CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In which Draco and Hermione miss a cornucopia of opportunities to run into one another…
September 29, 2003
When Madeleine "Kissy" Kissimmee hit it big, so they said, she paid four grand-sorcerers part-timing as architects and ski ball-machine repairmen two-hundred-thousand galleons each to enlarge a Barbie Dream House and everything inside of it (including some of the clothing) to an inhabitable size so that she could live out her days in true pop-princess style, no mean feat as the charm had to be replenished once a year until the end of time… but the money was good and they really were very drunk at the time, so they consented.
Draco wasn't sure if he believed it, but he could see why someone would. Kissy Kastle sat atop a lush, rolling green hill at the end of a street lined with many other indescribably large houses. It was a lurid shade of pink, surrounded by all manner of wicker knick-knacks that did nothing to detract from the "dream home" effect. It was also made entirely out of plastic, which was really how the myth had started.
"Well…" he said to a completely aghast Ron Weasley, who was having trouble taking his eyes off of a particularly awful lawn ornament. "Let's hope she let's us in."
"Er... right…. I'm thinking—"
"— That I'd better go this one alone? Spectacular. I was just having the same thought. See you in a bit."
"Hey! No! I said I'd do this for Hermione, but I said nothing about letting you go into pink, plastic houses completely alone with Kissy "The Human Sperm Bank" Kissimmee!" Ron grabbed Draco's sleeve before he could turn away and make a successful break for the front door.
"…And her abundant assets," Draco added once Ron had finished, scowling at Ron's hand on his sleeve.
"Yes, and her assets."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Look, Weasley. I've known Kissy for five years. I can tell you that this will not go smoothly if you come in with me."
"Why?"
"Why?"
"What are you gonna do that I can't be there for?"
"I'm not going to shag her, if that's what you mean… I think I'm in it quite far enough without being that stupid."
"Like I'd believe that." Ron scowled, but let go of Draco's sleeve nonetheless.
Malfoy smirked (no surprise there) and said, "You wouldn't happen to be a fan, Ronald?"
Ron made a face, but couldn't hide the slight pink tinge that conquered his cheeks. "Of course not, I'm just looking out for my friend."
"Right."
"Hey! If it wasn't for me you wouldn't even be paying this visit to your little 'friend,' so I'd show a little gratitude if I were you."
Draco turned on his heel and started up the hill. He called back over his shoulder, "So I guess we no why you're not me, then. Eh, Weasley?"
Ron scowled at his back but didn't follow. Draco gave himself a mental pat on the back and hurried faster up the hill.
He hadn't quite been telling the truth to dear Ronald… truly, he was going to try and not shag Kissy. He'd said it himself, he was "in it quite far enough without being that stupid,"; but one never did know what to expect from the pop princess on any given Monday… and it certainly was a Monday.
He reached the clean, white front door and knocked three times. A small, periscope-like metal tube extended from the keyhole.
"Please state your name and the nature of your visit," said the disembodied, unmistakably sweet voice of Kissy Kissimmee.
Draco rolled his eyes impatiently. Ever since gossip-mongering "reporters" from Witch Weekly had started hiding in her teapots and sneaking in through her milk box, Kissy (who had always been a bit dramatic, anyway) had fired all her help and practically locked herself inside her mansion, trusting no one but herself to monitor who and/or what went in and/or out. It was a bit ridiculous.
"Draco Malfoy. Open the door."
"State your business, please," said the metal tube.
"Kissy, this is ridiculous, open the door."
The tube hmphed. "I can't let you in until you tell me what you want."
"Kissy!"
"Dracikins!" her voice whined. "I can't let you in 'til you cooperate!"
"But it's me!"
"How can I know that? You could be one of Them."
"But I'm not."
"You would say that even if you were."
Now it was his turn to hmph. "Fine. You win. I don't have time for this." He leaned close to the tube. "I need to ask a favor."
Instantly, the door flew open.
"Dray-Dray?" the impulsive starlet threw herself onto him in a lavish show of bottled affection, completely as though she hadn't just been refusing to let him inside. "Where have you been? It's been eons and eons! Much too long."
He choked on the smell of her sugary sweet perfume and awkwardly patted her on the back with one hand while trying to brush her hair out of his face with the other. "Much too long…right."
She jumped back and pulled him inside. He took the opportunity to evaluate her appearance. Her hair was a new shade of blonde…very bleached, but more yellow than his own. It was curled into loose waves that framed her heart-shaped face. She was wearing a lot of shiny pink lip-gloss on her famous pout, and lavender eye shadow that matched the floor-length robe she was wearing. She looked more stretched than when he'd last seen her, but only his eye for picking out weaknesses would have noticed the almost-invisible circles under her eyes and the unhealthy emptiness of her cheeks.
"Close the door, quick!" she said, backing away from the threshold again. "If it's open even a second too long They can get in!"
He did as she said.
"Perfect. Now, as I said before, where have you been?"
He followed her through the white, completely plastic foyer and into a pink and purple living room. "Oh, here and there. You'll never believe the day I've had, Kissy."
"Really? Here, I'll make us drinks. You tell me all about it." She opened up a hot-pink armoire and brought down two cocktail glasses and a mixer.
