4

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; I make no money here.

AN: Many thanks to my beta, dreamy_dragon73, for all her help; she makes it all readable.

After a few days with no more signs of Granger coming into Clonbur, he decided to do a little more reconnaissance. He once again arrived in the woods behind her shed and slipped unnoticed around to the back of the cottage. He'd been watching the first floor, expecting her to appear there again like before, but instead he noticed movement on the lower floor towards the back of the house. Suddenly, he realized he was looking right into her bedroom, and his target was coming out of what must obviously be the bathroom. Her hair was tousled and damp, hanging in ringlets over her shoulders. She was wrapped securely in a thick, white towel...securely that was until she dropped the towel and proceeded to walk around her room in the buff.

It was plain to see that Miss Granger was no longer a little girl by any means. He shifted uncomfortably. She had wonderful, womanly curves. As she propped her foot up on the stool and bent to smooth lotion over her legs, he saw the most gorgeous arse he'd seen in quite some time. When she turned around and stretched a bit, he couldn't help but gasp at the pair of breasts displayed before him. Not huge, just a bit more than a handful, perfect really in his opinion, with lovely light brown nipples that made his mouth water when they puckered in the cool morning air.

Sweet Merlin! What was he thinking; this was Miss Granger, his student...well former student really, but still, he shouldn't be ogling her like this without her permission (as if that would ever happen). And what was the woman thinking! Prancing around in the nude, showing off everything she had to the world. He then looked guiltily around. Her window faced her own very isolated, private back garden, where she obviously didn't expect her perverted old Potions teacher, or anyone else for that matter, to be lurking about, looking into her bedroom window.

He silently slipped away, returning to his own home, where he found himself in need of a bit of relief before he could safely head off to work for the day. A strange thing happened while in pursuit of said release...er...relief. Usually, his fantasies were filled with images of auburn hair and green eyes, but today his treacherous brain kept producing visions of a curly-haired, brown-eyed termagant, kneeling at his feet as he wanked his way to oblivion.

~**~

A week later, she still had been unable to produce anything worth keeping. It was so frustrating. She knew deep down she didn't have to do this. With her settlement from the ministry and her inheritance from Maeve, she could live quite comfortably, if not extravagantly, and not ever have to find another job. But now that she had told everyone she was going to Ireland to settle in and write novels, she'd feel like a failure if she didn't actually do it.

"Maybe I'm just trying too hard." Deciding that maybe what she needed was some distraction, she pulled out the erotic romance from Maeve's collection that she'd started reading the night before and wandered off to distract herself.

Before she could get sufficiently distracted, she was interrupted by two owl posts, one containing her daily paper delivery. The other was Harry and Ginny's owl, Narina, with a letter. The two owls seemed to be battling over who would be the first to make their delivery. Hermione settled it by offering them both owl treats simultaneously and taking the post as they paused to take their rewards.

Hmmm... should she read Harry's letter first or see what sort of garbage the Prophet was printing today? She really ought to subscribe to the Dublin wizarding newspaper, The Morning Sun; it was a much more reliable source of news and not nearly the gossip rag the Prophet had become.

She decided to read Harry's letter first. She only got as far as the first paragraph.

Dear Hermione,

Hopefully Narina will reach you with my letter before you read the news today. Please don't take it to heart. It is the Prophet, after all, so you know no one is going to take this seriously.

Hermione threw Harry's letter down and ripped the Prophet out of its wrapper. There on the front page was a picture of Theo with his arm around her bimbo of an ex-secretary, and the glaring headline read: NOTT HEIR ENGAGED, AGAIN! In a ridiculous interview, he claimed that he had fallen deeply in love with Trudi after she had offered him solace and comfort when his heart had been broken by his former fiancée, Miss Hermione Granger. Then he'd 'accidentally' let it slip that he had caught his former fiancée in flagrante in his very own office with a well-known female Quidditch star. "It's no wonder she was never able to maintain a lasting relationship all these years," he said of Miss Granger. "All this time I thought there was something wrong with me, but now I know that she's batting for the other team. It all makes perfect sense."

"ARRRGGHHHH!" screamed Hermione. "That filthy, no good, lying sack of dragon dung!"

~**~

She hadn't come into the village looking for him. She obviously was not seeking him out. In fact, she probably had no idea he was even here. Guilt had kept him away from observing her for several days, but finally his curiosity got the better of him. He Apparated again to his favorite hiding spot but swore to himself he would not lower himself to being a Peeping Tom. The last time had been an accident. He promised himself if he saw her naked again, he would not look. Well obviously, if he saw her he would have already looked, but after that he would be honorable and turn away. That's what he told himself, anyway.

She wasn't naked, and she wasn't in the bedroom. He didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed. She was in the kitchen today. As he stood watching, two owls approached and landed on her window sill at the same time. They appeared to be jockeying for position to see which would deliver their burden first. Once they'd flown away, he watched as she first opened a letter, but after reading only a short bit, she threw it down on the table to rip the wrapper off the paper. He immediately recognized it as the Daily Prophet; he had several months worth of back issues piled up at home. He didn't know why he kept getting the sleazy tabloid, but he hadn't bothered to read it in a long time. He noted that she seemed to be getting very upset by whatever was written in the paper. Before long, he heard her curse.

"ARRRGGHHHH! That filthy, no good, lying sack of dragon dung!"

