Ginny and Draco Do America, or, Dude, Where's My Eye?

Chapter Two: Santa Monica Boulevard Boys-- Er, Wizards

Rollin' down the Imperial Highway
With a big nasty redhead at my side
Santa Ana winds blowin' hot from the north
And we was born to ride

From the South Bay to the Valley
From the West Side to the East Side
Everybody's very happy
'Cause the sun is shining all the time
Looks like another perfect day

I love L.A.

--Randy Newman, I Love L.A.

A/N: If you've ever been in a car driving too fast down Highway One, you know exactly how Ron felt. Yes, you really can see circles of sea lions from the road along the California coast.

"Ooh," Ron groaned from the back seat of the Honda Civic, holding his stomach.

"Everything going swimmingly back there?" Draco asked cheerfully. They had left Monterey and were heading towards Santa Barbara on Highway One along the California coast. The little car swooped up and down the twisty, turny road. The sun was shining on the Pacific waves far below them over the crags of rock, and the cries of seagulls filled the warm air.

"What are you so happy about?" Ron spat, falling back into Hermione's lap as if the effort of speaking had been too much for him.

"I'm getting a chance to torture you, and also perform a useful activity," smirked Draco. Then he saw Ginny's face. "Er-- sorry, Gin-- I mean, Weasley."

"Did I just hear the word 'sorry' pass the lips of Draco Malfoy?" Hermione asked incredulously. "That's it. Judgment Trump is at hand. Soon we'll be seeing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

"Oh, stuff it, Granger. I don't know, I just don't feel up to my usual level of sheer rottenness today."

"Be that as it may, if you start humming 'Sunshine Day' by the Partridge Family, I will smack you," said Hermione. She turned back to the near-comatose redhead in her lap. "Ron, do you think you could eat some chocolate?"

"Food-- don't-- mention--" Ron moaned.

Draco glanced over his shoulder and pulled into the parking lot of a rest stop. Unfortunately, this occurred as the car was going ninety miles an hour, which led to impressive skid marks. He wondered what the odd music that suddenly appeared in the background might mean, the one that was insistently pounding out a guitar beat that sounded like "wokka-chukka, wokka-chukka," but then the car came to a halt and so did the strange sounds. "You didn't get any blood on the upholstery, did you?" he asked impatiently over the moans and wails from the back seat.

"I think if we all jump Malfoy together, we could get him in the boot and leave him there," said Ron in a very weak voice.

"Another car was following us, Weasley," Draco said. "A little red one with no top. I didn't like the looks of it, and I was trying to shake it."

"Other people are allowed to use the road when you're driving on it, Malfoy," said Ron. "I realize that this must sound like a strange concept to you, since you're used to having the land cleared of all visible serfs whenever you deign to step onto it."

"You must be feeling better," remarked Hermione. "Out!"

Ron let himself be dazedly led to a vending machine and fed a stream of Hershey bars by Hermione. Draco and Ginny walked up to a rock outcropping overlooking the ocean. He wanted to take her hand, but felt rather awkward about the idea. After all, until four hours ago he'd been the sworn mortal enemy of her family and friends. He stole a sideways glance at the strands of her hair that had escaped from the tight braid and were blowing loose in the wind.

"Aren't those robes dreadfully hot?" he asked. "Why don't you take them off?"

She jumped slightly. "Er-- no! No, I don't think I will." Ginny hugged her arm tightly over her chest.

They stood looking out at the ocean. Ginny's face seemed to betray a deep inner conflict, rather similar to the one drivers on the San Joaquin tollway might feel as they ponder whether or not to gun the accelerator through right after the last car and avoid paying ninety-five cents. She bit her lip. But then Draco saw something on the beach far below, and he did grab her hand, pointing.

"Look, look!"

Ginny's eyes widened. Lying on the beach was a circle of sea lions.

"They're so beautiful," she breathed. "Oh, there's a little baby one-- now it's being cuddled by its mum-- now it's swimming--" Her eyes were alight with wonder, her soft pink lips were slightly parted, and a sudden gust of wind molded her robes to her body in a most suggestive fashion. Being not only the official Heir to the Evil Empire (TM) but also a hormone-crazed horndog of a seventeen-year-old boy, Draco pounced.

For a heartstopping moment, she leaned into his kiss, opening her mouth to him and letting him press her back against the trunk of a redwood tree. The pounding of their hearts very nearly drowned out the inexplicable but quite distinct voice of Elvis singing "I'm just a hunka hunka burnin' love!" in the background.

