Chapter 2:
"So how was it?" Hermione asked when Malfoy came in, and he said, "I didn't even read the extra one. If I wanted to read a romance novel I'd just borrow one of my mum's," and Hermione knew she had work to do.
"It's a social satire, you twit. You're as bad as those girls. Well, I've picked out two American novels for you this time. And they're ones they read in school, so perhaps that'll be more at your level," she said, and took them from where she'd stowed them behind the counter: "The Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."
"So now you've got me reading kids' stuff, Granger?"
"I'm simply giving you a well-rounded education, since you seem to have missed out on an entire genre of literature. If I thought they'd pass I'd give you Shakespeare and then maybe you'd understand."
"I've already read Shakespeare. Everyone knows he was a wizard. That's why the muggles can't figure out who he was."
"Oh, what crap. Would you read all these books happily if I told you the authors were secret wizards?"
"No, because I'd know you were lying. And, really Granger, I'd expect better of you."
"Oh ho, now there are Great Expectations," Hermione laughed, and then went over to a shelf. "Here, take that as well and...uh-ummm... 'A Tale of Two Cities.' Now pay up and run along."
"Run along? You really do think I'm a child," Malfoy eyed the receipt and carefully counted out the pounds.
"Well, you've read about as much as one, haven't you? And you seem to read in the same stupid way as a child, all about the plot and not about the essence."
"And what's the essence of your favorite book? 'Hogwarts: A History' isn't it? Eau de Dull?"
"Oh, Malfoy, I'm honored you noticed. Now don't you have places to be, things to do, books to read?"
"Aren't you going to ask about your...music things?"
"Cassette tapes-oh yes-too good for those as well?"
"Wizengamot is out. I'll need to borrow another."
"Aw, I fink liddle Malfoy wikes it! Well, I think I have some around here so you don't need to set foot in my hovel of a flat," Hermione fumbled among the junk piled behind the counter, and finally found a couple cassettes and passed them across the counter. "But I expect to get all those-and the player-back soon. In better condition than you received them."
"What are you, my mother? Or some librarian?" Malfoy said, but he was obviously satisfied, and he left.
"A librarian," Hermione muttered. She kept a file of the whereabouts of all her cassette tapes. She was still bitter about an ex who had taken her Cream. Though she actually wasn't sure what one of the tapes she had just given Malfoy was-that worried her. She shook her head. Probably some Dylan. It'd be fine.
That night I baked undercooked brownies and we had Ginny and the Patil twins and Lavender Brown and Cho Chang over, which Hermione said was far too much like a Harry-Potter's-girlfriends club (Harry-Potter's-girlfriends clubs were popular in the First Year circuit that year, though usually the girls only pretended to by Harry Potter's girlfriends. Ginny wrote a piece on it for her terrible publication, and was nearly lynched by one of the ten-year-olds she had to interview. Which just goes to show that Witch Weekly is extremely unprofessional.). She also said it reminded her of the Gryffindor dormitory and she refused to be one of those people who reminisced about their boarding school dormitory. But it's good to have friends, and we had friends or at least people who liked their brownies fudgey and undercooked but wouldn't make them themselves, and everyone knows that friends are like tundrles, and if you don't use them you lose them. Hermione said she saw her friends every Wednesday night at the Leaky Cauldron, and then I had to explain that if all your friends are male certain problems can result. Like all your friends being terribly emotionally stunted (Harry took offense at that; Ron said I was right. I like Ron, he's learning.). Also, you can't talk about your period, and I had mine for seventeen days straight once, and my father didn't want to hear about it and if all my friends were male who would I tell? Hermione didn't have anything to say to that. No one does. It turns out I had my period for seventeen days because there was dust from the Sahara in the air over England. I'm very sensitive to these things.
"So how's the Malfoy book club doing?" Ginny asked as soon as she came in, shedding her bag and jacket. Ginny carried a very large bag with her everywhere she went, and no one was entirely certain what she kept in it but she said she needed it. She was constantly putting it down in inconvenient locations and then apologizing for it. She had to, because her bag tended to chew on things.
"Sorry about the bag," said Ginny, because the bag had begun to chew on Hermione's shoes. And then the oven played the William Tell Overture, which meant the brownies were done, so I had to leave the room.
"Luna! Can't you make that thing play something else?" Hermione called after me. (And of course I could, but where's the fun in that?) "Ginny, don't you have a spell for this thing?" she added, pulling her shoes from the purse's cavernous mouth.
"Well, of course not. Purse dogs are supposed to be just like muggle purse dogs, aren't they? And muggles can't do spells."
"Muggle purse dogs aren't actual purses," Hermione muttered. "And theirs are also smaller."
"Well, where's the fun in that? Now dish. I got here early just so you could tell me without Cho interrupting so you can clarify details about which edition and printing you sold him." Cho was an appraiser for Matterton, the prestigious wizarding auction house, and for reasons no one fully understood, information like that fascinated her.
