I was in London this past weekend with my parents, picking up the rest of my stuff from various friends' flats. It was pretty tiring and the drive back was so looong! Since I got back I've been busy sorting, cleaning and finding space for my stuff, which was a relief as I got all my books again along with my notebooks I use for writing, but also just an accumulation of random crap I kept throughout the past year.

Anyway, two things today...

1) My one-shot for elyaeru is finally here!

Title: Draco Malfoy is a jerk!
Author: hathorx
Rating: PG
Summary: Draco and Hermione making out in a closet... but are they alone? Drabble turned one-shot for elyaeru, who gave me the prompt 'skeleton'! Enjoy :D


Draco Malfoy is a Jerk!

Hermione took a deep breath and turned around the corner. Although it was lunchtime, a handful of students still roamed the corridors on their way to the library or back to their dorms.

Her fingers tugging at the sleeves of her grey sweater, she carried on walking down the corridor, peeking behind her every so often to make sure she was alone. Slowing down as she reached the first classroom door on her right, she looked up around her once more, before grasping the doorknob of the broom closet nearby and swiftly walking inside.

Hermione shut the door behind her and stumbled around in the dark for a minute, wondering whether she should use her wand to cast a light and finally decided not to. Draco would be there soon and then it wouldn’t matter anymore whether it was dark or light.

She began to shiver from the sudden cold inside the closet and decided that next time they really should pick a more romantic, or at least more comfortable, spot to meet up in secret. Hogwarts’ broom closets were indeed notorious as rendez-vous points for couples, but they also happened to be small, damp cupboards, crammed with all sorts of junk, which were never comfortable to lean against when making out and which often smelled like cabbage and mouse faeces. Once, Draco had even dragged her inside the Christmas decorations’ closet and Hermione had spent the rest of the evening hiding in the girl’s bathroom trying to untangle multiple streaks of tinsel out of her hair.

This time, she had decided, she would tell Draco exactly what she thought of his cunning plan to meet in broom closets and that he had better come up with a more comfortable and larger meeting place and fast!

Hearing the door suddenly click, Hermione looked up and caught a glimpse of pale skin and blond hair slide in before the room was plunged back into darkness.

“Fancy meeting you here, Granger,” Draco drawled, stepping closer against her. Although Hermione could barely make out his features in the dark, she could tell that he was smiling.

“Glad to hear you’re in such a good mood,” she told him, crossing her arms over her chest. Draco, however, decided to ignore her stance and quickly pulled her hips towards him.

“I detect sarcasm in your voice, Granger,” he replied amused, prying her arms apart and lacing his fingers with hers. “Is something wrong?”

“Apart from the fact that I can’t see you and even your expensive cologne doesn’t block out the awful smell in this closet, really no – nothing at all!”

She pried her fingers away from his, determined not to let him have his way, and decided keeping her distance from him might help. After taking a couple of steps back, however, her shoe suddenly made contact with something soft and squishy.

Retreating her foot, Hermione leapt forward at the same time, bumping into Draco, who held her firmly against him and started laughing.

“Draco, I’m serious!” she hissed at him, hesitantly putting her foot down again. “I hate meeting like this – these closets are just horrible and we can’t even bloody see each other! I’ve had enough and you’d better come up with a different location tomorrow or you won’t be seeing me again for a very long time.”

That shut him up, but she could still hear him smiling in the dark and it annoyed her.

“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered, pulling her back towards him, the tip of his fingers caressing the small of her back. “I promise you next time we’ll meet somewhere else and I’ll make it up to you.”

“Promise?” she asked him, no longer resisting his pull and sliding her arms around his neck.
“Of course,” he replied, before kissing her fully on the lips.

She smiled against his lips as he kissed her eagerly, making her grasp his shoulders as she stumbled slowly backwards. The shelves at the back of the cupboard abruptly hit her neck and back, but she barely noticed as Draco deepened the kiss, sliding his hand down her thigh, whilst the other one grasped the back of her neck. Hermione moaned in response and quickly wrapped her leg around his waist, bringing him in closer and making him groan from the sudden contact. She smiled at his response, but immediately gasped in delight as she felt his cold touch against her skin at the rim of her skirt. She was so caught up in the moment that it took her a few seconds to realise that his cold hand was giving her goose bumps.