She appeared furious. He strengthened his Disillusionment Charm and moved in closer, as he wanted to hear what she was saying. As long as he stayed very still, she shouldn't notice the tell-tale shimmer of the charm. She was muttering angry threats. He heard her mention something about hexing someone's bits off and feeding them to the fishes. His hands slipped down to cover his bits. Perhaps, spying on Granger was not such a good idea after all. Now she was feeding her unwitting victim to Acromantulas. She was not someone you wanted to be angry at you; Dolores Umbridge had learned that the hard way back in Hermione's fifth year.

~**~

Hermione was furious. She wanted revenge, retribution. She wanted Theodore Nott's slow and painful death. No, she wanted to hex his bits into tiny little pieces and feed them to the fishes. No, she wanted to tie him to a rope and dangle him over a pit of Acromantulas. No, she could...

She finally called Draco on her mobile. He'd told her that he kept his own on as he had several Muggle-born clients, who traversed both worlds, and he found it an easy means to communicate with them. She told him in no uncertain terms that she wanted to sue the socks off Nott. While Draco sympathized, he advised her against filing a lawsuit. He said it would only put them in the public eye for much longer than if she were to simply ignore it and let it fade away.

"Draco, no! How can I just ignore it? He's made me out to be the evil, cheating witch who broke his poor innocent heart."

"Sometimes you have to choose your battles, Granger. It's not true, so don't let it bother you," he advised. "It's not true, is it?"

"No, Draco, it's not!"

"Damn, Granger, here I was having really hot, girl-on-girl fantasies of you and Cho Chang, and you have to go and ruin it for me," he teased.

"Draco, I don't care about that part. If people believe I'm gay, I just don't care. But he's making up all these horrible lies and using my name in the press to gain sympathy for himself. He'll probably run for Minister and win just on the sympathy vote factor."

"So come back to London and prove him wrong. Hey, I know, we can tell everyone you're in a wild three-way relationship with me and Luna."

Hermione started giggling at his absurd suggestion; it eased the tension of her fury just a bit. "How will that solve anything, Malfoy? After what Nott's said, people would just assume I was after Luna."

"I'm just as pretty as she is." He pouted.

"Maybe prettier... It's going well for you two, then, is it?"

"I don't want to jinx it. But thanks for convincing her to go out with me; I owe you one for that."

"You've helped me so much already. You don't owe me anything, Draco." She paused before continuing, "You honestly don't think there's anything I can do about this mess, then?"

"Not right now. It's really not a wise decision at this time. I honestly think it would make an even bigger mess than this already is. It would just turn into a huge media circus. You've been smeared by Skeeter in the press before, Granger: back in school during the Tri-wizard Tournament with Krum, then again when you broke up with the Weasel. Why does it bother you so much this time?"

"Because he's playing the heartbroken hero in all this, and that'd be my role. For me it was real. I'm the one who found my fiancé fucking my secretary on my desk, and I never even suspected anything was wrong before that very moment. My heart really did break that day, Draco. I loved him.

"After all these years, I thought I'd finally found someone to love; someone who liked all the same things I liked: books and research and intelligent conversation; someone who would love me for me. But that was all a huge lie; he just pretended, so he could ride my celebrity status into an election and straight into the Ministers' office. And then he proceeded to tell me just how frigid I am and how completely inadequate and useless I am as a woman, and that no one would ever want me, could ever want me.

"He told me that he had to force himself every time he ever touched me, every time he lowered himself to rut with a filthy... That hurts, it hurts so much... How could I have been so stupid, so clueless, so totally wrong about someone. I'll never be able to trust another man as long as I live. And now that he's screwed up his free ride into politics, he's going to get there anyway by dragging my name through the mud." She snorted. "That's funny, isn't it, Draco? He's dragging the Mudblood through the mud."

"Hermione, please... stop... Don't say that."

He'd never called her Hermione before, ever. She tried to quell her tears, knowing that Draco could hear the stifled sobs on the other end of the line.

"Listen, we're going to make him pay for this. We'll get him back for what he's been doing. I don't know how or when, but we will. We'll find a way, I promise you that."

"Thanks, Draco. You grew up to be not such a prat, after all. I'm going to let you go for now. Give my love to Luna, all right?" She disconnected and turned her mobile off before he could say anything else. She was so angry, she hurled it with all her might straight through the open window out into the yard.

"Well," she said aloud to herself, "Nothing better to do for it than go get drunk." Grabbing the keys to the bug, she headed for the Green Dragon.

~**~

He'd watched as she rifled through a ratty, beaded bag and pulled out a Muggle mobile phone. She paced back and forth as she dialed, then put the phone down on the table and turned the speaker phone on high volume, so she could pace and talk and wave her arms around at the same time. It didn't take long to figure out that she was talking to Draco Malfoy, who apparently was her lawyer. Before long the whole sordid story unfolded.

A tale of lies, betrayal, deceit, unfaithfulness and cruelty. All things he could readily understand, probably more so than most.

As she disconnected the call, she threw the phone out of the window in a fit of pique, declaring she was going to get drunk. Luckily for him, she didn't actually watch the phone after she threw it, or she would have noticed that it bounced off an invisible chest, causing a sharp grunt of pain before it fell to the ground. Damn, the girl had a strong arm on her, that was certain. He'd most likely have a bruise there tomorrow.

He decided to go home and read some of those Prophets he had stacked up in his closet. With that information, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the rest of the story. If there were any details he couldn't surmise, he would place a Floo call to his blasted godson to get the rest of the story. She didn't seem determined to Disapparate off to murder Theodore Nott, and he knew she wouldn't be going too far in that old rattletrap of a car. He knew he'd be able to find her at his own pub before the night was over; it was the only one around.

tbc