AN: Hello again...
Well, another chapter... not exactly one of my better ones, sorry, but university is quite intense at the moment... I praying for Friday to arrive (because then my presentation on Wednesday, the exam at Thursday and the essay due to thursday will be history and I will have time to write again... so bear with me please.)

Warnings: Err... no clue. The usual, I guess.

The next week was pretty quiet apart from one or two mishaps where he missed muggle vocabulary.

To the surprise of their colleagues Draco and Charlie flirted with each other during their shared work hours. They didn't know that they 'flirted' for the sake of flirting and didn't mean anything by it – it was to their mutual amusement and the faces their colleagues made from time to time only added to their fun. But that didn't mean they were slacking off, far from it. They both did their job. They liked their jobs and Draco even managed to weasel his way into a promotion of sorts. He didn't get any more money but he still managed to silently become a cooking assistant. During rush hour he was allowed to cook the simpler dishes by himself.

He hadn't told Glen about where he went yet, simply because they hadn't seen each other since then. Glen was called home because his mother had been in a car crash and he returned to Scotland for two weeks. He had called once to let them know that his mum was fine and would soon be released from the hospital but would be walking with crutches for about a month and a half.

When Lynn told him about that he had asked her how long Glen's mum would need to stay at the asylum – she had nearly hit him for that. The one book he had about muggles had said that asylum would be just another word for hospital and Draco had no idea why Lynn reacted that strongly – and since she refused to talk to him after that, she didn't explain it to him either. (She managed to keep it up for approximately 14 hours and 53 minutes before her resolve broke. But she still didn't explain what was wrong with his question.)

The other mishap happened at work. He had asked Charlie if she needed some help to straighten out her girlfriend – she had told him a few minutes earlier that they had a huge fight over a misunderstanding because Mona had been stressed.
The connection between 'Straighten out' and 'straight' didn't occur to him until it was too late and his colleagues thought him an intolerant asshole. Just great.

Luckily for him, Charlie realised that he'd been unaware of what he implied with the question, after she got over the first shock. She actually broke down laughing and had another giggling fit when after work she explained to him what he had said and saw his face when he realised his faux-pas. She had been shocked to find out that he'd never encountered the notion that it might be necessary to "straighten someone out" that way.
Her explanations explained the looks their colleagues had given them when they continued flirting after he put his foot in.

They asked him to go clubbing with them again the next weekend and he agreed.
Barely concealing her mirth Mona asked him if he still wanted to "turn her straight" as a way of greeting. He got the feeling that he wouldn't be allowed to live that down.

The evening out was nice enough – even though he got pressured into asking a girl there out for a date – Rachel, a girl that somehow reminded him of a mixture of Goyle and Finch-Fletchey. He couldn't pin down why that was though.

They met the following Tuesday for a movie and dinner afterwards.
The movie was okay but the dinner… it was a disaster. Well, as a date it was a disaster, other than that it was okay – probably. Rachel kept talking about that guy she was interested in, a guy that was apparently good in sports, had good grades, was nice, loved to play chess and something called W.O.W. – he had no idea what 'wow' meant, except for, well, 'wow' and he decided to ask Glen about it later.
The girl was completely smitten… Damnable Hufflepuff. He couldn't care less how great her guy was, but while going on and on about the guy she unknowingly told him a lot about muggles in general as well.
All in all, it was bearable although he found it quite difficult to explain why he snorted when he heard her full name. He felt tempted to laugh when she told him that her full name was Rachel Celina Finch.

He came home to a full house that day. Some people from Glen's university that attended the same lectures invited themselves to their homes for a study session. How they envisioned a study session with more than twenty people was beyond him though.

It was way too loud and together with Lynn and Cassie he fled the house again. And he was dragged to the zoo because neither he nor Cassie had had anything special in mind when they ran and Lynn suddenly decided she wanted to see pandas.

Draco found the Zoo to be quite an interesting experience. There were no magical creatures there only muggle animals. Some of which he had never seen before while others resided in both worlds. He was shocked to see a Belgian python, though. A Belgian python was classified as a magical creature because its poisonous blood was used in many Dark potions.
She was wrongly classified as a Ball python but the colour and pattern was all wrong. He sent a text to Dean about it and Lynn explained to him how he could add a picture to his message so he also sent a picture of the python, too. Apparently the quality was really bad, but Cassie had added that he should be glad that a mobile of his' batch was even able to make photographs.

He found it a bit awkward when they passed a bunch of ferrets but despite all of the girls pestering he did not tell them why.
And then they arrived at the pandas' cage… It was impossible to drag Lynn away from there – she claimed she was in a way too interesting to stop conversation with one of them and her two companions braced themselves for a loooong evening.
They ended up playing "Last-Letter" as Cassie called it.
"Tiger"
"Rat"
"Tortoise"
"Eagle"
"Elephant."
"Turkey"
"… Yak?"
"Kangaroo"
"Oyster"
They spent over half an hour like that while Lynn was happily talking away with one of the pandas.

That night, Draco dreamt of dancing pandas in the forbidden forest.

Work the next day was hell – Charlie wanted an exact recollection of everything Rachel said and did to dissect it. And then she relayed every last shred of her findings to him again. A trait that reminded him of Greengrass. He shuddered. What was the use? It wasn't as if he'd been interested.

