"Marriage - as its veterans know well - is the continuous process of getting used to things you hadn't expected."-

Tom Mullen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In which Hermione wears makeup and Ginny smokes in the rain...

September 26, 2003

"Wha' chuduta yer face?"

Hermione sighed. Even muggles were prone to notice when one looked like the swamp-thing.

"Allergies," she stated simply.

'Welcome to Supermart! My name is Anne! If you're not super-happy, then you can't possibly be at Supermart!' the girl's nametag proclaimed. The cashier herself, however, a slouching teenager with thin purple bangs in her eyes and a nose-ring, looked far less than super-happy. In fact, now that Hermione could get a good look at all of the Supermart's early-bird customers, none of them looked very happy in the slightest, but that may just have been the harsh fluorescent lighting.

"I need something to cover this." Hermione gestured to her blotchy complexion.

"Makeup?" Anne yawned.

"Yes." Hermione nodded. "Please."

"Aisle seven."

Hermione quietly thanked Anne and headed off in the direction of what she thought must be aisle seven, passing under an arch of highly deflated balloons and a sign declaring the "Semi-Semi-Semi-Semi-Annual Anniversary Sale!" She passed the same rack of rainbow colored lamps three times before she really felt lost.

"Need help finding anything?" In contrast to Anne, the man/boy now hopping about in Hermione's general vicinity did, in-fact, look 'super-happy'.

"Hi, erm…" She caught a glimpse of his nametag as he continued bouncing. "Mr. Fabulous. Is this 'aisle seven'?"

"Aisle seven?"

She nodded.

"No way! This is aisle two!"

She sighed.

"But I can show you aisle seven!" He bounced off in the direction she'd come. "Come on, silly! You can't find aisle seven without a guide!"

She followed, but refrained from bouncing. Back under the deflated arch, past the deflated cashier, and a pile of roll-on deodorants, 'Mr. Fabulous', whose real name was Clyde, stopped.

"Is this it?" she asked, hoping 'Mr. Fabulous' might just have an excuse to get back to his own, fluorescent-lit corner on the other side of the store.

"Aisle seven?"

She nodded.

"No way!" He continued on, bouncing up-and-down the rows of cheap markers, generic sodas, and more condoms than Hermione knew existed.

It was on their second time past a display of cherry-red lipsticks labeled simply "RedSexy" that they were stopped by a lazy cat-like creature with a messy blonde bun and fingernails like crimson claws.

"Needsumelp?" the girl asked Hermione, completely ignorant to 'Mr. Fabulous' bouncing away.

"Excuse me?"

"Need. Some. Help?" The girl blew a large pink bubble with her chewing gum.

"Oh, yes." Hermione nodded. She was growing tired of nodding. "Please."

"Make-up?'

"Um…."

"Cause I only do makeup."

"Well then…."

"If it's not makeup, then you're gonna have to go find Clyde again."

"Yes. Yes, it's makeup."

The girl chomped noisily on her gum. "Well then…" chomp "what kind of budget" chomp "are we talking about?"

Hermione dug into her pocket and pulled out the wad of paper money inside. "This."

The girl's heavily lined eyes twinkled as she took the money and quickly counted it. "Well," chomp "then you haven't really got a problem at all. Shall we?" She grabbed a basket from beside her feet. "What did you do to your face, by the way?"

"Well, I…."

"Cause you should really have that looked at." Chomp.

Somewhere in the world, Draco Malfoy was feeling Very Ill Indeed. Well, no. He wasn't feeling Very Ill; he was Very Ill. He'd spent the past four hours throwing up what seemed, to him, to be everything he'd eaten in the last week. Potty and Weasel had passed out, woken up with very bad headaches and no inkling of where they might be or why Draco was so sick, and left to go to his wedding shower. The stripper had, apparently, left while they slept and he was too ailing to notice; not that he'd have cared. She'd just been a load of fun while she was there, what with the tripping and the falling and the giggling and the "Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit! This so isn't my fault!"

He imagined this must be something like the time Weasel'd tried to curse him and ended up coughing slugs. He laughed weakly. Bloody karma. He remembered Potty and Granger carting him off to that hut. He'd laughed… and then Pansy had laughed… and then Crabbe had laughed… and then Goyle had laughed… and then Pansy had laughed far too loudly and grabbed his arm to keep herself steady and he'd stopped laughing. It had taken her a second to notice. Stupid tart.

