Particle B

Title: Particle B
Rating: Rrrish
Pairing: D/Hr like GOLD
Disclaimer: It's not mine, it's big, and has rats as menslaves - you've got three guesses GO!
Summary: It was about the kids. The darlings, the angels, the adorable bunch of human – well, those. They had to go somewhere. Such a shame, such a waste of time. But someone had to do it – someone had to step up and say, ‘Hey! I know Hogwarts fucked up, totally closed down and puked all its students back out as soon as Voldemort came lurking around the corner – but that’s okay! It’s in the past! Now we’re back and we’ll have you, magical children of the world, we really will!’
A/N: Beta'ed by the AMAZING yuying_luo. I owe you an eternal life, Super!Yuying X)

*

“OH, DOOOO COME TONIGHT!”

There were four classes again. Four classes, more or less, because there weren’t that many people back yet. Each containing twenty-five to thirty-five students. That’s a lot of kids with lots of potential to make a lot of mistakes.

“AAAND IF YOU – OH, SHI—WHA- WHAT THE F– FUCKING STATUE! JEEZ, FUCK YOU, STA-TUE!”

Four classes with one big assignment per two weeks, two per month, that’s eight assignments. That, times twenty-five students (at the least), is two hundred assignments of two two-feet long parchments is four hundred parchments to be corrected only for the first part of the assignment.

“AND IF YOU DO IT RIIIIGHT!”

Plus that amount for the second part of the assignment, and the third, and the fourth, and a whole bunch added to it – especially for the younger students – makes about a thousand pages to correct per month.

“I’LL BOIL YOU UP SOME HOT, STROOOONG LOVE!”

Plus a few pop quizzes per class of about half a page, and about four hundred assigned quizzes, and the hundred notebooks she’ll have to check, that’ll make it a grand total of, please, let’s not exaggerate: about a good two thousand pages of parchment reeking of mistakes per month, shall we say?

“TO KEEEEP, YOOOU, WAAARM, TOOOONIIIIGHT!”

But how? How the hell was she supposed to get anything done whatsoever under these circumstances? Just – okay, calm down, just block it out. That’s right, hands over ears, murmur something to yourself or something, soothing stuff, yes – yes! Like that! Now, good, look at the—damnit, look at the paper, woman! Right. Right. Jarome Fox. Hufflepuff, yes, okay! There we go! Jarome—

“WHOO! DO YOU HEAR ME, HOGWARTS? MAKE YOURSELF HEARD, HOGWARTS! WHOOOO! ROCK ON!”

Same thing. Same damned thing every damn month. And how long has it been? How long, huh? Two months? Two and a half? No, couldn’t – it was regular, it was. Must’ve been the third month. Third month? Holy hell! She couldn’t go on like this. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t, most of all! But who was there to put a stop to it? Who? Just the fact she was asking that question, meant pretty obviously the answer was FUCKING NO ONE. And yes, the ‘fucking’ was important. As long as he left her alone. As long as he didn’t come in. Hands over ears, Hermione, and now, Jarome Fo—

“TEACHER, FRIENDS! TEACHER, FRIENDS! WAKEY, WAKEY, TEACHER FR… Frie… teacher…”

Next week, Jarome Fox would get his test paper back. And he’ll be a very, very surprised young man. From the upper right corner, right under his name, down to the fourth question halfway the parchment, he’ll see a very big, fat red scribble that looked exactly like shit. A scribble that looked exactly like someone had their quill lingering about one place of the parchment, and due to a loud noise or a great shock, lost control of their hold and sort of… dragged the ink all over the place.

And if Jarome assumed exactly that, then he’d be a very, very perceptive young man, too.

Hermione shot up, backs of her knees pushing the chair backwards, creating a lot of stupid fracas. She was rather shaky, rather tired, and kind of hoping something big, fat and human didn’t just crash into her office door. She breathed three times. Three steady, weighted out, balanced-kind-of-person inhales. And exhales. To get her blood pumping the right way. The slow way, the quiet way, the friendly way it did whenever she had a friend over for tea.