He sat down on one of the long, pink couches. "Well, this morning I dropped by Cleo McMillan's dance studio… you know Cleo, right?" She nodded. "Of course, she choreographed for your show a few years ago, didn't she?" She nodded again and started filling the mixer with gin and orange juice. "Insufferable witch. Anyway, I had some business to do there so I cornered her in the bathroom." He caught the look on her face and smirked. "Yes, the bathroom. I didn't have a lot of time to deal with her, so… you know." She tapped the mixer with the tip of her long, white wand. "Then after that I had to go visit NCHANTED—"
She snapped to attention. "Really?"
"Really. I, personally, am still amazed that they're all living in that one mansion together. In the same room, I'm told."
"It's true, I went there last year for their Christmas party," she said, and started pouring from the mixer. "They sleep in five bunk beds stacked one on top of the other… like soldiers or something."
He laughed darkly. "How… quaint."
"What did you do then?"
"You know that muggle adaptation store in Hogsmeade? Wait, no, of course you don't. No one does. The place hasn't made a knut since it was opened. Anyway, I had to stop in there to ask Mr. Tasse, that's the wizard who owns the accursed place, a favor. And now I'm here."
"Drinks done!' Kissy declared and handed him one of the gin and sins. "Now let's see…" she said, tossing her head to the side in a blatantly coy flip. "Dancers…" she sat beside him, resting her elbow on his shoulder. "Boy bands…" He scooted away. "And muggle adaptations…" She followed. "And now you're visiting me… Why, Dracipoo, if I didn't know any better I'd think you were putting on a show."
"It's not quite so simple as that, I assure you." He scooted away again.
"Then what is it, Mr. Malfoy. Tell me, please." She followed again. "I just love the sound of your voice."
"Do you now?" He was practically cornered against a plastic armrest. "Well, I would love to tell you…"
"Would you?" She placed her elbow on his shoulder again and traced one pink-nailed finger along the part in his hair. "Then do."
"I need to ask a favor of you." He tried to shrink down away from her fingers and elbows but only found himself further pinned to the couch.
"So you said." She leered in what she obviously thought was a seductive way. "Oh, come and stir my cauldron…" she sang, almost teasing.
"Well… as you probably have heard…"
"and if you do it right…" He tried to push himself away and off the couch as one of her hands slid slowly but surely under his waistline.
"My fiancé and I…"
She jumped away from him as though burned. "Fiancé!" She screeched and quickly closed her robe.
He rolled his eyes. "Kissy, you get the papers. You knew I was engaged."
"I could have shagged you, and you would have let me!"
"Kissy, obviously you weren't paying very close attention, but I was desperately trying to get away while you were trying to seduce me with Celestina Warbeck's greatest hits!"
"Oh, so now I'm the slag here?"
"YES!"
She visibly deflated. "What did you want, then?"
"Like I SAID, before you became enraptured by my pants, I need to ask a favor, and I'm willing to pay copious amounts of money for your cooperation."
While her fiancé was off doing Something Mysterious and failing to be seduced by Kissy Kissimmee, Hermione was also off and failing at quite a few things, but she would never have said that there was anything mysterious about the waiting room at Les Decouper Ivres, which was where the Malfoy women had dragged her after purchasing what might have been loosely termed a "wedding gown".
Contrary to her original thought, that the place was either a bar (She knew enough French, at least, to know that the seemingly fashionable title actually meant "The Drunk Scissors") or a place where prospective mothers-in-law took prospective daughters-in-law to torture them, Les Decouper Ivres was a very Chic salon. Naturally, it was filled with very Chic people doing very Chic things, like wearing all white and drinking bo bo tea. Hermione felt like a sore thumb in her casual t-shirt and jeans.
Narcissa and Co. had abandoned her at the door, saying that they had all made appointments beforehand and she would have to wait a bit before the head stylist let her through. She wasn't surprised. She was surprised to find herself wishing they hadn't left her alone, when that was the only thing she'd wanted at all only a half-hour before. There was nothing for it but to wait, though. If she ever wanted to talk to Draco again she'd have to sit tight and wait… and wait.
She twiddled her thumbs and ate cucumber finger sandwiches. The sandwiches were quite good but they might as well have been peanut butter and tripe for all the joy they gave her.
Why, why, why didn't anyone think to check Rita Skeeter's facts?
But then, why did they have to? What was nature's purpose in creating a witch like Rita Skeeter at all?
She couldn't answer, and so only sulked.
She picked up a copy of Witch Weekly and absently stared at the first page she turned to.
All her problems would be solved if Draco suddenly showed up at the salon. Then, at least, they could talk and maybe go home. But what were the chances of that happening?
"All right, Weasel, you go in first."
Ron glared at Malfoy's back as they stopped before the storefront of their next intended destination on Diagon Alley. "Should I ask why, or would that only slow us down more than picking up that one—" He jerked his thumb in Kissy's general direction "—already did."
Malfoy huffed and turned to face him. "We need to make sure she's not already in there! If she saw us it could blow the entire operation!" He snapped, and then smirked. "You'll be the least conspicuous."
"Of course, why didn't I think of that?" Ron rolled his eyes and headed into Les Decouper Ivres, a Very Chic salon in a Very Chic part of Diagon Alley. He really didn't think that being abnormally tall with flaming red hair and a displeasingly long nose made one "inconspicuous," but he was sick of arguing with Draco Malfoy and so bottled his frustration for the time being.
Inside was white with very low-hanging, very bright lighting fixtures. He half-heartedly scanned the room. As far as he was concerned, Malfoy was being ridiculous. What on Earth would Hermione have been doing in a salon of all places? Last they'd heard she was looking for Draco, and it was mutually assumed she was still at it.