He leaned over and spewed all over the floor again.

You know, said the tiniest voice in his head, a new one that often sounded like his beloved fiancé, Maybe if you felt guilty every once in a century things like this would stop happening to you.

"Shut up." He spat and lay back again.

So…this is what the illustrious Draco Malfoy is reduced to? the voice chided, Vomiting in the back corners of closed brothels?

"Brothels?"

I didn't say it, you did.

"You're such a cliché." He groaned and heaved air over the side of the couch. "He's your ex."

Which?

"Both of them…and the stripper" he laughed again; a dark, amused cough.

That's disgusting.

"You're disgusting."

Nice comeback.

He swallowed, and then instantaneously began throwing up again.

"Bloody hell."

Come on, get up.

"And what the fuck for?"

The best shag of your life.

Well, maybe it only sounded a little like his Granger.

People often said that Narcissa Malfoy was a heartless bitch; which was simply not true. People also often called her Narcissa Black-Malfoy; which was simply silly. A woman who had married so well and into such a prestigious bloodline would hardly bother keeping track of where she'd come from. Narcissa was far more interested in where she and her in-laws were at any given moment, her own family, namely her sisters, being such embarrassing failures. True, Bella had tried; but, quite obviously, she hadn't tried hard enough.

So, for that reason, and because she simply was not a heartless bitch, while her only son puked all over a closed bar, Narcissa Malfoy waited outside of Chateau Lestrange, a building she'd been inside many a time but which, for reasons unknown (well, she had her ideas), she was not currently being invited into. She'd dressed in her golden re'em-hair mantle and a cream colored dress. She was perfectly aware that Aemilia Lestrange, who was only really family by an extremely stretched marriage connection (Aemilia being her brother-in-law's sister) and too much time spent together in the ennui of weekend tea dates, was keeping her waiting because she was busy standing in her hall-sized closet trying to outdo Narcissa's outfit, but that was why she hadn't asked Aemilia to come to Palais de Malfoi. (When both of their homes had been built, it had been very "in" to give your manor a French name.) Narcissa simply didn't have time to outdo Aemilia anymore. She was far too busy planning a wedding to be bothered with petty competitions like the one Aemilia was currently playing in; and she would always have the advantage on Aemilia, anyway. At least she was a natural blonde (mostly), and her eyes were a normal color (or more normal than Aemilia's freakish violet ones). People would call Aemilia's eyes 'hypnotic' or 'deep'; but Narcissa knew they were freakish. And while Narcissa was very much shorter than Aemilia, Lucius and she would always take better pictures than Aemilia and Magnus ever had. Actually, now that she thought about it, she had the competition in the bag.

In an instant she had both turned to the imposing front doors to knock again and Aemilia had emerged, wearing the same green evening gown she'd worn to the Malfoy's Christmas party two-years-ago (Narcissa never forgot or forgave outfit-repeaters) and a wide-brimmed black hat with a live fairy posing where a netted veil might have sufficed.

"Oh!" Aemilia beamed, as if she hadn't known Narcissa would be there. "Darling!" They fluttered to kiss each other's cheeks, two well-dressed hummingbirds. "Have you been waiting long?"

"Oh, no, of course not. I only just got here." Narcissa lied, appraising Aemilia's hat with polite interest.

"Lovely mantle." Aemilia adjusted her own fur shawl.

"Yes, your dress is absolutely exquisite. I almost feel like I've seen it before."

"Oh, this old thing?" Aemilia smoothed a wrinkle on her skirt. "You must have seen it in the store. I got it at Malkin's a year or so ago, but I haven't had a chance to wear it yet," she lied.

There, it was done. The contest was over and Narcissa had won.

"Shall we go, then?" Aemilia smiled as though she hadn't just been beaten.

"Oh no, you first. I insist." As winner, Narcissa was entitled to the second, and so more glorious, entrance.

"Alright, then. I'll have Jeeves draw up a carriage."

"Jeeves?"

"He's new."

"That was the Weird Sisters singing their new cover of that old classic 'I Want You, Witch', which has just been climbing faster than devil's snare over the past few…"

Ginny Weasley held up the plate she'd been washing, tilting it until her eyes appeared only as background to a monster pair of lips in the skewed reflection and then placing it to dry on a humming rack beside the sink. She caught a glimpse of her watch as her hand passed her face and then brought it back to confirm what she'd seen.

