Wow, I feel very proud of myself. I think it's the first time I've ever updated the same story two times in one week. Anyways, I'm feeling really happy today because I got my permit on Monday and then I drove on Tuesday for two hours, which was really fun, and when I tell people that I got my permit they're all like whoah, you're still 15? I've gotten that question about ten times in the last two days. Anyways, I hope you all like this chapter and I just have to say that I'm not too good at choatic scenes so beware.

Disclaimer- I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters. They are all owned by J. K. Rowling but I do own those characters that you do not recognize.

It was exactly 11:59 in the morning and Draco and Andromeda were standing at the receptionist's desk at Marvin's Magical Tours holding a rather oddly shaped vase, which was the portkey that would take them to the Duprés's "castle" as Renée had put it.

Draco was slightly annoyed for Andromeda had changed his appearance so drastically that he cringed every time he saw himself in a mirror or in the glass of a store window. His blond hair was now a dirty brownish orange color and hung loosely until his shoulders, his skin was smattered with freckles, and his eyes were the same eerie brown as hers. If he didn't know any better, he'd say that he almost looked like a Weasley.

Andromeda on the other hand still had her beautiful silvery brown hair and her dark eyes but her facial features were different. Her slightly pointed nose was now rather round and her slender chin had a sharp sort of angle to it. She also had freckles and much paler skin. Though it did not sound like she looked too much different, just the manner in which she held herself promoted a huge change.

"How much longer?" asked Draco impatiently.

"About thirty seconds." She looked down at her watch then back at him. "Remember, my name is Iris, you are my nephew Earl Bennett and you are here on vacation with me because your grandmother did not want you around during the summer."

"Isn't that slightly odd though?" asked Draco. "I am twenty four. Shouldn't I have a job?"

Andromeda rolled her eyes at him and said, "Fine, you have a job that is highly time consuming therefore you get a two month vacation during the summer to do as you please. Happy?"

Draco nodded just as the portkey activated. He felt a tug and a jerk on his navel and a few seconds later, they were standing in the middle of a grandly furnished room. While it was nowhere near as elegant and old-fashioned like that Malfoy Manor, it was still nice. It had a modern twist to it which was a little odd at first.

"This is rather small compared to home," drawled Draco loudly.

Andromeda sniffed at him and said, "Not everyone is as rich as you."

Draco crossed his arms, his eyes shining as he bragged, "That would be why we are one of the richest families on this planet."

Andromeda rolled her eyes and said, "You had best keep quite now. She's coming."

Just as Andromeda said, Renée Duprés sauntered into the room, wearing bright gold dress robes and diamond earrings. Her face was caked with makeup and bright red lipstick painted her lips. "Ah, Iris. You're here."

"It seems I am," replied Andromeda tightly. "I am very sorry if I have kept you waiting."

"Don't worry about it." She turned her gaze to Draco and peered at him. "This would be your nephew?"

"Earl Bennett," he murmured giving her a short bow, taking her hand in his and not kissing it.

She smiled sourly at him and said, "My son and my husband will be down shortly. I'm sure they'll be pleased to meet you."

Draco nodded and muttered, "Me too."

Renée gestured to the room she had just come from and said, "Come. Lunch is waiting." Draco and Andromeda followed the woman into the next room where they were met with oddest looking dining room they had ever seen. The walls were bright red with silver edges and a massive glass chandelier hung in the middle of the room. On one side of the wall, there was a massive window and the sunlight that filtered through reflected off of the chandelier giving the room a rather bright and holy appearance. The ceiling was gold. On the whole, it was a little too bright for Draco's taste. He preferred darker colors such as black and dark green.

There was a tiny table in the middle of the room that looked more like a side table and was definitely too small for five people to sit at. Draco and Andromeda watched as Renée walked over to it and tapped her wand on it. She turned to them and said, "My husband, Ruin, bought this for me from Brazil. Their enchanted tables over there are marvelous. By the time she had finished saying this, the small surface had grown to be a massive table capable of seating at least twenty people with quite a bit of room in between each seat.

"Isn't this a little big for five people?" asked Andromeda, her nose in the air.

Renée colored slightly and said, "Our house elves cook very well. Therefore, we have a lot of food."

Andromeda nodded slightly before sparing Draco a glance. She gave him a gaze that clearly said that she thought nothing of this woman. Draco could not help but agree with her. It was clear to both of them that she loved to flaunt wealth in everyone's faces.

At that moment, Charles Duprés and his father Ruin Duprés entered the room. Renée gave the two of them a rather sugary smile and said, "So kind of the two of you to join us." She gestured to Andromeda and Draco and said, "Iris and Earl Bennett."