"He doesn't like any of the books, but he's middling level polite about it." Hermione didn't trust Ginny. She said she was going to turn into Rita Skeeter and she didn't understand why Harry wouldn't do anything to stop it. I had to explain about the power of the word that starts with s and ends with x but isn't a number or an abbreviation for an instrument frequently used in jazz music or a nonstandard spelling of the plural of sock. And besides, Ginny may work for Witch Weekly but she did it with an eye towards reform and interviewing Quidditch stars. And she wasn't an unregistered Animagus quite yet.
"Haven't you heard? He's not allowed to use any 'racial slurs'-he probably doesn't know what to do without the word 'Mudblood' in his vocabulary," Ginny said.
"That explains a little of it, then," Hermione mused. "He seems to be quite taken with my cassette tapes."
"Have you figured out how to get mp3s to work with magic yet? I want one of those-what are they called? Poddles? They're so cute."
"iPod Gin. And I'm working on it, you know."
"Yes, when you aren't writing your Declaration of House Elf Rights. You know, if you made magical iPods maybe you could get enough money to actually go to law school."
"That's the problem with magical law school, anyway. It costs so much that no one who graduates can afford to work pro bono and nothing good gets done," Hermione said. "Wizarding barristers..."
Luckily, Lavender arrived right then and cut her off, "Hello, dears! Are the brownies out of the oven already? I predicted it!" Lavender was in the fortune-telling business. She didn't actually have the Inner Eye, at least not usually, but she wore lots of floaty clothes and muggles paid her to tell them things they already knew. Lavender had proved to be surprisingly observant in this regard, though she usually hid it in fits of giggles and a tendency to defer to whomever she was dating at the time.
"Hermione!" she trilled, dumping a pile of silk scarves a safe distance from Ginny's purse. "What's this I hear about Malfoy coming to your bookstore? Is he still quite fit?"
"Was he ever fit Lav?" Ginny yawned. "All I remember is a glaring pastiness. Whiter than a cave slug, that one."
"Or a mooncalf!" I added from the kitchen.
"Alabaster, dear. Alabaster is in right now. The muggles are all about vampires," Lavender giggled. "And don't call me Lav. It sounds like an abbreviation for lavatory."
"You didn't think so a few years ago," Hermione muttered.
"Oh, that was ages ago Hermione! And you know I'm with Thomas now and he thinks my full name is lovely."
"Yes, we know all about Justin," Hermione agreed. "Really, telling us about his foot fetish was maybe a little more than I ever wanted to know."
"You all are so dull. I wish Gin would spill more about Harry."
"If I can't call you lavatory you certainly can't call me after a muggle liquor, Lava."
"Okay, fine, full names all around. Why is Cho the only one of this lot with a nice, one-syllable name?"
"Well, her name will be expanded considerably with her upcoming marriage," Ginny giggled.
"What? She and Finch-Fetley are engaged?" Lavender said.
"You weren't here last time, missed that piece of news," Ginny grinned.
"Well Thomas and I were on vacation, weren't we? Tell me everything. And Hermione, don't think this lets you off the hook about Malfoy. I know you never answered my question."
Hermione didn't answer Lavender's question, and then Cho and the Patils arrived, and the brownies had to be eaten before they cooled too much, and Padma had to update Hermione on her research on the nature of magic for an independent think tank (no one else understood it in the least, but they'd spend hours cooing over magic particles if given half a chance) while Parvati crowed about how she was sure the fashion house where she worked would use one of her designs soon, very soon. But sometime near the end of the evening, when we were all slumped around the living room rubbing our bellies and Parvati was wondering if it was possible to Accio food out of the stomach and Hermione was explaining that that was called bulimia and it was very bad, Lavender remembered and asked again.
"So, Hermione, is Malfoy still quite fit?"
"He's not attractive, he's a bigot. The two are mutually exclusive."
"But you're going to reform him, aren't you? And then he'll be lovely."
"Well you obviously already have an opinion, so I wouldn't want to ruin it. And you've seen pictures from the trial, haven't you?"
"Yes, but his face was all wrinkled and serious in those. I haven't seen him in person in ages and ages."
"Come on Hermione, just give her what she wants," said Cho. "You can remove him from his opinions for just one moment and judge him solely on physical merit, can't you?"
"Ginny," Hermione said, turning away from Lavender and Cho. "Remember in your first year, all that with Tom Riddle? You wouldn't call him attractive, would you?"
"Hermione! It's hardly comparable," said Padma. "Now you have to tell us."
"Actually," Ginny mused. "Tom was quite hot, in an evil sort of way. But I like Harry better."
"Of course you like Harry better," Parvati said from beside her, putting an arm around her shoulder. "And it was terrible unkind of Hermione to even bring Riddle into this. Now you have to spill."