Quite suddenly, he snapped to attention, frozen in spot, his mouth gaping dryly at the very witch he'd been looking for, who sat, oblivious to his attentions, on one of the Very Chic white chaise lounges.
He slowly backed away and out of the salon.
"Well? Spit it out, Weasel," Malfoy commanded, once he'd got out.
Ron blanched. "She's in the there," he whispered, his voice like sandpaper.
Draco's eyes snapped to alert. "What? What's she doing?"
"I don't know… reading a magazine."
Draco nodded. "All right, we'll just have to remain as inconspicuous as possible."
"Right."
The strange trio entered the salon as quietly as possible. The witch behind the desk beamed and opened her mouth to greet Draco, but he put a fast finger to his lips and she smiled knowingly, casting a furtive glance to her left and Hermione. Draco did the same. His fiancé was still deeply engrossed in her magazine. They inched forward.
A wizard watching them sneak across the waiting room dropped his ceramic cup of bo bo tea. It shattered on the clean floor with a resonating crash. Draco stopped breathing.
Hermione looked up at the sound of a ceramic cup breaking. The poor wizard who had dropped it was looking embarrassed and frowning at something, presumably the mess, on the floor. She turned back to the magazine.
Ron breathed heavily. The floor was very cold under him. When the inconveniently clumsy wizard by the door dropped his cup, he'd done what seemed most natural and hit the floor, dragging Kissy and Malfoy with him. Luckily for them there was a god who liked them (or at the least, sympathised with their motives) somewhere in interior decorating who had placed a long, white couch right beside the place where they fell. Laying on the floor, catching his breath, and trying to decide what to do next, he silently thanked the God of Interior Decorating and cursed the man who invented bo bo tea.
"Crawl." Malfoy directed, almost too quiet to be heard.
Ron balked. "What!"
But Malfoy had already started crawling towards the front desk, and there was nothing to be done but follow him. He indicated that Kissy should come along and they, too, started dragging themselves towards the receptionist, who was watching them with a look of extreme amusement. And so, the pop princess, the ex-fiancé, and the white-blonde heir arrived at the front desk.
Draco gestured that the witch at the desk should lean down so he could talk with her. She rolled her eyes in a gesture strongly reminiscent of Ron and did so. He craned his neck to whisper something in her ear. She smiled at the still oblivious Hermione again and then gestured for them to come behind the desk. They did.
Behind the desk was cluttered with boxes of snacks and files stuffed with half-filled-out paperwork. When they'd all squeezed in the witch leaned down and handed Draco a tiny bronze key, saying "There's a door in the back, on the left, with a burn on its bottom edge. That's my office. You can use it for a few hours until we close."
Draco nodded and took the key.
Hermione was halfway through glaring at a Witch Weekly article about Celestina Warbeck's husband's recently uncovered affair when the witch at the front desk botched her name.
"Harmony LaGrange?" she called out, her voice made megaphone-loud by the wand-tip she held to her lips.
Hermione dropped the magazine and stood, crossing to the desk with as much poise as she could muster. "Yes, that's me," she said, flashing her daughter-of-dentists smile.
"Follow me." The receptionist stood and Hermione followed her to the back of the salon, past Cordelia Malfoy having some sort of white potion painted onto her face, past Narcissa and Aemilia getting red lacquer applied to their claws, past her own mother and sister having something that glowed with a soft golden light applied to their hair. "Terribly sorry about the wait." She smiled and gestured for Hermione to sit before a large, slick mirror. "We're just so busy today. Hilary will be with you in a moment. If you need anything just call me, my name is LaLaine."
Hermione nodded absently. Only a few minutes before, this 'LaLaine' character had been snapping at her to take a seat, they were too busy to deal with her anytime soon. Now it seemed her personality had done a U-turn. It surprised Hermione how little this bothered her. She had, apparently, sometime during the last week, grown used to people acting in strange, irrational ways. A week before she might have pondered the reasons behind LaLaine's change of heart, but just then she leaned back and chalked it up to multiple personalities and the negative effects of hair-dye fumes.
She didn't have much time to lean back, though, because a moment later a bubbly twenty-something with bleached blonde hair streaked with red popped up on her left and started bubbling away in something akin to English. "'Ello! I'm Hilary! I'll be your stylist today! I just love your hair! We don't have much time today, so we're going to try to do everything at once! This is Raven!" She indicated a dark-skinned woman by Hermione's right elbow. "She'll be doing your facial! This is Adam and his assistant, Jake!" Two short, curly haired men nodded from near the mirror. "They'll do your nails! When we're all done a woman named Christy will do your make-up! Isn't that nice!"
Hermione could tell by the exclamation point at the end that it was not a question, and so did not respond. In an instant the chair had been turned away from the mirror and flipped into a flat position. A bowl was placed below her head and Hilary started washing her hair.
"Close your eyes," the woman named Raven commanded. Hermione obeyed. Before she could even notice people moving around her, every part of her was having something done to it. Her shoes had been removed and her toenails and fingernails were being simultaneously prepped for and manicure and a pedicure. Something that smelled vaguely like a strange mix of avocado and lime was being rubbed over her face in cold, circular strokes; and Hilary was running citrus-scented shampoo through her hair. She felt like she'd suddenly become the central component of a terrifyingly efficient machine. It was rather like going to the orthodontist.
As Hermione was worked over like a piece of barely-salvageable meat, Draco and Ron were busy working over their own plots in a back office of the salon.
