ONE SMALL THING - A Dramione Fanfiction

ONE SMALL THING - A Dramione Fanfiction: Chapter 2

After that, it was Rita Skeeter and a whole bloody flock of ambitious journalists, photographers, well-wishers...and even a girl or two who fancied Harry or Ron...

Through all of this, Hermione had suddenly felt very alone.

She'd done her best. First for Harry, by giving up her Seventh year to help him find and destroy the horcruxes, then for Ron, by cheering him up after what had happened to Fred.

Even Draco Malfoy, for goodness' sake! All those books she'd read on Magical Law...She knew that the only reason he had not been sentenced to years in Azkaban was because of her testimony that day at the Wizengamot.

Yet he had just sat there, looking bored out his mind. He did not even notice how she quoted law after law which would help him in his case. The judge looked impressed, Harry looked furious, and Draco...looked like Draco. Maybe a shade or two paler than usual, though.

Still, she'd done an incredible job, and she did not even get a nod from that ungrateful son of a....

"Well, um, Miss Skeeter, I..." Bill started, before he was hastily interrupted by the same giggling Miss Skeeter.

"MIZZ Skeeter?" She rolled the word around in her mouth. "Oh, Bill darling, we're all friends here!!" She threw her arms in a wide semi-circle, indicating all of the gawking spectators who were just standing there for the spectacle, or because there was a slim chance they could be caught smiling and pulling faces in the background if the camera-man happened to snap a moving picture or two of Rita and Bill Weasly.

'Bill darling' turned even redder, his freckles standing out on his face.

"We are?" He stammered, throwing pleading looks in Hermione's direction.

Hermione, Save Me! was practically scrawled across his forehead.

Hermione fidgeted as the woman once again rubbed the Weasly's arms, murmuring something about muscles.

She stood and paced as Rita motioned for a young assistant to write something down.

She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and her vision clouded over.

She chewed her thumb-nail until the woman's sickly-sweet nasal voice invoked a monstrous emotion in Hermione that she rarely felt but very much liked.

Dangerous irritation, followed by a poisonous rage.

She whipped out her wand and in one swift motion cast her own silencing charm on the squaking Miss Skeeter, who then delicately touched her throat, surprised that sound suddenly would not come from there.

"Everyone," Hermione began, slightly shaken by having all the eyes suddenly fixed on her, "I'd like your attention for a moment please."

Good Gryffindor, you sound like McGonagall, a voice in her head whispered.

Ignoring the voice, she squared her shoulders.

"We have spent a whole year being hunted by V-voldemort, a year which should have been spent safe, at Hogwarts."

Rita tried squaking again, her brows furrowed, but the charm held.

"Now, after all we have won, after all we have lost..." At this, she looked pointedly at Bill whose face hardened in remembrance, "we've longed for just a short bit of time to rest. To think things through. To heal. And nobody..." she nearly whispered with anger, "...has thought to give us that."