Boo. I went to the land of federal moose and bears, so that's why it's taken me so long to get this chapter in.

The sun had sunk low towards the horizon by the time the bus had reached the city. It had been absolutely boring and bloody annoying with that bitch Hermione always shooting him the daggers. Why the hell did they have to take the Muggle bus when something like the Knight bus was so much faster? Then again, the Knight bus was filthy and not something he would demote himself to. The Muggle bus was just as bad, it smelled awful, had who knows what all over the seats, and there were actually real living breathing muggles there too. The horror of it.

At the moment they were crowded together in a tight hallway, amid loads of numbered doors. Draco had never seen anything like it, and thank god because it was blank and hideous. Apparently, from the little snippet of conversation he had listened to, this place was called an apartment building, a muggle torture pit more like. Who would want to actually live in this place? There was nothing. No wonder muggle suicide rates were so high.

Someone pressed a key into his hand with the number 109 inscribed into its key chain. The short annoying brunette was still chatting away in the midst of the crowd but he wasn't really listening anyway. No one noticed when he left. No one came after him when he turned the corner. No one tapped on his shoulder when he turned the key in door 109. Ah, the bliss of invisibility.

It was dark inside, except for the last rays of the sun grazing against the window. 'How do they expect us to live here if there's no light?' He wondered. Even in his prison of a room there was light. This sucked. And so he had to wait for a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

In the fading light he could see a couch facing a stand with an odd box with a screen of black glass sitting on it. Odd what these muggles use for decoration. He traced his finger along the box with boredom, feeling the cool glass slid across the pads of his fingers. At the bottom panel there was a series of little bumps that could move. This was fascinating. Almost like a game. He pressed them one by one. Nothing happened. So he continued to press them.

Suddenly there was a bright flash and something was moving across the screen. He jumped with surprise. There was a face looking straight at him as if he was in trouble. It was starting to scare him. He hid behind the couch and crouched there for a bit before coming back up. The thing was still staring at him, and started saying something about someone being killed, showing images of a body. He pressed the buttons frantically trying to get it to go away. The screen changed and there were lots of loud banging noises coming from the box. The buttons didn't seem to be working right, so he kept on slamming them down. The bangs kept on getting louder and louder until the thing was vibrating. The noise was defending.

He ran into the next room and shut the door tightly. The noise was still coming through the walls but it was muffled. He sighed, brushing the bleach blonde hair out of his eyes. There was a small white tub in the corner with a faucet. Ah, finally something that looked familiar. Water flowed out as he turned the knobs. He sat back and watched it slowly fill the tub. The roaring of the falling water drowned out the sound coming from the box, which was good. Plumbing was something he could understand.

He opened the door and went into the next room, leaving the water running. In this room there was a nice large bed. It looked safe enough to sleep in, although he didn't entirely trust the muggle mind. Anyway, he flopped onto the bed and promptly fell asleep.

Ginny was sitting in the dark unpacking her bags when someone knocked on the door. She groaned at the mess laying around her knees, it would never be put away if people kept on interrupting her. The knock came again, this time it was sharper, as if impatient.

"Coming!" She cried out unnecessarily as she stomped over to the door and threw it open.

The exotic looking redhead was leaning against her door frame with a bored expression on her face. At first she didn't say anything, just stood there as if she wanted to freak Ginny out with her unwavering gaze. Finally she gave a slow blink.

"Hey, I'm Lisa." The American accent was really thick and sounded sort of blockish, if that made any sense. Her hand didn't extend itself out in a friendly gesture, her lips didn't smile, she just closed her mouth when she finished talking. Ginny had decided that this woman was really unpracticed at being social or this was social in America. Stupid Americans.

"Ginny." She decided that since Lisa didn't stick out her hand it wouldn't be good to stick out hers. Um, so yeah, that was it? That was all she had come to say? What sort of Bullshit was that? She shifted uncomfortably, unsure of what to do.

The words came again, slowly, but deliberate and unfaltering. "Yeah, listen, one of the muggles in this building has something that makes you see stuff that isn't there. Its not magic but it sounds good. Come with?"