"Kyle?"

There was no reply from above her, so she apparated to their bedroom, where a pile of fluffy white comforters was all she could see of him.

"Kyle?"

There was still no reply so she kicked off her shoes and dived onto the mass of down comforter and boyfriend, which smelled oddly of peppermint.

"Gah, Ginny, you're crushing my liver!"

"Am not."

"Yes you am."

She rolled off of the pile and onto some pillows. "Kyle!"

A pair of green eyes became visible in the space between the comforter and sheets. "Yes?"

"It's noon."
"And?"

"You need to go pick up the Grangers!"

"The who?" He yawned.

"Hermione's parents!"

"Oh, right."

"Just take the sign I made and they'll come to you."

"No work involved?"

"None at all."

He considered it for a moment. "Okay."

It was a proven fact that Kyle could not walk through the Leaky Cauldron without stopping for at least a little drink. But, because he was on a mission and because Ginny had made it perfectly clear that he was already late, Kyle took a butterbeer to go, which, he rationalized, couldn't put him behind anymore than Ginny crushing his liver had.

So, sipping from a steaming brown bottle and lazily holding a sign that read 'Grangers' in a place that was neither an airport nor a train station, Kyle passed off Very Well Indeed for a bum of incomparable madness. In this way muggles began throwing money at his feet; not that he noticed; sleep was still sticking to his eyelashes and he was much too preoccupied with the billboard across the street (which featured a woman in pink knickers and little else) to care about much of anything.

So, when a red Ferrari pulled up in front of him, he was far too interested in billboard-girl's bellybutton to notice the fabulous piece of automobile in his general vicinity. Had he been paying attention, he might have been mildly impressed by the girl who emerged from the backseat (the three fifteen-year-olds eating chips across the street certainly were), whose hair was meticulously straightened and highlighted, lipstick meticulously touched-up, and outfit perfectly casual. She was wearing a huge pair of designer sunglasses, which covered perfectly (and painfully) plucked eyebrows and perfectly fake eyelashes; but not for long. As soon as she'd emerged from that fabulous piece of automobile she slid the sunglasses up into her hair in a perfectly practiced motion.
"Is that Kyle?" the girl squealed, and Kyle was forced to tear his eyes away from billboard-girl's lint-free bellybutton.

"Huh?"

"Ohmygod! This is, like, so crazy! You've, like, grown… or something!" The girl threw herself onto Kyle in a far-too-enthusiastic hug.

Now Kyle was awake. "Jeanie?"

"Ohmygod, Kyle! You are, like, so slow!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Ohmygod, Kyle!" Jeanie took Kyle's butterbeer and downed what was left. "You really need to stop drinking."

Kyle looked at the sign in his hand for the first time. "Oh."

She laughed loudly, showing rows of perfectly even and white teeth. "Ohmygod, Kyle!"

"Uh-huh." Kyle took the lull in Jeanie's particular brand of conversation to look over her shoulder at Mr. Mark and Mrs. Rebecca Laurence-Granger, who were currently unloading the trunk of their truly fabulous automobile: a group of black suitcases punctuated by one leopard-print wheel-bag. "Wanna get your bag?"

"Huh?" Jeanie looked back over her shoulder. "Oh, no. Daddy'll get it."

"Oh… right." Kyle absent-mindedly took back his empty bottle.

"Everything set then?" Mr. Mark had managed his way over to a spot beside his daughter, slightly deflated under her bags (there were three of them) and his but beaming nonetheless. "Everything going well, Kyle?"

"Yes, of course, Mr. Granger. I'm just a bit tired."

"Oh, please. Call me Mark, everyone does."

"Of course, Mr. Mark. Do you need any help, Mrs. Laurence?" Hermione's mother looked up from the bag she'd been fiddling with.

"Oh, no. But thank you." She hefted the bag onto her shoulder and joined the rest of her family around Kyle, who had quite suddenly become the center of attention. He cast a last, despondent look at billboard-girl's belly button and then turned back to the Grangers.

"Everything set, then?"

As it turned out, Aemilia hadn't been lying. Jeeves was new. So new, in fact, that he had yet to exist.

