Author's Note: Do I really give love a bad name, Jon Bon Jovi? Do I really

By the way, I've never been to Europe, much less England, so if Wikipedia lied to me about the way that British grocery stores are set up, I apologize for my cultural illiteracy. In my mind, their supermarket is basically the Nob Hill near my house. But I digress.

It seems my lovely reviewers are very concerned about ickle Ron and Harrykins. Never fear; they are spoken of in Chapter Twelve and appear in Chapter Fourteen. As for what occurs therein, you'll just have to wait and see.

Chapter Ten

Of Exorcisms and Fire Escapes

When Draco awoke Saturday morning, there was a cat on his windpipe. Even as he groped for his wand on the coffee table, however, the cat relocated itself to his face, then his hair, then the arm of the couch.

Draco brushed gray fur off of the bridge of his nose. Then he brushed gray fur off of his mouth, his forehead, and his shirt. Then he got up and went to the kitchen, because that was where the refrigerator lived out its blessed existence.

Hermione was already up and sipping tea. Having gotten a bit of a feel for the way Hermione Granger approached food, Draco was utterly unsurprised to see a telltale teabag lying on a saucer nearby, still dripping feebly. Fighting down the urge to salute it and start talking about sacrifices made in the name of truth, justice, honor, and thirstiness, Draco went and buried his head in the fridge.

There was no more orange juice, and very little of anything else that looked even remotely edible, other than the leftover pizza.

"Hermione," he said.

"Mm?"

"We have a mission."

"And what's that?"

"To exorcise the demons in your refrigerator."

The evil salsa and the stomach-turning casserole were still very much in evidence. Draco dumped the salsa out in the trash, rinsed out the jar, and set it on the counter next to the orange juice container, which still hadn't found its way into a recycling bin. He followed it up with some long-expired mayonnaise and green applesauce. Applesauce, as every good Refrigerator Exorcist knows, should never, ever, ever be green.

The casserole put up more of a fight. First of all, it was sprouting white and black mold, which screamed "unhealthy" at a volume of about eighty decibels; and second of all, it had glued itself to the dish. Draco had to enlist a spatula, a fork, and two serving spoons to prise it off, at which point the majority of it slopped its way into the trash can to join its infernal brethren. Then there was some severe scrubbing to be done to rid the dish of the last of the crusty stragglers.

"In the name of God, I banish you!" Draco howled, scouring furiously.

"I have neighbors, you know," Hermione remarked.

"In the name of God, I banish those neighbors!"

"I don't know why I talk to you."

"Much as I dote on you, Hermy, darling," Draco rejoined, "I must have silence if I am to best this particular specimen of Hell-spawn."

"It's a casserole dish."

"It's a Hell-spawn casserole dish."

When the good fight had been fought and all the fiends had made a forced migration to the bottom of the trashcan, Draco wiped the sweat from his virtuous brow and surveyed the conquered refrigerator in triumph.

His triumphant smile faded fast. There was nothing left in the fridge.

"I have a new idea even more brilliant than the last idea," he declared.

Hermione's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"Let's go grocery shopping."

Hermione sighed. But she went and got her coat anyway.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Resolutely they set off through the labyrinthine aisles of the supermarket, Draco pushing the cart and pointing Hermione in all directions to retrieve various edibilities.

Draco knew "edibilities" wasn't any more of a word than "enigmaticness" had been, but it still sounded good. If Draco wrote the dictionaries, he decided, the world would be a much more fantabulousiriffic place.

"Oh, get one of those," he told Hermione, indicating the re-zip-able bags of pre-shredded lettuce. "We can have a taco night. Una fiesta!"

It was the perfect opportunity for her to inquire crisply just how long he thought he would be staying. (It wasn't even staying. It was freeloading.) But she didn't say anything.

Well, nothing other than, "You are un idiota" as she tossed a package of lettuce into the cart.

Idiota though he may have been, Draco could quite clearly see that they would be eating a lot better in the future.

Everything was going absolutely splendidly until Hermione stopped short and whispered urgently, "Oh, no. Run, run, run, run!"

Before Draco could so much as budge the overflowing shopping cart, a tiny old woman with huge glasses settled among the folds of her face came toddling speedily towards them, a shopping basket swinging from her stick-like arm.

"Hermione, dear!" the woman piped happily. "My, you look well. I always told my sons, 'If you look well, you'll feel well,' but they didn't listen to Mummy; oh, no." Her wide, watery blue eyes lighted on Draco. "Oh, and you've brought along a little boyfriend!"

"Er, he's n—" Hermione began.

"What a charming boy!" the woman enthused, beaming brightly as she adjusted her glasses to peer at Draco more intently. "Just the kind of strong, commanding man you need in your life, dear—just perfect for you! Haven't I been telling you all along? Didn't I say, 'Hermione, dear, get yourself a big, tall, put-together fellow, and you'll be all set to start your little family'? I did; I did! Are you engaged yet?"

