The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Lollies and Loki- CH24

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR:

After the devastating blow that had been learning the ultimate fate of the two girls she'd grown so close to Loki had offered to post-pone her starting high-school but Hermione, after careful consideration, had decided against it. She knew she wouldn't be getting over the murders of Sylvianne and Helena any time soon, and the best thing she could do was distract herself.

Her parents had enrolled her in a very posh school by the name of St Judith's College*. The students that attended came from wealthy families of doctors, surgeons, CEOs, politicians, wealthy socialites and even minor nobles. There was a certain standard of excellence required from the students, who were all expected to go on to be as successful as their parents. Hermione, being two and a half years younger then the youngest student, about twice as intelligent as most of the twelve-and-thirteen-year-olds she shared classes with and homeschooled for the last few years, did not fit in even slightly.

On her first day of school, during her very first class, she corrected her mathematics teacher for writing an equation incorrectly on the board. It was not a particularly auspicious beginning to her life as a high school student, but she wasn't in a headspace that let her actually care, not when it became very clear to her very quickly that her peers had no idea what to make of her; she was too young, smart, and fierce– too different.

She didn't act like them, didn't speak like them, didn't even dress like them; she wore her hair in strange hairstyles of looping braids interwoven with golden thread and soundless gold bells, or simply let her curls, nearly at her hips by now, fall freely, tumbling chaotically down her back like they had a will of their own. Her skirts always seemed longer then regulation rather then shorter, falling below her knees, her jewellery was strange, knotted braids of leather cord, shimmering thread and golden feathers that the teachers never seemed to notice, and she moved with a dancer's grace; light, smooth and agile movements that almost, at times, seemed borderline predatory. 

It didn't take long for the novelty to wear off, and, of course, because she was different and small and terrifyingly intelligent (as one teacher described her when Hermione was still within earshot) and alone, bullies considered her an easy target and went in for the kill.

That was their mistake.

The problem (for them, not for her) was that Hermione's best friend was Loki Silvertongue, and her exposure to him had honed her tongue sharp as a dagger that she knew just how to wield, her slicing remarks and cutting words tearing the bullies to shreds, flaying them and leaving them bleeding even as she drove her teachers insane by already knowing everything she was being taught and being so obviously bored in classes.

Once, Hermione would have cared, would have felt lonely and timid and have been horrified by the lack of respect she showed her teachers. But she just didn't have the energy to care, not really, not when her world felt so greyed out and empty and the only time she really felt anything positive was when she was curled up in Loki's arms, feeling the heat that didn't burn and the flickers of static against her skin as she listened to the steady beating of his heart reminding her that she wasn't alone.

The days crawled past, each second like wading through syrup, heavy and sticking, and it began to feel like she was living inside some sort of sharp-edged vacuum of increasingly destructive emotion, until she inevitably reached her breaking point.

It happened at school, during the lunch hour. She was sitting in one of the empty classrooms with a half-written essay surrounded by a scattering of pens and pencils on her right and an apple on her left that she was just staring at, half heartedly trying to convince herself to eat it, when one of the more insistent of the bullies sauntered into the classroom like she owned it, sitting down next to Hermione with a sugary smile in place as her giggling friends stood behind her.