Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to someone, but that someone isn't me.
A/N: Another day another chapter. When last we left our favorite ferret and his thrilled fianc¨¦, he was being held at gunpoint (gasp!) and she was completely oblivious to his mortal peril. Let's see how this unfolds...
Chapter Dedication: erm... Johnny Depp! Cause... he's inspired me with a monstrous plot bunny for my next (after I finish with A Reason to Forget and this and I've written my Luna/Harry fic) story. And... Sarah McLachlan, cause I was listening to Mirrorball while I wrote this. Yay!
"There is no such thing as lying; it's just different interpretations of the facts."
A Perfect Day to Elope
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In which Draco has an adventure and Hermione hates orange taffeta...
September 26, 2003"I said don't move!" said the man with the gun. Draco hadn't.
"I didn't!" he snapped.
"I said don't talk!" the man growled.
"I..." Draco stopped himself as he felt cold metal pressed harder against his neck.
"Don't!" the man shouted. "Now empty your pockets!"
"You said don't move!"
"Right..." the man paused, "then, where's your money?"
"I haven't got any muggle money," he retorted.
"Oh, so you're money's too good for me, eh? For someone on the receiving end of any shot I fire you're not acting too bright."
"I told you, I haven't got any money." He sighed. The man swore violently.
"Then... er... empty your pockets!" he commanded.
"You said-"
"I know what I god damn said! Just... do it!" the man spat. Draco hesitantly lowered his hands. He momentarily thought about wrestling the gun from his attacker; but as brute strength went he knew well enough that he'd lose to just about everyone. He reached first into his right jacket pocket, where he had put his fare for the ride home. He pulled out all the sickles inside and dropped them silently into the man's outstretched hands.
"These real silver?" the man asked warily.
"No, I just carry around shiny gray coins. I'm a magpie!" Draco snapped, the man shook his gun menacingly. Draco got the message and reached into his right pants pocket, where he was keeping a spare galleon, just in case. He pulled out the gold coin and dropped it into the man's waiting palm.
"This real, too?" the man asked again. Draco nodded, the gun was still pointed menacingly at his neck. "Go on, the other ones now!" He reached into his other pocket, where the remnants of his broken wand were still sitting. "What's that, a broken stick?" the man laughed.
"Yeah, it's er... sentimental," Draco lied. The man tossed it over his shoulder with an annoyed grunt.
"The other one, now," he snarled.
"I don't have any more," Draco snapped, throwing his hands up in exasperation.
"The other jacket pocket, and no more of this lying, understand?" the man barked.
"Oh...that one." He swallowed, cursing his own stupidity.
"Yeah, that one," the man mimicked. "Do it!"
"Right." He slowly reached into the pocket and drew out a crumpled piece of paper.
"What's that?" The man eyed the paper curiously.
"Nothing... just my-" The man snatched it away. "grocery list..." The man unfolded the photo.
"This is how you keep track of your groceries, eh?" The man laughed, a sadistic laugh. "Pretty looking list."
Draco's hand was itching to slap the man, and his gun, into the next millennium. "She's my sister, alright?" he lied. He could see the photo in his head; worn from being folded and unfolded so many times.
"If that's how it is in your family, then." The man laughed. "I'm not here to pass judgment."
It was a photo of Hermione, a photo she despised. It was three-years-old and he'd taken it on her muggle camera because he'd left his in the hotel. She had fallen asleep on the beach. Her wide white sun hat fell over her eyes and her hair was spread out on the sand behind her. She was wearing the bikini he'd bought her. It was the only time she'd ever worn it, though he'd never understood why. She looked amazing in it. She'd fallen asleep on the beach in her white ensemble and he'd taken the black and white photo. She'd ordered him to destroy it after she'd had the film developed; but he'd saved it instead, convincing himself he was saving it for blackmail purposes only.
"Just..." Draco clenched his jaw-line into an annoyed right angle. "give it back."
