A/N: My apologies for the long delay in posting this chapter. Writer's block is a demanding master (and so are my classes).

Chapter Three
Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup cocoa, firmly packed
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup mayonnaise
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F, and grease and flour two 8-inch cake pans. In a small bowl, pour the boiling water over the cocoa, and stir until smooth. Set aside. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the mayonnaise and sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla and cocoa mixture, beating until incorporated. With mixer at low speed, gradually add the flour mixture, beating just until batter is combined. Pour batter into prepared pans, and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

For those with stranger, or let's just call it more adventurous, tastes.

§§§

The trainers were gone, and Hermione had dug out her old school robes from her bag. There were a bit short, and no longer fit correctly in the bust and hips, but they would do. If she didn't fit in, at least she no longer stood out. With her unmanageable hair tied back and her boots securely fastened, and the picture of Remus in a place no longer visible to customers, as he had suggested, Hermione was quite confident that she could damn near pass for a Pureblood. Halfblood, in the least.

She decided to open late the next morning. Well, it wasn't as much a decision as it was the only option. She had overslept and woke up at eleven, instead of her scheduled seven, and only awoke when Crookshanks came in and left a gift of a dead vole at the end of her bed. For not being incredibly old, in part-Kneazle years, anyway, the cat was becoming increasingly senile by the day. When he started thinking that dead voles were a nice way to begin his owner's day, she didn't know.

After a warm shower (that threatened to put her back to sleep standing up), she dressed slowly and walked down the stairs with Crookshanks at her heels, mewing in question to whether she enjoyed her present.

She wasn'texpecting to see anyone waiting for her to open; in fact, if she'd been told that anyone was waiting for her to unlock the door, she would have questioned his sanity. So when she saw a tiny, burlap covered back sitting on her stoop, she considered just going upstairs and going back to bed. She was obviously still asleep, anyway; she was dreaming.

Crossing the cold floor and shivering slightly, she undid the deadbolts and opened the door, switching the sign to read as "open". The bell tinkled and the child – no, it wasn't a child – jumped up from the step with a gasp. It had its burlap sack clothing pulled over its head, but from the green, dusty feet, Hermione knew that it couldn't be anything but a house elf.

"Hello," Hermione said gently, stepping backward through the door and holding it open for the disguised creature.

The elf just stood there, refusing to remove its head covering and cowering slightly below her. There were bumps in the burlap where its ears and nose were, and slack where its breath pulled and pushed the rough fabric. Its feet were gigantic and she could just see its long fingers grasping at the bottom of what was most likely a potato sack, holding on to its cover for dear life.

"Would you like to come in?" Hermione asked, unable to wipe the confusion from her face. The sack nodded and shuffled through the door. She closed the door behind it, and only when it had heard the click did the elf remove its disguise.

It was a male, with the typical bat-like ears and bulbous eyes, thrown in with a round nose for good measure. He was the shade of a new tomato, and his loincloth rivaled the late Kreacher's skimpiness. Hermione hoped the potato sack was part of his daily ware.

"May I help you?" she asked with raised eyebrows, her voice catching slightly.

The elf looked around at the displays with wide, watery eyes and nodded. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and craggy, as if he was fighting off a cold or suffered from a lifetime smoker's lungs.

"Bern needs chocolate for his mistress," he said, feet shuffling nervously.

"You have a large selection to choose from," she answered, gesturing uneasily toward the counters. "Is there anything particular that she likes?"

"Honeydukes," the elf answered. "But Bern can't go into Honeydukes, and mistress does not know. Mistress wants chocolate."

His face was frozen in a grimace, and Hermione suddenly noticed that his mouth barely moved when he talked. He seemed to blink infrequently, almost once per minute, if at all.

"You can't go to Honeydukes? But isn't there one in Mold?"

"Bern stole," the elf said gravely, his expression still frozen. "Bern not allowed at Honeydukes."

"Oh," Hermione said, drawing the syllable out. "All…right. Well, I appreciate your honesty. Does she like orange chocolate?"

"Yes, mistress likes orange chocolate," the elf said, shuffling toward Hermione who was holding out a cellophane wrapped bag. The elf grabbed it quickly, leaving a galleon where the chocolate had been, stuffed it under his burlap and tucked it in his arm, and dashed out the door.

Hermione walked back to the counter and put the galleon in an envelope beneath the register. Her first sale: from a crazed house elf who talked like Clint Eastwood.