"Ahem!" said the voice of Hermione.

The music stopped. They looked at her.

"Jealous because you aren't getting any, Granger?" drawled Draco.

Ginny hurriedly backed away, removing Draco's hands from beneath her robes. "We really should be going," she mumbled, turning scarlet.

"So it's like that, is it?" he asked angrily.

"Think of it this way, Malfoy," Hermione said snidely. "You're all alone in the gas station of love, and you have to use the self-service pumps."

Ginny sniffled miserably. Draco refused to look at her. Little tease! he thought savagely. Sod it all anyway, he was supposed to be pure, sheer, unadulterated evil, no artificial flavorings or preservatives, absolutely guaranteed to be free of altruistic impulses and FD&C Red #5. So where had all this sunshiny happiness come from? It must be a trap with Ginny as the bait. Well, he wouldn't fall into it! Draco gritted his teeth and thought about his latest meeting with Lord Voldemort in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor.

"You must join with me, young Malfoy... join with me..." the Dark Lord had murmured from snakelike lips, his red eyes glowing.

"What exactly is in it for me again?" Draco asked.

"Unlimited power over time, space, and reality. Provided we win the war, of course."

"Yes, there's always that... I don't suppose they taught Muggle History in your day at Hogwarts, but do the words 'Confederate War Bonds' mean anything to you?"

"There's more," wheedled Voldemort.

"What else?"

"The Powers of Darkness, Ltd. just got word from Skywalker Ranch. Do the words 'You could assume the actual identity of the Dark Lord of the Sith, as revealed in the third film if Lucas can ever get together on the merchandising rights with Gringotts' mean anything to you?"

Draco licked his suddenly dry lips. "My Lord, you have discovered my deepest, darkest secret! I'm a closet Star Wars geek." He knelt on the dirt floor, wishing Father would remember to install shag carpet down here. "I am yours, mind, body, and soul. Well, maybe not the 'body' part; that's quite disturbing, actually."

"Yet the fan fiction exists," said Voldemort with a shudder.

Draco grimaced. "And they say we're evil."

"Ron, wake up," Hermione whispered urgently once they were back on the road.

"Whazzat?" he mumbled, his eyes closed.

"I just saw Malfoy and Ginny... well, um..."

"Can't this wait until I've managed to pull myself back from the jaws of horrible death?" he moaned.

"Really, Ron, it's just carsickness! I'm trying to tell you about Draco Malfoy, the unholy spawn of Satan, and your sweet, innocent, wide-eyed little sister, who were--"

"I wouldn't worry about that." Ron opened one eye a crack. "Say, he didn't try to touch me while I was lying unconscious on the cement floor of that rest stop in Lompoc, did he?"

"Ron! Honestly! Why aren't you more worried about him and Ginny?"

"Really, Hermione, how on earth can you not see that Malfoy's obviously--"

"Bent," said Ginny. "The latch to the boot on this car is hopelessly bent. We'll never get our deposit back."

"Who cares!" said Ron. "I'm never going to make it to Santa Monica in the first place."

"We ought to throw you out the window," said Draco. "Might make better time if we did."

"I was mad to think that you were even capable of behaving like a decent human being, Malfoy," said Ginny.

Draco pondered what she'd said for a moment, and then his temper snapped like a perished rubber band. "That's right! I'm unrepentantly evil and that's how I like it! Evil, evil, evil, do you hear me? I steal lollipops from babies! I don't return recyclables! When traveling by the tube in London, I don't 'mind the gap!' Oh, and I'm allied with Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters, who are planning to take each and every one of you and shave off your skin with rusty razor blades."

"Is it too late to leave him on the beach?" asked Ron.

Draco gunned the accelerator, and the little car lurched around a bend in a most alarming way. "Do you want to go *faster*? Raise your hand if you want to go *faster*!"

"That's it!" Ginny scrambled over to the driver's side of the car, slammed on the brake, and pushed Draco out the door. Then she settled into the driver's seat herself. "I'm taking over this car from now on."

Draco glared at her in a way that had made basilisks turn tail and run. Ginny glared right back.

"Now, you can either be a stupid git," she said, "or you can get in this car and shut up. Which is it going to be?"

She was beautiful when she was angry, Draco thought reluctantly. He muttered something incoherent.

"What was that?"

"I said I'd play nice from now on."

