Life's a Beach

Draco Malfoy

Yeah, so I let Granger talk me into going to the beach. And I'll admit… it wasn't as horrid as I thought it would be.

One of the first things I noticed was the attire. Everyone was wearing practically nothing. Since Granger didn't have "swim suits" for the girls and me, I felt out of place. Granger was wearing a little stretchy top thing that didn't cover much of anything, and a little skirt that had tropical flowers on it. Stella and Luna wore floral sundresses, so they blended in better than I did. I was wearing these "shorts" things and a shirt Granger had in her apartment. She said they were Ron's, but she didn't want them anymore.

"Are you hungry?" She asked as we walked down the boardwalk. There were so many new words that it became hard to get used to them all!

"A little." I admitted, and Stella and Luna both screamed that they were starving.

So, I blindly followed Granger to a booth where a woman was waiting to take our order.

"We'll have four cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, a funnel cake, a small bag of cotton candy, and four cokes." Granger said eloquently.

"What's all that stuff you ordered?" I asked, perplexed.

"It's stereotypical beach food." She replied. "You'll love it."

When the tray came out of the window a few minutes later, Stella and Luna's eyes went wide. They reached for the bag of fluffy pink and blue clouds, but Granger swatted their arms away. "That's dessert!" She scolded.

We walked over to the beach and sat down on a towel Granger brought in her bag. She handed all of us a mysterious object wrapped in silver foil. Then she gave Stella and Luna a red and white cardboard box and placed a second one between herself and me. Then she gave us all our drinks—cokes—the only thing I'd actually had before. The muggle soda was popular at Hogwarts, so I'd had several in my lifetime.

I opened my foil and looked at it. There were two pieces of bread with lettuce, cheese, and beef in between them. It didn't look that bad. Granger gave me a packet of red sauce to put on it.

Nervously, I took a bite. It was one of the best things I'd ever eaten! Luna and Stella looked delighted, and they downed their burgers in about a minute. I watched Granger take a "French Fry" out of the carton and dip it in "Ketchup" and then eat it. So, I imitated her.

"These things are good." I announced. "But why are they called 'French' fries? Did the French invent them?" I asked, stuffing another one into my mouth.

Granger laughed. "No, actually, the Belgians did."

"Then why are they called French fries?" Stella asked, as confused as I was.

Granger shrugged.

After we finished the main course, I started on some funnel cake. That was oily and sugary… and Luna loved it. "Daddy?" She asked, pulling on my arm. "Can we get these every day?"

Granger laughed. "Luna, your teeth would fall out if you ate that every day!"

Stella, however, was delighting herself with cotton candy. "Try this, Luna!" She said, shoving a pink clump at her sister. "It's really good!"

Luna agreed, so I ripped a piece off. "Gross!" I muttered, spitting it out in the sand. "This is too sweet!"

"Who would've thought Malfoy didn't have a sweet tooth?" Granger giggled.

"This is too sugary for its own good." I said, sipping soda to get the taste out of my mouth.

After we ate, Granger led us to the shore. We walked along the ocean, and I never saw Granger happier. Her long, curly hair was blowing behind her, and the ocean spray was lightly splashing her face. She bent down to pick up a seashell. It was long and curly, with speckles of pink in it.

Luna found a smooth piece of blue glass on the shoreline. "What's this?" She asked, holding it up to Granger.

"That's fairy glass." She said with a smile. "The fairies take glass that gets lost in the ocean, and they make it smooth and soft and then they put it on the shore for people to find."

I was almost amused at this story. Granger was good with children, I noticed, and she had some imagination. "Here, Hermione." Luna said, holding the glass out to Granger. "You can have this."

"Thank you." Granger smiled and pocketed the glass.

Granger looked through her bag and then pulled out a yellow disc. "Hey, Malfoy! Catch!"

She tossed the disk—a Frisbee, I later learned—in my direction.

