Defamation of Character

Chapter Eight –

Hermione sighed as she stared at the blank page. Trying to write was useless now because the threat of a major lawsuit was hanging over her head. Not that she cared about money, but stress was stress, no matter how it presented itself.

It had been a month since her “daring” escape from the bastard’s evil clutches. Having Apparated to the local wizarding authorities, she had insisted that her former professor had held her against her wishes. By the time she and the local equivalent of Aurors had arrived, Snape was gone. He had left no trace and no evidence behind. He’d even taken the enchanted notebooks.

Incensed, Hermione had returned to England to file a report with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Of course, without proof and with Percy Weasley as his alibi, the charges had been dropped.

No one believed her!

Not even Ginny believed her. In fact, Ginny didn’t even remember her impromptu visit to inform Hermione about Snape’s lawsuit against Romance Rabble. After talking with her, Hermione had begun to doubt her own sanity. Maybe Snape slipped her a Forgetfulness Draught. She certainly wouldn’t put it past him.

An owl pecked at her window, destroying any concentration she may have hoped to tap into.

Grinding her teeth, Hermione slammed the notebook shut and opened the window. The owl hopped onto the ledge and held its leg out. She untied the parchment and handed the animal a treat. Satisfied, it took flight and left her to read the message.

Unrolling the paper, Hermione noticed that it was heavy and had probably cost a bundle to send via owl. The top of the document caught her eye. Law Office of Percy Weasley, Esquire.

Her blood began to boil as she unfurled the long document. She scanned it, unconsciously holding her breath as she did so. Tears welled in her eyes as she read the terms and conditions of the bloody bastard’s suit. She felt herself become physically ill and was sure that had she eaten something that didn’t agree with her. A date that was a week from the current day was listed as the appearance before the Wizengamot. Underneath it was more legal jargon, a notice of copies that had been sent to all shareholders of Romance Rabble, and an invitation to settle out of court.

Her fiery temper got the better of her, and she crumpled the summons in her hand, somehow resisting the urge to rip it to shreds first. Hermione dropped it onto the ground and looked about her modest flat. Everything she had ever worked for and most of the books she had ever aspired to own were neatly lined on the shelves. Her collection was quite impressive by any means. Silent tears of frustration fell to the floor. Dread coiled within her stomach.

Molly…

How would this impact Molly, whose own contributions to her creative endeavors were too enormous to comprehend? The Weasley family matriarch would be devastated. First of all, her spawn… er… son was representing the greasy git. Secondly, the bad press would undoubtedly cause a drop in sales. Molly wasn’t ambitious. She didn’t aspire to great wealth, but Molly had so wanted to buy Arthur something nice for their wedding anniversary.

Ginny…

She had no idea how the lawsuit would affect her redheaded friend. Like her mother, she had didn’t put much value on material possessions. However, Hermione had become privy to Ginny’s grand scheme to remodel the Burrow for her parents’ anniversary with her share of the profits.

Fred and George…

She didn’t even want to be in the same country when they received their summons. They would probably start scheming of ways to off their ne’er-do-well brother, which she would wholeheartedly support.

Picking up the parchment, she began to unfold it. Now was not a good time to fall apart. She wondered if Snape’s offer was still good. Make love to me, and I will forgive your debt.

Hermione shuddered in remembrance, cursing her traitorous body as it throbbed with unresolved lustful intentions for her former professor. She shook her head, mentally chastising the mere entertainment of the thought. There was no bloody way she would prostitute herself for Severus Snape, not even with a ten-foot pole.

Any romantic notions she may have had about him were dead and buried. He was definitely not the man she had imagined him to be. He was a vain, pompous, arrogant, self-centered bastard. What had she ever seen in him?

She sat at her writing desk and picked up her quill. Before putting pen to paper, she contemplated her next move. What was she going to do? How was she going to dissuade Snape? How was she going to protect the ones that she loved?

Multiple questions turned to mush in her overtaxed brain, and she growled. One thing was for certain, she needed to get a lawyer… one with less scruples than Percy Weasley.

--

"Please follow me, Miss Granger," the buxom secretary said with a plastic smile.

