Chapter 10

Draco was running all over the place. He had to fill salt shakers, remember who gets decaf and who gets caffeinated coffee, and clean his pants. (Some rotten kid had spilled grape juice on them by "accident".) As he was doing this he saw a flash of bright red streak across the room. He stopped what he was doing and prayed to Merlin that this person wasn't who he thought it was. The red head's identity was confirmed when he saw another young man wearing glasses.

"Shit." He said out loud as Agnes walked by.

"What's wrong?" she asked, even though she obviously didn't care.

Instead of telling her he turned to her and said, pleadingly, "Can we switch floors for tonight. I'll do the second floor so you won't have to do the stairs." He thought he had her there. She always complained about the injustice of forcing an old woman to climb stairs.

To his surprise she said, "No way, buster. I need to lose weight for my sisters forth wedding, and you bet your bottom I'm not joining a gym. Those stairs are all I've got, so you just suck up whatever stupid problem you're having and shoo." She gave him a dirty look and made her way up the stairs, mumbling about young people and their easy lives.

Draco had no ideas as to how to get out of this one. Maybe he could just avoid them and they'd leave due to bad service, but the restaurant would get a bad review. Maybe he could pull the fire alarm, but then he might get arrested. Maybe he could just quit. No, he needed this job more than anything. Agnes was right; he would just have to suck it up. He picked up his order pad and walked over to their booth.

"Maybe I should wear a bag over my head",he thought as he chickened out and headed for the kitchen.

oOo

The three couples had been seated in a circular booth. Hermione hated these because they forced people to eat with their elbows touching, and she really didn't feel like touching Reggie's elbow right now. As much as Hermione hated to say this, Reggie was a truly nice person. Looks aren't supposed to be everything, but they do count for something, and unfortunately for Reggie, he was a bit… ugly. Hermione tried to be polite, but it was just so fake sounding. So her best strategy was to remain silent and keep her head down.

As they waited to be served, the waiter seemed to be completely absent at the moment, Ginny started making conversation with Charlotte.

"So, Charlotte, what do you think of Minister Shacklebolt?"

"I'm not sure. He's plenty nice to me, buy I don't think I like his policies very much. I think the new magical creature law is absurd. Why should we keep them in captivity if their not harming anyone in their natural habitats? I also think that he's spending too much time on preventing the dark arts. He should be helping fix up Diagon Alley. It's not as nice as it used to be."

Everyone stared at her with disbelief. Ron looked at her and said, "I didn't know you were so, er… smart."

Her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth formed a straight line. "So you thought I was dumb?"

"Well," Ginny shot him a dirty look, "no. Of course not."

Even though Ron thought he had been forgiven, everyone could see that Charlotte was still mad at him. Harry thought that it was about time to change the subject.

"So Charlotte, what's your blood status?"

She seemed to lighten up a little. 'I'm a pure-blood. It's kind of an interesting story. My father, who was pureblood, was sent to Azkaban even though he didn't do anything wrong. When the minister at the time realized him mistake, they set my father free. He was so furious that he decided to leave the wizard world completely. He eventually fell in love with a muggle woman, my mother, and they had me. Little did my father know that my mother was actually a pure blood as well. When I started showing signs of magic she told him that she was a witch. At first he was angry that she didn't tell him before they got married, and that he had failed to break all ties to the wizarding world. Then he realized how much he loved my mum and me and decided to be a wizard again. Most pure-bloods would call him a blood traitor, but I just call him Dad." They all laughed at the story and Charlotte had regained her good mood.

She smiled while saying, "Where's our waiter anyway? We've been here for 20 minutes!"

Ron, desperately trying to win Charlotte back said, "Maybe he's shining his shoes. He must be excited to meet us. We're famous you know."

"You might just be right. Oh, here he comes now!"

They all turned in the direction Charlotte was pointing and saw their waiter, a tall, blonde man.

"No way." Harry said. He turned to Ginny and said, "Leave it to you, Gin, to pick the one restaurant in all of London that he works at."

"Well, you can't blame it all on me. You should have read his file more carefully. Then you would have known the exact place he worked." She said firmly.

Ron looked very amused. "You guys never told me that he was a waiter. This is going to be fun."

Hermione gave him a dirty look and said, "Don't you dare pull any tricks tonight. That would be unprofessional and embarrassing to us all."

Poor Reggie and Charlotte had no idea what the big deal was. He was just their waiter, right?

oOo

Draco finally mustered up enough guts to walk over to the "Golden Trio's" table. As he approached he saw that Potter and the Weasley girl were fighting. "Trouble in paradise?" he thought. He also noticed an incredibly beautiful woman sitting next to Weasley. How'd he manage to nab a chick like that? She's probably blind and deaf.

He noticed that Granger was sitting, uncomfortably, next to a rather itchy bloke. He made a note to himself not to get too close to this mystery man.

When he got to the table, everyone became silent. Weasley had the smuggest look on his face that he'd ever seen. He wanted, with all his heart, to smack it off of his freckly face. He cleared his throat and broke the silence by saying, "Welcome to the Paramount Pub. What can I get you to drink?"

They just stared at him, as if he had lobsters crawling out of his ears. Suddenly, the beautiful woman asked, "Do you have Sprite?"

"No," he said calmly, "but we do have 7Up."

Charlotte looked crest fallen. "Oh. Um, I'll have Lemonade then, please."

The itchy man took her lead and ordered his drink, and the rest followed. Ron was last.

"I'll have a Pepsi. Oh, and if you spit in it, I'll take you straight to Azkaban, personally. They'd be glad to have you."

Draco said, through gritted teeth, "Coming right up… sir." He turned around angrily to go get their drinks.