Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to J.K. Rowling and I'm unsure who the 'what is a youth?' song belongs to but it was in the Romeo and Juliet from the sixties. And you know who owns the coconut song? Fred Heatherton! He sang it in 1949. woot. Crazy stuff there.
Chapter Dedication: erm… Natyslacks. Cause she's usually the first person to review all my chappies. Yay! Even though last chapter was Xamphia, so it's for you too. Yah, I realize last chapter didn't really seem exactly pointful, but it was really just me explaining why Lucius isn't in Azkaban. Gah. Which is why I hurried up and wrote this one. : - ) love you all
"The ABCs of ex-girlfriends:
…I stands for I still hate her. Odds are I always will, unless she calls me and offers me favors.
J stands for Jim. This is her new boyfriend. Doesn't Jim have a nice car ? Doesn't Jim have a good job? Why does Jim want to date her? I think Jim could do much better. I hate Jim. Jim is my mortal enemy.
K stands for Kill.
L is for Love. It's a great euphoric feeling that exists between two people and is shared upon by both parties.
L is also for Lunatic. Lunatics are crazy. Lunatics are the last people that actually believe in love…"
A Perfect Day to Elope
CHAPTER TEN
In which Draco listens to the Spice Girls and Pansy has a heart...
September 25, 2003
"Down at the county fair, one evening I was there, I heard a barker shouting, underneath the flair..."
Hermione wrapped one hand around one of the cold metal bars that came between herself and her fiancé. She honestly wished it were more than that just then, something like a soundproof island. She once again tried jamming her fingers into her ears, but no good. He would continue to sing and she would continue to try and become comfortable on the camp bed they'd given her, though she would most likely also continue to fail at that as well. She looked blankly up at the ceiling. It was gray stone, wet from the leaking pipes she heard rushing overhead. Had she had her wand she could have easily blasted it apart and stunned the guards into allowing some sort of escape. Honestly, though, there would have been no point in that. She wasn't in huge trouble in any case. Draco and she would just have to sit and wait– and sing, in Draco's case– until someone came and paid the ten galleon bail for the two of them. It was nothing, but she highly doubted she knew anyone who cared enough about the two of them together to actually get out of bed and bail them out.
Ron would do it for her, and Narcissa would come and fetch him. Hell, Ginny might even do it for her; but none of them would do it for both.
"Oh! I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, there they are all standing in a row," he sang. He had decided, upon their arrival at the ministry and after their fingerprints had been taken, that the guard who was set to watching them wasn't going to let them out any time soon. So, in true Malfoy fashion, he had taken to being as annoying as possible in the hopes that guard would chase him off, or at least give him some reason to sue. "Big ones, small ones, some the size of your head!"
"Shut up Mal-ferret! It's a jail not a bloody karaoke bar!" she shrieked for the ninth time, kicking the bars for emphasis.
"Come on Hermione! Oh! Give 'em a twist, flick of the wrist, that's what the showman said!" he continued. Hermione dared a glance over at the guard. Far from being annoyed he seemed to be rather enjoying himself. "Oi! I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts!"
"I don't even know the words you arse!" she turned back to him, and found that he'd moved around so that he was sitting as close as possible to the bars and leaning his forehead against them, so that she, being very close to the bars herself, found herself only an inch away from his leering face. She jumped back and scuttled against the wall. "Don't do that!"
"Everyone you throw will make me rich!" he crowed, a hint of laughter obstructing the words. He looked directly down at Hermione, who was now biting into her bottom lip to keep from saying some things she knew she'd regret later. "There stands me wife, the idol of my life, saying roll a bowl, a ball, a penny a pitch!"
"Not yet I'm not," she muttered. He ignored it.
"Singing roll a bowl, a ball, a penny a pitch, roll a bowl a ball, a penny, a pitch..."
"I said stop that."
"Roll a bowl a ball, roll a bowl a ball, singing, roll a bowl a ball a penny a ball a penny a ball a penny a ball a penny a pitch!" he finished, holding out the last noted until he finally had to breathe.