Hermione didn’t like the way her heels made themselves known when she was walking on tiled floor. But flats were for girls who bought a fortune worth of make-up in nature shops, claiming to go for the natural look. Yeah, as if they… no, okay, that was a lie. She just didn’t like looking short. So she didn’t. And if that meant walking on carpets whenever she could, then so be it!

But there wasn’t any carpet in her office. So it was her, and her heels, and some noise. Click, clack, clicking – and damn, she was finally there.

“Hullo?” She pressed the side of her face against the door. “Hullo?” she repeated, in case anyone had forgotten she’d said it once already.

Maybe he just threw something at her door. You know him, Hermione! He’d do something like that. Of course, yes, that’s what he did… throw a… a…

“HULLO?” She knocked on her own door. Well, how ‘bout that? “You still out there, Malfoy?”

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. This hasn’t happened before. And change wasn’t a good thing – not in this place, not with her current state of being. His current state of being, as well. And her shaky hand was about her wand, about her belt, holding it very, very closely as she made to open the door.

And when she found out no effort was needed for the door to oblige, her wand jumped up with her heart; her heart to the throat-area, her wand to the big, dark corridor area. Doors didn’t open on their own account. Doors opening on their own equalled change and change equalled bad things. Definitely bad things.

No one was there to meet the wrath of her wand, though. There was someone, however. Someone big, fat and human very much existing about her feet. On her feet, more accurately. Spread out, unconscious and drooling, sliding slowly from the door onto the floor, one arm gliding around her calf in a distracted manner, holding tightly onto it.

Hermione made the sound of distress. That sound, you know, like someone had just dropped her in a nice, large bowl of ice water. That sharp sound that went like ‘-heaaaah!’, which most read as ‘-please step back and undo whatever you’ve just done in a nice, reasonable yet hurried fashion. Thank you.’

Thing was, though, most were conscious when hearing The Sound. Draco Malfoy? Wasn’t.

“Malfoy!” she whispered, wand-poking him in the ribs once, twice. “Malfoy! Wake up! Ma—let – Malfoy! Let go of my leg!”

“Humpfsfsppssh.”

How coherent of the guy.

What a joke. What a marvellous joke this was. Let’s play Granger! Let’s, let’s! Let’s hire her, Let’s do that! Let’s! Let’s make her play teacher with Draco Malfoy, see how long she lasts before her brains explode all over the walls in a great big mojo puddle of EXHAUSTION! Let’s, let’s!

“Malfoy! I’m serious – go back to your office!” Poked him again, in his arm this time, trying to wriggle out her leg. “Go on, boy! Shoo!”

“Guhaaahuhhfffs.”

No use. The boy was as pissed as a horse.

Hermione inhaled--because air is good for you---and prepared herself for the following:

“Alright, Malfoy.” She gave up on the poking, and slowly bent down to peel his fingers from her leg. “You owe me. Big time.”

As soon as his arm had no leverage and her supporting feet were gone, the boy fell completely to the floor, limbs draped about in a manner that they definitely shouldn’t. Ever. His head fell to the right, mouth slightly open and a little bit of drool forming at the corners of his lips.

More air, Hermione, keep that air coming!

She repositioned herself, contemplating the best approach and when she realised there was generally no approach that would be considered morally right, she settled for the most convenient one. Grabbing the boy under his armpits, Hermione readied herself to reach the other end of her office. Reach the red couch, reach it – and you’re done for tonight. You’re off the hook for at least a month – unless he decides to take it even further next month and barge into her office still conscious.

Oh heavens. She felt kind of nauseous at the thought of it.

Hermione didn’t have much power in her. That is, she had quite a lot of buzzing and fizzling energy and all – but when it came down to expressing it physically, downright physical rough drivel, she was kind of weak. Dragging a male her age, probably twice her weight and things like that across a room… well, it certainly gave her sanity a run for its money. It wasn’t so much dragging as pushing; step for step, she pushed him towards her a little. Took a step backwards, pulled at him. Took another step backwards, yanked at him. And he, the angel, stayed perfectly asleep. Or knocked out. Or whatever.