"I don't think I will," the man snarled, "I think I'll keep your 'sister' in a pretty little frame by my bed. I think I'll have some, er... dreams about her and there's nothing you can do about it."
Draco took a deep breath. One... he has a gun, two... he has a gun, three... he has a gun...The man cocked the gun again. "Now, er... let's see how lucky you are, eh?"
"If you're going to shoot me just do it. I've met much worse villains than you," Draco snapped.
"No, I'm not going to shoot you," said the man, clearly of the opinion that he was being kind. "You'll have a harder time getting home if you're alive."
Draco suddenly had the striking notion that somewhere in the world Hermione was still sitting in her flat; and she had no idea what kind of trouble her wine had gotten into.
Hermione wondered what kind of trouble her wine had gotten into. Normally, if she was ambiguous enough to give Draco the notion he'd be getting sex, he'd be back within ten minutes. It had been two hours.
She shook off the lingering shadow of worry and returned to her paper.
She'd spread the Daily Prophet out in front of her again and seated herself, cross-legged, before her fireplace. She had, after a few moments of disturbed glaring, turned away from the center spread and immersed all her conscious on an article about the Gringotts goblins, as mistreated as she was convinced they were.
The goblin Snorgak said Wednesday that the goblins were "quiteBut she never got to find out that the goblins were horribly abused because at that moment there was a shrill ringing from her kitchen. She jumped up and leapt at her rotary phone. She kept the phone for her parents (who still had not figured out owl post), but still they only called in emergencies. She'd given the number to Harry- Ron's previous experience with a telephone had left him scarred- but he'd never called. She'd given the number to Draco, in case of emergency, but she doubted he knew what a phone was, let alone how to use one. Still, two hours was a very long time...
"Hello?" she gasped into the receiver.
"'Mione?" said the voice on the other end.
"Hey, mum." She rolled her eyes and sank into a seat at the kitchen counter.
Mrs. Rebecca Laurence-Granger said something along the lines of "Hi sweetie," before they lapsed into the dull kind of conversation that's sure to go on between a mother and her twenty-three-year-old daughter.
"So." Hermione tried to sound like she was grinning. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Mrs. Laurence-Granger answered, perhaps a bit too quickly.
"Mum, it's one in the morning. What's wrong?"
Rebecca sighed. She muttered something that distinctly sounded like "Know-it-all."
"What was that?"
"Nothing, again." She laughed. "Now, about why I was calling. Yes..."
"Yes?"
"Well, this woman from that newspaper, what was it? The Daily Fortune?"
"Daily Prophet, mum."
"Right." Hermione recognized the sound of a newspaper being unfolded on the other end.
"So?" she prompted.
"So what?" Mrs. Granger muttered, her mind zooming off to bigger, better things.
"So, this woman from the Prophet! What'd she say?"
"Oh, right!" Rebecca cleared her throat. "Well, she asked if I'd like to be interviewed... about you."
"And?" Hermione had begun twisting and untwisting an unused towel in her hands, wringing it like a particularly deceitful rat.
"And I was wondering if anything was wrong," Mrs. Granger concluded. "So?"
"So what?" Hermione dropped the towel.
"So..." Hermione could hear her mother bursting at the seams. "So when were you gonna tell us! And don't even act ignorant young lady." Hermione snapped her mouth shut, "You got yourself into this engagement mess, again. You can get yourself out."
"Mess?" Hermione tried to act offended. It didn't work very well. "Since when have I ever gotten in a mess I couldn't handle?"
"Since the instant you left that... what was his name again?"
"Stop being daft mum, you know Ron's name," Hermione snapped.
"Ron was it? Okay, excuse an old lady."
"You're not that old, mum. Just, stop talking." There was a sizable pause. "Okay, you can talk now."
"Good, I was thinking you'd just stop me talking until after you'd gone and got married!"
"Don't be silly. I need you to dress all my bridesmaids in hideous orange taffeta again. Couldn't do it myself, could I?"
