InsaneJournal

Current mood:	restless
Entry tags:	100 quills, 500-1500, challenge, draco/hermione

Ficlet: Best Revenge
Title: Best Revenge
Rating and Word Count: R (barely), 924
Summary: Draco feels revenge is a better outlet for rage than tears. Hermione thinks he may be right.
Notes: Written for dramionedrabbles "Welcome to my Nightmare" Halloween 2008 challenge #1: "No tears please, it's a waste of good suffering" -Hellraiser. Also written for my 100 quills table prompt: 046 Tears.


Under the flickering lights of a lonely candelabra, Hermione pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and struggled to control her breathing. Small, hiccuping sobs continued to shake her body. How much more of this could she take, she asked herself. How many more evenings would she let herself be chased from her own common room by Won-Won and Lavender? The sight of them pawing each other flashed across her mind's eye again, and she buried her face in her arms.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Granger, for wasting your tears like this.”

At the sound of his hated voice, Hermione shot to her feet and instinctively drew her wand. Arms crossed, Malfoy leaned against the doorway and smirked at her defensive pose.

“You're out after curfew, Malfoy.” She swiped at her cheeks with her free hand. “And, for the record, you don't have a clue why I'm crying, so keep your opinions to yourself.”

He rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows why you're crying, Mudblood,” he said in a bored voice. “The Weasel and Lavender Brown.” He laughed and hummed the opening bars of “Weasley is Our King” when she flinched. “Even you should be able to see how pathetic you are,” he straightened up and walked toward her, nudging the door shut with his foot. “Crying over the Speckled Casanova of Gryffindor? Don't you have anything better to do with your pain than this?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” He was so close the tip of her wand was close to touching his chest, so she put it away. It was obvious he was out to wound her with words instead of magic.

“Sure you do.” The candlelight gilded his hair as he cocked his head to the side and looked at her with hard, eager eyes. “You're angry, right?”

She looked down.

“He hurt you.” It wasn't a question, and the truth of it made her grit her teeth involuntarily.

Malfoy was close enough that she could feel his breath, hot and moist, against her face. “You've been humiliated,” he said, smiling slightly.

A hundred tiny, awful moments came to her then, from giggles and whispers in the corridors, to the way conversation came to a stop when she sat down in the Great Hall, to the sight of Lavender's fingers tucked in Ron's back pocket. Rage and grief boiled up inside her and she shouted, “Yes!” in a cracked voice.

Malfoy gripped her upper arms and pulled her against him. “Then take what you're feeling and do something about it.” He shook her slightly. “Don't waste it on tears. Get even.”

“I--” She had never been this close to him before. “I don't--”

“It's not just that he's dating, is it?” he continued hypnotically. “It's that he's dating her—a girl who spends her time curling her eyelashes, who reads tea leaves while you read books. Could Weasley possibly have picked another girl who is less like you?” Numb, she slowly shook her head. Malfoy spread his hands against the small of her back and stroked upward until he could tangle them in her hair. “It kills you that he picked someone who's your opposite, doesn't it?” He lowered his head until she could feel his lips brush against her as he whispered, “How bad to you think it would hurt him if you did the same?”

His mouth was hot and hard, and she willingly accepted the sleek glide of his tongue. Mirror-like, she lifted her arms and clutched fistfuls of his blond hair, pulling his mouth down to her even as he pulled her head back, exposing her throat to his lips and tongue. Hermione shivered as Malfoy bit down gently and sucked on her skin, drawing marks to the surface up by her ear, next to her pulse, and down near her collarbone.

“That's one-two-three marks for Weasley to wonder about,” he crooned, and she whimpered in response. “Won't it drive him mad wondering who did it?” Hermione attacked his mouth, stroking her tongue against his. Malfoy's cool hands slid under her shirt, and she moaned and arched into his palms.

“All right, break it up! That's ten points from—Granger?” Anthony Goldstein's shocked exclamation hit Hermione like a frigid wind, and she scrambled away from Malfoy. The Ravenclaw prefect's face was scarlet with surprise and embarrassment. “Um, sorry. I didn't know—I mean, how long have you two been...” his eyes ticked back and forth between a blushing Hermione and a calm Malfoy as his voice trailed off.

“Not long,” Malfoy said easily. “So we'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone.” He moved next to Hermione and slipped his arm around her shoulder. She stared up at him open-mouthed. “We're sorry to have broken rules, of course, so I'll just walk Hermione back to her common room and head down to the dungeon myself.” He guided her past Anthony, who stared at them with eyes like saucers, and out into the hall.

“Are you out of your mind?” Hermione demanded as soon as she was sure they were out of earshot. “Goldstein is one of the biggest gossips in school. Everyone will know what we were doing by morning!”

“Including Weasley.” Malfoy smiled at her expression. “See? Revenge is better than tears any day.”