Travel Companies (3/?)
by pari
[see chapter one for disclaimers, etc.]
IMPORTANT NOTE: You should definitely heed the PG-13 rating in this chapter. Because I use a bit of the foul language near the end. Nothing creative or deviant. Just not the sort of language you'd want to take home to your mother. Consider yourself forewarned and I'll be happy.
past parts can now be found here:
A/N: The part of this crossover where the fandoms do, in fact, crossover :p will get here eventually. Do not despair. I'm just having too much fun keeping Draco and Hermione cooped up in this fic alone to let them off the hook too early.
~[]~
The history of the American Magical Community was really quite fascinating, if one could put aside one's biases and appreciate the complexity of American culture.
America had no Ministry of Magic of its own; rather, American witches and wizards used a localized form of government that gave each small magical community in the country the right to govern itself. The communities each had their own school, their own hospitals, their own legal charters, and operated under the direction of their own elected governors. Each governor, then, had the right to elect his or her own representative to speak, on behalf of the community, before the tri-annual American Magical Conference in Cory (America's largest magical city and official magical capital).
The Conference performed a number of services for cooperating magical communities, and supervised negotiations with: non-cooperating American magical communities, foreign magical communities, and non-magical or "alternatively-magical" associations such as The Watchers Council (a British-based organization which dealt with magical creatures, or persons who weren't considered magical in the traditional sense - like Watchers, Wiccans, Slayers, and Mages). The Conference resolved minor national and international disputes, carried out public service initiatives, worked with the American Center for Muggle Studies in Salem to improve Muggle/Magical relations, and appointed ambassadors to deal directly with the members of the different magical sects listed above.
At least, it had. Up until about the time of the second Muggle World War. Before that, British/American Magical relations had already been strained by political differences (most of which originated from the American Revolution, in which the Ministry had refused to participate). During the war, an unfortunate misunderstanding nearly caused outright conflict between the Conference, the Council, and the Ministry. And after the war, the ever-reclusive Council became even more so, nearly withdrawing from International Magical Affairs altogether. The Conference and the Ministry nearly ceased communications between Magical America and Britain. Certain British wizards' associations began an anti-American campaign, and the British purebloods erased all of the Magical bloodlines that resettled in America from their now "non-existent" Subcriptio Prosapia.
Now the Conference had only two ambassadors for matters not presented by their cooperating communities: one for handling PR with other Magical Americans, and one for handling PR with just about everyone else. Members of the Council were given restricted access to Magical entry points throughout the country (access that was not to be extended to the many Watchers, Slayers, etc. for which the Council was responsible) and foreign wizards and witches had to petition for the Magical equivalent of a Muggle Visa in order to conduct any business on American soil that had not been mentioned in the Treaty of Harrow Square .
Hermione watched Draco waiting outside the Rent-a-Car office through the frosted glass of the window in its front door. The paperwork involved in acquiring a rental turned out to be taking a lot longer than she had hoped, and she'd had to toss Draco some reading material to keep him busy (and not yelling at anyone, or wandering off to explore something and get them both into trouble).
Not Hermione's own reading material, of course. Draco would probably rather read the back of a Muggle cereal box than any one of the texts Hermione had brought along for their trip (including American Magical History, Magical Treatises of the Past One-Thousand Years, and American Magical Law: A Retrospective).
Instead, Draco was scowling down at a copy of Woman's Day Hermione had picked out of a stack of magazines sitting in the office's waiting area, mistakenly having forgotten to look at the magazine's title before inflicting it upon her partner.
She sighed.
For the first time, Hermione understood the Conference's foreign policies. Getting permission to visit the Hellmouth had taken a ridiculously long amount of time (even though investigating magical phenomena was covered by the Treaty). But if she were a governor of the Conference, she wouldn't want wizards like Malfoy traipsing into the country on a whim. Malfoy could be charming and charismatic in a political setting, thoughtful in times of emergency, courageous in battle; he'd been the life - and quite nearly the death - of every party Hermione had ever seen him attend. But he simply could not function under circumstances less dramatic.