"What are you thinking?" Draco asked. They'd been poring over the same piece of paper for a half-hour. The little pictures drawn on it had consequently lost all meaning and neither of them really wanted to deal with it. If it wasn't such a vital piece of The Plan to Win Hermione Back they might have scrapped it.
Ron started. He hadn't actually been thinking about anything except how very nice Kissy's lazy curves looked in her light, flowy robe— she was reclining against the far wall with her legs at her chest so the fabric fell in particularly pleasing ways.
"Um… I think we're not going to be able to do that ourselves," he improvised.
Draco nodded. "Would you go out there and ask LaLaine to send an owl to Dean Thomas?"
"Why? Dean hates you."
"This is his area of expertise, isn't it? And besides, nobody hates money."
"But—"
"Just do it."
"What would I tell him?"
"Tell him that you, Draco Malfoy, and a briefcase full of galleons need him to come to Les Decouper Ivres and build something."
Ron didn't bother arguing further. He was glad for any reason to get out of the room.
Once he'd left, Kissy was quick to fairly propel herself off of the wall and onto the table, where she assumed a pose that she clearly considered alluring. "Draco…" she purred.
"Kissy?" He picked up the drawings again, anything that would let him ignore her.
"My skirt is riding up. Can you fix it?"
He glanced at the offending garment. She wasn't lying. He glared at her. "Are you five?" She shook her head. "Enfeebled?" She shook her head again. "Then why can't you lift up your arm and pull it down yourself?"
She pouted and grabbed his wrist. "Because I like the way you do it."
"Well, I don't do it, so apparently you like having your skirt at an unflattering length."
She hmphed and leaned closer to him. "Draco Malfoy what's your problem…" she sang. He rolled his eyes pushed her away.
"Go find Christy, or something," he snapped. She giggled. She had an oddly musical laugh.
"Why would I do a silly thing like that?"
"Because you're the entire reason we're here. We don't need to work on this here. We need to work on you here. I was going to wait until Thomas got here so we could measure you for this…" He jabbed at the drawing. "But you're being an insufferable slag is vexing me and that really isn't helping us to get anything done." She looked as though she were about to pitch a fit so he set his stare and pointed authoritatively towards the door. "Go."
"Hi, I'm Kissy."
Hermione mentally rolled her eyes (she couldn't actually do so because she had cucumbers over them) and managed an unfriendly "Hm…"
A few minutes before, the salon-machine had taken a break from working her over and left her with vegetables on her eyes and paste on her face. To her own surprise, she had almost been enjoying it until the peaceful silence was shattered by someone getting her hair done in the next chair over who, Hermione could only guess, wanted to be her new best friend.
"I just love getting my hair done, don't you?"
"Hm…"
"Not so much now, though."
"Hm…" Was the witch deaf or just irreverently dumb?
"And I just got this new haircut, Lockhart's flaxen blonde number 5, see? But of course, you can't." She giggled. The hairs on the back of Hermione's neck stood on end.
"I'm gonna be in a—" The girl's last word was cut-off and Hermione heard her utter an oddly muffled squeak.
"What was that?" she asked against her better judgement.
"I… just got a new job."
"Hm…"
"My employer is making me go brown. Yuck. He's a major prick, though. He wants me to look like his ex-girlfriend." She drew out the ex for reasons Hermione didn't feel like fathoming and continued. "How creepy is that?"
"Very."
"And brown is so not my colour."
"Mhm."
"Ugh… briefcase full of galleons my arse…"
"Mhm." Hermione started drifting off again. She was starting to get used to the high-pitched whine of the witch's voice, and so better able to tune it out.
"Stop it!" The girl suddenly snapped. Hermione jumped. She couldn't imagine what she'd done. "She's not even paying attention, you could just say it if you wanted!" Ah, the annoying little tramp had a boyfriend of some sort lurking around making signals at her… probably lewd ones by the sound of it.
"Your boyfriend?" she asked.
"My… fiancé."
"Huh."
"You married?" The girls voice took on an oddly sinister quality that Hermione couldn't place.
"Not yet."
"Engaged?"
"Unfortunately."
"Why unfortunate?"
"Long long long story." Hermione answered honestly.
"Your fiancé a prick?"
"Sometimes."
The witch paused, presumable signing to the fiancé again. "You love him?"
"Of course."
"Hm…" Hermione ignored the disappointment in the girl's voice. She was imagining it, of course. "Well, me too."
"Wonderful."
"Say…" That sinister, unplaceable quality again. "Have you heard about that Granger girl with the ridiculous name who left Draco bleeding Malfoy for a Weasley… and pregnant, too." That oddly musical giggle again. Hermione felt a sudden, unexpected rush as she realised she was about to hear gossip about herself. Apparently having cucumber on one's eyes was as good as polyjuice. "I heard they'll be breaking off the engagement any day now, too. Ridiculous. It's like the girl can't keep an engagement longer than a few hours!" The witch sounded practically ecstatic at this news. Hermione wondered what she'd ever done to make anyone hate her so much.
She cleared her throat and dragged the subject back to her fake pregnancy. "Pregnant? You don't say."
"Oh, everyone's saying it. Apparently she screamed it at his father and now he's forcing them to get married! And now she's run off. It's absurd, of course. His family is still pretending nothing's happened."
"You don't say."
"I, for one, have trouble believing she's pregnant, actually. I can't believe a man as suave, handsome, rich, well-bred, and, well, smart, as him would ever shag that." Suddenly, Hermione understood the witch's dogmatic hate. She was clearly insane. "It's hard to argue with evidence, though. I mean, look at her stomach!" Hermione was getting sick of people making jabs at her baby-less stomach. She resolved to take up pilates as soon as she found the time. "It's obvious enough that there's something going on there, don't you think?"
