"Wake up sleepyhead! Lots to do!" Veronica growled darkly and threw her pillow in the general direction of the voice. Upon opening her eyes she realized why she had been so eager to stay asleep. A rich purple comforter, much like the one that Wonka slept under, was covering her. She had no idea where it came from, but she had a sneaking suspicion… He was standing over her, threatening to jab her with his cane again, should she refuse to get up immediately. She threw a dirty look directly into his blue velvet eyes and crawled to her feet.
"Sleep well?"
"Yes." Veronica said tartly.
"Well, that's a surprise."
"The best kind of prize is a surprise." Veronica said mockingly.
"I'll have that back now." Wonka said, pointing at the crumpled velvet comforter now lying on the floor.
"Why? You apparently gave it to me. You can have it back when I leave."
"I'm not letting you get any ideas into that pretty little noggin of yours about going back to sleep." He said nonchalantly, snatching it up off the floor. Veronica snorted.
"Now, I'll leave you to get ready, there's a shower somewhere in this building, take the elevator, it'll be faster." And with that, he disappeared down the hall, going who knows where to do who knows what. Veronica sincerely hoped he wouldn't be waiting to ambush her in the shower with fresh towels. But he wasn't. She appeared in paradise 20 minutes later feeling quite refreshed. He was waiting for her, gloved fist at the ready to knock on the Bucket's door for breakfast.
The next few days seemed to go much the same. They worked late into the night, skipped every meal but breakfast, and spent so much time running about the factory; Veronica thought she must certainly have memorized the way around by now. It didn't occur to her that the locations of several rooms seemed to change daily. The second night she had actually fallen asleep in the fudge room and awoken in a room that produced chocolate dipped pretzels. Her location hadn't changed one iota, and she knew it from the look of sheer delight on Wonka's face.
"The fudge room is always the pretzel room on Thursdays!" He had exclaimed. "But I never had the excuse to fall asleep here on a Wednesday night!" He looked around gleefully and then practically dragged Veronica from the room to go down to breakfast.
On the third day, they discovered the "guest room". The Oompa Loompas had apparently taken the liberty of constructing one in the middle of the second day, when there was a lull in the action, but hadn't bothered to tell anyone until Veronica looked like she was about to fall off her feet. The Oompa Loompas had to end up carrying her to bed; Wonka wouldn't touch her under most normal circumstances.
The chocolate shamrocks were not going well. As predicted, the first one caused the unlucky test Oompa Loompa to be able to speak nothing but Mandarin Chinese… And it failed to wear off in 24 hours as promised. The second test chocolate produced an unusual Romanian dialect, which pleased Wonka immensely because 'they were getting closer.' Veronica completely failed to see his logic here. Worse, he no longer seemed to need her around and took to ignoring her for long stretches of the day, even when she attempted to speak to him. By Midnight the night before Valentine's Day, the chocolate's effects wore off in 24 hours, and better still, the Oompa Loompas were now speaking a Cockney accent which had Wonka overjoyed. He actually allowed Veronica to slip off to bed, and better still, gave her a half-hearted 'goodnight' before she went. This was the most attention she had gotten since breakfast the morning previous. She hadn't forgotten about the next day, however, and hoped that his two words to her that night were a sign of better things to come.