Author's Note: Shazam! I turned eighteen on Saturday. Why don't you give me a review for my birthday?
(End review prostitution.)
Maybe if you're good, I'll update on Wednesday.
(End review prostitution/blackmail. Begin chapter.)
Chapter Seven
Some Kind of Joke
Malfoy was drinking orange juice straight from the carton when Hermione came into the kitchen. She chose to ignore that little breach of etiquette.
"I'm collecting the laundry," she told him. "I'll take yours, too, if you want."
Malfoy crossed to the sink and fastidiously rinsed out the carton. "That'd be great," he replied. He waved the container in his hand around a little. "You have a recycle bin?"
"Uh," Hermione said noncommittally, slipping back into the living room to raid his pack. Dumping it out on the couch yielded a surprisingly small quantity of clothes and various portable belongings. She sorted through two T-shirts, two white dress shirts, the gray slacks he'd worn Wednesday, the black ones he'd worn yesterday, and a pair of jeans that had fared somewhat better than the ones he slept in. Within their folds she unearthed a battered leather wallet, a scuffed Swiss army knife, a comb in need of a few new teeth, a disposable razor, a nearly-empty bottle of cologne, a few frayed handkerchiefs, a set of house keys, and a worn pack of playing cards.
"I was looking for those," Malfoy said of the lattermost item. He plucked it from the wreckage, tucked it into his back pocket, and returned to monitoring his toast. Hermione hadn't yet mustered up the heart to tell him that there wasn't any butter. Or marmalade. Or jam. Or anything. Hers was a rather condiment-deprived existence.
She flipped the wallet open. There was an identification card with a picture of Malfoy smirking at the camera, a very expired coupon for a free burrito at some fast-food place, and about twelve pounds. Hermione searched the pockets of the pants, but the dozen pounds was the only money she could find. As far as she could tell, it was all he had to his name.
Things were a little more dire than Dear Drakey was letting on.
She gathered up his clothes, insured that none of them were dry-clean only (that being a mistake she'd made before, to disastrous results), and stuffed them in her laundry bag. That was tonight's task. Sitting in the laundry room feeding coins to the ornery washing machines was a smashing way to spend a Friday night. For Hermione Granger, it was also a tradition.
Malfoy was munching toast and stroking the fur under Sparky's chin. He had shaved sometime before, during, or after the shower he'd taken last night, and it softened his chin, made his face younger and more vulnerable. Sparky lifted his head complacently, and Malfoy's fingers followed. He looked pensive, tired, and gorgeous.
Malfoy, that was. Not the cat. The cat looked kind of pitiful with admirable consistency.
Malfoy finished his (unadorned) toast and went to the counter to retrieve another piece of bread. Watching him closely, Hermione appraised the rust-colored stains and the jagged rips that bedizened his rumpled T-shirt.
"Take your shirt off," she commanded.
Abruptly Malfoy turned. To his credit, he rebounded from his astonishment in seconds. "I usually save that for the second date," he remarked, "but if you insist…"
"I insist."
He paused, and she knew she had him.
"Hermione, love," he said slowly, "do you remember all that wonderfully eloquent stuff I told you about dark and stormy nights?"
"Yes."
"Let's wait for one of those."
His gaze was firmly attached to the peeling linoleum, but there was something in the set of his shoulders that was at once firmly resolved and already defeated. And something in that image told her that she had to let it go.
For now.
As she started back to her room, she saw that Malfoy's bag had fallen unevenly—that there was still something in it. She upended it over the couch and shook, and, sure enough, as she should quite obviously have known, a few more articles fell free: a few pairs of boxers, a few pairs of socks, and an undershirt, all colored a rosy, even pink. Then a final item straggled down to plop contentedly upon its predecessors.
It was a pair of red socks.
Yes, Hermione would be doing the laundry around here.
Malfoy was off in the bathroom again.
"Hermy, darling?"
"Yes?" she called back.
"Can I use your perfume?"
She sighed, but, to her chagrin, she did so fondly. "No, Malfoy."
"Not even a spritz?"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When they arrived at the Ministry, there was a morbidly obese manila folder on her desk, an abomination of organization vomiting forth a positively sinful amount of papers. Hermione felt her heart sink from her chest to her stomach to her shoes. It probably would have continued from then on, spiraling down through the stony layers of the Earth, snaking through the magma until it was incinerated in the fiery core, had she not gathered up her resolve and sat down in her chair. She opened the folder. And then she looked imploringly up at Malfoy, who had not yet taken his seat.
"Might you be dreadfully kind enough to go grab me a coffee?" she asked desperately.
He bowed deeply. "Your humble servant, madam," he said again.
She didn't give him any crap for it this time. He had long since proved that he was humbler and more servile than she ever would have thought possible.
Shortly after Malfoy had disappeared, the girls returned, descending like harpies to feast on human flesh.
"You brought him back?" one of them squealed. "You're such a dear! Are you nearly done with him?"
"You're revolting" slipped out of her mouth in a mumble.
"What's that?" They leaned in closer, and Hermione leaned back, attempting to escape the sickening cloud of overpowering fruity fragrance.
