Disclaimer: I own the wit, not the characters.

A/N: After re-reading one of my favorite stories- "Secrets" by Campy Capybara, I decided to respond to the challenge within her story. The challenge was posted by Scarlet. Now I don't know who Scarlet is, but I really do love the challenge. However, I am only going to loosely respond- meaning that the challenge will not be in my story- only the idea. If you want to know what the challenge is, I will post it at the end of this chapter.

So here's my newest story everyone! I have already written half the story, and this is the first quarter or so of it. I just decided to split things up, because it would be WAY to long as a one-shot.

The name Hermione Granger incited many ranges of emotions in witches and wizards across the globe; happiness, admiration, sympathy, respect, and even fear.

People knew a lot about Hermione Granger. She was a savior of the Wizarding World, the youngest woman to appear on a chocolate frog card, and the girl every little girl looked up to. However, those were not the things on most people's minds when they first thought of her.

The first thing most people thought, but rarely spoke out loud, was that they were sure that Hermione Granger was Draco Malfoy's mistress. It's what the gossip mill and the press shoved down their throats anyway.

Details of the Malfoy/Granger relationship had never been publicly stated by a fellow War Hero, so few were lucky enough to know its origins.

But everyone knew what Draco Malfoy's father felt about it.

News of Britain's most talked-about couple had first spread from the moors of the Malfoy Mansion to the smallest cobblestoned street of London. It was shortly after the war had ended, and people were ready to believe anything.

They needn't have to be so open-minded.

What else was one suppose to assume after Lucius Malfoy ran out of the burning Malfoy Mansion just long enough to scream "Curse you, Hermione Granger! You can rot in hell with my bastard son if you love him so much!" before returning to his successful suicide attempt?

No one stopped to note the irony in the blonde Death Eater's staunch religious beliefs.

Friends of Hermione Granger were too busy searching for Draco Malfoy, who had mysteriously disappeared a week prior to his father's fortunate death.

Friends of Draco Malfoy either heard no news of the event from their miserable Azkaban cells, or were too busy searching for Pansy Parkinson, who had also mysteriously disappeared.

Friends of the late Lucius Malfoy were too busy sharing the Azkaban cells of some of Draco Malfoy's old friends. However, most of them did go without a fight; they had surrendered their wands once they saw that the Dark Lord had fallen to the boy-who-lived-and-triumphed. Only some of them insisted on waiting the perfunctory decade and a half to make sure Voldemort wouldn't rise out of his grave like last time.

Ironically, it took the press a few weeks to latch its over-eager hands onto the Malfoy/Granger relationship. Journalists were the only ones who could legitimize such a scandalous piece of gossip, but they were unsure of what to do at first.

Immediately after Harry Potter's victory, the press had begun to work overtime. All the time. They had churned out thousands of celebratory articles for Voldemort's demise, hundreds of wedding announcements for couples basking in the new victory, and dozens of "Imprisoned Death Eaters!" lists all in one week.

The next week, they had published interviews on Dumbledore's Army members, thousands of Ministry warnings against drinking and Apparating (those rates had just about skyrocked), and "Have you seen this person?" ads for Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson (hundreds of these were printed, because they were the only members of Dumbledore's Army who hadn't been interviewed).

Offices within the Daily Prophet, the Wizarding Times, the Quibbler, the Monthly Magick, the Witch Weekly, and the Goblin's Gossip were all being bombarded with owls.

People wanted to share their war stories. People had spotted Harry Potter snogging Ginny Weasley in Hogsmeade the other day. People wanted the new Minister to supply Diagon Alley shops with more Firewhiskey. People had reason to believe that their annoying co-workers were somehow involved with the Dark Arts and should therefore be locked up.

Everyone wanted to say something, and the caffeine-addicted, underpaid journalists knew for fact that it was hard to know who to trust and who to print.

So when the newspaper and magazine offices were being bombarded with yet another mob of owls claiming that the Heroine of the War was indeed carrying on a sordid relationship with the son-of-a-Death-Eater-turned-a-Hero-of-the-War, the press just dismissed they story as a side effect of the new shipments of Firewhiskey and an aftereffect of the euphoric aftereffects of the Light's victory.

Yet after another month of hero-worship, raging parties, and various expansion to the Azkaban prison cells (turns out, Voldemort had quite a bunch of followers), rumors of the Malfoy/Granger relationship steadily became fact. After one more month, the public acknowledged that Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger were not just having a relationship; they were having an affair. A very immoral and illegal affair.

And how exactly did the public find out about all of this?

Through a series of journalism blunders that could only be described as phenomenal.

A/N: dun dun dunn! Mini-cliffie! I hate them too, but there was no better place to cut off. I will have a very, very interesting chapter next week to top this one. Promise =)

READ AND REVIEW! Tell me if you guys like it! And don't worry, I will continue updating my other stories!

Here is the original challenge by Scarlet:

A murmur spread amongst the guests as she entered the room.

She owned respect born of fear as the most powerful witch alive. If not in her own right, then certainly by association.

The best friend of Harry Potter.

The foremost protégé of Severus Snape.

But the ultimate scandal attached to the name of Hermione Granger brought with it, also, her greatest power.

She was Draco Malfoy's mistress.