Aemilia had name issues (as did Narcissa, it was something to do with rich blonde women simply not caring), but no one would dare to tell her so, especially the poor house-elf who was sent off looking for a non-existent butler. Twink knew perfectly well that there was no Jeeves; but when the choice was between correcting her mistress and producing an oddly named butler she'd always take the butler.

Chateau Lestrange (at least, what was left of it; 'Le petite chateau', which had occupied the east border of the estate, and 'Le chateau de taille moyenne', which had stood atop a hill in the south-west corner, having been burnt to the ground in a 'freak accident' right after Aemilia heard her brothers and sister-in-law were thrown into Azkaban for the second time. She'd been so happy to hear they'd escaped.) was different from other wizarding homes in that, as well as a full regiment of house-elves to clean, launder, and grovel, they also hired three human butlers (squibs, the lot of them) to handle the mansion's less remedial tasks. Their names were Riff, Niles, and Geoffrey. Twink resolved that Aemilia must have, in an uncharacteristic moment of carelessness, mistaken the soft-G sound in Geoffrey for a J… that would be it. Carelessness was much more redeemable in a house-elf's mind than blatant indifference.

She found Geoffrey in an unimportant room deep into the west wing; dusting a fireplace that was the only piece of decoration the room could offer to fill its own emptiness.

For a house-elf, the prospect of a full grown witch or wizard is always at least a little terrifying, the average male house-elf coming up to the average human man's knee. Geoffrey was tall, even by human standards. He had stringy, lead-colored hair that he wore far too much gel in and dark eyes that flickered in a constant limbo between contempt and servitude. The house-elves of Chateau Lestrange were terrified of him; but not nearly as terrified as their mistress made sure they were of her.

"What do you want, elf?" Twink had been lingering in the doorway.

"My mistress sends Twink to get a carriage."

"Then get a carriage." He stood.

"My mistress asks for Butler… Geoffrey… to get it." Geoffrey wasn't family. She could tell him the sky was green without having to do so much as break her nails.

"Oh…" Geoffrey dropped the brush. "Are you sure? I don't drive… but… of course."

Even Geoffrey knew who paid for his hair gel.

It was eleven o'clock and Ginny's deli was completely and totally empty. Even Ginny herself was upstairs, sprawled across the bed with her head on Kyle's chest. There was a slight breeze seeping through a crack in their window, and they could hear the Granger's chatting amicably in the guest room, where Ginny had assured them they could stay until the end of time, though secretly she hoped that they wouldn't stay so long. She chanced a glance to see if Kyle was asleep. She could hear his heart through the warm red t-shirt he was wearing and his chest.

Boom boom

He felt her move and opened his eyes. "Huh?"

"Absolutely nothing." She smiled and pretended to be snuggling down to a nap; though when she was assured he'd fallen back to sleep she opened her eyes again and sat up. He mumbled something but made no effort to stop her. She stretched and rubbed the sleep from her eyelids.

In the next room she found Jeanie, posing in front of a full-length mirror that Ginny assumed she'd brought in one of her bags, as it hadn't been there before.

"Hey, Gin." Jeanie turned round and round, switching this detail and that.

"Where'd your mum and dad go?" Ginny yawned. She could have sworn that all three Granger's had been there.

"Downstairs." Jeanie removed her jacket and through it onto the loveseat, which had become a pile of cast-off clothes.

"Why?" Ginny sat down on the twin bed, which was pushed into the corner away from the queen-sized four-poster under the window.

"It's noon, Gin. You and Kyle dozed off, so mum and dad started the party on their own…" she added quickly, "don't worry, they didn't mind. No one we didn't know has got here yet, I think. It's all people who were gonna come to 'Mione and Ron's wedding. Does this look good to you?"

It took Ginny a moment before she registered what Jeanie had said. It had been so long since anyone had casually mentioned "'Mione and Ron's wedding". It had become The-Event-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. Jeanie was posing for her, though, so she nodded. "It doesn't really matter, though, Jeanie. No-one down there is going to care what you're wearing." At least, she added to herself, no one who's there yet.

"Yeah, I know." Jeanie said, as though she didn't know. She pulled an elastic off of her wrist and Ginny watched in fascination as she spent a minute spinning her hair into an elaborate up-do above her head. "Mmm… no." She shook her head a pulled it all out in a tenth of the time it'd taken to do. "Can you hand me that bag?"