“Draco, stop it – your hand is cold,” she told him, laughing slightly.

“Sorry,” he said quickly and moved his hand away from her neck.

The cold touch was still brushing against her hip bone though causing her to giggle. “You know I’m ticklish,” she told him. “Stop it.”

However, just as she grabbed his arm to pull away his hand, she realised it was actually still caressing her thigh and not her hip bone. The cold hand brushing against her skin didn’t belong to Draco!

Her eyes opening wide, Hermione screamed in fright before darting across the closet, pushing Draco out of her way. She reached the wall and desperately began searching for the door handle and her wand.

“Damn it, Hermione! What the hell is wrong with you?” Draco asked her annoyed.

“Something was touching me in the dark!” she yelled, hitting her elbow against a shelf in her agitation to find the doorknob. “There’s someone in here!”

She suddenly heard him begin to rummage in the dark and finally locating her wand, she instantly cried, “Lumos!”

It took a few seconds for her eyes to become adjusted to the sudden light, but then she clearly distinguished Draco retrieving his own wand from his back pocket all the while jiggling a finger in his ear hole. After all, she had screamed in fright right next to him.

“Are you sure?” he asked her in disbelief. “This is a pretty small cupboard, I think we would have noticed if someone else was here.”

Hermione nodded back at him, shaking like a leaf.

“All right, hold on,” he told her, turning around to face the cluttered shelves behind him holding out his own lit wand.

“Draco, wait it’s not safe,” Hermione suddenly spoke up, realising something dangerous – or even someone – could be with them right now, ready to attack them at any instant. “We should leave.”

He kept rummaging through the mess, however, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Draco, I’m serious,” she continued, her hand closing around the small door handle. “Stay here if you want, but I’m leaving -”

“Hang on,” Draco cut in, his voice becoming serious all of a sudden. “I think I’ve found something.”

She fell silent as her hands resumed shaking and shivers suddenly run up her spine. Something had been touching her around her waist, something cold - and now that she came to think of it, soft - had been caressing her skin! The mere thought of it made her want to run out of the closet as far away as possible, but she also felt the need to stay with Draco.

“Come here,” he told her, “I need you to cover me.”

She took a hesitant step forward, holding out her wand. “What is it? What have you found?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he continued, trying to pull something out from all the clutter before stopping all of a sudden. “Merlin, I think I found something!”

Hermione crept closer, all the while trying to distinguish in the dark what he had found among the shelves.

“Hermione!” Draco suddenly exclaimed, no longer moving. The panic in his voice caused her to freeze, her heart beating wildly against her chest.

Daring to turn her face slightly to peer over Draco’s shoulder, he suddenly whirled around at her.

“Was it THIS?”

Before her mind could register what was happening, something big and dark jumped right at her all of a sudden and its cold touch brushed against her face. Hermione screamed in horror, her arms instantly whipping up to protect her, causing her to drop her wand and to stumble backwards towards the closet door.

Frightened out of her mind, Hermione’s hands desperately searched for the door handle in the dark. A hand suddenly tried to grab her from behind and she screamed in fright once more. Her right hand finally found the cool brass handle and clasping it tight, she bolted out of the closet. Her eyes winced at the sudden bright light and before she could figure out where she was running to, her foot hit something hard on the floor, causing her to trip and fall to the ground.

Breathing hard and still shaking all over, Hermione slowly came to her senses and realised that the corridor was strangely silent. Looking up behind her, she unexpectedly noticed a line of first-year students queued outside the classroom door and all watching her with wide eyes. The last one in line had apparently dropped his book bag on the floor in front of the closet door, causing Hermione to trip. Next to him, Draco slowly emerged from the closet, holding a life-size plastic skeleton in one hand and her wand in the other.

The bastard was barely containing his laughter.

“The closet’s packed with Halloween decorations and this skeleton was stuck between the shelves. You must have -” He stopped short as soon as he noticed the first-years and immediately began to sneer at them, causing them to turn away from Hermione and suddenly hurry inside the nearby classroom.