"Guys," Hermione whined, then sighed. "All right. I don't think he's my type, but he might be-just a tiny bit-attractive. If he would stop wearing women's shirts."
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Cho said, but Lavender was frowning.
"There's got to be more to it than that, otherwise you wouldn't have tried so hard to hide it. I want more details, Hermione."
And then there was a knock on the door, one of those fortuitous coincidences that usually only happens in novels or when a flock of bilbies is flying overhead. I went to get it, and Lavender gave Hermione a look that was intended to tell Hermione their conversation wasn't over but really just looked constipated.
It was Draco Malfoy. He smelled like the man who walked up and down our street prophesying doomsday, and he was uneven on his feet.
"I thought your wards were pretty excellent Granger?" he said. His tone was mild, but he was slurring his words.
"Well Luna let you in, you imbecile. And she's my flatmate."
"You... you live with the loony?" Hermione looked at me and I looked at him. I almost wanted to laugh because it had been so long since I'd been called that, but I knew it bothered Hermione-that he didn't call her mudblood because he couldn't, but he would still call me loony. She got up, and there was a sort of rage in her eyes that the women in the room knew well.
"Hermione," Ginny said.
"You know, Malfoy," Hermione said, ignoring the rest of us. "I don't think I'll magic you, because it's really cruel to use magic on someone who can't use it back. You know that?"
"You know what I want to know, Granger?" he held up a cassette tape. It was not in good shape, and Hermione flinched when it crunched between his fingers. His voice lowered to a hiss. "Who's Ash, Granger?"
Then several things happened at once. Hermione, who had been clenching and unclenching her fingers in a fist, lifted her hand as if to punch Malfoy. Ginny and Cho shouted "No!" while Padma said "Ash?" Lavender started to shake as if perhaps she did have the Inner Eye. And Malfoy collapsed in our doorway.
You should probably know now that muggle liquor does not react well with the wizarding body. Something about the chemistry-Hermione or Padma could explain it-makes the onset of drunkenness much swifter, and it usually results in a black-out like Malfoy evidently experienced. We all looked at him.
"Well, shit," said Hermione.
"Ash, Hermione?" Padma said. "MY Ash?"
Hermione sank to the floor besides Malfoy and sighed, "You have to believe me, Padma. We never did anything. I just-made him a mix tape. I didn't even give it to him."
"And I know you're telling the truth how?"
"I just am," Hermione said. "I wouldn't-Gryffindor, right? Gryffindor, Padma. We were friends. I made him a mix tape-he wasn't even with you. I wanted...but he wanted to date an Indian girl."
"So you introduced us because I was an Indian girl? Was that the only reason?"
"No, Padma. I introduced you because I thought you would like each other. Because he was smart and funny and nice. And you did, alright? You do, don't you? Ask Ash, he'll confirm everything I said. Ask..." Hermione fumbled with Malfoy's fingers and extracted the crushed tape. "For Ash, okay? Not from Ash." She laughed bitterly, "It was a good mix. I spent a lot of time on that one."
Padma got up and left. Parvati looked at us, mouthed "Sorry," and collected both of their things, followed her sister.
"So, you think we're still friends?" Hermione asked, looking around at the rest of us and sounding tired. "And I guess you can decide for yourself what you think about Malfoy."
Lavender was still silent. We all looked at her, because normally she would be the first to speak, and there was a sheen in her eye, a strange glaze like widows with a shuttering spell cast on them. Suddenly, she shook it off.
"Can I have some paper? I need to write something down," was all she said.
"Did you make a prophecy?" Cho said. "Can you tell it to us?"
"Later," Lavender said, while I went to fetch paper. "Hermione, Luna-you're going to have to let Malfoy sleep on the couch. He looks rather sweet like that, doesn't he?"
"What's going on, Hermione?" Ginny said softly. "With Ash-and why did Malfoy care so much?"
"I don't know," Hermione said. "I was just giving him books. We hardly talked. Unless-" she frowned. "I think I was the only person he was talking to. That would be something, wouldn't it?"
"Don't forget he was drunk, besides," Cho said. "Muggle liquor, I'd think."
"Yes, that would do it, probably," Hermione sighed.
"But what about Ash?" Ginny asked, still speaking quietly.
"It was like I said," Hermione said. "We were friends. I just had a crush on him. You know I introduced him to Padma-it wasn't a big deal, really."
I came back with the paper and a quill, even though Hermione said we should really use muggle pens (or pins?) around the house because quills were so messy, and we all sat their quietly while she scratched out a note and then put it in her pocket. We sat there for several more minutes, until finally Cho stood up.
"Well," she said. "It's been quite a night! I supposed we should get on our way. Though, girls-" she looked at Hermione and I. "I expect to hear all about tomorrow morning very soon. And Hermione, I still want the list of which editions you gave Malfoy."