Hermione started, realising it was her turn to say something. "Mmf."
"I wonder what she'll name it, though. The Malfoys have a long history of beautiful names. I mean, just look at them! Granger, though… I don't know."
Hermione pressed her luck. "I heard she was going to name it Clare."
The witch made a sound like she was retching. "Clare? Ew. I, for one, find Kissy to be a desirable, beautiful, classy name for either gender."
Now it was Hermione's turn to feel like retching. She managed a weak "Mhm" before the witch went off on a long monologue about the beauty and history behind a name like Kissy.
"Do you want the simple answer, or should I explain it for you?" Dean said through gritted teeth.
Draco had learned, since Dean's arrival a few minutes before and among other things, that Dean still nursed a bitter chip on his shoulders about Draco gate crashing his and Lavender's wedding. He was only there, he had informed them upon arrival, because he could use a few hundred extra galleons. Draco assumed this was because Lavender had just announced the impending arrival of their first child, as he'd read in the Prophet's society pages, but didn't bother mentioning it in the interest of time. "Simple."
They were sitting around an enlarged version of Draco's scribbled drawings, and Ron had just explained the general idea of what they were for to a very sceptical Dean.
"It can't be done," Thomas stated simply, as he'd promised.
Draco nodded as if he understood. "Could it be done if I paid you more?"
Dean glowered and jabbed an irritated finger at the drawings. "What you're asking me to do…" He paused and shook his head as though he'd just been thrust into a bizarre dream. "What you're asking me to design, build, and run… it couldn't be done for one-hundred-thousand galleons within the time you're asking me to do it."
"Could it be done for two-hundred-thousand galleons?"
Dean chuckled darkly, then turned abruptly serious. "Don't be ridiculous, Malfoy. Not even you have that kind of money to spend on…" He flicked the paper distastefully. "…rotating crystal staircases built over twenty-four hours."
"You'd be surprised how much money I have to spend on this plan," Draco intoned. Dean shook his head again.
"It's impossible. If you want someone to try, find a man who likes failing. I don't."
"Oh, there's no room for failure, Thomas." Draco pointed authoritatively down at the sheet. "This is an imperative part of the operation."
"I understand, but what you're talking about…platforms that rise and fall on command, a lighting spell that flickers on and off without manual operation, crystal stairs that melt in an instant and then rebuild themselves step-by-step, for Merlin's sake…It's never been done… much less in one night."
"But this is your area of expertise, isn't it? Designing fantastic, never-before-seen structures? Pulling together impossible operations?"
"Well, yes…" The artist nodded reluctantly. "But this is nothing like building bridges of cold fire over Hogsmeade for Fawkes night, or even like that moving, fire-breathing glass dragon for the Weird Sisters last year… those I had notice months, a year in advance. This…" He shook his head again. "It can't be done, and that's the last word on it."
"We'd give you a team."
"No team in the world would be able to put up a self-transporting, specifically-targeted, maintenance-free, long-range voice-projection field in one night. The thing doesn't even exist."
"Not yet. Think about it…" Draco leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. "Isn't this exactly what you dreamed of leaving Hogwarts? Big, important, ground-breaking projects; making things people had never even dreamed of into reality; being paid to tackle the impossible." He dug deep and pulled out one last bit of inspirational sap. "This is the dream," he whispered.
Ron snorted. Dean cocked his head to the side, thinking about it.
Draco nodded. "While you consider that I'm going to go check on Kissy."
Now it was Ron's turn to glower. "What's she doing that she's not here, again?"
"She's getting her hair done. What else does one do in a salon?" Draco smirked and left the room.
"Hi, I'm Kissy." Kissy took a seat in the comfortable reclining-chair beside the woman with green paste on her face, cucumbers on her eyes, and foil in her hair. Her favourite salon past time was making friends with the people that couldn't see you.
"Hm…"
Christy started painting heavy, dark, hair-dying potion onto her flaxen locks. "I just love getting my hair done, don't you?"
"Hm…" The woman was not proving very friendly. Or maybe she was deaf?
"Not so much now, though."
"Hm…"
Kissy pouted at herself in the mirror. "And I just got this new haircut, Lockhart's flaxen blonde number 5, see? But of course, you can't." She giggled as she noticed the woman's cucumber-laden eyes again. "I'm gonna be in a—" Suddenly, her mouth was covered by a pale hand. She let out a muffled squeak of protest and looked up to see whose hand it was. She stopped protesting when she saw it was Draco. She'd known he loved her! His desperate need to touch her had been translated into a need to cover her mouth. It was something, at least. She smiled against his palm.
"What was that?" the woman asked. Draco mouthed something that Kissy didn't understand.
What? she mouthed. He grabbed a lipstick off of the counter and wrote "That's Hermione!" in big pink letters on the mirror. The stylist glared at him. Kissy covered her own mouth. "Answer her!" he wrote under the first message.
"I… just got a new job." Kissy managed shakily.
"Hm…" She hadn't noticed anything. Draco breathed.
Kissy smiled mischievously and set one of her heels on Draco's lap (he was sitting on the counter, now) as Christy folded her hair further into foil rolls. "My employer is making me go brown. Yuck. He's a major prick, though. He wants me to look like his ex-girlfriend." She dragged out the ex and traced her toe up his thigh. He pushed her leg away. "How creepy is that?"