And then, one of the ovens stopped functioning - it was quite hectic after that. In a way, he liked it, he had always been able to perform well under pressure – when it came to potions that is, and therefore he was also able to perform well when it came to cooking. But it was also chaotic and sent them all in a frenzy – a frenzy that resulted with everyone that came in contact with the kitchen (except Draco, at the beginning at least) being in a rotten mood.

The only good thing about the day was that the wife of his boss asked him if he were interested in an apprenticeship the next day. He would have to wait for the new year for it to begin officially because he missed the autumn deadline but he figured it was fine anyway. And it seemed, 'officially' was not the same as 'unofficially'. Because as soon as he had said that he was interested, his boss started to give him the third degree. He spent his whole evening telling his boss about diverse spices and seasonings while he was doing his normal workload.

He did fine at the beginning but later on he started to have difficulties not to mention wizarding spices and their properties, especially when his boss asked him how to counter having too much salt in a soup for example. He almost answered with Syrup of Green Pumpkin Weed. He barely managed to change his answer to sugar. The only answer his boss didn't seem to like.

He fell asleep as soon as he fell into bed once he finally came home.

The next day was a bad day as well – but for a different reason. He hadn't really thought about it before but when he saw the newspaper that morning – or rather the date on the newspaper – he realised that it was his mother's birthday.

He didn't know what to think. He had burned all bridges behind him but… she was his mother. He didn't want to think about her as his mother, he couldn't see her as his mother anymore, not really anyway, but at the same time he could not renounce her the same way he did Lucius, not knowing she was in 's because she went insane over everything that had happened during the war, not when he knew that it was partly because she witnessed the things Lucius did to him and made him do.

But then again, it was her own damn fault for being that weak!

Draco ran straight to the toilet where he was sick. –he couldn't believe he had thought that. That was Lucius talking and he loathed himself for it – and it gave him some very bloodthirsty fantasies.

"You okay, mate?" unknowingly to him, Glen had entered the bathroom. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Yeah right. Dra…. Black, what's wrong?"
"I said, it's nothing!" He snarled and got up – only to sit right back down and empty his stomach again when he realised he'd been about to cast a really nasty wandless curse at Glen.
"Shit." He groaned and Glen handed him a wet cloth to wipe his mouth.
"Thanks."
"Think you can stand up?"
"I was sick, not dying." Glen actually laughed at that but helped him up anyway.
"You look like hell."
"That's what I feel like." Draco rinsed his mouth while Glen flushed the toilet.
"Ate something wrong?"
"no…" He paused but then opened up hesitantly "Thought something wrong… Something that was my… well, Lucius, talking – and it made me sick to the stomach."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No. But… can…" He couldn't bring himself to ask Glen to keep him company so he changed the topic and asked him about 'wow' instead.

Ten minutes later, his mind was really but he had no idea what Glen was talking about, really, the only thing he was able to comprehend was that it was the abbreviation of a game that was played on the comp… comp… competer thingy. He forgot the name of that machinery.

If he was honest, he didn't really care about it either but he was glad for the distraction. And Glen seemed to sense that – he 'forced' a lesson in how to use one of these com-something-things onto him.
Draco didn't really memorise much of it, only how to turn the thing on and that you could connect to write essays and stuff on it, but other than that it just went in one ear and out the other. He was just glad that Lynn was out, she probably wouldn't have left him alone until he was able to recite every last thing she tried to teach him.

When Glen went to the toilet and accidently left his mobile phone on the living room table, Draco 'stole' it. He tried – and failed to find the phone number of the Mike Lithman guy.
Because Glen startled him coming back, Draco accidentally pocketed it.

Accidentally because he hadn't really meant to but he kind of panicked – he figured it wasn't exactly nice to sneak around in someone else's mobile phone, just like you wouldn't go through their trunks or read their letters without permission – except your name was Theodore Nott of course.

Draco remembered one time during fifth year where one of the third years had annoyed Nott and in retaliation Nott had decorated the common room with every last thing that had been in the third year's trunk.
And then there was the time when Nott had been bored and hung all the socks from Crabbe's and Goyle's trunks from the ceiling – with a permanent sticking charm… It had taken them three days to get them all down. Not Crabbe and Goyle, mind you, Pansy and he had had to take them down.
But that time Nott claimed to have used 'accio'.
Oh, and then there was the time when Nott had also been bored and turned everything inside their trunks a hideously yellowy colour.

So, later that day – Glen had gone out for shopping, still without realising his phone was gone – Draco tried again and this time he was successful and he sent a text to Lithman, telling him, he (that means Glen) would attend his birthday celebration.
Afterwards he put the mobile back on the living room table.

AN2: WEll, that was that. Now, after twenty chapters I want to say thank you to every one who reviewed. If I didn't answer your reviews yet, don't worry, I will - as soon as this week is over. That goes for the reviews from members since one can't answer a guest/anonymous review and I don't like posting answers in the ANs. If it's an important question I'll probably add a short answer anyway... we'll see.
Also, I want to thank the reader who nominated me for the "Energize W.I.P Awards" - I feel honoured.