Draco made even reading a magazine look suspicious and unnatural. He kept trying to talk to the pictures in the advertisements (although Hermione knew Draco had seen countless Muggle photographs, even owned a television, and realized that none of them were going to talk back.) He also held the magazine as though he were afraid of what it might do if he manhandled it, and kept flashing the cover at Hermione through the window and mouthing 'You're still trying to be funny, aren't you?'
Despite herself, Hermione couldn't stop smiling.
Some people were just not meant to blend in, and Draco Malfoy was one of them.
~[]~
"A Volvo. That's what they've given us."
"Yes, Malfoy, a Volvo." Hermione watched Draco with a mixture of bemusement and concern as they approached the parking space the rental clerk had specified. And some amount of trepidation as well, as Hermione didn't like the way Draco was rolling the car's name around on his tongue. He seemed to be trying to remember where he'd heard it - or something similar to it - before.
"Hmph," he said finally. "Well. If this automobile is anything like the last one I was in, I have to say the name is terribly misleading."
Hermione glanced at him through the corner of her narrowed eyes.
"I don't want to know what you mean by that, Malfoy," she said, then added, emphatically: "I don't."
Malfoy closed his mouth.
"Oh, look! We're here," Hermione said quickly, spotting the small, silver car in question.
Malfoy glanced at her through the corner of his eye.
"This can only end badly, Granger. You know this, don't you?"
Hermione glanced back, sighed, and looked away. The Volvo sat there in front of them, silent in its parking spot, waiting.
"Think happy thoughts, Malfoy," Hermione told her partner. "We've already survived a flight on an airplane, haven't we? How much more difficult can a car ride actually be."
~[]~
What a lot of people didn't realize about Draco Malfoy was that he did have a serious side. He simply chose rarely to show it. And the few people who'd known him well enough to have seen Malfoy being logical and serious, were the type smart enough to keep that sort of information to themselves. Or were the type who either couldn't share, or wouldn't be believed if they did.
For example, Millicent and Vin - two of Draco's old school friends - were dead; Tim and Moon were both in Azkaban. Greg was alive and free, but - thanks to his past as a Death Eater - had the credibility of a blast-ended skrewt. Draco had enough dirt on Blaise Zambini to keep him quiet for at least a lifetime, and Pansy Parkinson wasn't saying much the last time Draco had checked in with her at her private room in St. Mungo's. Draco's father and godfather were also dead and his mother had been as chatty as a dead sea scroll before The War. It wasn't likely she'd go blabbing his secrets now.
The only other persons - besides the diminutive Auror sitting next to Draco in the Volvo - to have ever seen Draco's serious side were Draco's old Quidditch captain, Marcus Flint, and Harry Potter. Flint had been trying to ruin Draco's reputation by praising his character for years, but no one ever believed him. And Potter - with Draco's blessings - tried to keep their peculiar friendship as hush-hush as possible. It was very likely that the Daily Prophet would start declaring The Man Who Killed Voldemort mad again if his reconciliation with a Malfoy ever became public knowledge.
But the main point of all this secrecy and such was, really, the protection of other people. People who hadn't seen Malfoy's serious side. And therefore didn't realize that that part of him wasn't quite as pretty as the rest.
For the first time, Draco considered the possibility that Hermione Granger had similar rules to his. That perhaps she shielded the people around her from her own serious side. Which was, quite simply, a disturbing thought. Draco had always thought Hermione quite serious enough.
He'd had no idea.
"If you do that one more time, Granger, I'm going to hex your hands to the steering wheel."
Hermione turned and scowled at him, chin slightly tilted upward in indignance.
"This is how you're supposed to drive, Malfoy," she said, switching lanes and sticking her arm out the window - elbow bent in a manner that supposedly signaled the direction she was headed - as she did.