"This one?" Ginny picked up a heavy-looking pink bag from the ground. Jeanie nodded. "Wow… what are you holding in here, air?" She handed it over.

"I know, 'Mione gave it to me as a birthday present last year. It's got some kinda spell on it that makes it weigh, like, nothing." She pulled the bag open with a metallic pop and various shades of lipstick cases hit the ground with a clattering sound. "Oops."

"Alright, I better go. But thanks, Jeanie." Ginny turned from the room and slid down to the deli. Through the kitchen door she could hear light rock and a low, conversational murmur punctuated by soft bursts of laughter. She checked her reflection in a shiny pan and then walked out to her deli.

"Oh, Ginny!" Ginny turned toward her mother's voice.

"'Lo, mum." Mrs. Weasley grabbed her in a breath-restricting hug. "Who all is here?" she said, rubbing her ribs once she'd been released and could breathe almost-properly.

"Oh, dear. Well…" she looked around the room. "Just about everyone. But Jeanie didn't tell us: Where is Hermione?"

Ginny stopped looking around the room and turned back to Mrs. Weasley "They're not here?"

Lucy's room was clean. Absolutely, perfectly, pristinely clean. Sitting on her duvet, legs crossed and looking across the vast expanse of suddenly visible floor, it made her sick.

Every few weeks, her mother would decide that their home was filthy and go after the messiest room in it: Lucy's. After working for a full day she would realize that cleaning was a very bad idea and leave all the other messes to fester. The floor of Lucy's room was black marble. It was very cold in the winter and very cold in the summertime. It was generally very cold. Lucy's slippers were across the room, and it would be far too inconvenient to get off of her bed (a canopy of baby pink tulle) and get them, possibly freezing off her feet in the process. She took her school bag (she was being allowed home for two weeks in order to help with the wedding), which was lying on the bed beside her and dumped the contents onto the floor.

She watched an upturned inkbottle spew its contents onto the tile. Shimmering black ink slithered down the unnoticeable slant of her floor and pooled against the wall. Before she could admire the way white light played on the puddles edges, though, the ink had vanished; her mother insisted on buying the kind of anti-spillage ink that vanished when it touched anything but parchment. She sighed morosely.

The bag was quickly followed by her duvet cover, a pillow, and one sock. It formed a kind of bridge across her room. She schlepped across the duvet and the pillows, then scooted the last few inches on the sock.

They were very nice slippers.

Lucy had only just gotten back to her bed when her mother, looking as frazzled as if The In-Laws had come to call, threw open the door (without knocking) and stepped inside of the room (without being invited).

"Aunt Narcissa and Aunt Aemilia have come to call." She said, very short of breath, her blonde hair swishing madly as though it had only just caught up with her.

Lucy groaned. She was going to have to get dressed.

"Get dressed." Rachel commanded, and swept away.

"She's not my aunt!" Lucy shouted after her, forcing rebellion where there simply couldn't be any. Then added, to herself, "Most people don't even know their uncle's sister-in-law's sister-in-law."

She forced herself up again and walked over to the closet, which she'd only just finished re-filling the night before. Lucy had a lot of clothes, but only ever wore about a sixth of them. All of her relatives liked buying her long, swishy dresses, in the hopes that she might wear them once. The only occasions that Lucy ever found to wear the long, swishy dresses were when The In-Laws came 'to call'.

Lucy quickly tossed off her t-shirt (a black one from the Weird Sisters' Voldemort Tour, which she'd gone to see the previous summer) and jeans and opened the closet. Lucy's closet was magically organized; it only showed the clothes you were looking for at any one specific time. When Lucy opened the closet door, a barrage of satin and crushed velvet poured forth. It smelled slightly of mothballs. She grabbed the nearest dress, a short red taffeta one with an overlarge tulle underskirt, and pulled it on as quickly as possible. There was no time to magically hide her hair ("Still haven't cut out those awful stripes, then, I see." Aunt Narcissa said every time they saw each other.), so she grabbed a wide brimmed, striped red hat from a high shelf and stuffed it down over her ears, smashing the spikes she'd set it into in the process. As an afterthought she snatched up a red clutch, and then attempted to bolt from the room, nearly breaking her neck sliding on her empty school bag. She didn't realize that she'd forgotten shoes until she reached the hall and her feet set down on chilly stone. She might have turned back; but Rachel was calling her again and she dared not mouth off in front of Aunt Narcissa or Uncle's Sister-in-Law's Sister-in-Law Aemilia. It wasn't that either of them would punish her, but her mother would punish her later for embarrassing her in front of the two women she most sought to impress (Lucy didn't count Mum as a woman; she was more of a force).