The first time, two months ago, it was enough to shock Hermione thoroughly. She was just about to call it a day, put away her work and turn in for a nice, long sleep in celebration of surviving first month when she heard rumble about the corridor. Ruckus quickly followed by loud, unabashed singing, cussing, yelling and – if her hearing wasn’t deceiving her – dancing. Horror occupied the majority of her general being as she peeked through the door key and watched one Draco Malfoy being royally DRUNK. She secured her chambers in every way she could possibly think of and tried to recover. Carefully.

The very next morning she went straight to Professor Baginson, no hesitations about it! ‘Have you heard him, Professor? Have you SEEN him? What if the students saw him?! Making a fool out of himself, drinking like that, in the middle of the night!’ And Professor Baginson had said that yes, yes Hermione, he did hear him. And yes, there was no excuse for his behaviour – but what could they possibly do? Warn him? Suspend him? He was there volunteering! They all were, and there was nothing binding them to their job. No rules, no money, only a roof over their heads – and a bunch of screaming, whining little pains-in-the-asses.

Malfoy aside, that is.

It was a disaster waiting to happen, really – she dragged the boy’s limp body one step further on the dusty floor – but it was her disaster too, wasn’t it? Currently, no Headmaster. No house elves, no magic outside classes – unless it was an emergency. Until the ministry got it together, got their magic tracking devices back on their feet, got their bloody act back up and running. And Hermione didn’t understand at first, how did they want to do this, how?! Separate the tasks in the meanwhile, each teacher doing his or her share. And it worked. Kind of…

But it wasn’t about that, not in the long run – was it? It was about he kids. The darlings, the angels, the adorable bunch of human – well, those. They had to go somewhere. Some had lost their parents in the war, some had just turned eleven as the war ended. Some were already thirteen, never to have attended a Magic School. Such a shame, such a waste of time. But someone had to do it – someone had to step up and say, ‘Hey! I know Hogwarts fucked up, totally closed down and puked all its students back out as soon as Voldemort came lurking around the corner – but that’s okay! It’s in the past! Now we’re back and we’ll have you, magical children of the world, we really will!’

Hermione collapsed on the squishy cushions, letting go of Malfoy’s arms so that only his back was slumped against the end of the couch, though he was slowly moving towards gravity all over again. She took a nice, healthy dose of air and dove for him again, grabbing his upper arm and awkwardly lifting the rest of his body that hung from it onto her level. Hell, she hadn’t sweated this much since she ran around the Quidditch field within the time span of sixty second.

AND YEAH, she’d never even done that to begin with. So that was saying something!

But good God (this was good, right?), she was on the right track. His torso was kind of on the couch, kind of. Half-ish. Still sliding off, granted. Hermione tried to jump over him, get to the other side so she could somehow boost him further up, but that only worked halfway. Her foot got stuck under his leg and she staggered about, speeding his descent to the ground.

“Oh no you don’t!” she grunted, freeing her foot and continuing on with her original goal. Pushing him up by his side seemed to work, and with a little knee and a little shoulder and all the power she possessed, Hermione managed to get the boy flat on his stomach on the Transfiguration’s teacher’s red couch.

And with one, big, nice and large exhale, she let go of all the air she’d saved up till now and let her forehead rest on the boy’s back, trying to co-ordinate her breaths to his. Because he was breathing so regularly and she wanted that for herself. And a warm body temperature was nice, too. Human stuff was nice in general, when unguarded like that.

Hermione turned her head, letting cheek fleetingly feel the soft texture of his robes, then pushed herself from the current kneeling position into a standing one.

He was drooling on her couch now. Fully.

Oh, he owed her alright.

Big time.

*

Being a teacher is a nice alternative to things alike to self-hygiene and idleness, you know. But before we go and sound all drastic here, it isn’t so much that teaching consumes all and that all which revolves around teaching; no, it is more or less that teaching occupies a small part of your day, with that small part being so heavy on the stomach that things like eating, bathing, and breathing properly are set aside for a certain amount of time for the sake of recovery.

Sometimes, he thinks that if he’d known what he was getting himself into, he would’ve refused the offer kindly, because “Hahaha! Nice one, funny! But no, no, Gods no! But thank you for the thought and—“ would’ve continued eating out garbage cans each morning, midday, and evening for the rest of his days.

