Travel Companions (8/?)

by pari

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimers: Draco and Hermione and all their lot belong to J.K. The Sunnyville crew belong to Joss. I've got nothing. This is simply for fun, not profit.

Feedback: please.

A/N: Still no real bunnies :p Forgive me.

"Okay, okay, okay… Let's just pretend you didn't lose me back at the sweet and sour chicken."

Hermione, Draco, and the Slayer - Faith, she said her name was, making Hermione wish, for not the first time, that she'd studied current events in the Watcher's Council before she and Draco had first gone out - were sitting around the motel room's lopsided table. Faith had been relatively behaved (i.e. nonviolent) so Draco had removed her partial bodybind. This arrangement worked for all of them, as Faith didn't seem the type to sit there and be fed, and Hermione would have been awkward helping feed her, after the straddling incident of earlier.

Malfoy, no doubt, would not have been awkward at all. But Hermione was strangely reluctant to watch Malfoy help the Slayer with the Chinese Hermione had bought to replace their first order.

This order was more than twice as big as the last one. Hermione hadn't known what the Slayer might eat, and she'd been too flustered and preoccupied, at the time, to give it much thought - so she'd ordered a little bit of everything on the Chinese restaurant's menu.

Still, the Slayer had already made her way through two helpings of chicken, much of the mushu pork, and half of the noodles. She was now working on the rice and egg rolls, while Hermione watched in fascination, and Draco fought Faith for the last of the shrimp and dumplings.

"I mean, what's the big deal. So you didn't know the Hellmouth went bye-bye. Now you do. What are you gonna do? Track down everybody who doesn't know how to pick up a phone and tell their mommies?"

Faith spoke around a mouthful of rice and then slurped down a couple of long noodles.

Hermione tried to stay focused on their conversation. She'd only ever seen Seamus Finnigan eat like that.

Draco scoffed at the mention of a telephone, still sore at his failures in using the ECS.

"It isn't really about the Hellmouth. It's politics, partly. The Ministry's been hoping to strengthen its relations with the other Magical communities for some time now. And this doesn't make our chances for doing that look good."

Not good at all. Hermione knew that Minister McGurren had been planning on a series of good-will gestures towards the Conference, in a show of appreciation for their limited support throughout The War with Voldemort. And in an attempt at forging ties that would ensure more than limited support from Magical America in the future. Having his similar intentions towards the Council nullified by the Council's silence on the matter of the closed Hellmouth (or, if what Faith said was true, by the destruction of the Council) would no doubt discourage the Minister personally. But if the Conference knew about what had happened with the Council, and had chosen not to alert the Ministry… Or if, worse, the Conference hadn't known about it either…

"Then there's the little issue of a Hellmouth having closed without anyone at the Ministry having noticed," Draco contributed. While Faith attacked her meal with gusto, and Hermione picked at hers, Draco ate in proper-sized portions, holding his chopsticks with perfect ease and poise. Faith had tossed hers aside when Hermione had handed them to her. "It isn't like the Ministry should have to be told these sorts of things. Closing a Hellmouth is no small feat. There should have been buzz about it all the way across the Atlantic. But there was nothing."

This was the first time Hermione had ever seen Draco speak so openly with someone about which he knew so little. Actually, until recently, Hermione had rarely seen Draco speak openly. As they had been giving Faith the explanations she'd asked for, Draco's sudden loquaciousness had begun to nettle Hermione, although she wasn't sure why.

Then she'd realized. Draco was as nervous about the recent developments as she was. She'd seen it before - how casual Draco behaved under pressure. He didn't flitter around the room, as Hermione sometimes did, or become so lost in thought he nearly ended up buying an entire buffet bar. He strutted, and snarked, and showed off just as he always did. But if you watched him closely, he held himself unusually still; his eyes never mimicked his mouth when he smirked. And he spoke with the straightforwardness of someone aware that something "bad" was coming, and that soon it might not matter what anyone said in the meantime.

"We need to know as much about what happened as possible," Hermione explained, taking up where Draco left off. "So that, if there are…outside forces…affecting our communications with the other communities, they can be dealt with before something unfortunate happens."

