Chapter 11

A/N: For the sake of this chapter, Hermione can still see Malfoy because she cast the spell. It seems I'm not capable of writing a story without a disguise in it at some point... My newest one (Not Quite a Fairytale, coming soon) has a disguise in it, and so does A Tail Changes Everything...

This chapter puts me over 70 000 words archived here! That's quite exciting... I'm still obsessed with the stats pages; I just have a lot less time to look at them, which is sad because they're fascinating.

~Frosty

"Well then how are we going to disguise me?" He asked. My only answer was an evil grin; I had an idea, but he wasn't going to like it.

He stared backing away further when he was my evil grin. "On second thought, I'm positive he's not here. He's probably somewhere nice and far from anywhere anyone would ever go, far from anyone who could possibly recognise me."

I just continued grinning; poor, suspicious Malfoy, it seemed almost like he had no faith in me – that or he was worried how I would go about disguising him. And here I was having been nothing but helpful...

I cast the spell I had been planning and watched as Malfoy cringed away from me and tried to escape. I sighed, "Calm down, I just disillusioned you," I told him.

He stopped his cringing and looked down at himself. "Oh. Let's go then," he said, leading the way towards the entrance. I rolled my eyes towards the sky and followed him; someone had to make sure he didn't do something stupid like open the door while no one could see him, it would arouse suspicion.

I speed walked past him, giving him a bit of a shove for making me put in the extra effort as I passed – and he would most likely earn it in the near future but I wouldn't be able to do it with people watching.

Once we were inside, I hesitantly walked up to the front counter, a little weary of the decorating scheme in their front room; it looked like Disneyland had thrown up and then an office decorator had tried to make it look corporate. "I'd like a day pass please," I told the woman behind the counter.

She smiled vacantly at me and handed me a ticket, along with a map of the building and its many levels. It looked like out back it was some sort of theme park, but in the front it was a hotel/huge business type thing, presumably so people could 'work' as well as stay in a genuine muggle hotel.

I held the map slightly off to the side so that Malfoy could read it over my shoulder without me looking mental. "Are you thinking he's trying out the 'soul crushing, tedious desk job' as well?" I asked out of the corner of my mouth, glancing quickly at him.

Malfoy nodded. "Except I'm not sure he has a soul in him, he always did seem a little vacant." I frowned at him but ignored him; my bet was that he didn't even know which of the older Weasleys we were looking for. Sure he knew the name, but put all three together and he would probably be clueless despite their drastically different looks.

We headed off to the building that housed the cubicles that wizards actually paid to sit in – some of these purebloods were pretty mixed up, and they thought the muggles were the ones being odd.

The office building they had in their parody of an amusement park wasn't actually that abnormal looking, considering what the hotel had looked like. I could actually picture normal muggles coming here to work on a daily basis.

No one had any objections to a stranger walking in – this wasn't a real workplace after all – so we just walked right through the first floor of cubicles and made our way to the elevator. A helpful little sign was posted telling us that the 'muggle workplace simulator' was on the fifth floor. If Percy Weasley was in this place, it would be there – hell, he's probably in charge of the place by now if he'd been here the whole time he was missing.

Malfoy followed me into the elevator and we waited while the 'authentic muggle elevator music' played in the small space. I scowled up at the speaker in the ceiling; there were some things that really weren't needed from the muggle world, elevator music being one of them.

The elevator ignored my scowl and dinged cheerily as we reached our destination. This floor looked so... normal compared to the portion of this theme park I had already seen. The whole place was a maze of cubicles and there were offices along the far wall, it was all painted in shades of beige with the occasional motivational poster on the walls as if that would brighten up the oppressively uniform colours in the place.

Not one of the people looked up at me as I exited the elevator, so I just walked towards the offices at the back; if Percy wasn't in one of them, whoever was should be able to tell me if Percy was here.

"Granger, look," Malfoy said, grabbing my arm to stop me. I tried to glare at him without looking like I was glaring while at the same time attempting to see what it was he'd stopped me for. I was more successful with the latter; just entering one of the offices was a flash of red hair followed by blond. What was Lucius Malfoy doing here with Percy? Even more shocking was that Malfoy had been right about guessing Percy was here...

"Holy crap..." I said quietly, but not quietly enough; Malfoy was standing beside me looking both smug and worried at the same time.

"I told you this is where the Weasley would be, it's just the right amount of horrifying and cheap for him to find enjoyable. My father's presence is a little worrying though. Where are you going?" He demanded in a whisper when I started to walk away during his little gloating session.

"I'm going to find out what they're talking about," I told him quietly, glancing around to see if anyone noticed I was talking to thin air.

"And how do you propose we do that? They've probably locked the door and cast a silencing spell on the room."

For someone who spoke like he knew everything, there was a whole lot that he didn't know. I discreetly pointed up the one of the cameras and nodded towards the office in the far corner labelled 'security'. Malfoy still looked confused, but didn't dare ask about it; people were starting to notice me standing there and were glancing up curiously from their work or games of solitaire or whatever they were doing at the ancient computers on their desks.

I strode confidently over to the security door, opened it, and walked in, all without any hesitation – if you look like you know where you're going and what you're doing, people assume you're supposed to be there and don't question it. Malfoy followed me in and looked around with a frown. "Granger, how will this stuff help us?" He demanded, indicating the only thing in the room, a bank of monitors.

I ignored him, instead examining said bank of monitors. There was a keyboard and a mouse hooked up to them, so it was obviously some sort of computer system, I just had to get it to show me the right room. My eyebrows drew together in a frown as I started hitting buttons experimentally, the person who had set this up was a little too enthusiastic with their electronics; they'd installed something way more complicated than a place like this should ever need and they'd installed the cameras with sound, which was very convenient for us - if I could just get them to show us the room we wanted to see.

"Ah hah!" I exclaimed triumphantly as I finally got the thing working the way I wanted it to; all the monitors were now showing an angry Lucius holding his wand to Percy's forehead.

"I thought you said Draco would be out of our way for a long time and we were in the clear," he hissed menacingly. My eyebrows rose as I took in the scene we were witnessing. They were working together? They were supposed to hate each other.

"Mr. Malfoy, listen to me!" Percy said as he edged away from the tip of the wand pointed at him. "Just because Draco's escaped doesn't mean we're going to get caught. The money we've taken is long gone and the ministry has no way to connect it to us, so we're still safe."

We watched as Lucius took a step back from the redhead and scowled. "They better not connect this to me, you have no idea what it would do to my reputation if people found out I was in trouble financially!" He snapped before storming out of the room.

Percy slid down a wall and sat on the floor, resting his head in his hands; apparently he'd been more terrified of Lucius than he's let on.

I glanced over at Malfoy behind me; he looked like he was ready to stab someone, but was torn between choosing his father or Percy as his first victim.