Chapter Two
That night Hermione and Mandie apparated outside of an elegant restaurant at eight fifteen. They were running late because Ginny had left them early to prepare for her own dinner at the same restaurant with her husband an hour before their double date, leaving Mandie to pick out Hermione's outfit, not trusting the girl to do it on her own. Mandie herself was wearing a dark blue dress that had a square neck with no sleeves and hugged her curves until it loosened a little around her hips to flow to right below her ankles. Thank goodness for high heels. Her blonde hair was straight and went down to the middle of her neck. There wasn't a similar feature between herself, Ginny and Hermione on their faces and bodies other than good skin and size 7 feet.
"Reservation for four under the name Hanshaw," Mandie told a man in the entrance.
"I'm going to go check my make-up," Hermione told Mandie.
"Okay, do you want me to wait for you?"
"No, I'll find you."
Hermione went to the loo, whose door was thankfully nearby. Truth be told, she had never been on a blind date and she behaved very differently than her friends had ever seen her when she was on a regular date.
'Just one night,' she told herself in the mirror. She didn't even know why she was so worried. She had been on plenty of dates since the divorce and had gotten over Draco with many men and kickboxing classes. The only thing that she even had to think about was watching herself around her friend.
On the other side of the door, Ginny had come over to Mandie to compliment her on her dress and to comment on Hermione's when she saw something that made her heart stop.
"Oof," Mandie let out as Ginny whipped her around. "What the-"
"Hermione's ex is here!" Ginny hissed.
Though they had been friends for years, Mandie had only seen Draco in the pictures in the newspaper and magazines, which were always drawn on before she (or Hermione) ever got a good look. For all she knew, that mustache and pirate patch he had in the latest Daily Prophet could be how he really looked.
"What do you mean he's here?" Mandie asked, her face paling.
"I mean he's in the restaurant." Ginny looked over Mandie's shoulder at the seat Draco was just sitting at. There was a man with short, brown hair sitting alone at the table. If she wasn't happily married, she would have been thinking of a way to go over to the table to flirt with him. "Okay, he's gone. We'd better hope Hermione doesn't find out."
Mandie nodded and Ginny walked back to her table, hoping that Harry didn't find out that Draco was there either.
Mandie scanned the room as she was led to the table where Aiden was waiting patiently for her.
"Sorry I'm late," she said as he stood up to pull her chair out for her.
"Oh don't worry, you were worth the wait (A/N corny much?)" he replied with a smile. "My friend is in the loo fixing his hair."
"Well mine is fixing her make-up." Mandie laughed.
"He's done nothing but obsess over it since his divorce a few years ago," Aiden told her. "I'm actually glad to get him out on a real date for once."
Mandie smiled. "Same, only she obsesses over her work."
"Well if they have a kid, at least we know it will either have a hair fetish or start a salon," Aiden joked.
Hermione stepped out of the loo and looked around.
"What are you doing here?" She asked the blonde man beside her the same time he decided to ask her.
"I'm on a date," they answered simultaneously.
They stood for a second, not saying anything before they began to walk in the same direction.
"What are you doing?" Hermione asked her ex-husband.
"I think we just established that a few seconds ago," Draco told his former spouse.
Hermione rolled her eyes at his immaturity and cut between a few tables to get to Mandie quicker. She sat down in the seat beside her friend and let out a small huff. She could have been mistaken, but when Mandie's date saw her, a little color faded from his face.
"Er, you must be Mandie's friend," he said, the color coming back to his cheeks.
"Hermione," she replied with a polite smile, holding out her hand.
"Well, my friend should be here shortly," he said slowly. Sure enough, not two seconds later his friend was at his side. Draco Malfoy looked at the two girls before him. The blonde one was seated beside Aiden in an elegant blue dress. Beside her sat the frizzy haired bookworm that haunted his past in…in the dress she wore to the Christmas ball where they had to go together because they were the Head Boy and Girl.
Two of the three occupants of the table stood up politely as Draco walked up to them. He saw how the sparkling blue dress still clung to Hermione's body the way it had the night he realized that he lo-loved her. The spaghetti strap dress was straight across her chest, but in the back had strings tied in a cris-cross until the small of her back, which was where her hair fell to in the softest curls, It flowed straight down to right above her toes, where he could see she had on blur strappy heels. He couldn't believe she still fit into it.
