Disclaimer: Anything you recognize does not belong to me.

"Anything simple always interests me." - David Hockney

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which Hermione succumbs to the power of wedding magazines and Draco is insensitive...

September 24, 2003

"Finite Incantato" Hermione waved her wand over her shoulders and watched, with a certain amount of satisfaction, as the halter dress melted into her favorite blue sweater and jeans.

The nightlife at Diagon Alley is something unlike the nightlife in any other part of the world. For one, all the nightclubs, which aren't there during the day but which appear at eight and disappear at four, expel pounding techno beats, elated trumpet squeals, and screaming guitar solos. The congealed sound gives the streets a kind of unearthly soundtrack that blares, bleary-eyed, into the wee hours of the morning. Dancing along to this pell-mell harmony are the mélange and spawn of midnight. Glitter children mingle with head bangers and women in long black evening gowns still clutching their opera glasses, creating a glittering mass of incompatible dialects and slang. They duck under swinging arms and ooh and ah over street performers of an unparalleled caliber, street performers who dance on top of two-man-high platform shoes and swing shimmering flags in rainbow colored patterns while calling to passersby that they ought to go into such-and-such club, or dance the night away over a cold bottle of some-or-other wine. The effect of all this glitter is to make one feel sickly as though one has been thrown smack into the middle of a Baz Luhrmann film gone terribly terribly wrong.

"You haven't changed your hair back," Draco remarked, pulling on one of her soft brown curls.

"Are you saying my hair wasn't this pretty before you messed around with it?" she teased, playfully pushing his hand away from her hair.

"Not at all," he replied hurriedly.

"Good." She laughed, watching as a group of teens in feather boas and sparkly go-go boots danced by. "Shall we go then?"

"Where? The sky is clear, we've got galleons to spare, the night is young."

"Is it?"

"It is."

"Let's… erm, well… if we could just..."

"Of course we could see if Flourish and Blotts is open Granger, why didn't you ask before?"

"There's no need to tease. I like to read," said Hermione. He looked dubious, but nonetheless snaked a keen arm around her shoulders and lead her down the street, swiveling under a pair of magenta stilts and then turning so that they were face-to-face with the bookstore, which easily dwarfed the buildings around it.

Flourish and Blotts was, indeed, open, much to Hermione's pleasure and Draco's annoyance. She ignored this and surged inside, dragging him along behind her.

The inside of Flourish and Blotts was a montage of bookshelves that brushed the unattainably high ceiling. Hermione had, of course, been here numerous times but the sheer size of it all always shocked her. She took a deep breath of the air that reeked of knowledge (which oddly enough smelled like a blend of coffee and peppermints) and set off at a very fast walk towards the sign reading "TRANSFIGURATION: Aardvarks to Alligators". He considered stopping her but then seemed to think better of it and headed off in the other direction, to a much dinger, much less polished corner labeled simply "THE DARK ARTS".

Hermione ran one finger along the books as she went, raising a cloud of dust from one very mean looking book as she passed. "aardvark… acid… addition… afterwards…" she muttered, stopping in front of a shelf labeled clearly "A. I.: Artificial Intelligence". The books on this particular shelf were shiny and new and looked as though they'd never been touched at all. She pointed at random and pulled a book entitled "Brains Where There Oughtn't Be: A Study in Soul Transference." She drew it, with all the air of a child at a candy store, off the dust-free shelf and flipped it open to somewhere in the middle. "Many instances of soul transference have been discovered as of late, resulting from the recent demise of He-who-still-must-not-be-named and yada yada yada…" She slammed it shut and slid it irritably back into its waiting space between "Speaking Without Mouths" and "Dementors to Diaries: Soul Transferences and the Dilemma of the Hollow Shell". She sighed; boring at transfiguration did seem so deathly he moment. She slipped out from behind the shelves and found herself facing a very tall magazine display with the words "ENGAGED?" in big red letters across the top. Hermione nodded as though the sign cared. The sign continued: "LUCKY YOU! YOU'LL NEED LOTS OF MAGAZINES! LOTS AND LOTS!" She pondered this for a moment and then shrugged, picking up a thin copy of "The Magical Day" and flipping through the black and white images of glowing witches in flowing white gowns that coated every page.

Draco Malfoy was bored. It had never occurred to him that one could become bored of Flourish and Blotts's dark arts section; yet there he was, bored out of his mind while poring over a picture of a muggle being tortured by a very short man in form-fitting brown robes. He shuddered and slammed the book shut. What he wanted was something interesting. Apparently, he knew everything that books could tell him. This was not surprising, considering his parentage, and so he shrugged it off and considered it another perk of being his father's son. He strolled casually out into the entrance again and spun three-hundred-and-sixty degrees before a sign with big gold writing on it caught his eye. "ROMANCE" it read. Yes, porn was most definitely what he needed. He grinned and set off towards the sign.
"One-Hundred-and-One Ways To Make Your Day Unique," Hermione read aloud, then snorted. "Yeah, it'll be real unique once all the other women who read this do it too." She scoffed, and turned the page. "Dresses for every body type… that's not so bad." She smiled, eyeing her own petite frame over the top of the page. "That's not bad at all…"
"Malfoy? Draco Malfoy?" Draco shut the issue of 'Veelas Gone Wild' he'd been perusing and held it firmly behind his back. "Yes? What?" he snapped. Last time someone had snuck up on him like that he'd nearly been hauled off to Azkaban. He sincerely hoped he'd done nothing wrong as of late.