Ruin shook Draco's hand cordially then turning to Andromeda, he frowned. "Have I seen you somewhere before?"

Andromeda's smile faltered very slightly but nevertheless she replied, "I don't think so. This is my first time here."

Ruin took her hand and placing a small kiss on it, much to the chagrin of his wife, said, "You remind me of a cousin I had."

"Really?" came Andromeda's reply. "Who?"

Ruin frowned and said, "We don't speak her name anymore."

Andromeda pulled her hand out of his grasp and giving him a smile replied, "Indeed."

Charles took a look at Draco and holding out his hand said, "You look like a nice fellow. I'm Charles."

Draco took Charles's hand gingerly and arrogantly replied, "Earl Bennett." Charles nodded and taking Andromeda's hand, kissed it and said, "Charles."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she replied, her eyes boring into his. Charles dropped her hand and inadvertently shivered, his blue eyes darkening.

"Shall we all sit down?" asked Renée, sensing the slight amount of tension in the room. Everyone nodded and soon, they were all seated at the table. Ruin sat at the end of the table facing the window, Andromeda sat down at a chair facing the left wall while Draco took a seat next to her. Charles took the seat across from Draco and Renée sat down next him.

Immediately, all varieties of food covered the entire table, ranging from stuffed goose and turkey, all the way to salads and soups. There was an assorted choice of wines as well. Draco had to admit that this was almost as good as the food back home. Almost, being the key word in this situation.

"Let's eat," chirped Renée in a sickly sweet voice.

As they elegantly put food onto their plates, for purebloods never did anything in an inelegant fashion, Draco gazed out of the window at garden that spanned out in front of it. It was rather large and unusually green. It had some sort of a fake look to it and judging by the way this house looked, Draco was sure that it was. Fake gardens must have been in fashion for he remembered how just recently, his mum had been talking about how Gringotts would not insure her fake plants that she had bought for an insane amount of money from Morocco.

"Nice isn't it?" came Charles voice across from him.

Draco glanced at the man and said, "Quite."

Charles looked at Draco uncertainly and said, "You're not the talking type are you?" Draco merely ignored him. Charles looked outside and then back at Draco. "Earl was it?"

"Yes."

"Well, err…do you like gardens?"

Draco, who was very adept at catching onto poor conversation starters decided to give his cousin a break and replied, "Yes. In fact, the garden back home at my grandmother's house was grown by me. No gardeners or anything of the sort."

Charles grinned and said, "Dedication to gardening. That's something you rarely see among people like us these days." He looked out at the garden and said, "This is all fake though."

"Really?"

Charles, giving his mother a sideways glance, leaned forward and said, "My mother is very concerned with fashion trends. If something is in fashion, she'll go all out just to show her 'friends' that she is in sync with what is 'in'."

Draco gave him an odd look. "What?"

Charles shrugged and replied, "I don't know. I'm just repeating what she told my dad."

Draco rolled his eyes and looked back outside with a sneer. Just as he was about to turn back, something rather fell passed his line of view. It looked particularly like...

"Did you see that?" he asked Charles.

He looked up and raised an eyebrow, for there was food in his mouth. "What?"

"Something large fell past the window."

"You mean flew."

"No, fell."

Charles took a sip of his wine and said, "It's probably a bird. We have these fat birds sitting on the roof of our mansion, much to mother's dismay. They always shit on the gardens. One probably fell that's all."

Draco raised an eyebrow and replied, "It was much larger than a bird."

Charles frowned and asked, "Human size?"

At this point, Renée interrupted the conversation. "As I said before Iris, they've already become good friends." She smiled at Andromeda who managed to smile back. "Now what were you talking about?"

"Earl here thinks he saw a person fall past the window."

Renée laughed a little too loudly for Draco's comfort and he exchanged a glance with his aunt whose eyes said nothing. "A person? Why Earl, you have a rather...active imagination."

Draco stared at the older woman with a clear face. "It looked like a girl," he said as simply as he could.

Renée's face faltered just slightly. She smiled and said, "Well, if it'll ease your conscience, I'll have Ruin check the fifteen other rooms that run up this wall and the roof." Draco barely resisted the urge to snort as she said that. She was a right braggart.

Ruin and Renée exchanged a glance and he nodded. He smiled warmly at all the occupants of the table and said, "Please excuse me." With that, he swept out of the dining room.

Making sure to close the doors behind him, he placed a silencing charm over it so that no one would be able to hear outside of it. With that, he yelled, "Philostrate!"

A rather tall and thin man with a curling grey mustache and a balding head presently came into view. He bowed and said, "Yes sir?"

