Author's Note: Gar. That was me being scary.

reviewers r for teh pwnzorz, LOL!!!!11

Pretend Private Message to Katie: I'm utterly overjoyed that I could improve your day. I know how it is sometimes (i.e. atrocious), and it makes me very happy to have helped. Since I can't reply to your reviews, I'll thank you here for the consistent support—I really appreciate it!

Chapter Eight

Awkward

Draco winced. And then, because that didn't quite seem like enough, he winced again.

Hermione, that pinnacle of worldly wisdom and cool collectedness, had completely snapped. The girl was crazier than Luna Lovegood on a drug binge.

Well, maybe not that crazy. That was a level of crazy that most mortal beings couldn't hope to comprehend.

In any case, Hermione had leapt out of her chair, jabbed a finger into his chest, told him in a loud and resonating voice to get his smarmy, slimy, smirking git face out of hers before she made it look like a Picasso painting, and stormed out. The storming out bit, while remarkably melodramatic, left Draco stranded in front of her desk, her coffee in his hand, with everyone within hearing range turning out to stare at him.

He winced one more time, just for good measure.

Then he set the coffee down carefully in the origami crane graveyard and ran after her. Literally ran. He must have cared about Hermione even more than he had previously thought. You didn't literally run after just anybody; no, sir. Sometimes you strode purposefully, but it wasn't really running unless you lifted up your knees, and honestly, you didn't lift up your knees for any idiot who'd gone tearing off—

He almost missed Hermione altogether. Out of the corner of his eye, Draco caught a glimpse of rampant brown hair and crisp gray suit. He managed to skid to a halt that only mostly compromised his dignity and found himself in front of what looked to be one of those private conference rooms. The wall was glass parted by a few metal support beams, and within there resided a long oak table surrounded by rolling chairs, a large whiteboard on the wall beyond its head. Those things and, of course, Hermione Granger.

Such rooms tended to be soundproof. That soundproofing, Draco noted grimly as he set his hand on the door handle, was probably going to be a godsend.

After living with his parents for seventeen years, Draco Malfoy could smell a prospective chewing out from miles away. Furthermore, that smell not a palatable one.

He bit the bullet, opened the door, stepped inside, and shut the door after him. Then he looked up at Hermione.

The first thing she said—or, rather, spat—was "'Ardoc Olyfam,' huh?"

"It's an anagram," Draco explained helpfully.

"I know that," Hermione continued to spit. "I just can't believe—" She buried her hands in her hair and looked like she might be considering tearing it all out. Before Draco could warn her that bald-in-patches was definitely 'out' as far as hairstyles went, she recommenced her vituperative spitting with a vengeance. "I can't believe that you'd be so senseless as to start chumming it up with—" Draco had been under the impression that she couldn't get any madder. He had been wrong, and the next two words proved it. "—Giles Helicane. You—"

Draco felt a twinge of anger in his own chest. He was being maligned here. Maligned! It was a fun word to say, but it was a pretty unpleasant thing to be.

"First of all," he interjected, "I couldn't exactly give the man my real name. And second of all, he started chumming it up with me, not the other way ar—"

"Will you shut up and let me scream at you?" Hermione cried.

Indignantly, he opened his mouth. Then he closed it and set his jaw. Better to get this over with now.

"I just can't believe this!" Hermione screamed, true to her word, pulling a nice, histrionic pose with her face turned towards the heavens and her arms out wide. "I truly, honestly cannot believe that you come sauntering in here, swinging your hips, and the one time I leave you unattended—" This was clearly untrue. She had left him unattended at least half a dozen times in the past two days. "—you get Giles Helicane under your spell, and the next thing anybody knows, he's practically coercing you into taking a job! Never mind that I've been slaving away for over a year. Never mind that I get everything done early. Never mind that I'm so bored doing drudgework without advancement that I could slaughter something. No! You come in here and kiss Giles Helicane's extremely oversized rear end once, and he's practically prostrate at your feet trying to get you to work for him!"