"Silk, darling," her mother corrected, adopting a pre-Madonna accent that suited her like orange taffeta suits... anyone, really. "And it was tangerine, not orange. Orange would be terrible."
"Well, we'll never find out, will we?"
"And why the hell not?"
"I'm not having bridesmaids, am I?"
"Again: and why the hell not?"
"Who the hell would be my bridesmaids? In case you haven't noticed, my last set isn't really in a Hermione celebrating mood." Hermione flicked her wand in the general direction of an upper cabinet and a nice sparkly glass flew down into her hand.
"What about Jeanie?"
"Jeanie? She's not...she's so... no."
"She's your sister."
"She's so immature."
"Do you remember what you were like when you were seventeen?"
"Don't remind me." She filled the glass with another flick.
"Exactly. Maybe someday, when you're a big twenty-eight-year-old, and she's twenty-three, she'll complain about when she was seventeen."
"And I'll be sniping about what a prat I was at twenty-three. Three cheers, mum."
"No need for sarcasm." Mrs. Granger sounded hurt.
"Fine, alright. Jeanie, that's one. Who else will wear orange taffeta?"
"Silk, dear."
"Right."
"What about that Ginny girl?"
"I think she was more pissed than Ron."
"Too bad. She was nice. Are you sure? After three years, lots of things change..." She sounded doubtful.
Hermione took a thoughtful sip from her glass. "Don't I know it. Three years ago, let's see..." She walked over to and leaned against the wall. "I was engaged." She counted off on one of her fingers. "I was forced into having bridesmaids." She counted off her middle finger. "I was in love, Harry was pissed, and I had made a habit out of snogging Draco Malfoy." She stared down at her hand. "Not a lot's changed, mum."
"Except you're pregnant this time, which we haven't even discussed!" Hermione dropped the glass she'd been holding. She noticed, but didn't care much. All her attention was on the phone pressed to the side of her face. "Hermione?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm here," she replied, trying to steady her voice.
"So?"
"So what?" said Hermione.
"You! Pregnant! Baby! Grandparents want to know!" Rebecca squealed.
"Alright... fine. I'll tell you all about it. But mum, you ought to know, there is no baby."
Another city bus rolled by. Another pair of headlights cast a flickering glow onto another dusty sidewalk and another intimidating figure. The headlights marked him out, a stark shadow against walls of white. There was something poetic about the way he carried himself, some kind of ruined regality that a bus-riding man named Owen Rose, a poet, took note of.
Draco Malfoy had about as much idea of Owen Rose as he had of where he was. He knew that he was a few blocks westor was it east?of the liquor shop, but where the liquor shop was, or had been, he hadn't the slightest idea. He hadn't the slightest idea what one might do in these situations, and as it was he had no money to buy the information off of anyone. No one helped poor people. Or at least, he certainly never did.
The bus moved on and the world was once again plunged into darkness. Shapes grew out of the dark. Shadows became the nighttime hues of dark and darker. Dark matter melted into trashcans, beer bottles, and an unwelcoming alley. He turned his eyes on a raised metal street sign. "Spinelli and Honder," he read, then added, as sarcasm took over, "that helps."
He wondered what time it was. He wondered where he was. He wondered how long it took for a person to starve to death. He wondered how long it would be until sunrise.
"I could be pretty intimidating if I had a gun," he muttered. "I could be pretty intimidating if I had a wand."
He considered walking a bit further, but for what? His feet hurt, his stomach was of the opinion it ought to be filled, and his... suffice to say he missed Hermione. There was no point in moving, at all.
Then again... on that note there was really no point in standing still, either.
"But," he remarked to no one in particular, "if I'm moving I can at least pretend I'm heading in the right direction..."
"Platoon to Mermaids? How's it goin'?"
Officer Joseph Corelli's wife had just left him. This was not why he was at work when most people were sleeping, that was his job; but the fact still did nothing to improve his mood.
"Mermaids to Platoon, peaceful here. You?" came the crackly reply
"Unusually peaceful..." he noted, as though determined to find a fault in the crimeless evening.