Once she'd winced her way down to first floor (a feat unto itself), she found them waiting for her in the foyer; talking pseudo-civilly.

"Ah, Lucine!" Aunt Narcissa stood. Aunt Narcissa always stood when someone new entered the room, but it wasn't out of respect. She could obtain a better appraisal of the person's faults at a higher angle. "Still haven't cut out those awful stripes, then, I see."

Lucy tucked the traitor strand of black hair back into the hat and forced a smile. "Forgive me, Aunt. I'd forgotten."

"Quite."

"Lucine, where are your shoes?" Rachel laughed, though the question was very serious. She never called her Lucine unless The In-Laws were afoot.

"Um…right there." Lucy pointed to the far corner, where her battered red platforms were lying in a heap.

"Oh…" Rachel recovered quickly. She laughed. "Lucine, stop joking! Where are your shoes?"

"I'll go get them." Lucy laughed, and started to turn, grateful for a reason to leave.

"Now, really, Lucine." Aemilia, who'd been sitting beside Narcissa before her collaborator stood, said. "There's no need for that."

"Yes, Lucine, come back. There's no need for that." Rachel echoed.

"Hand me that clutch." Aemilia snatched it away.

"Yes, Lucine. Give her your clutch." Rachel sank back into her chair; she was good at echoing.

Aemilia waved her wand over the clutch a few times and it transfigured into a pair of red, toothpick-heeled stilettos. Lucy eyeballed them. She had stiletto issues.

At a look from Rachel she nodded and took the life-threatening heels. "Wow… they're amazing."

Ginny was in the bathroom when they arrived.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

She was in the bathroom; but she heard the sudden silence from where she was trying to hide on the floor. Once, there was a polite murmuring, and then there was nothing.

Silence.

She stood and opened the door a crack, just to make certain they hadn't all died.

Unfortunately, the parade of blonde hair and designer fur pouring through her deli door was fully alive and breathing.

Cordelia Malfoy was first, followed by Narcissa, who even struck a pose at the end of her imaginary 'catwalk'. A blonde woman (She had a fairy on her hat. Ginny barely covered a giggle.) followed shortly after them, and then a blonde man, and then three blonde women, and then two blonde men, and then two little blonde girls dressed in outfits to match their mummy's, and then a blonde boy followed by a blonde girl who had to be his sister and then… Ginny couldn't watch anymore. She retreated back into the bathroom with a frown and a snort.

It would all be perfect if someone could tell her where Hermione was.

Unlike the entire Malfoy clan, who were all two-hours late because for some reason they all felt the need to arrive together, Hermione Granger was late to her own wedding shower because a sales-assistant with claws where her fingernails ought to be had spent an hour and a half doing her makeup. She could feel an hour-and-a-half of foundation slowly dragging at her face, and the black goop around her eyes was congealing in the most inconvenient way. She reached up to wipe it off, but it came away in the form of an ugly black streak on her thumb so she decided against that idea.

She turned down a dark alley and apparated to her own closed clothing store as soon as possible. Tiny mannequins stared at her accusingly, daring her to not work for house-elf liberation. A tiny piece of parchment was stuck to the register. It was a note from Tammy saying where she'd gone, the same place Hermione herself was headed.

She swept past the accusing mannequins and out of the store. The sky threatened rain, so she pulled her long plaid coat over her head and ran for Ginny's. The storm built steadily as she ran, sporadic bursts of lightening in the distance egging her on. She turned the final corner and it started drizzle. Cold rain drops dripped down through her hair and over her face. She threw open the door to Ginny's, submersing herself in the light rock jams of Celestina Warbeck just as the storm broke. The little bell above the door rang, a traitorous gong screaming her arrival. The room was plunged into silence. Hermione removed her coat; sixty eyes followed her as she turned and hung it on the hook by the door. Thirty-pairs of eyes followed her as she turned back.