Such as an entire Watcher's Council getting itself blown up, without (supposedly) anyone to come to their survivors' aide. Hermione was just beginning to think of what Faith had told them in terms of what it meant for the Council members, and she balked at her own short-sightedness, not having thought of it sooner. All those lives lost, that - perhaps? - could have been prevented. And the families of the Watchers that had died…

…the men and women who'd lost their spouses; their lovers. The children who'd lost their parents…

"Cool. So make a trip to Cleveland. I'm sure Giles can give you the 411. Me, I was just there for the slayage. Not the person to talk to about politics."

Hermione nodded. She'd told Justin everything Faith had told them - about the closing of the Hellmouth, and about where Mr. Giles and his Slayer could be located. As it turns out, Faith was not the Slayer Hermione and Draco had come to America to find. Hermione still thought of her as the Slayer, although - really - a Buffy Summers was reported to be the Council's Chosen One. Faith, and a number of younger girls, as well, had all been activated through a series of strange events - the retelling of which had given Hermione just one more reason to stir the soup in her hands without actually sipping much of it.

"No hard feelings, then?" Draco asked.

Faith shrugged. She and Draco seemed to have come to some sort of understanding while Hermione was out at the restaurant. Hermione could not imagine how.

"Eh. I made you bleed, you fed me. Gave me boots." Faith grinned, wiggling her feet, which were propped up on the sloping side of their table. Draco had given her a pair of vintage army boots to replace the Doc Martens Hermione's book had damaged. "We're cool," Faith said.

"Excellent. Because I'm exhausted," Draco said, dropping his chopsticks into one of the empty paper containers littering the tabletop.

Hermione silently agreed. But wondered if she would get any sleep tonight. Or - technically - this morning. They were supposed to get a final call back at eight a.m., telling them what they were to do next, or if they were simply to return to the Ministry.

The Slayer stood and stretched, arms held high above her head and back arched like a cat's.

"Well. Am I good to go, or what? 'Coz I get kinda cranky when I have to sleep in a chair." She cast a meaningful glance at the chair Hermione and Draco had put her in while she'd been in her bodybind.

"Yes. Yes, of course," Hermione agreed, standing, as well. It wasn't as though she could do anything to stop her, if Faith decided at that moment that she wanted to leave. She had made Hermione and Draco place their wands on the opposite side of the room before unbinding her, to prove that they meant her no harm.

"You're playing us, aren't you?" Draco had said.

Faith had just smiled. "Depends. Are you gonna let me?"

Neither of them had mentioned that Draco could cast a summoning spell wandless. Or that Hermione carried a spare wand. The spare wasn't very accessible, and so wouldn't pose a threat to the Slayer if she tried to flee, anyway.

"Then it's been real. But I've gotta catch some zees. You crazy kids have fun in Cleveland. Give B my best."

Hermione and Draco took Faith's last words to them with as much aplomb as they had her first, at least knowing this time what - or rather, who - the B referred to.

When Faith left, Hermione felt a number of conflicting emotions. Uncertainty, as perhaps they shouldn't have let the Slayer out of their sight so quickly - they couldn't even verify any of her stories; disappointment because Hermione had been in the presence of a Slayer. And the experience had not been as educational as Hermione might have hoped, except in the most surprising ways.

And, finally, Hermione felt relief. She'd been on edge with the Slayer there. When it was just she and Draco again (and didn't that seem strange, to think of it that way) Hermione felt as though she could let down a bit of her guard, and speak more freely.

Then she turned to see what had captured Draco's attention about as soon as they had said their goodbyes to Faith.

He was looking at one of the motel room's beds. The motel room's bed, as the broken frame and ruined mattress nearly blocking the entrance to the bathroom resembled a proper bed no longer.

Hermione couldn't dredge up a response to Draco's querying gaze.

This was just the perfect end to her eveni-… To her early morning.

"Flip you for it?" Draco offered.

Hermione sighed.

"Get some sleep, Malfoy," she said, and lay down on the left side of the bed.

As soon as Faith left the motel room, she found a payphone. She dialled in a number she'd only used once since it had been activated.

