metro had been left by previous passengers. She grabbed one and flipped idly through, pausing to peruse an article about Sienna Miller’s latest haircut. Hermione imagined what her hair would do with that kind of cut and had to chuckle. The man sitting across from her looked up at the sound and returned his gaze quickly to his book. Hermione had the odd feeling that she recognized him, though she was certain she’d never seen him before. He must have felt the same, as he was unable to keep his gaze from her for long.

“Gotta get rid of it. Gotta keep it safe,” he muttered just before thrusting the book in her hands and heading for the exit at the next stop.

“Wait, sir, I can’t take your book!” Hermione cried after him.

“Not mine. Keep it safe at your shop! Find its owner, and for the sake of everything good, don’t let her find it!” If he was going to say anything else, it was cut off by the abrupt slamming of the doors behind him.

“Mind the gap in your sanity,” she groused, but flipped the book over in her hands. It was heavy and bound in leather that may once have been red. It looked old, but not ancient, like it had been dropped in water or something. The gold flake of the title was illegible, and only a few letters of the author’s name were still visible on the cover. Never one to look a gift book in the mouth, Hermione shoved it into her bag as she realized she was coming up on the Gloucester Road stop. She could take a look at the book later. If she had to guess, it was just some used novel from a charity shop, since that man looked like he probably lived in a homeless shelter, or just on the street. He certainly hadn’t looked well, with all the fidgeting and sweating. She would surmise that the episode meant nothing.

She would have been mistaken.



A/N: How many times should I apologize for not updating in ages? I'm terrible. Sorry times n! :( I do have some good reasons for the months that have gone by: I completed my first manuscript and am now looking for an agent, I moved, started a new job, hated it so much I had a bit of a mental breakdown, quit the job, and helped care for my grandpa on a near-daily basis (although I live 80 miles away) for six weeks until he died and I inherited his dog. It's been a hectic few months, so I hope you'll forgive me. And I hope I haven't lost all my readers! Anyhoodles, leave some R and R, would you? This lady needs some!

ddf