"Don't You Dare!" ~ A Dramione Story

Chapter 21

Draco  hadn't seen Hermione at dinner. Someone in Slytherin house had shown him the paper during lunch. He had stopped receiving it himself, with all the awful things being printed about his own family.

Ron Weasley was stupid. He had known this before, but now it was clinically confirmed. Half of his house had been having a laugh at Granger "who would surely die alone with ten cats." Then again none of them had heard the story he had heard from Hermione.

Weaselbee would have died in the woods had she not been a genius. Honestly the girl was the only thing the guy really had going for him. An idiot only bags a smart, pretty, and respectable girl once in a lifetime.

Malfoy shamelessly thought these things to himself as he carried the large platter with a sampler of everything from dinner up to the Head's dorm. The house elves had been all too excited to prepare food for Miss Hermione, whom they all seemed to adore since she had stopped trying to set them free. And the food she would need.

Draco Malfoy had a plan. One to avenge Hermione, and rid him of Pansy all in one blow.

He knocked on her door gently, and decided to do the unthinkable.

"Hermione?"

A quiet sob met his ears.

"Um, I brought you dinner. I know you think you aren't hungry right now, but wait until you smell this." He said attempting to sound cheerful.

The girl who opened the door did not look like the Hermione Granger he was used to seeing. She much more resembled post battle-at-Hogwarts Hermione.

At the way he was examining her she began to sniffle again, and he quickly showed her the tray. She gave a weak smile, at his attempt to comfort her and asked with a tiny laugh

"Is that pastry filled with chocolate?"

"So wait one second. Are you asking me to the Yule Ball?"

Hermione asked half an hour later, looking a little more lively as she munched on the food Draco had brought her.

"Does the idea offend you?"

"Seeing as that I have suddenly become dateless, not terribly, but I fail to see what it achieves."

"Let's address all of the many pros of us making an entrance together. We will piss off two individuals, and greatly please another. To start with I will finally be rid of Pansy."

"Wait one second, were you or were you not, shagging her on our poor couch a few weeks ago?"

"Her idea not mine. I had nothing better to do that night."

"Disgusting. Could you not have played a game of chess?"

"Hermione, you did not just ask a male to compare chess to sex."

She giggled, and nibbles on one of the pastries. It seemed they were indeed made of chocolate. Draco enjoyed a little more than he cared to admit watching her clean the excess chocolate from her fingers.

"Pansy only thinks she can win me over because I never make any true effort with a girl of class. If she sees me take you to the ball as a date, then she will realize I am trying to commit and give up."

"Makes enough sense. Now I assume the second to infuriate is Ron."

"Exactly. Listening to what you've told me he thinks you are the sexually repressed, strictly business, type. We prove to him you are not that way with every guy, and he will be redder in the face than he is in the hair."

"You know this is beginning to sound like a plan worth involving myself in."

"I have not even finished, Granger. We will utterly delight McGonagall. Picture it: the two enemy houses united before the school. It is everything she wanted to happen."

"Malfoy I do believe you are smarter than people credit you to be."

"Granger are you insinuating people believe me unintelligent."

"Oh." Hermione laughed leading him out of her bedroom.

"You know what they say about blondes."