Life, Love, and an Acute Caffeine Dependency
By: QDT
Disclaimer: I am the Queen of Duct Tape, not the Queen of Harry Potter.
Chapter Five"Where are we going?" asked Hermione, dragging her feet as Fred tugged her down the street.
"Your flat, for now." Fred didn't glance back until he realized that Hermione had stopped several yards previously. "Come on."
"You don't know where my flat is," Hermione pointed out. "It's that way." She pointed behind her.
"Oh," said Fred sheepishly.
"Yeah." Hermione rolled her eyes and turned around, suppressing a smile.
Upon reaching Hermione's flat, Fred walked in first and began walking down the hall, as if he somehow knew where he was going.
"Uh, Fred? What are you doing?"
"Giving myself a tour."
"Ah." Hermione paused. "Why are we here, anyway?"
"Reason one," said Fred, walking into her kitchen, "is for me to learn where you live so I can come bother you whenever I want. Reason two is because you need to change into appropriate clothing for where we're going."
"And where, exactly, might that be?"
"Uh-uh. Not telling. Wear an old t-shirt and jeans, and you might want a sweatshirt."
"In the summer?"
"Yes, in the summer. Just bring one. And old tennis shoes. And knee pads, if you have any."
"Knee pads?"
"Do you have any?"
"I don't think so."
"Then you can borrow some."
"Why?"
"Because you don't have any."
"No, why do we need knee pads?"
"I'm not telling, remember? Just go change." He pushed her in the direction of her bedroom, which he had found earlier on his self-guided tour.
Five minutes later, Hermione was wearing old clothing and her hair had been removed from the braid and pulled into a loose ponytail.
"Good. Let's go," said Fred, heading out the door and several feet realized that, once again, Hermione had stopped for some reason.
"What are you doing?" he asked before he turned around.
"Locking the door," Hermione replied.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Seeing she had finished with the door, Fred started walking again. "This way," he said cheerfully.
"Now where are we going?"
"To my car."
"You have a car?"
"Hermione. I am a successful businessman. Of course I have a car."
"So? You're a wizard."
"Whose father happens to be completely obsessed with everything muggle."
"Still. Where are we going?"
"You'll see it when we get there."
Where they were going ended up being, eventually, spelunking.
For those of you, dear readers, who do not know what spelunking is, let us just say that it is caving. Caving, as I am sure you know, is a delightful activity that involves walking, occasionally crawling or rolling, through an underground tunnel that exists as a haven for all sorts of fun and entertaining creatures with little or no eyesight. The cave is usually slightly damp and contains and underground river, which you will sometimes fall into and get completely soaked. I resume:
They ended up going spelunking.
Hermione is about as big on physical activity as any normal person, which is to say she will work up a sweat with no scruples in the comfort of a gym or park of some kind, but is a tad reluctant to go slogging through an underground path that is home to several species of unidentified mold.
"Fred," she said. "What are we doing here?"
"We're going spelunking," he told her, grinning broadly and incorrectly assuming that everyone else in the world is just as he eager as he is to engage in odd activities for no apparent reason.
"Spelunking."
"Yeah, we go into that cave there and basically —"
"I know what spelunking is!"
"Okay." He opened the trunk of his car and tossed her a helmet, knee pads, and several flashlights. "You might want these."
"If I had any intention of stepping foot inside that cave, I would want these."
"C'mon, Hermione, it's fun! You'll be thanking me later."
"When I'm covered in gunk and will require five showers to smell like myself again."
"No, in five minutes. It's not far." And Fred began walking toward the cave, and Hermione had no choice but to follow since she did have the keys and could thus not drive away and find some place civilized to go.
About ten feet into the cave, Fred stopped. "Down here," he said.
"Down whe —" She caught sight of the hole in the ground. "No," she said. "Not down there."
"Yes down there," he said, and then picked her up and set her down in the hole.
"What? Fred, NO! Don't — put me down!" But alas, Hermione's valiant efforts to escape were of no avail.
Fred jumped down after her. "Follow me," he said, starting off down a tunnel to their right. Said tunnel soon became said crawl space, and Fred and Hermione were forced to roll or army crawl for a while, Hermione protesting every step of the way.
"Fred, what are we doing? It's getting loud up ahead, and it's probably not a brilliant idea to end up by some swift river that we'll fall into and drown. If I drown, you had better pay for flowers at my funeral, and —"
"Would you prefer roses or carnations?"
"What?"
"At your funeral. Would you rather me bring roses or carnations?"
"Carnations," she said, slightly put off. "Red ones. And when I die, I'm going to come back as a ghost, and I'm going to spend the rest of my afterlife haunting you, because it'll be your fault that I died, and then — oh, my."
The crawl space/tunnel opened onto a ledge and Fred jumped down and offered Hermione a hand.
"Coming?" he asked.
I'm so mean. You have to wait for the next chapter to see what it opens up to! I have planned ahead that far, so it won't be such a long wait this time. Feedback is love!
Until next time,
Ab