Author's Note: I'm sorry, guys. Don't hate me for the delay? This chapter fought me tooth and nail. It finally started coming together for me in the last 48 hours. A huge shout out to my bff for the idea of the Forever Sucks, and all of my other friends who responded to my Facebook plea for Weasleys Wizard Wheezes product ideas. I'm getting married a week from yesterday! I'll try to get another chapter through ASAP. Writing is important for maintaining one's sanity when everything is busy.

Chapter 16: Strategy

Hermione was doing the best she could. But she'd begun to worry that maybe she just naturally wasn't funny. It's not like people hadn't made that accusation before, numerous times as a matter of fact, as she was growing up. People had told her that she wouldn't know a joke if it bit her, and that was probably one of the milder forms o the accusation. How many times had she been asked if she had a wand up…well somewhere a wand shouldn't go, just because she didn't find something as amusing as someone else did. She would have sworn she had a sense of humor, but finding things that other people would find amusing suddenly seemed to be a struggle now that she was actively trying to do it. It was starting to make coming into the shop feel like torture.

She frowned. "Shoes that only let you walk in circles?"

"It's brilliant."

"It's awful."

She sighed. Somewhere out there, there was a brilliant product ready to be born. If only she could figure out what it was.

Draco loitered in the library. He had a little time before he needed to leave for his shift at the restaurant. He looked at the books all around him and the computers (currently in use by other patrons) and wondered if there was any way to fill in his knowledge gaps well enough to get any sort of job other than what he was doing. Aside from the fact that he was sore and working for very little pay, he was bored. He wondered how the others on his shift managed to get by on it. Would they be doing it forever?The Ministry was paying his rent and giving him some amount of living money every month, and none of it was still anywhere near what would have kept in in the lifestyle he'd been accustomed to.

Sensing that neither of the computers he'd had his eye on would be open before he had to leave, he abandoned the spot he'd been lurking in and wandered down the aisle. He pulled out a large, heavy book, and thumbed through it, looking at pictures of pyramids and other colossal monuments of stone. It was funny to think of the Muggles trying to attribute these to the skill of primitive people with ropes and logs. Maybe not all of these, but at least some had clearly been built by wizards.

He supposed life as a Muggle in his current circumstances was better than being in Azkaban with his magic, but it was lonely sometimes. He was now more or less welcome at the park for football on Saturdays, and sometimes he joined the fellows there. But other times it seemed like too much hard work to remember not to talk about magic or things that were natural to him. He thought the computer teacher he'd met here might fancy him, but what would he say to her? "I clear away dishes four or five nights a week and can't tell you anything about my past before 2 and a half months ago," he muttered to himself. No. The only person he could actually talk to was Hermione. He could manage surface level interactions with Muggles—deal with his customers and coworkers, buy food—but that was all.

Draco knocked on Hermione's door. He'd had the day shift today, and actually had Saturday night to do with as he pleased for once. After watching television for half an hour after getting home, the adverts were getting to him. It was only a moment before she opened the door and without ceremony he declared, "I'm ordering pizza. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," she said. "You want to come in?"

He ordered delivery and came in and settled himself at the table, glancing at the notes she had spread out there and beginning to shuffle them into order.

"It's Saturday night. You don't have to work?" she asked, gathering up her notes and making sure they were organized into their proper piles before setting them aside.

"I was on the day shift."

"Lucky you."

They sat and talked about their days. The Frozen Terror ice cream wasn't coming along particularly well, and Hermione was looking for another idea to pursue. The temperature change just didn't sit well with the potion.

When they'd caught up on their days, and the pizza still hadn't arrived yet, Draco wandered over to Hermione's collection of movies. There weren't many, but she had saved some things from her childhood. He thumbed through them and chose one with a man in a bright purple coat and an assortment of garish colors around him. He was willing to bet was supposed to be amusing. "This?"

Hermione looked over to see what was in his hand. "I haven't watched that in years."

"What is it?"

"A movie about a man who murders children in unspeakable ways and enslaves a whole population." Her lips twitched. "Or a man who has a dream and makes delicious candy in a wonderland that shouldn't be real. Take your pick."