Hermione looked back at Draco, then at the skeleton with incredulous eyes, and then proceeded to pick herself up with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Hermione, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were so scared,” he told her, throwing the skeleton back in the closet quickly, looking concerned as he noticed her grazed knee.

As he took a step forward, however, Hermione gave him a cold look.

“Draco Malfoy, you are the biggest jerk I have ever met!” she shouted at him, before snatching her wand from his hand and turning away.

“Hermione, I’m really sorry,” he called after her, his face stricken with guilt as she headed towards the girl’s bathroom.

“Just leave me alone!” she shouted in return, all her fear suddenly transformed into rage.
As soon as she had turned the corner, she started running back up to her dorm, wand in hand, all the while muttering healing charms for her knee.

Damn that stupid idiot! She couldn’t believe how immature boys could be! But even more, she couldn’t believe what an idiot she had been for letting herself be so scared. It was bad enough that she had humiliated herself in front of Draco, but she had also made a fool out of herself in front of first-year students, who were supposed to look up to her.

She felt her eyes suddenly begin to prick with tears, but she refused to let herself cry. Instead, the image of Draco, looking shocked, dishevelled and clutching onto a plastic skeleton in one hand popped to the front of her mind and her face broke into a smile.

They had both been ridiculous, but that was the last time she would ever set foot in a closet again.


* * * * *

The next day, Hermione received a dozen red roses at breakfast and then Draco spent the rest of the day trying to tell her how much he was sorry. Even Harry and Ron found it strange that he repeatedly needed to speak with her in private, but everytime Draco approached her, she ignored him and walked away.

At lunch time he sent her three private owls. By dinner a box of her favourite sweets with a ‘sorry’ note and by curfew, he was hovering outside her window on his broomstick desperately knocking on her window and asking her to at least talk to him.

By the third day, his relentlessness finally dissolved the rest of her anger and she was willing to listen to him. As he appeared before her after lunch, she let him accompany her down to the pumpkin patch, on her way to Hagrid’s.

“Hermione, you’re right, I’m a jerk,” he told her, trying to keep up with her fast pace. “It was a stupid joke and it’ll never happen again, I promise!”

“And you’re sorry you made me look like a fool in front of a bunch of first-years.”

The shadow of a smile crossed his lips, but it vanished almost as soon as it appeared and instead earnest grey eyes stared back at her.

“Extremely sorry.”

“And you agree that your idea of meeting in broom closets was the worst one ever and a Slytherin should know better?”

She watched him squirm with the idea of openly admitting that he had faulted as a Slytherin and that a Gryffindor was right.

“Well, I –er, that’s to say -”

She raised an eyebrow and he immediately found a response.

“Broom closet was a crap idea and I will find much more suitable accommodation next time,” he told her, smirking slightly. “So, am I forgiven?”

She stopped and pretended to ponder his words with serious thought, but the truth was she had already forgiven him. Now, she was simply testing him and thoroughly enjoying having him wrapped around her little finger. It suddenly occurred to her that it was always been the other way around before.

“Fine. Apology accepted,” she said and continued marching on.

“So, we’re good?” he asked hesitantly, not sure what to make of her answer.

The sudden lack of confidence in his posture and face made her heart melt. “Of course,” she told him, her face softening a little.

He smiled in return and took her hand in his. She let him, but then her eyes narrowed down at him darkly.

“But if you ever try to scare me like that again, Draco Malfoy,” she threatened him in a very cold and very final voice. “I will hex you to hell and back, do you understand?”

His custom devilish smirk appeared on his face and lifting his eyes to make sure no one else could see them, he pulled her closer and whispered. “From you, Granger, I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Kissing her softly on the cheek, he then turned around and began his ascent back to the castle.

“Cheeky sod,” Hermione whispered to herself as she watched him leave, the corner of her lips slowly curving upwards.


* * * * *


Feedback is welcome! This piece hasn't been beta-read so if you noticed any spelling/grammar errors, let me know! Thanks for reading and elyaeru, I hope you liked it :D


2) I won draco_chorus' icon challenge #84! The icon I sent in was actually the first one I made since I got Photoshop back so I'm quite pleased :D