Well, a sale was a sale. It wasn't her job to pass judgment, there seemed to be enough people who claimed that in this town.

§

She decided to take the liberty of closing for lunch (to celebrate her first sale) and walked to the other side of town, her feet beginning to smart in the too-tight boots, hoping against probability that tongue-wagging was yet to travel that far.

She kept her hat, which by now must have been painfully out of fashion (she never did quite follow style) on, making sure that it stayed secure over her difficult hair.

The day was cool and crisp, but unusually warm for an October day. The trees that lined the street had burst into fiery shades of red and proud sheens of gold and bronze. Pumpkins, ready to be sacrificed to the coming Halloween, grew tall and fat in the gardens surrounding the houses, and the air smelt faintly of fresh soil and ginger. Silver scarf wrapped around her neck (a hand-knitted gift from her perpetually busy mother, given last Christmas), she walked slowly, intent on committing each pleasant, unbiased, careless step to memory.

Hermione smiled good-naturedly at the cashier as she got in to the queue behind an old woman who smelled like Crookshanks after he had been wallowing in the rain. It wasn't an unpleasant smell, just earthy and unusual, and perhaps faintly perturbing.

People didn't seem to recognize her here, which was a good sign. She found an empty table in the busy café – a wave of her wand cleared any leftover crumbs – and began her lunch. The egg mayonnaise and cress sandwich was tasty – they had even added pickles, unusually, which Hermione thought had only been her odd habit – the butterbeer was cold and frothy, and the éclair that she had chosen for dessert was delicious (not as good as her own, but quite good nonetheless).

Glancing through the book she had brought with her and flipping to the ninth chapter, she heard a small cough that was meant, obviously, to grab one's attention. She ignored it, thinking it was meant for someone else. Then she heard it again.

Hermione looked up, squinting into the bright afternoon sun, which shone directly above the crown of the head of the cough's owner. It was a girl of about fourteen with long, straight, brown hair, thick eyebrows, and a surprisingly pleasant expression on her face. She smiled politely at Hermione, revealing a bit of an overbite.

"Hello," she said, her voice sweet but lacking the smooth, thick, false tone that most people in the town masked their feelings with. "Do you mind if I sit here?"

Hermione looked around, noticing the obviously vacant tables nearby. Turning back to the girl, who had an endearingly hopeful expression on her face, she couldn't help but comply.

"Go ahead," she answered with a slight nod, scooting up in her chair a bit to bring an end to her slouching. Carefully picking up one last corner of her sandwich, she turned a page in her book but couldn't focus; the girl was chomping absently on the straw of her lemonade, staring at Hermione as though she had an arm growing out of the middle of her forehead.

"Er…" Hermione articulated, setting her book aside with an inward sigh. "Do you want something?"

"You're the new lady, aren't you?" the girl asked. "The one that owns the sweet shop?"

"It's a chocolate shop, specifically, but yes," Hermione answered, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. "You've heard of me?" she added boldly.

"From loads of people." She continued to gnaw on the plastic. If it had been metal, she would have drawn sparks. She never seemed to blink…her eyes held the same blank, unflinching expression that she had greeted her with a few moments before. "They don't seem to like you very much."

The atmosphere suddenly dampened, as if those fateful words had drown the dreary gloom from Hermione's shop so it hovered above their table, pulsing in perverse pleasure at the uncomfortable situation. She half-expected rain to come pouring down from the clear blue canvas of the sky.

She couldn't find words, so she shrugged mutely.

"You seem nice to me," the girl said cheerily. Fork in hand, she stabbed her sandwich mercilessly, as if it were an animal that she was torturing to death, and wedge a corner away from its former whole. What normal person ate a cold sandwich with a fork? "I can't find anything wrong with you, anyway."

Hermione couldn't quite take this as a compliment. She reminded her of Luna Lovegood, and how Harry had described that it might have been better to have no one believe him than have Luna full-heartedly and loudly support his cause. Likewise, Hermione wasn't quite sure that earning this girl's trust could gain her any popularity points.

"I like chocolate," the girl said wonderingly.

Hermione refrained from sighing and answered half-heartedly, "You should stop by my shop."

"Oh, maybe." She went back to chewing. "But I don't want to get fat."

Hermione finally let out the held-in sigh, but found that she had nothing left to say. She could just finish her sandwich and hurry back home…maybe take a stroll outside of town to kill time…

"Are you married?"

"Excuse me?"