I caught it easily, and threw it to Stella. I caught on quickly. "Hey, Hermione?" Stella asked, a confused look on her face. "Why do you and my dad always call each other by your last names?"

I gulped. Granger looked uncomfortable. "Well," I started, not sure what I would say. "We did that in school, so it's sort of a habit."

"Oh." She said, tossing the Frisbee to Luna.

"Were you friends in school?" Stella asked innocently.

"Not really." Granger said slowly, tossing the Frisbee back to me.

I threw her a glance. I felt like I should say something. I didn't know what, though. "Uh," I sputtered stupidly, still holding the Frisbee. "Granger and I were from opposing houses and we didn't really get along."

I knew it would raise more questions. I mentally smacked myself. "You were in Slytherin, right?" Stella asked. "So Hermione was in…" she paused, trying to remember the Hogwarts history I used to tell her before she went to bed. "Gryffindor?" She guessed with uncertainty.

"Exactly." I said to her.

"So you were enemies?" Luna asked bravely.

"I guess you could say that." Granger said, throwing the Frisbee to me again. I was getting tired of this.

"What else can you do here?" I asked, holding the Frisbee by my side.

"We can go to the boardwalk and play cheesy games that no one can win." Granger suggested.

"Okay!" Stella and Luna cheered simultaneously.

And so, we went down the boardwalk again and I noticed the sun was beginning to lower into the sky. As we neared the amusement park section, the sun had almost completely set. Granger fumbled through her pockets for coins. She handed a stack of quarters to Stella and Luna and pointed them in the direction of the games. They skipped off happily, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the prizes to be won.

I pulled a piece of gold from my pocket and headed towards an interesting looking game with balloons tacked to a wall. "Uh, Malfoy?" Granger asked slowly. "You can't hand a muggle a piece of gold!" She took the gold from me and gave me a wad of paper bills. She explained each one's value to me and then I walked to the booth.

"Try your luck at the impossible balloon challenge!" The man behind the counter said in an odd voice. Granger assured me that this was normal at amusement parks… all the people had weird voices. It was a requirement or something.

"What do I have to do?" I asked, looking at the balloons.

"All you gotta do is take these here darts and toss them at these here balloons." The man explained. "And you pop them, and the prize you win remains on the board."

I placed the right amount of bills on the counter and the man scooped them up greedily. He handed me ten darts and wished me luck. I threw the first one and missed. The next five missed, too. I was wondering why this was so hard! The seventh dart missed. And the eighth, ninth, and tenth darts all missed as well. I angrily dug through my pockets and placed more money on the counter. I hated losing, and when people said something was "impossible," it made me try much harder than the average person to prove them wrong.

I repeated this process almost four times. On my third try, ninth dart, I finally struck a balloon! I won a "super large" prize—an ungodly large pink bear. I lugged the huge thing around the park, looking and feeling like an idiot.

"Wow!" Luna exclaimed when she saw me with the bear. "That's neat! All Stella won was a tiny blue rubber duck!"

Again, I got board of this whole thing, so I handed the bear to Luna and she struggled to carry it around. It was almost as large as she was!

"Where'd Granger go?" I asked Stella, who was trying to toss a ball at a bunch of glass jars.

"They must glue these damn things together!" She muttered under her breath.

"Hey, watch your mouth!" I said, playfully whacking Stella in the head.

"Sorry." She muttered, throwing another ball. "And I don't know where Hermione is." She said, stressing Granger's name.

"Watch your sister." I said as I rushed off to find Granger.

I walked in the direction of the rides Granger described earlier. Some whizzed my quickly, and others calmly floated into the sky. It was the closest thing to magic in the muggle world. I read the sign that said "Ferris Wheel," and thought it looked like fun. I turned to look for my daughters, but the carnival games had vanished from sight.

I got on line and then I spotted Granger a few people in front of me. "Hey!" I scolded, running to catch up with her. "What're you doing, going on this ride?"

