Author's Note: Chapter Two, as promised.

Sorry if it seems like I, or perhaps Draco, or perhaps both of us, have A.D.D. when you are reading this chapter. If you read slowly, it mostly makes sense.


Chapter Two

Ice Cream Soup

Draco was slouching attractively in the blindingly bright silver chair facing away from the street when he detected Hermione's clicking footsteps. He'd caught a few glimpses of her heels as she'd been spinning this way and that in her rolling chair while he peppered her with a small armada of verbal weapons, and he had taken note. Thought it might come in handy. You never knew what snippet of information might save your sorry—gorgeous, but nonetheless sorry—ass.

Deliberately he made a tremendous point of dragging his tongue over the curve of his plastic spoon. Let her get that image stuck in her head.

She sat down opposite him primly and waited. He glanced up at her. No, she hadn't spread her petals and blossomed into a startlingly beautiful rose of a woman. Even after the extra ten minutes. You'd think a girl could do a lot in ten minutes if she put her mind to it. Maybe she'd actually spent the time, you know, working.

Nah.

Hermione Granger was still more of a wildflower than a rose—all right as far as looks went, a little unorthodox, and a bit more interesting than just the usual. Passable. If she was letting him into her home on little more than a plea bolstered by a guilt trip, more than passable.

"I'd be obliged if you'd keep a lookout for me," he remarked, licking an invisible drop of chocolate ice cream from his spoon. He was partly joking—and partly not.

An arched eyebrow lifted. Somehow she understood the nuances of his statement instantaneously, synthesizing both the facetious tone of his voice and the utter solemnity of the wand lying within easy reach in his lap. "What should I look for?"

"Anyone who gives me more than a passing glance."

Her head tilted. "Like those four fifteen-year-old girls giggling uncontrollably at you from that table to your left?"

Draco felt the old grin resurrected and tugging at his lips. "Especially them. They're deeply suspicious. You have my express permission to hex them into oblivion."

Hermione eyed the waxy paper cup that held the soupy remains of his ice cream. Mmm, Draco thought. Ice cream soup. "Are you done with that?" she wanted to know. "I like to get home before it gets too dark."

"Why?" Draco inquired, grinning languidly. "Worried someone will mug you, Ms. Premiere Witch of the Current Age?"

"Paralyzed with fear," she rejoined sarcastically, getting to her feet. "Are you coming?"

"But of course," he acquiesced graciously, gathering his wand in one hand and his faded bag in the other.

She looked at the latter item. "That's all you have?"

He tried to make his smile as cryptic as possible. Judging by the confusion on her face, he succeeded.

No, wait. That wasn't confusion. It was skepticism.

"Very mysterious," she remarked, once again sarcastically.

Draco sniffed and drew himself up taller. "Thank you. I pride myself on my esoteric enigmatic…ness."

Hermione smiled amusedly.

You wish, Draco thought. It wasn't amusement. It was patronization. Damn that woman.

"Ten points awarded for the alliteration," Hermione noted, undoing the gate and releasing them from the shop patio into the street. "Five of those points deducted for having to coin a word to make it."

"Enigmaticness is a word," Draco replied automatically.

"Not a chance," Hermione responded smoothly, starting off down the charming cobblestone street.

Charming as roadkill, maybe.

"Why don't we just Apparate?" he asked.

Faintly Hermione smirked. "There's this thing, Mister Malfoy," she said. "It's very new-fangled and exciting. Does wonderful things for you. It's called exercise."

I am a MALFOY, Draco thought indignantly. I have no need for your petty peasant cures to ills like obesity. My exceptional breeding exempts me from such pitiful futilities!

But he didn't say that. He did need that place to stay, after all.

Maybe he should work a little harder on ingratiating himself, come to think of it.

"Your hair," he said in his best Erudite Poet impression, "is the same glorious shade as that transcendent sunset." He pointed to the smudge of kind of reddish-brownish-grayish to which he'd been referring.