"You mean do I want to go and hallucinate? With you? Right now? Okay sounds good." She wasn't entirely sure of what was going on, but getting away from the mess would be a good thing. On the bright side she had just met someone new, and someone not from Hogwarts, thank the lord. The double blessing was that Draco seemed to have disappeared. If she remembered him correctly, and she did, he was hell on legs. Now, he just was a recluse. Hallelujah.

Lisa leaned forward and moved something on the wall next to the door. The lights flashed on and for a second Ginny was blinded. She careened into a corner of the coffee table. It jabbed hard into her shin and she fell over flat onto the carpet. "Ow fuck. What the hell did you do?" Ginny groaned.

"Jesus Christ, you've taken muggle studies and you've never heard of light switches? Grab your purse." She seemed to have perked up considerably but still wasn't smiling. Her black/red hair bounced against her back as she stepped outside the room.

The pads of her fingers were splayed out onto the rough carpet. Ginny repeated for the last time a groan and let the little fibers scratch against her cheek as she lifted her head.

"I'm not Jesus, I'm Ginny. Who's Jesus?" She scrambled after the retreating figure, only stopping to grab her purse and close the door behind her.

"You live in a country where the king was the head of the church and you've never heard of Jesus Christ." Lisa walked ahead with a bemused expression on her face. As Ginny raced up beside her the dark faced girl turned and shot her a look that made Ginny think that there was something going on.

"Church?"

Lisa stopped and faced Ginny. "Okay, you're obviously clueless about Muggles. Jesus Christ is just something you say when you're annoyed or skeptical, we'll just leave it at that."

"Oh, okay." They resumed walking in silence until they reached a wooden door at the end of the hall. It was deeply indented into the wall and beside it was a pair of buttons, which she didn't notice until Lisa pressed one of them. A light inside the top button lit up and there was a loud DING which made Ginny jump involuntarily and earned her another glance from her new friend. She smiled weakly at Lisa when suddenly the door slid open. Ginny would have started again, but she had no time to because she was dragged inside the box within. The presence of Lisa made her a little less jumpy but as the doors shut she realized she was sealed in, and so she screamed.

"Shut up!" Lisa slapped Ginny hard across the face, which caused the scream to cut short with surprise. "You're hurting my eardrums. Do yourself a favor and calm down."

Ginny swallowed hard and fought to remain calm, and it was an utter shock to both of them that when the box started moving she jumped again, except this time out of excitement. "I KNOW what this is! I've heard about these things. This is SO cool."

"Yeah? What's it called?"

"A MICROWAVE."

The dark skinned red head snorted. "This would be an elevator."

"Right." She smiled faintly at her mistake. This was making her feel really stupid, and she never felt really stupid.

The ding came again right before the doors rolled open. It was hardly as if they had moved at all; the layout was similar with blank walls and a patterned rug that decorated hotel room floors. Ginny was confused at the fact that they were the same and so while Lisa left the elevator Ginny stayed, expecting that they were on the wrong floor.

The doors had rolled closed again before Lisa noticed that Ginny wasn't following her. So she was forced to go back and hit the button again in the hopes that the elevator hadn't moved yet, luckily it hadn't. Ginny was forced to experience another wave of humiliation when she realized her mistake and so couldn't do much but follow Lisa down the hall with a bowed head and an unhappy expression on her face.

"First time for everything," said Lisa with a trace of sympathy. "Alright, just follow my lead when we go in. No Microwave references, Jesus Christ references, or anything you don't know about. You're allowed to talk about anything else when we're actually on the stuff." Her finger caught the underside of Ginny's chin, raising it slightly, which caused Ginny to smile again. This only caused the expression that lay lightly on Lisa's face to deaden, so she stopped immediately.

Lisa put her mouth directly in front of the viewing hole as she said "Knock knock!", which was followed instantly by a collective chorus of "Who's there?"

"You know who's here you crack heads open up the fucking door," and emphasized her point by jamming her shoulder against the door with a thud.