"I can't resist the Ferris Wheel." She sighed, looking up at it. "I used to go on all the time when I was little."

"Of course." I muttered. "I want to go on."

"Are you afraid of heights?" She asked, a smile playing at her lips.

"Of course not!" I laughed. "Granger, I played Quidditch!"

She nodded.

The line moved quickly, and we were soon getting into a seat together. "Will the girls be alright alone?" She asked nervously.

"Sure." I reassured her. "They've been trying to knock down these stupid glass jars for the past half hour."

She smiled, and the ride lurched into action. It was slow-moving, but the thing sure did go high! Suddenly, it stopped, with us at the top. "Uh… Granger?" I asked nervously, looking at my dangling feet. "Is it supposed to do that?"

"Yep." She said happily. "More people are getting on under us." She turned and looked at me. "Are you having fun?" She asked, smiling. I noticed for the first time that she had a beautiful smile. Stop thinking like that! A voice inside me demanded.

"Surprisingly, yes." I said slowly. "Elizabeth isn't going to be happy with me."

Granger shrugged. "I don't know what you see in her." She said boldly.

I was at a lost for words. What did I see in her? Sure, she was gorgeous and she did have great social skills… but she was a bit of an air headed snob. "Malfoy Inc. needs her." I said under my breath.

"So you're marrying someone you don't like just because your company needs her?" Granger asked, trying to understand.

The ride was moving again. It lurched downhill, and we were almost on the ground. I wondered if that was all the ride did.

"Well, yes and no." I replied. "She's also completely gorgeous."

"I get it." Granger said, smirking. "You're marrying her for her looks!"

"Uh… would you believe me if I denied that?" I asked, noticing that I could see Stella and Luna from that height. They were still at that bottle game. Luna was still lugging around that huge pink bear.

"No." She said, amused. "But I do think you're just the same person you were in school—chasing girls for their looks and nothing else."

I argued, "That's unfair, Granger." But I knew it really was true. "I liked you for a while; mostly because of your intelligence level."

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. In a normal situation, I would've run away. But this was far from normal—I was trapped on top of a circular muggle thing.

Her mouth dropped. "Me?" She asked, eyes wide. Another one of her greatest features… those never-ending brown eyes. Ah! Stop it with those damn mental voices!
"No." I said with a smirk, recovering from my slip of the mouth. "I just said that to get a reaction. This ride is awfully dull."

She slapped me on the back of the head. "You were scaring me for a minute there!"

Yeah, that irritating voice in my head agreed. You were scaring me, too, Draco.

After the Ferris Wheel Incident—it deserves capital letters, believe me!—we found the girls and went for a final walk by the water.

For some reason (probably boredom), I scooped his palm in the ocean and threw my small handful of water at Granger. She froze. "Malfoy!" She screeched, lunging at me.

Luna laughed, and Stella smirked.

She picked up water in her hand and splashed me with it. My hair flopped over when the water hit my gel.

"Oh, that does it!" I exclaimed, picking her up and throwing her gently into the waves.

"You—you---" She screeched, unable to use the word she was thinking. But I had a pretty good idea she was attempting so say something along the lines of bastard.

"Cat got your tongue, Granger?" I asked, smirking.

"No, but my clothes are soaked!" I looked at her shirt, which was sticking to her body. "And it's cold out now!"

"Oh, poor you." I sympathized sarcastically. "Take my sweater." I offered her my shirt, and she hesitantly slipped it on.

If only I would've stopped looking at Granger. Maybe then I would've seen Stella's face. She had that expression she always showed when she thought of a really good idea. If I would've seen her face, it would've saved me a lot of trouble later.

Author's Note: Hurrah for FOUR pages of fluff! That was mostly pointless, but it needed to happen for plot development and such. In the next chapter, you'll get to see more of my hatred for the Weasleys as well as some things from Stella's point of view. Then the plot majorly thickens… beware for some angst! Keep those reviews a comin'!