Ruin snapped something to a passing servant and said, "Philostrate, I need you to check in every single room above the dining room for a broken window or signs that someone may have jumped."

"Yes sir." Philostrate bowed. He looked at his master and asked, "The library as well sir?"

Ruin scoffed and replied, "No need. The windows are half a foot thick. No one can break them."

"The mudblood girl is being held in there, sir."

Ruin's eyes flashed momentarily. "Fine. I'll check the main library, the top two rooms and the roof. You check everything underneath the library. We'll meet back here after we're done. Hurry," he snapped.

Philostrate bowed and ran off, which was a very funny sight to witness. Ruin cursed under his breath as he too trudged up the grand staircase to the upper floors of the mansion. He really did not want such a big house. The thing was that it was a family house. He inherited it from his father who inherited it from his father. It wasn't nearly as big before Ruin inherited but once he married Renée, everything changed. Some changes were good, some were bad. The addition of five floors happened to be a bad change.

Ten minutes later, Ruin had checked the roof and the two floors under it. All that remained for him to check was the library. He was absolutely sure that there was no way for the mudblood to get out of the room. The windows were extremely thick and nearly impossible to break. Panting outside the door, he quickly composed himself and knocked on the door to the library three times before entering the room. He stopped dead in his tracks. Thick shards of glass littered the floor and the girl was no where to be found.

Ruin cursed loudly under his breath once more as he rushed out of the room back to the main entrance hall. If he did not know any better, he would probably say that she escaped hoping to get Iris and her nephew to convey a message back to the Malfoy boy and his mother. That would be the worst thing that would ever happen. The Master would have his head as well as the rest of his family's heads.

Once he reached the entrance, he saw that Philostrate was already there. He marched up to the thin man and hissed. "Find that girl and make sure she does not come anywhere near the dining room!"

Philostrate bowed to Ruin and ran off into the kitchen. Ruin muttered something under his breath and putting on a rather forced smile walked back into the dining room, closing the door behind him.

"My apologies. It seems that something did fall out of a window."

"A girl?" asked Andromeda curiously.

Ruin shook his head and replied, "Well, we have a rather err...unruly maid working for us at the moment and she's often prone to temper tantrums so she threw a few chairs out of a window on the 13th floor."

"Is she hurt?" asked Draco with a bored expression on his face.

"I- no."

"She should be," replied Draco with a nasty smile. "Putting you all through so much trouble. If I were you, I wouldn't stand for it."

Ruin gave Draco an uneasy smile then took a large gulp of his wine. That wasn't before he gave Renée a look that clearly said "trouble".

Philostrate marched into the kitchen with a rather disgusted look on the face. Every human servant who worked for the Duprés knew that Philostrate was a firm believer in pureblood supremacy and the fact that they had a mudblood, even if she was Harry Potter's friend, in the house was despicable to him.

Currently, the kitchen was filled with huge quantities of food with more being made each second. The house elves were rushing everywhere in a frenzy. It made one wonder why they did so much work when most of it was not going to be eaten that day.

"If anyone minds, we have a mudblood on the loose in the estate." He spoke of Hermione as though she was a common pest such as a rat. "I need a few of you to help me look for her. The master and I believe that she jumped out the window of the library. We're not sure if she is dead or alive." He looked around and asked, "Any volunteers."

Only one person, the cook, decided to help him. The Duprés had a human cook as well as a house elf cook. They preferred using the human cook for meals when they had no company and the house elves cooking for when they had company which was fairly often. She was a thin woman. One would expect her to be on the plump side but she was definitely not fat. Philostrate motioned for her to follow him. The two of them exited the kitchen and began walking down a narrow corridor that led right to the patio.

"Philostrate, that girl could not have survived a thirteen story jump," the cook began.

He merely snorted and said, "The master believes otherwise. With that, he reached the door that led outside and pushed it open.

Hermione felt herself falling and for a split second she realized that she was going much faster than she had anticipated and it struck her that she had just done a very stupid thing. The spell had only worked once and there was no guarantee that it would work this time. Her mind was on overload right now and she felt her whole life flash before her eyes as the words to the spell flew through her head. Right before she struck the ground, the jerking sensation gripped and she stopped, a little harder than before. She let out a huge breath as she dropped safely to the ground.

That had been relatively easy.

She felt the ground with a renewed sort of passion as she realized that she hadn't seen the ground in a very long time. She only had her cane and her senses to see for her. She looked up and saw a wide glass door in front of her. If someone saw her through them, she would be finished. So, looking around, she saw a clump of bushes to the side and quickly dove behind them. As she dove into them, she felt that something was not right. She frowned at the bush and almost laughed out loud. Every single leave on the bush was a fake. She hated fake plants.