"Um, no, I don't think I'm quite done," she amended weakly.
The brunette folded her arms across her chest. "Well, are you going to lend him to us when you are?"
The blonde leaned in eagerly. "Or just tell us where you found him. There's got to be more."
Hermione felt one of her eyebrows flick upwards of its own volition. "You talk about him like he's property."
"Hot property!" came the chorus, followed by a bout of giggles.
Surreptitiously Hermione drew the top drawer of her desk open and started groping around within it for a sharpened pencil. It was looking like she might need to defend herself.
"Ooh, what's his name?" the redhead demanded, spreading glossy russet lips in a hungry grin. "I bet it's something horribly sexy, like 'Maximilian Venturous.'"
Hermione wondered whether she had stolen it off of the back cover of a seedy romance novel or made it up all-by-herself-with-help. These girls probably couldn't make up their minds unless they had help.
"Um, no," she replied evasively.
"'Alexander Lace'?" the blonde supplied helpfully.
"Not so much," Hermione noted, cringing a little.
"'Xavier Weirwood'?" the brunette hazarded.
"I'm afraid not," she answered.
A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead were all at the office, vying for a geeky girl's good-looking roommate…
It sounded like the setup for some kind of joke. Some kind of really lousy joke. Some kind of really lousy not-at-all-funny joke.
As they all paused to think, Hermione heard something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand to attention and salute—Malfoy's laugh from down the hall. Frantically she racked her brains. What had she said yesterday that had cleared them out like so much dirty bathwater?
And then she had it, because she was, first and foremost, Hermione Granger.
"Er, don't you ladies have work to do?" she said loudly.
"Oh," the blonde one said, her exquisitely-made-up face falling. "Oh, dear."
"So we do," the brunette sighed in agreement. The redhead just shook her head dolefully, sending copper ringlets bouncing in a disgustingly attractive way. Mournfully the trio trooped off and disappeared.
Hermione stared after them. It was like… magic.
She wanted to jot the magical words down on a sticky note, but she discovered that she didn't have any. She settled with scribbling it on the wing of an origami crane.
Just as she finished, Malfoy sidled up to her desk again, but he wasn't alone. Laughing heartily at his side was Giles Helicane.
Giles Helicane, for better or—no, just for worse—was Hermione's boss. He was built like a bowling ball, but with limbs and a head, and he had a penchant for expensive cigars. Especially with that considered, he bore a bit of a resemblance to Winston Churchill—but that, as far as Hermione had ever been able to tell, Giles Helicane was not very smart, not very noble, and not very good to be around at all. If all the demons in the bowels of Hell had been assembled, and someone had picked the cruelest, meanest, most obnoxious one to command Hermione Granger, Giles Helicane would still have been worse.
Helicane laughed a bit more and then slurped from his coffee.
Far, far worse.
"And what did you say was your name again, dear boy?" he asked Malfoy jovially.
"Ardoc Olyfam," Malfoy said glibly.
"Right, right. Ardoc," Helicane went on grandiosely, "clearly you're a scintillatingly intelligent young buck—"
"Well," Malfoy tried to cut in modestly, "I—"
"—so it would be downright dotty of me not to make use of it." Helicane prodded Malfoy's chest with a podgy finger. "I," Helicane continued, "am down one personal secretary. Woman's gone on maternity leave, and I'm willing to bet she'll be staying home with the ankle biter after that—you know how women are about their broods." He laughed uproariously, and Malfoy managed a slightly strained smile. "Right," Helicane went on when his whole round girth had ceased to shake with laughter. "So what do you say, Ardoc, m'boy? Interested?"
"Um" was what Malfoy said.
"Excellent!" Helicane roared happily. "Come down to my office! We'll have a bit of wine to celebrate, and I'll show you your new desk!"
"Um," Malfoy repeated. Hermione discovered that he was looking bewilderedly at her.
As if she could help him.
As if she wanted to.
Helicane focused momentarily on her, and his bright blue eyes instantly shifted from sprightly and convivial to sharp and cold. "Granger," he greeted her curtly. Before she could respond, the change had been reversed, and he was clapping Malfoy on the back so hard that his victim almost toppled into the midst of his own origami crane display. "Anytime you like, Ardoc, come on by!" he pledged. "You can start working tomorrow! Hell, it's Saturday, but it makes no difference to me! Just ask for your old pal Giles, that's a good boy!"
With that, he bustled off.
Malfoy was standing there dumbly, but Hermione stared stonily at the manila folder on her desk and the papers it was belching forth. Helicane, Giles Helicane, had just offered Malfoy a job—no, handed him a job; a nice job, a cushy job, gift-wrapped with a red bow on top. She had been working here for a year to no avail, and Malfoy waltzed in one day and received a job. A job that should, by all rights, have been hers.
When Hermione did look up at Draco Malfoy, her cheeks and her eyes were both aflame.
"Um," Malfoy said meekly, shakily putting forth his peace offering, "I brought you some coffee."
This had to be some kind of joke. Because if it wasn't, Hermione was going to kill someone.