He'd never been a handsome man. Standing a good head shorter than every other man on the force and once described as an "ass-wiping bastard", Joseph Correli was a connoisseur of the strip tease. That was why his wife had left him, though he didn't know it at the moment. That little detail would be revealed in a future court case.
Officer Correli highly suspected his wife of cheating on him. Her best guy friend was a man named Alfonso deGuara. Alfonso deGuara was a man who acted, in Corelli's own words, "a bit queer, really." Alfonso deGuara liked to wear leather, lots and lots of leather. It was one of the reasons that women found him so attractive. It was also one of the reasons that Corelli despised him so. Alfonso deGuara was also very fond of smoking, gay bars, and Egyptology; but really it was the leather that did him in in Corelli's book. Officer Joseph Corelli wouldn't put it past Alfonso deGuara to steal other men's wives.
So, when a man dressed mostly in leather ran out in front of Officer Corelli's car, Officer Corelli was fairly certain Alfonso was acting on some half-baked scheme to kill him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" he screamed, swinging his door open and rounding on the leather-clad man.
"Walking, obviously!" the man snapped.
Officer Corelli stopped himself... this man was not Alfonso. This man wasn't even Latin. "What're you..." he swept his eyes over the stranger, "what're you doing out so late, eh?"
"Walking, obviously!" the white-blonde man repeated.
"Drunk, clearly." Officer Corelli mentally patted himself on the back. That was some quick thinking.
"So?" the man drawled, looking very bored.
"So..." Corelli pondered, an act which always made his head hurt. "So I'm gonna have to take you in. That's what!" He nodded smugly. Nice work Corelli.
"Really men, twice in one day this is..." It suddenly struck Draco, more like a well aimed brick than a realization, that he hadn't slept for forty-eight hours. It also struck him that this was wholly Pansy's fault, her being such a Slytherin and all. Not that there was anything wrong with that.
"Twice, you say?" the short man looked up from the files he'd been perusing. "Where was it you were arrested earlier today?"
"Dunno," Draco stated simply, examining his cuticles with a critical eye.
"Liar," the short man scoffed. He'd told Draco his nameOfficer Capelli, or somethingbut Draco had just as quickly forgotten it. They were muggles, some kind of law enforcement... something, not worth his time.
"My girffian… my wife is waiting for me!" he whined, deciding exaggeration was, as usual, the best way out of a bad situation.
"Don't I know that situation…" the short man muttered. The bigger one chuckled.
"But she's going to kill me!" He pretend to cower at the very thought, though the idea of a flustered Hermione did nothing but get him all hot and bothered.
"So?" the little man grinned, Draco was really starting to dislike him. "How's your marriage different than anyone else's?
"Well…" We're wizards! his subconscious screamed. "Well… we met in school and…" Good, storytelling. Draco could do storytelling. "Well, I'd seen her around a couple of times, but we didn't really talk. I mean, I knew she was the top wi—student" he corrected himself, "in our year, but she looked pretty snobby everytime I saw her so…" He paused, checking that he had their attention.
"So?" The big one was leaning forward and the small one, though pretending to be immersed in paperwork, was reading it upside down.
"So..." Draco picked his memory. "So there was this guy at our school, a real wimpy type, you know the kind. So this kid and I despised eachother, long-standing argument, you know?" They nodded. "He was a real prat anyway. So she was dating this guy and"
"Oh, it's one of those stories" the runt groaned, shaking his head.
"It's gets better!" Draco snapped. "So anyway, she was dating this guy and they were 'so in love', or something. So one day..."
Hermione brought her knees up to her chin and stared intently into her fireplace.
He was just being slow, she was sure of it. Nothing could have gone wrong, she didn't think she could take it if he got arrested... or something.
She had a sudden image of Draco locked in a muggle prison, trying to barter his way out with some kind of sympathy story.
"He'll survive." She yawned and let her eyelids droop. She could just take a little nap, there was no harm in...