Right then a door to the side of the massive glass door that she hadn't seen before opened up and two people came out. Hermione had not seen either of them during her stay here. Well then again, she hadn't seen anyone but Charles, Lucius Malfoy, and a few house elves. One was a tall and thin man and the other was a normal sized woman. She saw them look at the ground and mutter something. Then the man pointed up and Hermione silently cursed. They had figured out that she was missing.

She heard the two of them mutter something and then split up. Her heart pounding, she saw that this was her chance. They had left the door they came through open. Moving as silently as she could, she carefully crawled her way behind more plants and got closer to the door. The man had gone rather far but the woman was still close by.

Hermione was almost at the door. She just managed to slip inside when she heard a shout and footsteps. She immediately bolted down the corridor that she was in and cursing, told herself that if she ever got out of this, she would attend every single Auror training session with Harry and Ron. Come to think of it, where were Harry and Ron? Harry and Ginny should have been back from their honeymoon by now and Ron should have been back a long time ago from Romania where he was visiting Charlie.

She stopped in her tracks when she saw where the corridor ended. She was standing in a huge kitchen that was filled from top to bottom with millions of platters of food, dirty dishes, and house elves scurrying around. A part of her wanted to yell at them to all stop making food for she knew for a fact that the Duprés were not paying these poor creatures to make food but a shout behind her jolted her back to reality.

A quick glance back told her that those two people were still in hot pursuit of her. She needed to find a way out of this mad house. Fast.

Hermione took a deep breath and ran head on into the tall crowd of plates in front of her. She vaguely heard voices telling other people (not the elves thankfully) to catch her. She swerved past ten plates of spaghetti piled on top of each other when a short squat lady with a frying pan appeared in front of her. In a desperate attempt, she grabbed the thing nearest to her and swung it at the lady who swung the pan right back at Hermione. Luckily to Hermione's advantage, she had picked up a bag of open flour which landed right on the woman, who screamed and fell down, not expecting the flour.

A sound behind her caused her to duck as something flew past her head. She gazed at the object on the ground with an incredulous look. Someone had thrown a turkey at her head.

"You want to play dirty, do you?" she muttered murderously. "Two can play that game." Hermione grabbed an empty plate that was next to her and threw it in the direction that it came from. She heard a shriek and a crashing noise and smiled victoriously. "Ha!" She cried, "Take that!"

That was when something heavy flew into the side of her stomach. She almost screeched out loud when she saw that it was a massive lobster but she came to her sense and pulled it off her body. "Bloody lobster," she muttered and in a fit of rage, she threw it as hard as she could back at the man who had thrown it at her.

It was a known fact that Hermione had very good aim when it came to spells and simple things like that but when it came to things like massive lobsters about three feet long, her aim was well, not too good.

Hermione watched with wide eyes as the lobster continued its course towards a leaning tower of dirty plates that reached to the ceiling. All sound seemed to cease as well. Finally, the lobster rammed into the plates, breaking the ones that it crashed into and causing the remaining plates to fall. When she did not expect to happen was to cause a domino effect that would eventually break every single plate that was in the falling course of the plates.

The tower of plates groaned and crashed into the next tower of plates. Everyone around her began yelling and Hermione realized that this would be a good escape tactic. She began pushing over anything she could find hoping that she could cause an obstruction for the thin man and the woman were still following her.

Looking back very worried she started throwing food at them. That was when she heard the man yell, "DON"T LET HER GET TO THE DOOR!"

Hermione turned around and smirked as she saw the door looming just in front of her. She lunged for it but fell slightly short as a hand grabbed her ankle. She screamed and started kicking anything that was near her feet. She whacked her foot against a table and the hand immediately let go. But that was not before the whole table toppled over onto whoever had grabbed onto her. She turned around and saw the person covered with a now destroyed scrumptious looking chocolate cake. She stuck her finger into the cake and licking it right off. "Not bad," she muttered, yanking the door open as she saw the tall man and the woman still running towards her.

"Oh no," she whispered as she threw herself out of the door. She would get to the lunch guests if it was the last thing she did.

Draco conversed very lightly with his cousin after Ruin had returned. Much to Draco's dismay, Charles was really an alright person if you were not related to him. He was rather funny in an odd sort of way. Draco would never admit that to anyone though. It would stay locked up in a corner of his mind until the end of the universe. Draco would never tell anyone that he actually enjoyed talking with his cousin. Then again, they were not cousins at the moment.

He also kept an eye on Renée and Ruin but much to his disappointment, all they did was talk to his aunt on and on about pointless things that made Draco want to fall asleep. It wasn't till about fifteen minutes later when things finally got interesting.