Silence.

"Ohmygod…" Hermione turned toward a surprisingly familiar voice.

"Jeanie?"

Jeanie emerged from the blonde side of the room (Jeanie knew nothing of blood wars or muggle-hate, and so had immediately leapt to flirt with one of Draco's nameless cousins).

"Jeanie… what are you…" The question went unfinished. In one swift motion she was herded into the bathroom, where she ran face-first into Ginny.

"Oh…" Ginny clutched her head. "'Lo Hermione."

"Hi, Ginny. Thanks for the par—"

Suddenly, Ginny's face turned into that of a frowning, wet clown. It took Hermione a moment to realize that Jeanie was holding a pocket mirror between them. There was very little to do but scream; so that's exactly what the frowning, wet clown did.

By the time he fell asleep, Draco Malfoy might have died. The puking pastilles' effects had worn off on their own, but his entire body was spent. Every muscle in his body ached and he'd abandoned any hope of going to the wedding shower. His only goal was to live until someone found him. Then he could die. He feared loneliness.

When he woke up, he managed to convince himself he'd been dreaming. A blonde, heavily made-up face was swimming in his vision and he decided that, yes, he must have passed out when the stripper was giving him his lap dance. She certainly wouldn't have been there, otherwise. Once Bri… Bi… Bai…she slid into focus, he knew he couldn't have been dreaming. In the dim afternoon light, hangover or no, she gave a new meaning to the term 'coyote ugly'.

"Drink this." She handed him a bottle of steaming purple liquid.

Before he'd even finished the disgusting potion (It was a bit like gasoline with an after-taste like bile.), though, the world was swimming again and the container's contents were spilling over his torso as the world went black.

Ginny emerged from the bathroom as Hermione screamed. The high-pitched wail ricocheting off of dulled tiles had given her a headache and she desperately needed a fag. With the excuse of wanting to take out the trash she pushed past the semi-stunned masses and out the door. It was raining, and the chill soaked through to her core. She dumped the trash and leaned back under the deli's red awning. She rolled the cigarette and reached into her waistband, where her wand was waiting to be useful.

"Need a light?"

Ginny turned her head ever so slightly. Her eyes landed on Harry Potter's branded neck, where a fresh hickey blared the mark of Mary-Sue Lyleson.

"Thanks." She held the tip to his handful of blue flames.

Some muggle inventions simply couldn't be replicated by magic. She took a drag and let the smoke pour lazily out of her nostrils. An expert, Ginny'd been smoking since the age of fourteen.

"Trust me, I feel your pain." He extinguished the flames.

No, you don't. "Oh, sorry." She half-heartedly offered him the smoking fag.

"Thanks." He took it.

I didn't mean it. "No problem." She pushed herself up to sit on top of the dumpster.

"Great party, though." He didn't sit, but leaned into the ledge and returned her cigarette.

She snorted. "Yeah, and the Holyhead Harpies are really all men in drag."

"Sometimes I wonder…" He smiled.

She smiled. He did have such beautiful eyes. "Me too."

"We should go inside."

"No." She took another puff on the cigarette. "I'm having a much better time out here."

"Yeah…" She wished he'd say 'Me too.' He didn't. Instead, he said "I told Mary I was going to get some punch."

"Why?" She eyed him, trying to hide her interest.

"I was."

"Oh." She sighed silently. "Did you get lost?"

He laughed. "No." and then "Did you?"

"No." She blinked a raindrop from her eyelashes. "I'm taking out the trash."

"Oh."

She offered him the fag again. He accepted again.

"Do you always smoke a fag after taking out the trash?"

"Do you?"

"That depends on the trash."
Ginny suddenly became very interested in the glowing orange tip of her cigarette.

Inside, Hermione's screaming stopped and was replaced by a new, more frantic wailing. Ginny turned to see what was going on, but a line of red and gold balloons obscured her view. She sighed and extinguished the cigarette. "We should check that out."
"Yeah." She was thankful to hear he sounded almost reluctant. He helped her down from the dumpster-top and together they walked into the over-crowded deli. The wailing, it turned out, was none other than Loyola Malfoy, leaning over a little blonde girl who lay spread-eagled on the floor. She was sputtering incoherently and Ginny was forcefully reminded of an angry Kreacher.