"Very."
"And brown is so not my colour," she whined. Draco pushed her leg away again.
"Mhm."
"Ugh… briefcase full of galleons my arse…" Draco frowned and started signalling to her that she was an ungrateful slag.
"Mhm." Hermione replied, clearly off in her own cucumber-coloured world.
"Stop it!" Kissy got fed up with trying to signal back and kicked him. "She's not even paying attention, you could just say it if you wanted!"
"Your boyfriend?"
Kissy had what appeared to her to be a brilliant idea."My… fiancé," she said and smiled roguishly. Draco glared at her.
"Huh."
"You married?"
"Not yet."
"Engaged?"
"Unfortunately."
"Why unfortunate?" Kissy watched the look on Draco's face turn inevitably to curiosity.
"Long long long story."
"Your fiancé a prick?" Kissy prodded.
"Sometimes."
"You love him?"
"Of course."
Kissy deflated. Her brilliant plan had backfired in the most predictable way, and that was no fun. "Hm…" She sulked. "Well, me too."
"Wonderful."
"Say…" A hint of sparkle appeared back in her eyes. She kicked her foot back into Draco's lap. "Have you heard about that Granger girl with the ridiculous name who left Draco bleeding Malfoy for a Weasley… and pregnant, too." Draco glared at her. Kissy continued to prod. "I heard they'll be breaking off the engagement any day now, too. Ridiculous. It's like the girl can't keep an engagement longer than a few hours!"
"Pregnant? You don't say," Hermione replied, her voice dripping with apathy.
"Oh, everyone's saying it. Apparently she screamed it at his father and now he's forcing them to get married! And now she's run off. It's absurd, of course. His family is still pretending nothing's happened."
"You don't say."
"I, for one, have trouble believing she's pregnant, actually. I can't believe a man as suave…" She inched her foot further into Draco's lap. "…handsome…" A bit further. "…rich…" She slouched down in her chair. Christy tried to protest but her foot was already dodging his attempts at swatting it away and moving up his inner-thigh. "…well-bred…" She smiled impishly and stopped her leg in its pursuit of Draco Malfoy's zipper for one last drawn-out compliment. "…and, well, smart, as him would ever shag that." Draco pushed her leg back so hard that her knee hit her chest. She frowned bitterly. "It's hard to argue with evidence, though. I mean, look at her stomach!" she snapped. "It's obvious enough that there's something going on there, don't you think?" They both turned to the oblivious Hermione to see what she would say.
"Mmf," was all.
"I wonder what she'll name it, though. The Malfoys have a long history of beautiful names. I mean, just look at them! Granger, though… I don't know."
"I heard she was going to name it Clare." Kissy made a face at Draco, who had stood and was walking away.
"Clare?" She pretended to vomit. "Ew. I, for one, find Kissy to be a desirable, beautiful, classy name for either gender."
"Mhm"
"All right! Are you ready to see the brand new you!" Hilary exclaimed. Hermione doubted she was capable of doing anything but exclaiming. Once again, it wasn't a question, so she didn't respond. She laid back and let herself be turned toward the mirror. Then she let herself not say anything… and not say anything… and not say anything.
She had read, once, that some people simply froze when they received a great enough shock. As her body refused to move she wondered if that was happening to her.
"So… do you like it!" Hilary exclaimed.
Hermione forced her jaw to unclench, forced her hands to stop gripping the black-leather armrests, forced her nose to take in air, forced her lungs to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.
Breathe. Breathe. This isn't the worst thing that's happened all day, anyway.
It was a good thing that Hermione had got used to bad, irrational things happening to her, because if anyone had dyed her hair blonde a week before she would have hurt them. Badly. As it was she turned as calmly as she could to the beaming ball of exclamation points beside her and said as calmly as she could: "It's blonde."
"Yes! Mrs. Malfoy and I talked it over and we decided that a nice, warm, flaxen blonde would work best with a face like yours! As opposed to that hideous, strange brown you'd been working with before! Can you say unflattering!"
Hermione ran a hand through her salon-soft hair (that, at least, was nice). A section of warm, almost-platinum but definitely flaxen (at least Hilary knew her colours) blonde hair fell into her face.
She breathed, stood, forced her mouth shut, and walked out, grabbing her sister on the way through the waiting room.
She waited to scream until they were well down the street.
When Dean Thomas had been paid and persuaded to build Draco's staircase, Kissy's hair had been dyed a warm, chocolate brown and then permed, and Draco had been able to cross through the waiting room without being stopped by one of his cousins on her way to the bathroom, Ron and he regrouped to go over the day's activities at the only place they were certain to go unrecognised: a muggle restaurant called Mancini's, which Ron vaguely remember coming to while Hermione and he were still together.
It was the sort of small place where the tables were arranged very closely together and the napkins always smelled like tomato no matter how many times you washed them. The floor was covered in hard, brown ceramic tiles and a lot of empty blue and green bottles lined a plant-laden shelf along the top of the far wall. The host, who identified himself as Paco (Draco wondered what had happened to the Mancini advertised in the place's name) seated them at the only remaining table for two, right next to a sort of aisle that had been made through the tables. Across the aisle, at another table for two, two young women were sitting beside the fish tank. The chairs at the tables were organised so that one person had their back to the aisle, and so consequently the other table, and the other person faced their date (or partner in crime, whichever it might be) as well as the aisle and the reflecting table. A strange side effect of this poorly-thought out seating arrangement was that Draco, who had taken the aisle-facing seat, was not only looking at Ron, but also directly at the brunette teen across the room who had taken the other table's aisle-facing seat.