Draco made a noise somewhere between a drawn-out groan and a high-pitched whine as he gestured at the vehicles that were on the road with them.
"Then why aren't any of them driving that way?" he insisted.
"I don't know!" Hermione practically yelled, the stress of the entire driving experience finally getting to her. If she had thought that Draco had taken the news of his having to travel in a rental car surprisingly well, she had thought too soon. The pureblood had been a wealth of questions, comments and criticisms ever since they had left the airport. And whenever Malfoy wasn't talking, one of Hermione's fellow drivers was honking, trying to shoulder past her in traffic, making gestures that sorely tested her restraint from pulling out her wand, or riding up close enough on the Volvo's bumper, Hermione was sure the other driver could smell the scent of her shampoo.
On top of all of that, Hermione had to pay attention to road signs and stop lights, and watch her speed - which was nowhere near as easy to do in actual traffic as it had been on the dirt roads Arthur had taken her down near the Burrow.
"In the driver's manuals, it clearly states that you can't always rely on your blinkers to let other motorists know you intend to turn. I do not want to get us rear-ended, Malfoy."
Draco would almost certainly have said something inappropriate to that. But he was preoccupied with other thoughts.
"Driver's manuals?" he repeated. "Granger, you're Muggleborn. Why in Merlin's name would you need to read a driver's manual?"
"Muggles aren't born knowing how to drive a car, Draco," Hermione said irritably, as a large truck to the left of them cut into their lane at an unsettling speed. Hermione had to hit her brakes to avoid ramming right into the back of it. " And neither are their children. Anyhow, it's not like there was a lot of time for driving lessons when we came of age. There was The War to worry about. And then my parents…"
Hermione cut her sentence short with a curse as she realized they were coming up on their exit too quickly, and she hadn't yet moved into the exit lane. She gripped the steering wheel tightly and swerved to the right, eliciting a chorus of honks and screams from the drivers she'd disturbed in the process.
Draco had both hands clutching the seat beneath him. He thought back briefly to their ride on the plane and the seat cushion those stewardesses had claimed could be used as a "floatation device." He hadn't thought much of the notion at the time, but realized suddenly that such an invention might become handy if Hermione kept driving the way that she was.
He hadn't missed her uncharacteristic use of his first name, or the fact that she had cursed - which she almost never did. Or the slight hesitation in Hermione's voice as she had mentioned her parents.
Draco felt a sliver of unease snake through him, as he always did when that subject arose, and quickly steered their conversation away from any talk of his or Hermione's families.
"So you taught yourself to drive from a book. That is so unsurprising I might weep, Granger."
Hermione took her eyes off the exit ramp momentarily, to look at him, then turned back to her driving as Draco suppressed a grateful sigh.
Having picked up on what Draco was doing, and feeling somewhat better for having put the freeway behind them, Hermione felt generous enough to enlighten Draco a bit further about her skills with driving a car.
"Actually," she admitted with much relish, "Mr. Weasley taught me."
Hermione smiled as Draco muttered something to himself about "nutters", "mercy", and Albus Dumbledore. As he had never learned to pray, that was about as close as Draco could get to asking for divine salvation.
~+[]+~
Hermione and Draco were relatively quiet and happy for the rest of the trip toward Sunnydale. There were fewer cars out on the two-lanes than on the freeway they'd been on before, so Hermione was doing a lot less swerving and swearing. Draco had either run out of questions, or had gotten bored with getting answers he could rarely comprehend or care about. The only blemish on an otherwise problem-free trip, in fact, came when Draco cast an Incendio on their map and Hermione had to pull over to the side of the road so they could put out the fire, repair the damage to the Volvo's interior, and argue about whether or not the map (which Draco had been unable to refold once he had unfolded it) had deserved a fiery death.