A girl dressed all in red taffeta who Ginny recognized as having been a first year when she was a seventh year was the first to make any sense of it. "She has a fatal allergy to peanuts."

"There were peanuts in the brownies!" Ginny realized with a start, feeling wholly unwelcome as the lone redhead in a widening blonde circle.

"Oh my god! Somebody—"

"PEANUTS IN THE BROWNIES!" The fairy who'd been resting on Aemilia's hat was now flying angrily around Ginny's head and she had to swat it away in order to realize that Loyola was screeching at her. "HOW COULD YOU!"

"I didn't know I…" It was highly unnecessary to finish that thought, though, because the effort of breaking down taxed so much on Loyola's fragile psyche that she simply hit the floor with a fur-muffled thud.

"Alright," the girl in red taffeta continued. "We need to get her to St. Mungo's." Then added, "Both of them."

Cordelia Malfoy stepped forward, instantly taking control of the situation in her iron grasp. "The nearest fireplace is Flourish and—"

"No… it's not." Hermione had come out of the bathroom, the eyeliner and mascara streaming down her face and blending with the wrong shade of foundation. "There's one in the back of my shop."
Cordelia nodded. Two men carried both the blonde girl and Loyola out into the rain. The parade left the way it had come.

"I should go, too." Hermione wiped her eyes (it didn't help) and followed them, the lone, bold brunette in a deep expanse of blonde.

"Wanna go get some tea?"

Claudia had been taken care of and Loyola had been revived; so Hermione had spent the last hour-and-a-half sitting by herself on one side of the waiting room while the Malfoys fluttered around Loyola on the other side. She'd gone to the bathroom and removed a little bit of the melted make-up, but her eyes were still over-lined and her face was now a patchwork of various shades of pale. She'd resigned herself to being alone until she left, and so hadn't expected Lucy to walk over and ask her, quite civilly, if she'd like to go get some tea.

"Yeah, sure." Hermione set down the copy of Witch Weekly she'd been perusing (there was an interesting article on marriage vows in it) and stood. She only came up to Lucy's shoulder, but she attributed that largely to the red stilettos Lucy was balancing atop. They started towards the lift, their speed hindered by Lucy's slow, deliberate steps.

After an awkward silence outside the lift she made an executive decision that they ought to take the stairs. They started up, Hermione walking behind Lucy to ensure they didn't separate, and Lucy walking at an unbearable pace.

Hermione let her mind wander as they passed the third floor (A woman with cropped hair sat on the landing, pointing after them and laughing uncontrollably.). They were almost to the fourth when, mid-step, Lucy's shoes decided to de-transfigure and she was sent tumbling down the stairs, bowling Hermione over in the process.

Luckily for Lucy, Hermione was there to break her fall. Hermione, however, had nothing but the third floor landing to fall to, and once she reached it she continued somersaulting past the laughing woman, through the big double doors and on and on until she collided with someone's patent-leather shoes. She was quickly joined by a small red clutch.

As it turned out, she knew the someone.

"Mal-ferret?"

He feigned concern. "Oh, Granger, have you hurt yourself?" and then "What's wrong with your face?"

"Shut up." She stood so that they were almost level. "Where the BLOODY HELL have you BEEN?"

"I was hanging out with a stripper, who got me ill and then brought me here. Where else would I be?"

"Stop lying, wart."

"Aw… you do care."

She leaned her head on his shoulder, no longer caring that her questions be answered. "Let's go home."

"One question, Granger."
She nodded.

"Do you still want that wine?"

A/N: Thanks to everyone on AIM who I bothered with grammar questions (especially Jillian). If anyone finds a mistake, could you tell me? I just wanted to get this chapter finished and up. I only wanted it to be 3,000 words, max.It's certainly over 6,000. So, here it is. Now I can move on from this chapter and get to the rest of the story. Wow. What a very long day (I mean, think about it, it hasn't even been 24 hours since Malfoy went out for wine. God... it's like Romeo and Juliet, not with the forbidden love,but with the fact that that play only happens over about three days. Wow; and it's only been nine days since he asked her to marry him. I mean... think about it. It's mind blowing.) Alright, review, if it please you. I'm a total review whore, and it always makes my day when I get one (don't you wanna make my day?), but I'm gonna keep writing review or no. Love you all just for getting this far!