Draco wanted to point out that he really hadn't done any ass-kissing; he just hadn't very vociferously disagreed with anything that Helicane had said, but it didn't seem like a good moment to jump in. It seemed like a good moment to curl up under the table and die, or perhaps to throw himself on the floor and plead for forgiveness. Before he could figure out which was more likely to secure his place on the couch tonight, she was off again.

"And God if this office isn't the worst place in the entire world to work!" she was howling. Draco was glad—relatively speaking—that she'd moved away from berating him and towards berating life in general. "The ascension of the pay ladder is nigh on nonexistent unless you've got hips like a hippopotamus and a waist like a yellow jacket and you're willing to bed your superior—" Draco hoped for a moment that he wouldn't have to do any such thing before he remembered that actually accepting Helicane's job offer would result in his untimely death. "—and as if that's not enough, my boss is the worst overweight, under-qualified, hypercritical buffoon of the lot! And as if that's not enough, the health plan is monstrous! And if that's not enough—" Draco was beginning to sense a pattern here. "—the coffee tastes like sewage! And if that's not enough, three of my colleagues keep bothering me asking if I've quite finished with you so that they can have a turn!"

There was a very, very, very long pause.

Awkward, awkward, awkward, AWKWARD, Draco's brain chanted.

"Hey, listen," he said—awkwardly, it had to be admitted. "I'll go down and buy us both some ice cream and come back here; sound good?"

There was a noncommittal mutter that he was damn well going to take for an affirmation.

"Okay," Draco decided pleasantly—as pleasantly as humanly possible. "I'll just be going, then…"

"You don't have any money," Hermione informed him without looking up from her detailed scrutiny of the tabletop.

"Ah," Draco said, once again awkwardly.

She put some on the table, and he crept forward and snatched it up. It was like feeding a stray animal.

"Take it easy," he advised. And then he fled—awkwardly. Very awkwardly.

The awkwardness abated somewhat when Draco was out on the street. He took a deep breath of clean, awkward-free air and relished it. Thus braced, he began to stroll down the street towards the ice cream shop.

Dionyza's Ice Cream Parlour (with a U for authenticity) had a pretty terrace and a nice, open front with a red-and-white striped awning and broad windows. It was in one of those windows, in the curve of the authentic U, that Draco saw something that made his blood—not to mention his sweat—run cold.

The man who had been hounding him for the last two years, the man who traced him with inhuman accuracy, the man who had tried to kill him more times than he could count, was on the other side of the street, poring over a newspaper.

Draco paused. He was standing right in front of the door to Dionyza's. If he opened that door and darted in, would the cheery jingle of the bell make his adversary rear his ugly head? A fat droplet of sweat—in fact, the Giles Helicane of droplets of sweat—slid down Draco's spine. Did he turn and try to walk inconspicuously away?

He had to do something. The most suspicious thing of all was what he was doing—standing frozen in front of the door to the ice cream shop.

Something that was distant kin to a nervous laugh crawled out of his throat and died in the air. Geddit? Frozen in front of an ice cream shop?

Decisively, Draco turned on his heel and strode in the opposite direction from the man with the newspaper. If there was one thing he refused to do, it was to be a bad pun waiting to happen. Determinedly he marched right into the first store he encountered.

And stopped short.

Mobiles suspended from the ceiling swiveled placidly above model cribs. Alphabet blocks were stacked in an intricate pyramid on a nearby table, and the entire right wall was invisible under the proliferation of baby clothes in every color of a pastel rainbow.

The woman behind the counter had massive glasses and an even more massive smile. She looked like a cross between Sybill Trelawney and an overzealous hippie.

"Hello, dear," she crooned. "How old is your little one?"

At his helpless squeak, her face positively glowed.

"Oh! How many do you have, dear? Three? Four?" She smiled adoringly and heaved a delighted sigh. "So young, and already so busily at work on a family."

Draco entertained a single coherent thought:

Awkward, awkward, awkward, AWKWARD!