"Lovely." Hermione rolled her eyes and tried to make good use of his silence by laying deeper into the camp bed, which turned out to be a mistake as it was full of springs that poked into her sides.
"Comfortable?"
"Yes," she lied. He laughed.
"No, you're not." He smirked, laying down as well so that he was looking directly at the top of her head.
"I am."
"Stop lying, I'll sing again,"
"Alright then, it's like lying on a bed of rusty nails while being eaten by dull-teethed wolves," she snapped, rolling over onto her back.
"Well, you know what sarcasm gets you don't you?"
"My own personal minstrel?" she groaned.
He grinned. "Alright, Granger. Guess the song."
"I'd rather not, thanks," she said, hoping that would deter him. It did not.
"Okay…" He cleared his throat. "So, I'll tell you what I want what I really really want…"
"Dammit, Draco. Not that one, you can't sing that one. Well, you can't sing period but please… not that one. You'll ruin it..." Hermione moaned.
"So tell me what you want what you really really want."
"You're ruining it! That's wrong!"
"I wanna huh wanna huh wanna huh wanna huh wanna really really really wanna ziggy say ah!"
"Good god, of all the men to be trapped beside. Mine likes the Spice Girls!"
"Then sing it with me, won't you?" he sang, adding notes that weren't there.
"I don't sing,"
"You don't dance e-e-e-either."
"I wouldn't dance if you didn't fo-o-orce me to," she sang back, then stopped herself. "I don't sing often," she corrected before he could sing anything about that.
"You know you liked it."
"What, being dropped?"
"Indeed."
"Where did you learn to dance like that?"
"That's on a need-to-know basis." He rolled onto his back.
"Oh, really."
"Yes, really."
"And, may I ask why?"
"No."
"No?"
"Granger, do you really have to know everything."
She thought for a moment. "If I say yes will you tell me?"
"No." He paused. " 'It's always good to have an unfulfilled goal lying on your desk… it gives you a reason to get up every morning, you lazy toe-rag.'"
"What!" She bristled, jumping at his sudden change in tone.
"That quote courtesy of Lucius Malfoy, as to why he had a very badly beaten photo of Harry Potter on his desk."
"You're trying to change the subject."
"That was my intention."
"So, why does Draco Malfoy know how to salsa? And who ever had the time to teach him?"
"I think I like you not knowing." She could hear his trademark smirk. "It adds to the tall, dark, mysterious… mystery that is the enigma of Draco Malfoy."
"The 'enigma of Draco Malfoy'?"
"Yes. It's a very expansive mystery, comprising everything from his current fiancé to how he learned to dance."
"His highly desirable current fiancé" she interjected. He laughed.
"I suppose you intend to do this respectably?"
"Do what?"
"This whole… wedding thing."
"You'd what, blackmail the minister into getting us married?" He nodded vigorously. "How very Slytherin of you."
"Nothing wrong with that," he snapped. She laughed.
"Of course there isn't, if there was I wouldn't be here, now would I?"
"You probably wouldn't be leaving here, either," said a voice to her left. She looked up and nearly choked at the person standing just outside her cell.
The woman standing on the other side of the bars was dressed like something out of the eighteen hundreds. She was wearing a simple gray dress with a long skirt that gathered around her lower back in a bustle. On top of a head of curly, mahogany hair she had positioned a black top hat so that it was tipped forward over her eyes, probably making it very difficult to see, but giving her a purposeful air of mystery, nonetheless. Along the front edge of the hat was a veil of black tulle that shrouded a hard-featured face.
But it wasn't the outfit so much as the woman behind the veil who interfered with Hermione's breathing.
"Pansy?" Draco tumbled off his camp bed and hit the ground with an audible smack!
"Draco." Pansy eyed him thoughtfully, as though torn between illness and amusement.
"Have you bailed us out then?" said Hermione, before Pansy could say anything too nasty.
