Oh my God, Veronica, what did you just do? The thought reverberated in her mind for some time. She and Wonka were still sitting out in the snowbank, but the cold was all but forgotten. She was distantly aware that he had removed his hat, and was trying to brush the remainder of the wet snow out of it. Finally, he popped it back on his head with a smile.

"Well, come on! We can't afford to dilly or dally, now can we? We have work to do!" He said, somewhat overbrightly. He seized Veronica by the wrist and pulled her to her feet, leading her to the door. Veronica was numb. She had just dropped a bombshell, on herself as much as on him, and he was just going to try and shrug it off and pretend everything was fine?

"Wait." Veronica stammered, pulling him to a halt.

"We won't get anything done if you don't move those feet!" Wonka said, false grin plastered on his cheeks.

"I don't care if we sit out in this snowbank all day. You're gonna talk to me." Veronica insisted. "Now, I don't know about you, but I'm a little weirded out by that last conversation."

"Poppycock." Wonka said cheerfully, yanking her forward.

"Willy…"

"Veronica…" He imitated her… poorly. "I have work to do, are you coming, or do I have to send you home?"

"I don't know! You tell me."

"Are ya gonna help, or just stand there psychoanalyzing the past half hour?" Wonka shot back. His eyes were boring into her.

"Wouldn't it help if I psychoanalyzed?"

"Nope. What's done is done and you can't change that, not one little bit. So if you're gonna come with me, you'd better just put it out of mind. We've got a busy day ahead of us!" And once again, he yanked on her wrist and pulled her up the steps and into the factory.

"By the way, you're gonna want to change into something dry. Of course… I could just throw you into the room where we shrink-wrap all the fancy shmancy boxed chocolates… but you'd come out with a nasty sunburn." He giggled, then walked away, leaving her in the front foyer alone. Ten minutes later he was back, dry and neat, with not a hair out of place, carrying a large box in his arms.

"Here. It's just a prototype, and no guarantees it'll fit you, but try it on!" And Wonka steered her to the guestroom. Soon after, she stepped out, wearing a duplicate of the clothes she had originally visited the factory in.

"Oh good! It fits. Nothing's melting, ripped?" Wonka looked her up and down, made her turn in a circle like a model on the runway, and then smiled.

"Ummm… why did you have a copy of my uniform?" Veronica asked.

"Well, I had to test it on somebody!" Wonka grinned.

"And what exactly is this made of?" Veronica indicated the skirt. To her surprise, in response, Wonka popped the top button off her shirt and stuck it in his mouth. Well, buttoning that top button always made her look stuffy anyway…

"Spun sugar. Isn't it just neat, keen, super-cool, and groovy?"

"No… it's creepy. Why would I want to eat my clothes?"

"Well, my idea wasn't originally for whole clothes." Wonka smiled. "But I just HAD to find out if it was possible. Mostly I wanted to know about things like… zippers."

"…Zippers?"

"Yeah, you know, for those kids that suck on the zipper on their winter coats. When they have a scarf on and… Am I the only one that ever did that?" Wonka asked, sheepishly. "Charlie may just have been humoring me when he said it was a good idea…" He looked thoughtfully at Veronica for a moment.

Veronica was staring at the candymaker. He really was hopeless…

"If the zipper's made of sugar and you eat the zipper pull off, how are you supposed to undo it?" She asked dryly.

"I dunno!" Wonka said brightly. "We haven't gotten that far in tests yet!"

Veronica shook her head. Wonka snatched her by the wrist and pulled her off.

"Well, come on. Time to go, we don't have all day… Well, we do have all day, but we need to spend it working!" Wonka smiled. "Tell me if anything starts melting." He added, with just a hint of a sinister glint to his eye.

Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka, the amazing Chocolatier...

Veronica managed to make it through the day in the spun sugar clothing. She experienced no wardrobe malfunctions, nothing melted, but Wonka had the decidedly bad habit of snatching bits of extra candy from her ensemble. By the end of the day he had apparently decided that a high collared look just didn't suit Veronica, for he was slowly and meticulously ripping off bits of the collar. By dinner time, he led her back to the guestroom, made her change back into the clothes she arrived in, (Now dry) and sat at a table for the rest of the day, snipping off bits of the sugar fabric and staring at his creation, scratching his chin. Finally, when he made Veronica model it again, the skirt was a good six inches shorter, no longer down to her knees, and the shirt had had a complete makeover. He had apparently melted the entire front and reshaped it so that there were no more buttons, and it had a rather dramatic V-neckline.

"Wonka meets Armani?" Veronica grinned as she modeled the clothes again.

"What's an Armani?" Wonka asked. Veronica shook her head.

"You can keep those. I'd recommend an airtight container in the fridge for no more than a month, but… I guess it's up to you."

Veronica smiled. What was she going to do with spun sugar clothes? But she took them home anyway.