"Your eyes," she replied without missing a beat, "are the same glorious shade as that transcendent smog." She pointed without slowing her stride.

Draco was just reflecting on how unfair it was to play games with women who could keep up—and, furthermore, who actually knew what the game was—when the startlingly attractive hair on the back of his startlingly attractive neck prickled.

He had learned to listen to those startlingly attractive hairs. He had learned that the hard way.

Barely had he had time to grab Hermione's arm and throw them both to the uneven pavement before the curse sailed over their heads.

Draco was on his feet again in a fraction of a second, wand raised. "Rictusempra!" he shouted. The cowled figure in the alley doubled over, reduced to peals of hoarse, low, deeply intimidating laughter. Even as Hermione gaped, Draco snatched her arm again, pulled her to her feet, and commenced dragging her down the street. Momentarily, she recovered and attempted to match his pace.

"What—(pant)—the Hell—(pant, pant)—was that, Draco Malfoy?" she managed to cry shrilly.

All the panting was a little distracting. In her defense, Draco reflected, running in heels couldn't be a walk in the park.

Geddit? his brain prompted gleefully.

"That was a Death Eater, darling," he replied. "Thought you'd—(pant)—had some exp—(pant, pant)—erience with those. Now where in the blazing Hell is your bloody bachelorette pad?"

"Here—(pant)—hang a right—no, your other right—"

I am a MALFOY, Draco thought. I have no need for your pathetic directions!

Hermione towed him into a run-down lobby and then up two run-down flights of stairs—after which she gave up and went into the run-down hallway to seek the run-down elevator. Upon finding the coveted set of tarnished silver doors, she pressed the button and leaned against the wall, continuing to pant with a vengeance.

Draco Malfoy looked at her. This was her opportunity to have a romance-novel heroine moment—swelling bosom heaving sensuously, vivacious pink blush touching her cheekbones, et cetera. But no. There was pink all over her face, more blotchy than vivacious, and she was taking great, gulping, greedy breaths in a very wretched sort of way. She looked like she'd just run a quarter mile and up two flights of stairs in heels. Which she had, of course, but that didn't necessarily justify it.

To be fair, Draco relented, sighing to himself, he probably looked a little windswept, too.

The elevator doors parted, and they stepped inside. Then the doors slammed shut again, with an ominous creaking sound followed by an equally-ominous crunching sound.

"This place is a hellhole," Draco decided in some surprise. He looked at Hermione. "You live in a hellhole." He looked at the elevator doors in front of him, which might well never open again. "Oh, God. We're trapped in a hellhole, and we're going to die."

"We are not," Hermione snorted, less-than-convincingly. "I've taken this elevator a thousand times."

"And feared for your life every time," Draco hazarded.

Hermione chewed on her lip and watched the ancient needle pan over the numbers that represented the floors, choosing not to answer.

4… 4… 4… 4… 5!

5… 5… 5… 5… 6!

6… 6… 6… 6… 7!

The doors opened.

"We survived!" Draco crowed triumphantly.

"Very funny," Hermione responded, sounding, once again, less than amused. Unceremoniously she took his wrist and pulled him out of the deathtrap elevator and down the deathtrap hall. "Now, don't let anybody see you."

"What?" Draco prompted, grinning again. Couldn't keep that grin down for long. It was like a buoy. "Worried you'll have to share?"

She deigned to glance at him over her shoulder. In so doing, she narrowly avoided smashing into a wall. She blinked. Then, a moment later, she responded, watching where she was going this time. "More like, worried someone will see us together, and I'll never live it down." She fished a key out of her purse and jammed it into an utterly unremarkable door with the number 78 on it in bronze letters old enough to crumble into dust at a touch.

"Now, don't be selfish," Draco reprimanded.

"Go to Hell," she shot back.

"I believe we've established," Draco replied equably, "that I'm already there."