"Evening Granger," he said, exaggerating the feigned politeness.
"Malfoy," she replied bored, crossing her leg so that she was ever so slightly angled towards her friend.
"Um, hi, I'm Mandie," her friend said, holding out her hand. "You must be-"
"I believe the term you're looking for is Hermione's ex," Draco said, filling in the pause the girl took to think of what to say. She replied by smiling weakly and quickly taking her seat.
"So how many bottles of wine do you think we'll need tonight dear?" Draco asked Hermione as he looked at the wine menu. Mandie and Aiden had gone into their own conversation, hoping to cover up the tension at the table.
"Well that depends, hon."
"On what, sweetie?"
"On whether we're drinking the wine or killing our friends with the bottles, love."
""Now, now, no need to be hostile.' Draco looked up at the girl. "Wouldn't want your little friends to get nervous."
The passive aggressive verbal battle raged until the waiter came over to take their orders.
"You always knew everything, why don't you tell us what we should get," Draco said.
Hermione looked up at the waiter with a smile. "We would like Greek salads to start off with. He will have that delicious special I read when I came in and I will have the, erm, Fettuccini Alfredo for the main course, and I think we'll wait until we're done to see whether we're going to have dessert or not."
Mandie and Aiden cautiously told the waiter their orders and handed him their menus.
"What's the special?" Mandie whispered to Hermione.
"Pesci diversi alla Casalinga," Hermione whispered back with a smirk. "Draco is allergic to mushrooms and almonds."
Mandie's eyes flew open and she looked at her friend. "What happens?"
"Oh it's nothing serious," Hermione assured her as she fixed her napkin. "The almonds just make him break out in a small rash that goes away in a few hours and the mushrooms make him sweat profusely."
"What's the special?" Draco asked Aiden quietly, eyeing the not-so innocent girl beside him as she whispered something to Mandie.
"Some kind of fish."
"Well she must have forgotten that I enjoy fish, though it isn't my favorite food, and gotten me mixed up with someone else." He looked at Hermione fixing her napkin on her lap. "Well the dress is old enough. I guess you should try to be careful with it," he called over to her.
"Well it's not like I like to rely on daddy to buy me something new every time my clothes hit their one month anniversary."
Aiden looked from Hermione to Draco to Mandie. "So how long have you two been working together?"
"Nearing six years," she told him, hoping that the year would go unnoticed. "We met when I was promoted at the Ministry, but decided with our friend that we could do better and started our company that we have today. How about you two?"
Aiden shifted in his seat. "Well, we met when we were both, er, trying to hook up with the same woman at a club a few years ago."
"So let me guess, he ended up sleeping with her with just a few lines after you spent the entire evening trying to connect?" Hermione said.
"Now come on, you took more than just a few lines to get into bed," Draco said in a mock comfort tone.
"Finally," Mindie exclaimed. "The wine is here. They'll have first and you can put the bottle between them."
"Actually, can I please have a dry martini?" Hermione asked. This was going to be a long night and there wasn't enough white wine in the world that would help her get through it.
"And I'll have a scotch sour," Draco told the man.
"We're fine," Aiden said when he looked at him and Mandie.
"Oh my god, Gin, do I see what I think I see?" Harry Potter asked his wife.
Ginny squirmed in her seat, hoping that it wasn't who she had seen before. "What do you mean Harry?"
"I mean do I see Hermione on a date with Malfoy?"
Ginny had to keep herself from screaming in shock as she turner around fast enough, her chair almost fell over. Sure enough, sitting beside the handsome man she saw before was Mandie with Draco Malfoy on his other side and Hermione between the two ordering what she assumed was the first drink that came to mind.
"Holy, I mean, oh my goodness," Ginny said, catching the swear before she yelled it in the middle of the restaurant.
"It's okay Gin," Harry said, not being able to look away from the couple. "I think that it would be okay to swear in a situation like this. In fact, I'm sure that a few have passed each of their lips by now."
"I just hope that they both make it through the evening in one piece."