But that’s okay, because that was only during the rough days. Granted, granted, each day was rough in its own special kind of way, but it was some breakfasts, some lunches and some dinners – the ones where he was alone – completely alone, in his office with a giant knot in his stomach and a light migraine at the door, and a bright young feller came a-skipping in going on about whether or not they were going to be asked about the Battle of Fiddlebrough during next week’s quiz, when Draco realized it probably wouldn’t take much for him to reach out and just… snap! Clamp his hands about the child’s neck and squeeze that little too much.

And it worried him. It did! All right, that’s true – Draco certainly wasn’t a man’s man. A people’s person. The guy about town! But sure, give him a couple of directionless baboons and he’ll lead them to Timbuktu, or wherever! But kids? Harbouring things like opinions, ideas, suggestions, questions? All that’s yet to be squashed by the bigger, older and smarter? It was nearly impossible.

Because, he started to realise as time went by, there was an alarmingly large difference between teaching, and being a teacher.

There were days he didn’t show up. Days where he just stayed in bed, or wherever he woke up. The first time it happened was during the second week, and it wasn’t even intentional. He simply went to bed too late, and woke up at two in the afternoon, having missed two of his four classes. He stayed in his room for the rest of the day, things like ‘expelled’ and ‘punishment’ flashing about his mind like the titles of a murder story. He sweated copiously and bit off a considerable amount of his nails and eventually gathered his wits and made his way to dinner. Dinner. Where he had to sit with the rest of them for a good hour, making sure the students didn’t break out in a spontaneous food fight, much to his dismay; his generation never got to have a go at it with the mountains of steaming food. Not that there was that much food now, but that was beside the point – the point being… where was he, anyway? Ah, yes! First time he’d skipped his own class – the amazing thing was, you see, the whole accident was completely ignored. No one spoke of it, not even his own students had asked him where he was the very next day. It was almost as if it had never taken place to begin with; to this, Draco’s worries grew, though more concerned abut his mental state of being rather than his current job position.

Second time was half-conscious, since he knew that he was drinking at 3 AM, and he knew that he’d be doing it for quite a while, and he knew he wouldn’t wake up the next morning – but the words ‘I’ and ‘care’ failed to follow. Once again, no one spoke of it, but this time he received glances. Ah, the three D’s! Disapproving, disgusted and degenerating! But as long as no one spoke of it, Draco dismissed it, and knighted his little vacations as ‘field days’. The silence, however, didn’t last all too long and from time to time, one of the older members of the staff came to check up on him. Ask him whether he was feeling well, whether he thought he could handle his job and whether he was aware he’d missed sixteen class hours during the past month. But as the number of check ups began to disseminate, realisation sank in that nothing would ever happen. His classes would always be there, quite alive and quite ripe for him to murder, his job would always be his job simply because they couldn’t do anything about it, simply because they couldn’t get anything better than him. No, no, scratch that – it had nothing to do with better; they simply couldn’t get anyone, or for that matter. No one wanted the job, no one was desperate enough and no one really cared about anything other than their own misery right now. Not that Draco cared, but he was very desperate, which kind of evened it up.

He didn’t feel like being a teacher today.

Responsibility was a loose addiction. Addiction in the sense that it was always there, gnawing about one’s conscience; loose in the sense that it was almost too easy to avoid. Merely thinking about not doing that what you’re supposed to be doing, had almost the same two effects to it. First comes the feeling of relief, oh, the relief at the prospect of not doing the dreaded! But the relief is immediately followed by a gunshot. BANG! Relief was found dead in the town square, the newspapers say, the only suspect being Mr. A. Guilt. When asked, Guilt claimed it wasn’t even his war, but liquidation assigned to him by his chief: Dr. Conscience.

Sometimes Guilt’s hand wasn’t steady enough, and it shot a brain nerve or something, letting relief run free with its life for a day or two, till someone took pity on the town of Dracotopia, and shut Guilt up, if they happened to have a spare bullet. That, and for the laughs (Dracotopia was a morbid place).