By the time they reached Sunnydale it was dark, and Hermione and Draco were so preoccupied as they neared the town's welcome sign that they didn't immediately realize something was wrong. Draco was busy sulking over the map argument (which Hermione had perceivably won) and Hermione was busy reveling in her victory and the silent drive time it had afforded her.
Draco was drifting in and out of sleep and Hermione was practically dozing off herself when she finally realized that they had reached their destination and that doing so had been the least of their problems.
Eyes snapping wide open suddenly, Hermione gripped the steering wheel and - in a moment of thoughtless panic - slammed on the brakes.
The Volvo skidded and swerved across the, thankfully, empty road, then tore into the ditch on the right shoulder, throwing up dirt as it came to a jarring halt. As soon as she had lost control of the car, Hermione had started to scream, and Draco had produced his wand.
Neither reaction proved helpful.
In the ditch, Hermione could do no more than stare out the Volvo's dirtied windshield with wide eyes, and Draco, who's reflexes had acted without his conscious thought, had cursed the nearest thing to her - the driver's side car door. The door, in one brief, bright flash of light, disappeared. Leaving two highly frazzled Aurors breathing heavily and staring at one another with growing alarm and, in Draco's case, mystification.
"Granger!" he hissed, voice gone low and abrasive - as it tended to do when Draco was at his most angry or threatened. Seeing as the car door hadn't been attacking Hermione when he'd killed it, and that nothing else appeared to be making a similar attempt, Draco was understandably unsettled. "What the bloody fuck do you think you're…"
"Draco!" Hermione interrupted as soon as she'd recaptured her breath long enough to speak. "We're in Sunnydale!"
Draco shook his head to dispel the ringing that had begun in his ears. He felt, at last, something warm and fluid trickling down his face and realized he'd been cut when the car had gone off the road and he'd been thrown into the windshield. Only his Auror reflexes - which had had him bracing himself against the front dash with his boots - had kept him from slamming straight through it, rather than just against it. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding from when he'd further tried to catch himself against the glass. Small cracks, like spider-webs, marked everywhere he and the glass had come into contact. Draco gave a vague thought to the fortunate fact he hadn't snapped his wand when he'd hit. Not that the now non-existent driver's side car door would have agreed that his wand's having survived the accident was altogether fortunate.
Hermione had fared somewhat better, having had the sense to keep her seatbelt on throughout their entire trip. She had somehow split her lip, however, all the same, and blood had run out the corner of her mouth in a small trickle. Upset and confused, Draco allowed other emotions to overcome the concern that swelled up in him at the sight, unanalyzed.
"Great!" Draco replied, trying to keep the shrillness out of his voice. "That's just great, Granger. And this is cause to try and fucking kill us how?"
"We're in Sunnydale!" Hermione persisted. "On the Hellmouth! Draco, think! Feel."
Draco shook his head again, thinking perhaps that Hermione was far more injured from the crash than she appeared.
"Feel? Is that what you say to me after trying to propel me out of the bloody car! Feel? I don't fucking feel any…" Abruptly, Draco's words faded away and the meaning behind Hermione's words hit him harder than the windshield had before.
He didn't feel anything. Not from the Hellmouth. Any witch or wizard worth his or her weight in fizzing whizbees could feel the magical energy radiating from a Hellmouth from miles away. Not to mention when they were parked, crashed, whatever practically on top of one.
If Draco's heart had been racing before it was reaching new speeds now.
"Draco, the Hellmouth is gone!" Hermione continued, as Draco could do nothing more than nod, dazedly, in agreement.
Unless both he and his partner had somehow suddenly turned into squibs (vaporized car doors notwithstanding) the Hellmouth was gone. And had been for some time if neither of them could feel so much as a trace of dark magic from this distance.
And for whatever reason, the Watcher's Council - who had the foremost authority over Hellmouths and other such phenomena (at least in the States) - had not considered this development important enough to mention to the Ministry. Neither had the Conference.
International Magical relations were about to get a lot more fascinating.
[to be continued…]