"No, Granger, I've just come to visit you," Pansy snapped.
"How nice of you to, er… drop by?" Draco sneered, pushing himself onto his elbows.
"Bugger off, Draco. You weren't witty when we were dating, and you obviously haven't gained half-a-mind since," she retorted. He stopped talking. "Come on then." She sighed and swung open the entrance, turning to stride down the hall at a remarkable speed for the boots she'd stuffed her feet into. "You can't get out without me," she shouted over her shoulder, and they hastened after her.
"You did bail us out then?" said Draco. Pansy didn't reply but merely pushed him into the lift, Hermione shuffled in behind her.
"If you hate us so much…" Hermione began but Pansy interrupted—
"I don't hate you," she snapped, as though it were the most obvious statement in the world.
"But I'm a muggleborn." Hermione pointed at a vein in her wrist to show Pansy her muddy blood.
"As a person, yeah, I hate you." Pansy smiled indulgently, "but as an entity you're a bit of a boon."
"What are you talking about?"
"Well… him." She glared at Draco, "I despise. But that stories old news. This little 'wedding' you're planning is bound to cause the both of you great pain. I wouldn't want any bars protecting you."
"Vindictive little tart," Draco muttered.
"What was that?" Pansy chirped.
"I was just wondering how that marriage of yours was going."
She blanched. "You are to tell no-one about what you saw." She turned to Hermione. "Or I may just subject you to another week of his singing."
"Atrium" said the noticeably disembodied elevator-voice. Hermione had the fleeting impression that the atrium looked abnormally crowded before someone grabbed her by the wrists and she was pulled forward to the front of a shouting mob. She realized, now, that the mob was comprised mostly of pinstripes and white flashes.
Click, click, click… A whole host of shutters exploded in white-hot light and Hermione was temporarily blinded.
"Ms. Granger, Ms. Granger, is it true that you're pregnant?"
"Draco! Over here Draco! Over here, what do you have to say about rumors that you've been seeing French model Angela Levinson as well?"
"Mrs. Malfoy!"
"Hermione! What is your opinion on the DaVinci Code!"
"Malfoy! Malfoy! What do you have to say to rumors that you once were engaged to an Aborigine troll?"
"How are your parents taking it?"
"How are your friends taking it?"
"How is your dog taking it?"
"What's your favorite color?"
"Witch Weekly wants to know what you use to dye your hair!"
"Ron Weasley says he's not mad at you anymore, what do you have to say to him?"
"What is your opinion on the Riddle case?"
"What colors do you use in your kitchen!"
"Did your great-great-grandmother have a pet walrus?"
Hermione felt a firm hand suddenly intertwined in hers as her vision returned. She turned to see Draco glaring at Pansy's retreating back. Together they were clearly in no condition to apparate. "No Comment!" she screamed and ran for the nearest fireplace. She dove her hand into the silver flowerpot and threw a handful of sparkling powder onto the fire, diving into the roaring emerald flames and crying, "Haven!"
The world rushed by and Hermione's elbows banged painfully against solid brick walls. She closed her eyes and tried not to scream as she caught fleeting glimpses of darkened living rooms flying up and above her. Suddenly, she was thrown headlong out of her dizzied descent, and found herself pressed against the hardwood floor of her own foyer. She just had time enough to sit up and take in the comforting familiarity of it all before a large barn owl swooped down out of the darkness and dropped a large something on her head. She fumbled for it and then shakily unfolded the Daily Prophet.
The front page was fairly normal. The headline read something like "BALI BEATER BLUDGEONED" and there was a picture of the poor guy underneath, perfectly un-bludgeoned by the looks of it. She opened it up to the centerfold and instantly dropped the paper as though it had suddenly caught fire. There, grinning and waving up at her from beside a toothpaste ad, was her own graduation photo, five years younger but no less herself. In bold print above it, a glaring banner screamed "MALFOY MARRIES MUGGLEBORN".