Picking a speck of lint off her robe, Hermione did as she was told. She clutched the document in her hand and prayed that the lawyer would take the case. Percy may be an arse, but he was well respected in his field, and the first lawyer she had contacted had laughed in her face.

The secretary opened a door and escorted her to an ornate, cluttered desk. The entire office was a study in organized chaos. Law books were shelved along the wall, and a fine sheen of dust covered them. Filing cabinets that looked like they were overflowing with paperwork lined the other wall. The sinking suspicion that she had made yet another mistake stirred in her gut. The dust on the law books was testament that her former classmate had never adopted proper study habits.

"Mr. Malfoy will be with you shortly," the blonde woman informed Hermione, her eyes raking up and down the potential client's figure as if assessing her worth.

Hermione watched her leave. That's when she saw the portrait of Draco's father on the opposite wall by the door. That alone should have changed her mind and made her leave. Lucius’ sneer in the portrait sent a chill down her spine.

Before she could act on the instinct to flee, there was a loud pop behind her. With a gasp, she turned. She didn't know who was more surprised, herself or Draco Malfoy.

"You're my three o'clock appointment?" he asked, barely containing the contempt in his voice.

Hermione took a step forward, and Draco took a habitual step back. "Trust me," she retorted. "I wouldn't be here unless you were the last barrister on the planet that wasn’t afraid of Percy Weasley."

"But I'm not the last barrister on the planet," he reminded her. “I don’t know why anyone would be afraid of that sniveling git.”

Heaving a sigh of exasperation, Hermione sat in the ornate chair across from his desk. As much as she would like to hex Malfoy for the hell of it, she resisted. He really was the last barrister in London. At least he was the only one capable of meeting Percy on common ground. Of course the irony of the situation did not escape her. It was almost laughable, and she catalogued it in the depths of her creative processes to use in one of her books. "I'm being sued."

Draco snorted and covered his mouth.

"I'm glad you find this so amusing," she huffed, tossing the document onto his desk. She wasn't going to let him get the better of her. She wasn't going to let the pettiness of their past taint this exchange. Unlike the man before her, she had matured. Draco looked like a party-boy who had stayed up all night. He looked scruffy, his hair longer like his incarcerated father's. He supported several days’ growth of whiskers and reeked of tobacco. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like hell.

Sitting in his chair, Draco pulled it up to the desk and started perusing the legal document. His eyes widened in surprise. Hermione could tell he was trying to contain his laughter by the way his lips trembled.

"I haven’t spoken with my business partners yet. I thought it best to speak to you first to see if you would be interested in taking the case—or if you even thought you could win." Hermione worried the folds of her robe with her fingertips. If Malfoy didn't take the case, she didn't know what she was going to do.

Setting the parchment down, Draco leaned back in his chair and folded his fingers together. He seemed lost in thought to her, almost comical, seeing as she had always considered him to be as deep as a puddle.

She waited for his response, tapping her fingers on the polished wood of the arm of the chair.

"I'm at a loss for words, Mud—" He stopped himself before finishing the epithet. "…Granger. I had no idea you were the author of the Magic series. My wife is a huge fan."

Hermione smiled nervously. "How is Pansy?"

"I wouldn't know, seeing as she left me after reading your latest book."

Hermione cringed. “That’s absurd! It’s fiction!”

So much for the last barrister in London...

Draco shrugged his shoulders. "I can see why Professor Snape is so irritated. I must admit that I did not make the connection until just now. It boggles the mind. It's actually quite... repulsive. I never realized you had a thing for him."

She blushed. Would her embarrassment never end? She bit her bottom lip and waited for Draco to speak his peace. Snape was not the only person in her last book that she modeled one of her characters after. She had modeled the villain after Draco.

"You have some nerve, Granger," he stated, his cheeks flushing with anger. "Pansy left me." He opened a drawer, pulled something out, and threw it on top of his desk. "She left me because of this."

Looking down, Hermione saw a dog-tagged copy of The Darkest Magic.

"Thanks to you, my wife thinks I'm the devil incarnate. Thanks to you, she has filed for divorce. Thanks to you, she is in hiding, convinced that I mean to sacrifice our baby to You-Know-Who.”