"Come on, B," she mumbled to herself, as she listened to the phone ringing. "You are so gonna wanna hear this."

As sure as Hermione had been, before, that she would get no sleep in light of the Hellmouth issue, when she rose from her pillow - later - she couldn't remember having lain her head upon it.

Oddly, she did remember why Draco had been lying on the bed next to her. So when she turned - to find the right side of the mattress warm from having been slept on, the sheets slightly ruffled - she wasn't startled.

However, she was surprised that Draco was up and out of bed.

And then she heard him.

He was on the telephone. And laughing. It was not a pleasant laugh. It was more the type of chuckle Malfoy gave people to emphasize how not funny they were being.

"Oh, really. And are you going to tell her that?"

Draco was standing with his back to the bed, so he hadn't seen that Hermione was awake yet. For that matter, Hermione had just seen him. He must have been in the middle of dressing when the call had come - assuming he hadn't figured out how to place a call on his own. Hermione wondered how the phone's ringing hadn't woken her up.

Then she wondered if she had woken up. Seeing Malfoy shirtless in the morning was not an experience she associated with the waking world.

And she hadn't known that Malfoy had a tattoo like that. During The War, the Order had begun memorizing the Death Eater's descriptions and distinguishing features - fearing Voldemort had developed a way to hide the Dark Mark. Hermione herself had contributed in creating a spell that could cut through glamours, using non-Magical identifying marks alone.

Hermione realized she was staring at Draco's shoulder blades when he turned and saw that she was no longer sleeping.

She would have said something, or expected Draco to hand her the phone, but she had no idea what to say. And, after a moment, Draco seemed to decide on something, and went back to his conversation.

"Fine. But you tell the Director he owes me a bloody big raise for this." Draco hung up the phone.

"And what was that about?" Hermione asked with a dry mouth, finding her voice at last. She kept her eyes resolutely on Draco's face.

Draco had one brow raised, and was pulling on another button-up shirt.

"Looks like we'll be taking a little detour to Los Angeles."

Hermione kicked back the covers she'd been snuggled under, and stood - only momentarily distracted by the discovery that she'd gotten out of her robes and boots, before getting into bed, without realizing it.

"What are we to do in Los Angeles?" she asked.

Hermione couldn't read Draco's expression.

"Play house, apparently," he said. And then, before she could comment on that: "Smith says he thinks they may have found out who's been shielding us from picking up on the fluctuations in mystical energy that have been taking place over here."

The way Draco said that didn't bode well with Hermione.

"And?"

"I don't suppose your Muggle Studies course covered a firm called Wolfram and Hart," Draco replied, in way of an answer.

Meanwhile…

The perception of Muggle Britain as being mired in tradition and old-world sentiment had long been prevalent by the time the current Minister of Magic had taken office.

Not that anyone on the non-Muggle side of London could have said anything about it, one way or the other. There weren't a lot of wizards in the Ministry who knew enough about Muggle pop culture to have formed such an opinion. And the Ministry, itself, had been about as "old-world" as any Magical institution in existence.

But after Phineas McGurren became Minister of Magic…

"Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Auror's Division 315, how may I direct your talk?"

Akilina Kirke leaned back in her chair, at the receptionist's desk of 315, twirling her quill where it levitated above a stack of steno pads and parchment rolls.

She hardly glanced at the wizard whose face appeared in the flames of the miniature fireplace mounted in the corner of her cubicle.

"Yes, I need to speak to Auror Davies, on the f-"

"Fourth floor, office 26B," Akilina recited the room number mechanically. She paused in her twirling, and set down her issue of The Enquisitor, long enough to study the gyrating spheres resting atop the fireplace's narrow mantle. Each of them were silent. The one on the left glowed a mellow gold - the other two shifted from purple to green and back again. The twirling resumed.

"Please hold." Akilina reached into one of the jars sitting in a rack by her desk, and drew out a pinch of bright pink powder to throw into the fireplace. The wizard's face disappeared, replaced almost immediately by another.