This wouldn't have been a problem except that the girl was staring at him.
He first noticed when he'd set all the lists, calculations, and measurements onto the table and gone to put his briefcase on the floor. As he flipped the black case shut he happened to chance her appraising, almost brazen glance. He nodded curtly and put the briefcase under his chair. When he straightened again she was still staring. He tried to return the unwavering stare but she just smirked and kept on keeping on. He forced himself to look away and turn to Ron.
"That girl across the room is staring at me." He whispered. Ron rolled his eyes.
"She's a muggle, how could she possibly recognise you?"
"I don't think she has. I think she's just staring."
Ron started to turn towards the girl. Draco threw out a hand to stop him. "NO! She'll know I've noticed!"
Ron looked dubious but stopped.
"She looks very familiar," he thought aloud. "I'm sure if I could see her friend's face I'd know them…" Ron started going over the sheets as Draco rambled on to himself. "Quite pretty, too… wearing too much make-up, though."
"Take off your hat, 'Mione. This is a nice restaurant." Jeanie jabbed Hermione's elbow with the blunt end of her fork. The witch snapped to attention.
"What?"
Jeanie giggled. "I said take off your hat before one of the waiters asks you to. This is a fancy restaurant."
Hermione doubted that anyone would call Mancini's, a little Italian restaurant off of Charing Cross Road where Ron and she had gone on dates while they were still together, fancy, but she didn't feel like arguing over word-choice with her vocabulary-impaired little sister. After Jeanie had bought her a big, head-hugging hat that strongly reminded her of the turban-like wraps worn by high-class women in films from the forties and she had put it on to cover as much of her hair as possible, Hermione thought the only way of properly thanking the teen-aged muggle for not asking too many questions on the way out of the salon was to take her out to dinner.
She grudgingly unsnapped the hat's front button, then glared at the strands of golden hair that fell into her eyes. "I hate this," she stated honestly, but Jeanie wasn't listening. She'd become terribly interested in something over Hermione's shoulder. "What are you looking at?"
"There's a blonde man over there who's staring at me…" Jeanie giggled and continued staring.
Hermione started to turn to see the staring stranger, but Jeanie threw out a hand to stop her. "NO! He'll know I told you!"
"Who's he with?" Hermione asked. Any subject, even strange men sitting across the restaurant, was better than discussing her hair.
"Um…" Jeanie frowned and craned her neck. "I can't see… he's got red hair."
Hermione smiled at that because meetings between redheads and blondes made her think of what a meeting between Ron and Draco would be like, and how ludicrously comical its end would inevitably be.
"They're on a business meeting, maybe. They've got a lot of paper with them," Jeanie concluded, as though business was the only thing one could ever do with paper.
Hermione nodded vaguely. The waiter had just arrived to take their orders. "Erm… I'll have the Gnocchi Gorgonzola. What do you want, Jeanie?"
Jeanie considered the menu. "Um… What has no carbs, no sugar, and is fat free?"
Hermione cleared her throat loudly. "She'll have the angel hair pasta with marinara sauce."
"Ew… I don't want to eat hair!" Jeanie hissed once the waiter had gone. "That's gross!"
"You should have asked for food that existed, then." Hermione frowned. "You need to gain some weight, anyway."
Jeanie fumed. "Who are you, my mother?"
Hermione could see a fit approaching somewhere on the horizon of Jeanie's immediate future. She latched on to the last subject that had worked well. "Um… is that man still staring at you?"
Jeanie jumped. "Oh, I'd forgotten!" She leaned over to look around her sister. "No…" She deflated. "They're still working though. He's got such strange hair… even more blonde than yours."
"You should see Draco's hair," Hermione stated simply and took a sip from her water. "I think I'll go to the bathroom."
Ron was trying to use words to figure out how they were going to fit Kissy and her ego into a small, coffin-like space with her consent when Draco started talking about the staring girls again.
"Now the blonde has gone somewhere… the bathroom probably. I'm sure if I could just see her face…"
"You know this is fascinating to me, right?"
Draco glared at Ron. "If you truly must know, I've decided that the brunette looks a bit like a younger Hermione…"
"…Mixed with a young Maria Montez," Ron finished under his breath.
"What was that?"
"Oh, nothing." Ron started shuffling the papers again. "When Hermione and I were… engaged, and her sister was staying with us for a little while, she was about… fourteen or so at the time, whenever someone said she looked like a young Hermione, Hermione would say 'mixed with a young Maria Montez.'"
"A young who?"
"I don't know. Some muggle star, I always thought. It was just some kind of running joke with them."
Draco nodded as if her understood. "Well, her companion has left, anyway. What were you saying?"
"Oh, I was only trying to salvage all the rational bits of your plan. That's all."
"There's no need to be snappish, Weasel. It's not my fault the poor girl's infatuated with me."
"Is she staring at you now?"
Draco leaned out slightly to get a better view of the girl. "She is."
Ron laughed darkly. "Wave, then."
Draco glared at him, then turned back to the girl. "Oh, she's called over a waiter."
"Excuse me." Jeanie tried to smile as coyly as possible at the (very cute) waiter whose belt she had just grabbed. "Could I ask you a favor?"
He looked confused, but nodded anyway. "I'll try."