"Are you married?" the girl asked again, the pitch a perfect match with her previous, identical question, like she had recorded it and played it again. Hermione stared at her incredulously, trying to pull a curl from her line of sight.

"No, I'm not."

She looked surprised. "Really? How old are you?"

"Twenty-four." Twenty-three, whatever. Not a big difference.

"Weird, my mother got married at seventeen."

"Did she," Hermione replied blandly, pushing the remaining crumbs around her plate with the edge of her finger. "That's not too unusual. My best friend's parents got married when they were just out of school. Had him when they were nineteen."

"Why aren't you married?" she asked unblinkingly. The awkward bluntness of her question made Hermione's heart thud uneasily.

She couldn't believe she was about to spill her heart to a complete stranger, so she decided against it. "Because I choose not to be."

"You must get rather lonely." The girl shrugged vaguely. "I want to get married when I'm seventeen."

Hermione's ears were growing incredibly warm and, probably, quite red. But she called on her patience, begging it to stay. The attention of the other people in the café drew prickles on her neck. "How old are you?"

"I'll be sixteen next month."

"Do you have anyone to marry?"

"Yes," the girl sniffed. "Do you?"

Hermione frowned, clanging her spoon noisily against the side of the teacup, wishing that it would break and the shards would pierce her brain and perhaps allow her a painless death. "No."

"Really?" she said, irritatingly amazed. "Interesting. Not even someone you're interested in?"

"No," Hermione set her plate and teacup on the tray and swept the crumbled remains of her lunch off the table. "I think I'm going to go now."

"Okay," she answered, apparently unfazed. "Maybe I'll stop by your shop sometime, if my mum lets me."

Hermione forced a smile and spit out through gritted teeth, "Please do."

This was going too far. First she was being criticized for being Muggleborn, then friends with Remus, and now, now she had a fifteen-year-old tagalong that asked intrusive questions bordering on the extent of "Do you have a fulfilling sex life?" – which, Hermione thought, hadn't existed since she began breathing over twenty-three years ago. She had come close on a few occasions, but she was an icy, if not bitter, and selective virgin. And quite proud of it, despite the face that it had become so bloody popular to not be one.

Really, marriage was the last thing on her mind. It wasn't as if she was hiding her seven illegitimate children in the attic; she had no reason to be married.

Good Merlin, Muggle or magic, Hermione had a hard time fitting in anywhere.

Unfortunately, the girl kept true to her word and floated into her shop shop two days later, paying her respects as Hermione's second and, currently, sole customer, smelling of lavender and with her head most likely filled with it, also. She now insisted that her name was Annette (Hermione could have sworn that it was Helen, earlier) and that she was in the state of mind that hungered for a chocolate croissant.

"He's cute," Annette commented as Hermione, horrified, found her nibbling on the croissant and rifling through a drawer of her personal belongings after she came back from the bathroom. "Why don't you marry him?"

She held up the picture of Hermione and her two best friends, who all looked slightly confused, accompanied by a cheerful-looking Remus.

"He's married," Hermione commented. "Please get out of my things, it's not polite."

"Which one?" Annette asked, turning the picture back to her own eyes and staring down at it, the stringy brown hair forming a tattered curtain around her frame. "The older one behind you?"

"No, the one with the black hair."

"Oh, I was talking about the other one."

"The red head?"

"No," she insisted, now sounding faintly annoyed. "The other one."

Hermione almost answered 'Remus?" but caught herself. "Oh," she said instead. "That one. You think he's cute?"

"Definitely. Nice eyes. Do you talk to him at all?"

"Sometimes."

"You should marry him." Annette absently tucked the picture back in the drawer, failed to close it, grabbed the last bit of her chocolate croissant, and left, leaving Hermione to stare after her with a mix of disdain, sadness, and disgust.

"Yes, I'm going to marry a werewolf. God knows that that would make everything easier," Hermione muttered, slamming the drawer shut with a heavy thud. "I suppose I will be lonely for the rest of my life, thank you very much."

Crossing her arms and staring furiously across the shop, a breeze crept in and swept the door closed with a jangle of the bell, carrying curiosity on its breath and wonder in its whisper.

§§§

Thanks to: Dragon Blade5, Kailin, Kaliae, apple-frreak, TrinityDD, Blatant Discontent, Dracula5555, wackoramaco87, Rylee Smith, trevor-bruttenholm, acdecnerd, xPhoenixx, M'cha Araem, s.s.harry, Fou Fou, RandomReviewer, rainbow fuzzlez, and Pincoffin for reviewing.