There was scrabbling behind the door, and then the face of a 20 something punk wannabe greeted them with an overly jolly smile and "Uh, hullo, I didn't order pizza." Lisa sighed and pushed past him forcing Ginny to follow suit. Farther back there was someone rolling on the floor giggling helplessly at nothing and then a pair of faceless people who were having a conversation entirely made up of agreeing with each other.

Ginny realized she was staring and moved over quickly to the couch where Lisa was already helping herself to the contents of a plastic bag.

"Here you go." Without looking at her, Lisa shoved a piece of what looked like a mushroom into her hand. Ginny looked at it curiously, but when Lisa stuck it into her mouth she followed, not stopping to see if she actually had swallowed it or not. Almost immediately afterwards she barfed it right back out which caused Lisa to jump up, trying to avoid the mess.

The bitter taste in her mouth was overwhelming, although better than the taste of the mushroom, which was definitely the most disgusting thing she had ever tasted. Well, not really, but it came close to some of the more interesting flavors of Bernie Bott's Every Flavored Beans. "That was disgusting." She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth out of habit.

Of course, Lisa still had the mushroom held between her lips. "Well, you're not supposed to eat it alone. Eat it on a nacho."

"A what?"

Instead of rolling her eyes, Lisa let her eyes anchor themselves on Ginny before turning and placing the mushroom on a yellowish chip and handing it back to her. "Eat that."

Ginny looked a little skeptical but this time she swallowed it without difficulty. She could still taste it but it wasn't as strong, and so manageable. Nothing happened; she turned and looked at Lisa. "Everything seems normal, I'm not seeing anything."

"What? You thought you would just pop it in and see things? Wait for like fifteen minutes. When you feel it, you feel it."

Four hours later she was still on the couch giggling uncontrollably at the bubbles rising in her drink. Everything was so bright, moving and swirling in dimensions she had never seen before. This was so cool. There was so much going on she could hardly remember half of the details.

"HEY." Lisa danced over with a strange walk, as if the ground was rolling beneath her, and yelled into Ginny's ear. "I gotta crash, "she paused to giggle, "Let's go back."

"Mwhahahahaha," Ginny let out, which made Lisa collapse into a bout of uncontrollable laughter again.

"Tango train!" Lisa started dancing again over to the door and soon the whole room was following her in a strange little march. They went out the door, through the hall, and into the elevator, where the chain fell apart. Ginny attempted to climb the walls of the elevator and when she jumped she was caught by the whole group. She stayed in their hands and over their heads as they carried her to her room and dropped her with a thump to the floor in front of her door. One of the guys started screaming, and ran around the corner with his hands trying to rip out his hair. Lisa ran after him with another guy from the apartment who was trying to attach himself to her ear unsuccessfully because his mouth kept on missing. The last one ran around the corner but was followed by a loud crash which made Ginny think that maybe she would find him again the next morning.

She giggled as she searched for her key, which she didn't find, but that was okay because the door was open anyway. It took her another few minutes to discover this and push it open.

With half closed eyes she made her way to the bedroom, stepping over the contents of her bag that she hadn't managed to put up yet. In the dark room she grabbed her pjs and stripped off what she had with little care, letting the pieces of clothing land on their chosen places around the room. She lifted the sheet and then felt her hand brush against something that felt hard, or at least firm. It looked like a person, that was odd. Just to make sure, she prodded the intruder, who showed little sign that he felt it.

"hu-LLO!" She yelled into the sleeping person's ear.

The person jerked up and it was suddenly apparent who the person was, although Ginny's present state of mind wasn't able to find too much offense in the person. And so she moved over the other side where she climbed in, only to be pushed off, which didn't mean much except that she fell asleep on the floor.

Tulzdavampslayer: BOOM! Chunks of Hermione fly by Mwhahahahaha

Ex Driver Liz: Don't be worried about Draco, he likes himself better that way.

Brone & Alise Devay: HULLO MY CHUMS!!!!!!!!! Isn't Draco sexy? Mmmm...licking my lips but Snape is even sexier (although his neck just doesn't compare)