"Department of Magical Law Enforcement-"

One of the spheres shrilled. Akilina looked up at it sharply, lowering her tabloid. All of the spheres were glowing an angry orange, with streaks of brown and blue. Akilina blinked and turned to the wizard in the fireplace.

She smiled, widely. "Auror's Division 315," she cooed. The wizard was oblivious to the aura-reading apparatus' response. "How may I direct your talk?"

Akilina screwed off the top of the black jar resting on her powder rack, and reached for the dark red powder inside.

The wizard smiled pleasantly. "Auror Ambrose, please. Second floor, office 13C."

"Right away," Akilina replied, drawing out a pinch of the red powder. It crackled between her fingers…

Then fell back into the jar, as a man's hand wrapped around Akilina's wrist and she let the powder fall.

Akilina turned, ready to hex whoever had dared lay a hand on her, on work-hours or off - then stopped when she saw Harry Potter standing in front of her desk, one brow raised and with his arms now crossed over his chest.

"If you fry another of those," he said smoothly. "We'll never get the smell out of the lobby."

Akilina, for the moment, was placated.

She crossed her arms, in a mimicry of the auror, and shrugged.

"I don't mind the smell of burnt Death Eater. Do you?"

Potter simply looked at her.

"Oh, alright. Don't get your knickers in a twist."

She turned back to the wizard waiting to be connected to Auror Ambrose's office, and threw a pinch of gold powder into the fireplace, rather than the dark red. "It'll be just a moment, sir. Please hold."

The wizard's face disappeared from Akilina's flames, but the spheres on her fireplace's mantle blinked in confirmation that the silent alarm had been tripped. The wizard would shortly be getting a surprise visit, and it wouldn't be from Amanda Ambrose.

Akilina spun in her chair and plucked her quill out of the air.

"So. Potter. Did you need something? Or did you come down here just to stop me from reaching this month's quota?"

Akilina's smile was overly warm, and showed a lot of teeth, and caused Potter to roll his eyes as he seated himself on one corner of Akilina's desk.

"The Ministry doesn't pay us to blow people up, Kirke," Potter replied, rifling through the memos in Akilina's outbox. Many of the missives had been waiting for days for her signature, and a distribution spell, so they jittered within the box restlessly. Potter fished out three memos addressed to himself, receiving a nasty paper cut as one purchase order - anxious to make it's way down to filing - tried latching onto his index finger and failed. Potter frowned at Akilina in irritation, as Akilina ignored him and he sucked on his wounded digit.

"Well, they should. Would liven things up a bit around here. Besides, who foiled that assassination attempt on the HDIMC last month?"

Potter didn't blink. He gathered his memos in one hand, and the diet soda he'd put down (to stop Akilina from sautéing that wizard) with the other.

"Neville and Padma did. After they finished scraping enough Death Eater out of their eyes to chase down the two who sneaked in through the back."

Akilina narrowed her eyes, but returned to her Enquisitor and let the rebuttal go. "Way to flatter a girl's ego, Potter. Keep that up and you'll never get into my pants."

Potter ignored the vulgarity. He headed for the lobby's bay of elevators shaking his head at the Slytherin.

"Oi. And, Potter?"

Potter turned just as Akilina sent another message sailing his way. This one was written on a post-it note, rather than parchment, so it not so much "sailed" as somersaulted towards him - in that lazy way that post-it notes liked to somersault. The message had to be from one of the witches operating the department's phone lines.

Potter plucked it out of the air when it neared him, and he read it, his expression darkening as he did.

Akilina smiled. "You've got a call from the States," she said sweetly, as the face of an elderly witch appeared in her fireplace.

"Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Auror's Division 315. Just a moment, Mrs. Perks, and I'll connect you."

Potter entered the first elevator to arrive at the lobby, forcing his way through the small crowd of people coming off it, and quickly pushed in the number to take him to his office.

The next day, Wolfram & Hart's doors opened bright and early, just as they always did. The lobby was filled with the usual hustle and bustle of a demonically owned law firm/multi-billion dollar cooperation.

The executive boardroom was filled with the firm's most important department heads.

Plus one newly recorporealized, soulled vampire.