"Let's find out."

And so, they watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, pausing only long enough to take delivery of their pizza. Hermione wondered whether there was a magical equivalent to Violet's bubblegum—a feast in a piece of gum. It would make for good emergency rations for Aurors if it existed. Well, if it existed and could actually sustain them. She'd have to bring the idea to George.

Draco found himself hauling his laundry home from the laundromat yet again and had to wonder if it would have been less work to simply attempt to wash the clothes himself and not drag it all blocks away, wait in a hot and stuffy room for two hours, and drag it all back.

By the time he got home, his shirt was fairly repugnant to his own sensitive nose, not to mention a small candy coated handprint that had managed to find it's way onto the hem. There'd been a toddler present who had been utterly impervious to his famous double-barreled glare.

Figuring there was not much to lose, and the potential for gain, he dropped his laundry on the bed and stripped off his shirt. He considered filling the sink and dropping his shirt in, but one look at it told him he was overdue to scrub it down again. His poor aristocratic hands weren't used to the rigors of scrubbing and chemical cleaners and hadn't responded well the last time he'd had to give the bathroom a cleaning. Hermione had been willing to give him whatever advice he required, but she'd told him that under no circumstances would she do the heavy lifting for him (so to speak); it was his bathroom, and she was his friend, not his maid. It was still odd sometimes to think of her as a friend and not "the Mudblood" or "Weasel's bushy haired know-it-all" but he supposed they were friends now. There really wasn't any other word for it. She was almost his sole source of friendly social interaction. They did enjoy some shared pastimes together. Friend. It was a new concept for him.

Deciding to avoid the sink for the moment, Draco doused the shirt with a couple of pumps of hand soap and turned on the tap in the bath, putting the stopper in. What followed was a most energy intensive and unsuitable shirt washing. It seemed to take an age to work the soap into the fabric by hand, and even longer to clear it out. The candy stains were still faintly there, and he was fairly certain the smell of hand soap was just covering up his sweat rather than having actually removed it. He did his best to try and ring most of the water out before hanging the shirt up on the shower curtain, but when he went back some time later it was somehow still wet, and there was a large puddle on the floor. And it had the most Merlin-awful wrinkles in it.

Maybe the walk to the laundromat was worth while after all.

Thank, Salazar he hadn't had this notion 'til after he'd done most of his laundry and hadn't thrown everything in the tub. He could only imagine how his back would ache if he decided halfway through that it was a terrible idea and he'd had to carry soaking wet clothes out instead of dry ones.

Hermione and George had their heads bent over the workspace in the back of the shop, thumbing through their notes.

"This one."

"I don't think it's viable."

"How about this?"

"Well, how would you pull that off? I certainly haven't come up with anything."

The brunette wrinkled her nose; she didn't have any way to manage that one either. In time it might come to her, but she needed something brilliant, and she needed it now. "Some of the best sellers are the cheaper, smaller items, right? Because they are accessible to a wider audience, yes?" "Sure. Puking Pastilles sell out like crazy, but we've had the same jumbo pack of fireworks on the shelf for a month now."

"What about…" She thought back to the movie the night before with a grin. "What about an Everlasting Gobstopper?"

George arched an eyebrow. "Everlasting doesn't sound good. They wouldn't need to buy another one."

"It's…it's a mythical candy from a Muggle film. Candy designed for children without much pocket money. It lasts forever. But we could…" she searched her mind. "We could give it a twist. It never gets any smaller, lasts forever, but the longer you suck it the worse it tastes."

There was a flash of light in George's eye. "Brilliant. The kids would be buying them by the handful and competing with their friends."

And thus, the Forever Sucks were born. The idea was born anyway; getting the product off the ground would still take a while.

Draco frowned at the display in the windows as he walked back from Sainsbury's. He stared at a display with a plastic broom, ratty looking robe, and a pointed hat covered in stars. A certain morbid curiosity overtook him. He shifted the groceries in his arms. They weren't that heavy. He pushed the door aside and went in.