"Could you give a drink over to—" She pointed to the blonde man's table. "—that man over there. Something cheap," she added. "Tell him 'Courtesy of Jeanie Granger.' Can you do that?"
The waiter nodded. "Of course, miss. It might be a minute, but I'm sure I can."
Jeanie smiled and let go of his belt.
She twiddled her thumbs and fidgeted for a few long moments before Hermione returned, looking rather in a hurry, and resumed her seat at the table. "You know what, Jeanie, I'm really sorry, but I've just realized that I haven't done any work for the store in three days or more and we've got a show coming up… would you mind terribly if we just paid and then I dropped you off at Ginny's?"
Jeanie grunted. "I can find my own way back to Ginny's from the store, I think."
"I'd rather drop you off, in all honesty. A mug— er… non-magical person is Diagon Alley after dark is apt to encounter all sorts of trouble."
Jeanie shrugged absently. Hermione could tell she didn't like the idea of leaving the blonde man. "There will be all sorts of other blonde men at the wedding," she promised. "Let's go?"
"They're leaving!" Draco gasped, effectively interrupting Ron's new course of productivity, which was on how to make one blue light morph into twenty rainbow-lights without manual operation. It was just as well, Ron was no good at charms like that.
"Did you catch a look at the blonde's face?"
"No!" Draco slammed his fist onto the table, or he would have had a crafty waiter not place a tall cosmopolitan in the direct path of his angry hand. He looked up at the offending server. "I didn't order this."
"I know, sir. It's from the girl at that—" He pointed at the now empty table where the girls had been sitting. "Well… now they're gone. But the brunette sends it with her regards, I'm sure." He walked away.
"Well, what does it say?" Ron asked, indicating the small piece of pink paper stuck onto the straw of the drink.
"Courtesy of Jeanie Granger…" he read aloud.
"Jeanie Granger?" they both echoed.
"Like…"
"Hermione's little sister?"
"I guess so. How many Jeanie Grangers who kind of look like a younger Hermione could there be in London?"
"Only one that I know of."
"Me too." Draco considered the note. "Who was the blonde, then?"
When Hermione returned to the Burrow, over twelve-hours after she'd left it, clutching a carry-out box filled with Gnocchi Gorgonzola and wearing a hat that made her look like a last-stage leukemia patient, Ron was already sitting at the kitchen table, furiously scribbling calculations that Hermione assumed were about the Canons.
"Hallo!" he called as she swung off her overcoat and dropped it on one of the coat-pegs by the door.
"Hi, Ron. How was your day?"
He put down his quill and dropped the computations into a nearby folder. "Really dull, actually."
"Lucky you." She yawned and kicked off her shoes. "You would never believe the day I had."
He smiled and took a sip from a nearby butterbeer bottle. "Try me."
She laughed and removed her hat. All her shiny, soft blonde hair fell down to her shoulders in salon-clean waves.
"You were the blonde!" he shouted before he could stop himself.
Hermione cocked her head at him. "Huh?"
"I mean… um… You're blonde! Wow! That's quite a change."
She gagged. "I hate it. It's all Narcissa Malfoy's doing, anyway."
"You don't say."
"I do. But right now, I'm going to take this dinner—" She indicated the box of gnocchi. "—upstairs. I need to do some serious work for the next S.P.E.W. show and I just haven't had time. If anyone comes by looking for me, could you tell them I've died?"
He nodded. "I could do that."
She started up the stairs.
"Oh, wait!" he called. She stopped and turned back around on the third step.
"Hm?"
"Er… I'd asked Mary-Sue to go to the game with me tomorrow, the Canon's are playing Harry's team, you know, but he's just come by to say she's feeling ill so…"
"Harry was just here?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Really?"
"What do you want me to say, no?"
"Fine fine, all right. Were you going to ask me to go in her stead?"
He smiled at her bluntness. "Yeah."
"I'd love to." She took the boxed dinner and trudged upstairs.
When he'd heard the door to Ginny's room slam shut he counted to ten and turned to the fireplace behind him. Draco Malfoy's disembodied head was floating in the flames. It yawned. "She must be really out of it; she didn't even notice me. So she was the blonde?"
"Apparently."
"I should have known. What were we doing?"
"Um… getting everyone over to your rink tomorrow."
"Right, that."
"I still can't believe you have a rink."
"When are you going to learn, Weasel? I have everything."
A/N: I UPDATED! Ugh... three months is much much too long. Honestly. My little brother has taken up this new game called World of Warcraft, which he plays religiously, and of course the computer he uses is the computer I like to write on. It's no good, no good at all. So today I kicked him off and wrote until I was done, and there you are.
I've also started a new project, which is a comic called Life, Death, and Limbo. I don't feel bad plugging it here because I'm VERY proud of it. The link is in my profile. The comic is a study into my favorite character, Tom Riddle, and also into one of my favorite issues, Nature vs. Nurture. The general idea is whether or not Tom Riddle was born evil, but it's also got some nice Harry/Everyone (I'm exploring a lot of Harry ships in the fic as I don't actually have a personal preference for him.) and serious Ron/Hermione. There's a cast of very intriguing, well-thought out, deep characters (not many of them have shown up yet as there are only two parts so far, but whatever), and the ever impending chance of Voldemort being reincarnated (the comic is set post-finalbattle). ANYWAY! I like it a lot, and I'm sure you would too, so please, please, please, please, PLEASE check it out, and rec it to all your friends. I would love you ETERNALLY.
Of course, I will also love you eternally when you straight up review this chapter, but I think I can trust all of you to do that without being told.