"I'm just not sure we can trust him," Angel was saying.

"I'm certain we can't," Wesley told him. "But I'm not certain how long we can hold him if we don't give him a reason to work with us."

"And why do we want him working with us, again?" Gunn asked. Fred smiled at the sentiment, but Lorne responded with a "Here, here."

Spike paused in tapping out a rendition of Heaven Beside Me, on the top of the conference table with Angel's executive pen, long enough to put in his two-cents' worth.

"Well you don't think 'ol Tattoo Boy's stayed alive this long by being stupid, do ya? Seems to me you could make good use of a chap with his knack for pissing off higher powers. Seeing as you lot've got even more mortal enemies than he has."

Angel snatched the pen out of Spike's hand before he could start tapping with it again. Spike stuck his tongue out at him.

The others either pretended not to see, or not to be amused.

Angel indulged in one of his why-is-he-still-here sighs, and leaned back in his chair.

"Okay. Fine. Can we at least remove the tattoos, so it will be easier to keep him here?"

It was Wes, Fred, and Gunn's turn to shift in their seats and sigh. They'd already been over this issue. Twice.

"Not unless we want the Senior Partners to find him and send him to Hell…" Wes replied, in a patient voice which - coming from Wes - wasn't really patient at all. It was cautionary.

Angel snorted. He threw up his hands in mock horror. "Oh, no! Not that," he quipped. Fred giggled.

Wes gave Angel a stern look. "…which would make it impossible for him to help us take them down. And would completely defeat the purpose of our having kept him here, rather than let him leave LA again."

"To cause who knows how much more trouble," Angel muttered. He didn't notice, but Wes and Fred looked up, and Lorne turned, as the conference room door opened and Harmony slipped in, with an apologetic wave.

"He'd be working strictly in an advisory capacity," Gunn was saying. "Contract employee. He wouldn't, technically, even be part of the firm. He'd answer to you."

"Excuse me," Lorne said - cutting off Harmony, who had just opened her mouth to speak.

"Uh, Boss-"

"But isn't this the guy who wants to kill you? So badly he got himself all painted up just to come back here and unleash some big nasty in the basement?"

Wes and Gunn exchanged a glance.

"He won't like it," Wes admitted.

"But if the choice is between working for you and Hell…" Gunn began.

"I'd chose Hell," Spike said, cheerily, earning him another of Angel's glares.

Gunn coughed to hide a snicker.

"Um… Boss?"

Angel didn't look up, assuming Harmony had brought him the mug of blood he'd ordered.

"Just set it on the table, Harmony," he said, shuffling through some of his papers.

He set them back down again. "I'm tired of talking about this. Where are we with the Haklaar case?"

Fred piped up, as Harmony lingered in the background, looking uncertainly at Angel, and then through the doorway behind her.

"I've, uh, finished testing those sonar-resistant tracking devices you wanted. They're good to go. We can have them in place in a day."

Angel nodded, glad for once that something seemed to be going right.

Angel looked at Wes and Wes also nodded.

"Do it," Angel said. Fred scribbled a little note on her palm pilot.

"Boss…"

"Those trade negotiations with the Ga'Rod are going to take a while, though," Gunn reported. "I'm supposed to meet their Shaide this evening. Would help if I had a little something to bring with me to sweeten the deal."

"We aren't going to give them anyone's firstborn, Gunn."

"That goes without saying. But real estate's got some empty property up in the Hills. The Ga'Rod have been looking for a new breeding ground for a while, so-"

"Boss."

Angel and the others looked up at Harmony's uncharacteristic outburst.

Harmony looked startled by it, too. "Oh. Sorry," she said. Then stood there.

"Harmony," Angel finally asked. "What is it?"

"Your ten a.m. is here," Harmony told him, "and he's-"

"Rather anxious to get started," an unfamiliar voice spoke, as a young man walked into the room.

He was well-groomed and dressed in a dark, expensive suit. He had light eyes and white-blonde hair, and something about him made Angel sit up straight in his seat. Beside him, Spike had tensed, as well.

"I hear you buy babies," the man said, with a smile.

tbc…