"Er, n—"

"Wonderful, wonderful!" She looked at Hermione very seriously. "Now, dear, if your mother hasn't got a wedding dress for you already, you're perfectly welcome to use mine. Beautiful old thing, it is; perfectly preserved, too. Oh, it'd fit you nicely; I was a sprightly young thing once, too, just like yourself!" Richly, she chuckled, and Draco, with some difficulty, swallowed a tremendous smile at the helplessly embarrassed blush that was spreading over Hermione's cheeks. "Well, I'd best be getting along, dear," the woman sang. "These old bones don't like to stay out so long anymore. I tell you, I'd give my right leg—" She pointed a finger at the limb in question for emphasis. "—to be young again." She glanced at Draco and then added in a loud whisper to Hermione, "And I'd give the other for a night with your little gentleman there, don't doubt it!" In a normal voice, she concluded, "I'd best be off! You two have a very nice, long night, won't you?" She winked broadly and gave a girlish giggle, then waved and started off down the aisle.

"Mrs. Lychorida Bolton," Hermione explained dryly. "One of the neighbors you banished this morning. You might have banished her farther. Like to Antarctica."

Mrs. Lychorida Bolton turned back towards them. "Don't forget to use protection!" she called.

Draco had time to notice that Hermione's entire face was being consumed by a great, glorious red blush before he was bent over the handle of the shopping cart laughing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Fairly late the next morning, as Draco skewered his last piece of pancake and finished ensuring that there were no new horrors lurking in the newspaper, the phone rang. Hermione had been reading the comics, so there was a smile on her face and in her voice as she picked up.

"Hello?"

Then the smile disappeared, to be replaced by pure terror.

"Mother?" Hermione Granger whispered. There was a pause. "Well—well, yes, it's wonderful to hear from you, too—What? A visit? That would be—" Her voice squeaked. "—lovely! When were you think—" Her voice squeaked even more pronouncedly. "Today? No, no, that'd be fine! Just fine, perfectly fine, perfectly wonderful, perfectly—What? You're where?" There was another pause. After it, Hermione's voice was so squeaky as to very nearly escape the range of human hearing. "In the parking lot?" The next few words came out as a single, elongated, mortified squeal. "Yes-that's-fine-that's-great-no-problem-no-problem-at-all!" Hermione sucked in a deep, deep breath, and then her voice was steady. "Only don't take the elevator," she said levelly. "It's broken. Use the stairs… Yes, seventy-eight, that's right. All right, see you in a few." She set the phone in the cradle. There was a moment of calm. Then came the storm.

Draco slammed his dishes into the sink, whisked tap water over them, and jammed them in the dishwasher, safely out of sight. Together he and Hermione raced into the living room, where she bunched up his sheets and went tearing off somewhere to hide them; for his part, he shoved all his belongings back into his bag and kicked it under the couch. Hermione dashed into the bathroom to straighten her clothes and comb her hair, and Draco slipped in behind her to snatch his razor off of the counter. He kicked that under the couch, too, though he supposed that wasn't entirely safe, and grabbed his wand from the table.

Hermione was back by then, wringing her hands and looking around desperately. "Where can we hide you, where can—"

There was a knock at the door.

"The fire escape!" Hermione gasped. "Coming!" she called in the direction of the door as she dragged Draco into the kitchen, yanked the window open, and shoved him out of it.

He would have been more than a little miffed if he'd fallen to his death, but instead he landed on a steel platform. There was a ladder leading down and a stairway leading up. By the time he'd gained his feet, Hermione was already opening the door, so he crept partway up the stairs and settled as comfortably as possible.

Muffled voices reached his ears, becoming clearer as their owners came into the kitchen.

"No," Hermione was saying, "I'm not, and, at this juncture of my life, I don't think I need to be just yet."

Draco wondered if the question had been "married" or "pregnant." It was a toss-up.

"And you've got a window open?" a woman's voice tutted. "You'll catch your death of cold that way, sweetheart; we should visit more often to make sure you're—"

"Just getting a little air," Hermione interrupted. "And now there's plenty, so—"

The window slammed shut.

Draco reclined on the stairs. They were cold. So was the air. Maybe Mrs. Granger was on to something.

He took out his wand and conjured some bluebell flames, which he set on the step below him so that he could rub his hands before them. With his extraordinary powers of perception, he was foreseeing that it was going to be a long, long, long, long day.

His extraordinary powers of perception had no idea.

The sun had begun to set by the time the window creaked open again. Dark, angry, dreadfully ominous clouds were massing on the horizon, and the fiery orb tainted them pink and orange and violet. Draco had been entertaining the disconcerting notion that he had put his nose down somewhere and left it, because he was sure he hadn't been able to feel it for a good five hours.

"Draco?" came the prompt.

Gratefully, if not very gracefully, he clambered back into the warm kitchen. His extremities tingled.

"I'm so, so, so, so sorry," Hermione was moaning, sounding close to tears. "I tried to get rid of them, but they wouldn't go."

"Don't mention it," he told her, cheerfully enough given the circumstances. He meant it, too. Just thinking about it made him shiver all over again.

Immediately, he trooped to the fridge and examined its contents. He was glad they—or, rather, she—had bought such a ridiculous amount of food yesterday. He was starved. He wished they—or rather, she—had bought some beer, too, but he had realized even then that such an act would give Lychorida Bolton very, very, very bad ideas.

Well, slightly worse ideas than the ones she already had.