Maybe he wouldn’t go to class today. Maybe he will – either way, he was out of bed. Couch. Wherever it was he woke up… yes, it most definitely one of the teacher’s offices. Which one though, was completely beyond him in his present state. How long ago was it? An hour? Two? Five? It was still dark when he made his way down the corridors, his head thumping, woozy, and thick like fucking cotton. So excuse him if he didn’t have the time to think about stuff like time and space when all he cared about was the quickest way to a muddy, thick substance mixed with boiling water. Whether it was served to him in a cup, a bowl, a bathtub or an injection – he didn’t care, as long as he got it into his blood system.

There were five or eight cups on the table now, littered about him like tissues. One had pink flowers on it, and one of the others said ‘World’s best daddy’, another one was just blank and yellow with a big soup ladle in it he’d used to help the sugar resolve, ‘cause he couldn’t find anything else.

“TROOPER! Fancy seeing you here!”

“Fucking Merlin, Rutgers, could you fucking keep it down this early in the fucking morning?”

Not a man’s man. Not a people’s person. Certainly, most definitely, not the fucking guy about town. No, you’ve got the wrong man, surely, not Draco Malfoy!

“Alright, trooper, no need for the language!”

“I’m no fucking trooper, Rutgers. Stop calling me a fucking trooper.”

He wondered why Rutgers never annoyed him that much before because it was crystal clear at the moment that this man before him was the most annoying person he’d ever met. Perhaps it was because Draco was never around in the mornings and Rutgers usually turned in early.

Turned in early.

Ha, ha, ha. Mamma’s boy.

Rutgers was in seventh when he was in fourth, a bloody Hufflepuff till the very last word he’d puke about.

“Looks like someone got out on the wrong side of the bed, trooper!”

Draco groaned. Partially hoping the brutal noise would scare the man away, partially too tired to express his annoyance in actual words. He also decided that no amount of coffee was worth this.

It was Granger’s idea, anyway. So ‘that the students would know where to find them, and to improve the relations between staff members resulting in better functioning teachers, which would result in better results from the students, which would most definitely catch the Ministry’s attention so that they could count on extra subsidizing, which would mean that we can accept more students!’

Yeah Granger, that’s what we want. Even more maggots running around throwing pieces of chalk at his head when he’s not looking.

Teachers’ Lounge, his ass.

No amount of coffee served was worth the idea of a Teachers’ Lounge.

But yet, here it was. Here he was, too. In the teachers' fucking lounge.

Maybe he’d go and teach today, anyway.

“Hey, you! Rutgers!”

Rutgers, who was rummaging about a cupboard, looked up happily.

Draco tried to squeeze out a smile, but failed amazingly fast. “What’s the time?”

“Twenty to nine, trooper!” Rutgers winked, pointing at the very large and present clock that hung above the fireplace. Merlin, guys should be deprived of the ability to wink.

Twenty to nine. That meant he was already ten minutes late for his first class – he could still make it, make them sweat about for a while, giving a few assigned exercises from the book, maybe let them go early and still come across as the good guy.

Not that he really cared what those maggots thought of him.

Or his habit of not showing up.

Didn’t care whatsoever.

Draco picked up the yellow mug and downed what was left in it, which was altogether very tasteless and cold, and stood up, ready to be the good – no, great, no, no, AMAZING, teacher he could be and to finally get rid of that fucking guilt.

About damn time someone shot that asshole down, too.

“Eh, bu—eh, Malfoy?”

Damn! And he was so close to the door, too!

“What is it, Rutgers?”

“I—I was just wondering, were you, eh, planning on cleaning all these mugs?”

Draco blinked – once, twice. Why, he’d be damned! “Well, Rutgers, no. Not really – why?”

“Well, Malfoy, I—eh, I, you seemed to have used my mug.”

Ha! His students could wait. “Yes, so?”

“Well, I… this is my mug, Malfoy,” he picked up one of the empty ones, ‘World’s best daddy!’ “My daughter gave it to me, before I… er, left home. I’d appreciate if you’d… show more appreciation for other’s property.” He gestured vaguely to the rest of the mugs, each belonging to… well, probably each and every teacher who wasn’t Draco.

“OH! Well in THAT case…”

Draco assumed the hand gesture that followed was enough to make or break Rutgers for the rest of the man’s life.

*