"So, do you play Quidditch?" asked Charles with interest.

Draco smirked and replied, "Do I play Quidditch?" He shot Charles an arrogant look and said, "What kind of a moron do you think I am? Of course I play Quidditch." He sniffed and said, '"I was the best on my school team."

"I played at school too. We creamed everyone," replied Charles grinning. Draco merely nodded at him, not wanting to tell him about how their Slytherin team won against everyone except the Gryffindors.

That was when they all heard a crash followed by the chandelier above them shaking slightly.

"What was that?" asked Renée, turning to her husband.

"Not sure." Ruin spared a glance at the door then back at his wife.

"It sounds like something expensive fell," remarked Draco casually. Andromeda glared at him as he shrugged nonchalantly.

"I bet it's that statue of Voldemort you have in your room, Mom," said Charles cheekily. Draco snorted and Charles grinned.

Renée's face grew red and she replied as calmly as she could, "I do not own a statue of the former Dark Lord."

"Call him Voldemort, Mom. What's he going to do? Come back from the grave and call you out of fashion?" Charles smirked at Draco who shook his head.

Another crashing sound came followed by a shriek. This time, Ruin got up from his seat and began walking towards the door. Renée stopped him though as she said, "I'm sure it's nothing big. One of the maids must have spilled something hot on herself in the kitchen. It's no use wasting a well cooked, rich meal on something as trivial as that." Ruin looked at her and slowly came back to his seat.

Draco almost gawked at the woman. She had no morals or values in life. His mother was a very artificial and braggart sort of woman when she wanted to be but this was just going way over the top.

Everything was quiet for a moment but then, the whole room shook as an insanely loud noise rumbled throughout the entire mansion. Ruin threw down his napkin and muttered, "What the hell is going on?"

He burst open the doors of the dining room with everyone else behind him and began walking across the entrance hall towards a corridor. The noise still echoing throughout the house, Draco wondered what was going on. A yelling noise brought his attention towards the corridor Ruin was walking towards and that was when his heart stopped for a moment. Hermione Granger flew out of the corridor, panting slightly. She looked up at them, her eyes lighting up.

Philostrate and the cook were very quick to follow as well. They both burst out behind Hermione covered in various sorts of food. Hermione's mouth formed an "O" as she tried to escape them but Philostrate was faster. He had somehow acquired a long piece of rope that he had begun tying around her while the woman tried to get her to stay still. She thrashed and screamed in front of the five others not really caring that they were watching.

Draco stood paralyzed unable to do anything. The woman he was searching for was right here yet if he tried to do something, he would be found out. He admired her struggle though it was obviously a futile attempt. The two of them had her wrapped up rather tightly and started carrying away. Just as he lost sight of her, he heard her yell, "GET DRACO MALFOY!"

Ruin paled slightly as Renée fanned herself, clutching onto Andromeda's arm. Charles and Draco both looked on with shocked expressions as they saw her being dragged away.

Renée let out a strangled sort of noise as Andromeda soothingly patted her arm.

"What did she say?" asked Andromeda. Ruin nervously shrugged though Draco could tell he was lying. "I take it that was the maid you were referring to earlier?" she asked.

Renée nodded and said, "This is just so humiliating. I never should have hired her in the first place!"

"It's all right, Renée. Some things just can't be helped," consoled the other witch.

"I admire you so much, Iris," said Renée bursting into tears. Andromeda looked towards Draco, a slight grin on her face. He returned it.

Charles nudged Draco and said, "She's pretty isn't she?"

"Who?"

"The err...maid."

Draco couldn't decide if he should agree with him or strangle him on the spot. Instead he decided to say, "She's a maid."

Charles grinned and said, "She's still a girl and I like girls."

Draco stared at him, itching to hex the smile off his face. "She's a maid."

Charles shrugged and said, "She's gorgeous." Draco nearly scowled but kept quiet. Charles looked at him and said, "Our house isn't always this exciting but I think you should come over another time as long as you're around. It gets rather boring around here."

"Don't you work?"

"Do you?"

"I'm on vacation," growled Draco.

"Me too," replied Charles cheekily, running his hand through his hair.

Draco shook his head and said, "Sure. Perhaps I'll just drop in one day. All I do is shop with her." He gestured toward his aunt, who standing with Renée and Ruin, listening to Renée fume about something.

"Great!" replied Charles, shaking Draco's hand. "Now if you'll excuse me, Earl, I have a damsel to woo." With that, Charles rushed off. Draco stared at Charles's back with a murderous look as the brunet bounded up the stairs.

Damsels to woo, what a loser.