However, the girl he was glaring at didn't look like an Azkaban guard. In fact, there didn't seem to be a dementor in sight.

Actually, he thought he recognized her… maybe. She'd definitely gone to Hogwarts… what was her name again? Claudia? Channing? Not that he really cared; he just didn't like to be caught with his guard down. It didn't suit him.

"It's Cho," she supplied.

"I knew that," he lied. He wasn't sure why he was pretending to care, or why he was talking to her at all. She wasn't even very pretty. Then again, it's already been established that he really thoroughly had a thing for models.

"No you didn't, have you been reading porn?"

"Yes, fine, why are you talking to me again?" He quickly shoved the magazine into the closest book and glared defiantly down at her.

"Just making sure you were who I thought you were. Obviously I was right. I thought since I heard you'd been dating–."

"If I was dating you're old boyfriend it'd still be none of your business."

"What?"

"You thought I'd changed cause I was dating a... someone like Hermione. Well, I haven't gone all goody-goody, thank god. 'Oh, look, it's Draco Malfoy. He's dating a mudblood. Let's go give him kisses and tell him he's our hero. He's such a rebel. Ah!' sorry to disappoint you kiddies but I've not gone all gooey and soft just cause I've got a different view on what's important. Alright?"

She didn't answer immediately, but instead stood perfectly still except for her lip, which seemed to be shaking uncontrollably.

"How d-d-d-dare you…" she sobbed, "I j-j-j-j-just th-thought tha-that–"

"Well you obviously thought wrong, now didn't you?" he turned to make a dramatic exit but instead ran into something very solid. Something that appeared to be, on further inspection, a someone who was blocking his way. "Could you move?"

"You made her cry!" the someone said. He was taller than Draco, and so it was all the more impressive when he drew himself up to his full height.

"R-r-r-roger!" she sobbed, ducking behind the big man and clutching at his shirtsleeve like a two-year-old at the mall.

"Oh come on! I didn't say anything. You're girlfriend's just weak is all, I bet she just broke a nail or something," said Draco.

"H-h-h-he said, he said I was st-st-st-stupid!" Cho wailed; Roger looked Very Angry Indeed.

"Let's see ma'am, now that'll be sixteen sickles and…" the clerk made one last calculation, "three knuts."

Hermione carefully counted the money out on the counter and handed it over to the redheaded gentleman. "Have a nice day!" he called, as she tipped her ten magazines (two issues of "The Magical Day", one issue of "Altar a la Mode", four issues of "Star-cross'd Marriages" and three issues of "Bride to Be") and a new quill into her bag and began the search for her fiancé.

Twenty long strides away from Hermione and only two aisles away from Draco, who had set off weaving between the aisles, Roger Davies close on his tail, a woman named Sarah O'Roupe and her son, a squirmy little four-year-old named Mac, were wandering aimlessly among the aisles. Every once in awhile Mac would stop, open a book, ask what some random word said, then close the book and they'd continue on. "Mommy! What's this word say?" Mac squealed, but what the word indeed was Mac never found out because at that moment there was a deafening boom and the issue of 'Veelas Gone Wild' that Mac had found inside 'Midnight Morocco' went soaring into the air as Sarah scooped him up and bolted out of the store, screaming as a bookshelf came down right where she'd been standing an instant before.
Hermione Granger did not notice the nudie magazine that fell into her bag for a number of reasons. One reason was that her bag was already quite heavy and the extra weight didn't affect much of anything. Mostly, though, she didn't notice because at the moment it fell into her purse there was an ear-splitting scream as a woman carrying a crying little boy ran past her and then out. She was a bit bewildered by this but then there was a deafening boom, and she saw a huge bookshelf hit the floor, sending others after it in a sort of twisted domino rally. She screamed and ducked as three centuries of yearly almanacs flew past her head.

Then everything was silent. Hermione looked up from her vantage point on the floor and saw many other people doing the same. Only one person seemed to be standing, and she'd recognize that hair anywhere, especially accompanied by the icy drawl that so eloquently confirmed what she already suspected.

"Er… sorry."

Hermione vaguely remembered someone saying "Stay away from Flourish and Blotts!"; but, she realized too late, she obviously hadn't heeded the warning.

"Come. With. Me," she hissed through clenched teeth, taking Malfoy roughly by the hand and marching across and out of Flourish and Blotts.