Everywhere, there were costumes, many for children, some for adults. A woman's "police" costume that appeared to consist of a short skirt and undersized blue top, with a badge and a baton. A rather similarly themed nurse's costume was beside it. There was a vampire costume, which mostly seemed to be a cape and a set of false teeth. A makeup kit was hanging beside it. For some reason, the witch's costume had green face paint and warts in the makeup kit beside the robe and broom and hat. It was black and pointy. Why the green face paint?

He rolled his eyes at the wizard costume, which mostly seemed to consist of another robe, a spangled hat, and a beard that would have shamed Dumbledore's. The goblin costumes had the nose and ears totally wrong. There were all sorts of costumes he couldn't even identify (or if they had labels, they didn't really have any meaning for him). Tights and capes. Dresses. Wings. Pointy ears. Foods. There seemed to be every assortment imaginable.

The clerk cleared his throat. "Can I help you with anything?" Draco tore his eyes away from the display. "Just browsing."

Hermione had picked up a few things when she left Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes that afternoon and found herself knocking on Draco's door. She'd left early today, wanting to catch him before his shift at the restaurant.

"Hermione."

"Draco. Can I come in?"

He stepped aside to let her in, eying the parcels in her arms.

"I thought, since it's Halloween, I might bring some things by. I'm going to Hogsmeade tomorrow, to see Ginny. I did promise her I'd see her when I could. It'll be their first Hogshead weekend of the year." She had settled herself quite naturally at his table and began unpacking the things she'd brought. Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes. Nothing magical, but it was the sort of Wizarding food that one should have on Halloween.

He looked at the assortment appreciatively. "I'll make tea."

"Don't forget the plates."

He was out a moment later, plates in hand. "Kettle is on." He pulled out a chair and joined her, picking up a pasty. "What do Muggles do on Halloween anyway? I saw the most rubbish wizard and witch costumes. Why do they think witches are green?"

Hermione chuckled. "Small children put on costumes and go door to door asking for candy. Adults tend to have costume parties more focused on alcohol than sweets I think." "Green witches. That goes back nearly 60 years. One of the early color movies. Before that they were black and white." She took a bite of a Cauldron Cake. "The Wizard of Oz. They decided that you can in fact judge a book by it's cover, and that bad witches were ugly, and good witches were beautiful." She snorted softly. "I wonder what they'd make of me." She ran her fingers through her frizzy hair.

Draco got up from the table, certain the kettle must be boiling by now, "Hermione, does anyone ever know what to make of you?"

Hermione watched him disappear into the kitchen and reappear a few moments later, carrying steaming teacups. She took one from him carefully, not wanting to spill the boiling water on his hands. "Thank you. I suppose not. I'm not sure if Harry ever managed to make up his mind whether I was a buddy or if I was more like a sister. It took Ron years to determine I was a girl." She pushed more words out of her mouth, distancing herself from Ron's name. "Know-it-all, nerd, bookworm, courageous, smart, too afraid to break the rules. Such a pile of contradictions. Sometimes I'm not sure what to make of myself."

He sipped his tea and looked at her over the rim. "Clearly you're not sure what to make of yourself either." There was an air of the old Malfoy arrogance about him, a touch of a smirk. "That's okay. I hardly know what to make of myself anymore. Here I am, heir to the Malfoy legacy and having it do me not a damn bit of good. I'm sitting under a flickering light bulb in a Muggle flat, eating Cauldron Cakes, and about to walk several blocks, to take a large and rather smelly machine across town haul plates of food around for ungrateful customers."

"You can change the light bulb easily. I'll show you how."

"I've already done it once before."

A smile echoed on Hermione's face. "There's your answer. You may say you don't know what to make of yourself, but I do. You're a survivor. You're adapting to your circumstances and managing to stand on your own two feet in a world you never thought you'd have to live in. A world you could hardly ever really imagine the details of. A life where you don't have enough money or connections to solve all your problems."

He rolled his eyes and took another sip of his tea. "They never solved as many problems as I wished they would. I could buy my way onto a Quidditch team, but not not into anyone's respect."