She felt her world collapse around her. Malfoy's pain was tangible and pure. In his eyes, she could see his love for his wife. She could see the anguish in his eyes—eyes that she had always thought of as cruel. She had come to him for help. She had come to him for a chance to fight against Snape's wild allegations. What she had found wounded her already-fragile creativity.

Whereas she had cast Snape in the role of hero, she had vilified Draco. Write what you know, Molly had always encouraged her. Instead, Hermione had written who she knew, changing the names of the guiltless and the guilty in what she had viewed as a harmless pursuit. Only now, she realized, it wasn't harmless.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, reaching for the scroll and readying herself to leave.

Draco snatched the scroll away from her, his gray, cold eyes boring into hers. “I’ll take the case on three conditions."

She blinked and nodded.

"You must make your identity public," he stated. "And I want twenty thousand Galleons upfront."

Hermione heaved a sigh of relief, missing the fact that he still had one more condition to go. Other than going public with her identity, twenty thousand Galleons was quite reasonable. "Okay."

Draco rubbed his hands together. "That's not all, Granger."

Hermione swallowed the lump in her throat.

"You must write a sequel to The Darkest Magic. In the sequel, you will redeem the character of Drago Mallistoi—"

"But he's the villain!" Hermione gasped.

Draco quirked an elegant eyebrow and leaned forward. "I don't care how you do it, Granger. I don't care if your writing borders on the edge of insanity. You will write the sequel, and you will redeem my character in the eyes of my wife."

--


Staring out the dirty window, Severus watched the rain pound against the glass. The weather was a mirror for his mood. Several weeks had passed since he had abandoned his initial plan. Mentally, he scoffed. It hadn't been much of a plan to begin with. It had taken him those weeks to come to an unsettling realization.

He wanted Hermione Granger.

She had woven a web of seduction around his starved libido that he found himself reluctant to relinquish. Upon his return, he had tried to exorcise Miss Granger from his mind, but the whores of Knockturn Alley had proven to be poor substitutes for the real thing.

He had let the petty, vindictive side of his coldhearted nature control him. He had been incensed upon finding out the truth—that she was Perdita Winters. Realizing that his students were laughing at him had brought forth a flood of unpleasant memories, and memories that he has successfully buried beneath the armor of sarcasm in spite. A psychoanalyst would have a field day with him. Of course, he didn’t know any psychoanalysts.

Instead, he had Albus Dumbledore.

Who had he wronged in a previous life? Why did the Fates conspire against him?

Even though Hogwarts' headmaster wore spectacles, he was not blind. He was worse than Fluffy, the three-headed dog that had guarded the Sorcerer's Stone. The man was relentless, constantly pestering him and asking after his health. Severus didn't know how Albus knew about his trip to the tropics. He also didn't know how he knew whom he was with. The old wizard was about as subtle as a Hippogriff in a Cauldron Shop.

Severus didn't know which was worse—what Albus had said, or that he had actually listened to what Albus had said.

Severus had been a blind fool. According to Albus, Hermione Granger had feelings for him. It was a concept he still had difficulty believing, but it was there in black-and-white. The proof of her infatuation with him jumped from the pages of The Darkest Magic.

In true Slytherin fashion, he spurned intimacy but took advantage of sexual release whenever it presented itself. The young Gryffindor had sensual potential, a potential that he was all too eager to exploit. But first he needed to get close to her again. He needed to engage her. He needed her to give him a second chance, so he had proceeded with the lawsuit against Romance Rabble.

Knowing Miss Granger as he did, he would play to her protective sensibilities. Most likely, she would try to protect her loved ones. In doing so, he would make a bargain that she could not refuse.

--

TBC

Author’s Notes – I would love to respond to all feedback, but my ability to type is hampered by the slow recovery of my dominant hand. I got my cast off and my stitches out today. I have another three weeks to go of “not using” the hand. Anyway, I just wanted to thank everyone who has wished for my speedy recovery. I could use more wishes, because I am getting really irritated with the voice recognition software. Lastly, I must throw flowers at my beta-readers’ feet. They are all goddesses to me.