Hermione's eyelids fluttered open, revealing a rolling, blood red sky overhead. She blinked and sat up.
She was sitting on a beach. The sand was snow white and it seemed to curve off into the distance of infinity as she watched, a deep red sea rolling over the edges, defining them in shades of crimson fire. She'd seen this beach before; but she couldn't quite place where.
I must have been dreaming... she mused, still trying to place the mysterious beach. Right... that's it.
She absently ran her hands through her hair, yawning deeply as she did so. She wiped her hands off on her dress, a puffy white wedding gown sort-of thing, and gasped in horror as she realized her hands were covered in molasses. She tentatively reached up to her hair, finding it, too, covered in the sticky sweetener. She was about to ponder this when a small voice beside her squeaked "Mistress does not like Winky's dress?"
She looked down. Winky the house elf was standing beside her, clad in an identical dress that dwarfed her small figure. She grinned. "It's lovely Winky. I'm just wondering"
Suddenly, Winky let out an ear-piercing scream and plunged headlong down the beach, tripping over the overly-large dress as she went.
"Winky?" she called, but the elf was already gone.
"Elves..." someone behind her snarled, "who needs them anyway?" She turned around as slowly as possible, putting as much time between the here and the there. The there being the time when she'd have to face Cordelia Malfoy.
"Evening, Mum," she squeaked. Damn it... so much for standing her ground.
"Evening, Hermione." Cordelia grinned. "Come, we're going to be late."
"Late?" Hermione asked. Suddenly, she noticed the people standing behind Cordelia, more like a white-blonde mob than a family gathering at all.
"For your wedding!" Mum grinned, "Come on!"
"I dont..." Hermione choked, backing away until she hit something very solid.
"Hoot!" She whirled around to face the obstruction. "Ron! Help!" The tiny owl seated on Ron's shoulder hooted indignantly. "Hi, Pig," she mumbled.
"Hi, Pig..." Hermione's eyes fluttered open. She sighed. It had only been a dream. "Hoot!"
She looked up and into a pair of interested brown eyes. "I already said 'hi, Pig'!" she sighed, taking a quick glance at the sky outside her window. It was still dark. Apparently she wasn't the only witchor wizardwho couldn't sleep. "Give it here, then." She sighed and unrolled the short strip of parchment tied to Pig's outstretched leg, instantly recognizing the loopy black cursive. "Ginny..."
"Stop! Stop! That's her flat!" Draco was thrown forward as the police car came to a lurching halt.
"You're sure?" said the big officer, eyeing the dilapidated building suspiciously.
"Yeah..." Draco's eyes traveled up to the second story, "I'd recognize that window anywhere."
"Good luck!" The short one waved from the front seat as Draco stumbled out of the back.
"Hope your daughter's leg feels better!" the short one called. Draco grinned at his own lie.
"So do I!" He waved one last time and turned to the front door, praying that it was open. It was. He sighed with relief as the door swung open under his hand, revealing a ghostly art gallery, bald mannequins grinning down at him from raised, velvet platforms. Unnerving.
He passed through as quickly as possible, tip-toeing past statues that wouldn't hear him even if they did have ears. He paused at the door to her stairs, grabbing a bouquet from an artsy-looking vase before making his way up the rickety, claustrophic steps.
"Hello?" he called as her front door creaked open, silently thanking her for being so damned trusting. "Granger?"
He found her in her bedroom, sleeping even as he laid the bouquet on the pillow beside her. He pocketed her note, a list beginning with "Hey slowpoke" and ending with "Wedding shower tomorrow at Ginny's. Look nice." He didn't understand how she could even consider attending this wedding shower, when her baby shower, however phony, had been such a disaster. Oh well, that's why she was a Gryffindor.
"Malfoy Manor!" Draco shouted as green flames enveloped him and he fell, cascading down through the fabric of the wizarding world. Darkened living rooms rushed past even as he tumbled through his own grate, landing face-first on his own bedroom carpet.
"There he is!" someone in his darkened corner whispered. "Get him!"