They let the conversation drift back to lighter topics and made the Pumpkin Pasties and Cauldron Cakes last until Draco had to leave for work. As he locked the door behind himself and Hermione started to cross back to her own flat, he asked, "Do you have that wizard movie? I'd kind of like to see this green witch."

"I'll check. If I don't, I'm sure I can find it somewhere."

Hermione had decided to Apparate to Hogsmeade. The day after Halloween had dawned bright and not too chill. She busied herself around the flat until the time she'd arranged to meet Ginny, and then donned a decent set of robes and vanished.

Even with Hogwarts students taking up a fair amount of space in the streets, Hogsmeade felt smaller and less busy than Diagon Alley. It was still covered in all of it's Halloween decorations from the day before. It had a settled feeling to it, but not quite the age and firmness of Diagon Alley. Maybe because of all of the homes scattered through it, rather than just businesses. It felt…a bit more sprawling. It certainly seemed larger than it had a couple of years ago.

She made her way to the Three Broomsticks. She'd had some second thoughts about frequenting it again, but she just couldn't quite bring herself to suggest the Hogshead. She found a table and settled herself at it. She'd hardly been there a moment when the familiar sheen of red hair caught her attention. It took Ginny almost no time at all to find her. "There you are. I'm so glad you could make it. I've got so much to tell you."

Hermione listened while Ginny caught her up on events in their shared world, and the world at large. Percy had apparently started writing to her regularly, wanting to reconnect more strongly and never lose his connection with the family. Her mum was writing more often too. Ginny's classes were going well. Neville seemed to have retained the strength of spirit and personality he'd grown into the year before. He wouldn't take any crap from anyone, but knew how to get what he needed, and make sure everyone was working toward the same goal. Dennis Creevy carried his brother's camera everywhere, but rarely took pictures. Lavender had come back to Hogwarts and was a much more subdued person than she'd been before, but she was starting to smile again. Last year had seemed to age McGonagall quite a bit, but she was as tough as an old tree root and she wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry.

"And how are you?" Ginny asked.

"I'm here. I'm working with George now. I passed my Potions NEWT and I've started in on some Transfiguration books McGonagall sent me."

"You could come back to Hogwarts. I'm sure McGonagall would work something out."

Hermione shook her head. "I'm okay where I am. Really. I don't think I'd be up for the constant press of people at Hogwarts."

Ginny looked at her, searching her face. "You're not lonely?" she asked bluntly. "No me, no Harry, no Ron…" She swallowed.

"I promise, I'm okay, Ginny. I go to work with George. I'm still studying. If I start feeling like I need company, Draco's just across the hall."

"Draco?" Ginny echoed, raising an eyebrow at the use of Malfoy's first name.

"He's not quite the insufferable git he used to be." She shrugged and sipped her drink. "Besides, it's fun to watch him adapt. He does his own laundry now, and can cook. He has a job." She wasn't sure how to describe it. She supposed they were friends now, and not just acquaintances across the hall. "He's more like a regular person and not a preening, spoiled brat."

"Malfoy? Really?"

"Really. A couple of weeks ago, I donated Ron's clothes to a shelter nearby. I'm sorry, I probably should have asked if you wanted anything before I did it, but I just couldn't see it all hanging in my closet every day. Anyway, Draco helped me carry it all. Didn't even complain about the walk or how heavy it all was." She swirled her Butterbeer around in it's bottle for a moment.

"It's okay. I don't need any of Ron's clothes." She bit her lower lip between her teeth, looking at her friend. Hermione did seem to be doing okay. And even if Malfoy was the only…friend…she had nearby, at least there was someone. And there was George of course. He'd keep an eye on her. "How is George doing? I haven't really heard from him."

"He's starting to seem more like himself again, though he still has his moments."

They finished their drinks and took a wander through village together. Hermione bought herself a few new quills and a pot of ink. She could see Hogwarts in the distance, but didn't want to go.

"You won't go see Neville?" Ginny asked, getting ready to go back.

"Not this time. But tell him hello for me. McGonagall too."

She hugged her tightly. "Don't be a stranger."