"All right then. Oh, and another thing." Ginny turned around in the seat. "As punishment, you have to ride behind Hermione. And she's putting the front seat all the way back."

Draco groaned, but was forced to admit-- silently, of course-- that few things were a greater punishment for one's alliance with ultimate nastiness than riding in the back seat of a Honda Civic.

Ron's carsickness dissipated as they passed Port Hueneme and the road straightened out. He sat up and narrowed his eyes at Draco. With a Magic Marker that had been rolling around on the floor of the car, he drew a red line down the middle of upholstery of the back seat. "This is your side," he said in venomous tones. "This is my side. Don't let so much as one speck of your evil little self slop over onto my side, and we may both reach Santa Monica alive."

"I wouldn't count on that, Weasley," Draco said pleasantly. His fingers scuttled over to touch the edge of the red line.

"Don't do that," hissed Ron.

"Let your fingers do the walking, now where did I hear that?" Draco mused.

"Stop it!" squeaked Ron as Draco's hand came closer. "Hermione, make him stop!"

"I'm not touching you--- hmm-- is this bothering you? I'm still not touching you."

"Malfoy," said Hermione in a warning tone, moving the seat further back still.

Draco assumed an expression of extreme innocence and busied himself with looking out the window at the palm trees.

"Ooh, what beautiful beaches," said Ginny, wide-eyed. "I wonder, is it warm enough to bathe in the ocean here?"

"We don't have time," Hermione said impatiently. "We're supposed to meet the wizards on the beach at two o'clock." The car passed through the green archway labeled "Santa Monica Harbor: Fishing and Boating," and Ginny pulled into a parking space.

Ron looked out over the sea of cars in a hopeless way. "How are we ever going to find this Honda thing again?"

Hermione studied the sign affixed to a lamppost. "It says here that we're in the Itchy lot. Come on."

The sun beat down relentlessly. A group of girls wearing lycra tube tops and low-slung jeans that showed their thong underwear all looked at the four British teenagers strangely. "That is weird," one of them observed. "But look at the high H.F," another agreed, and they all giggled. "Amp down, girl!

"I can't take it anymore," sighed Ron. "Hermione, give me that money charm you found under the seat cushions." Hermione handed him the Visa gold card, a dubious look on her face. She looked wistfully after Ron as he disappeared into the T-shirt stand.

"' 'I Just Do What The Voices Inside My Head Tell Me To Do,'" Draco read aloud from a T-shirt displayed in the window. "Hmm, that's simply a statement of fact. Wonder why the forces of ultimate evil are talking to all the Muggles, though. Maybe they deserve more credit than I've been giving them." Silently, he pondered the question of whether they, too, had consistently been getting the message "Smile! It's a happy sunshiny zippadeedoodah kinda day!" for several hours on end, as he had. Of course, he didn't really know what the modus operandi of the forces of ultimate evil might be in Southern California.

Ginny leaned against a lamppost with a gull sitting on it, wiping her sweat-beaded forehead. "I think I'm dying of heatstroke," she said to no-one in particular.

"Are you sure you want to keep wearing those full-length wool robes?" he asked her, sotto voce.

"Yes!" she snapped, looking daggers at him.

Luckily, Ron returned at that instant, and his sister, friend, and sworn blood enemy were all too busy gaping at him in shock to really think about much of anything else.

"Ron," Hermione said at last. "You're not going out in public like that, are you?"

Draco was, of course, far from conversant with Muggle fashions. Yet he prided himself on possessing a keen sense of style, and he instinctively felt that a hot pink T-shirt bearing the legend "I'm With Stupid" was never meant to be worn over green lycra shorts imprinted with purple palm trees. Ginny, meanwhile, was snickering behind her hands and attempting to hide it by coughing.

"What?" Ron said defensively. "This is Muggle clothing! I just bought it at a Muggle shop."

"But of course," drawled Draco. "You look simply divine, Weasley."

Ron's face turned a shade of pink that very nearly matched the T-shirt. "Don't even think about it, you--"

"Queer, don't you think?" Hermione asked thoughtfully. "That wizards would be playing beach volleyball?"

Yet they undoubtedly were. Three to a side, they served, spiked, passed, and blocked, their muscular tanned bodies gleaming in the sun. Their wands were secured in little holsters attached to their extremely brief shorts, and they all wore beach flip-flops.

"Hermione!" Ron nudged her in the ribs. "Stop drooling. And you," he growled at his sister, "quit licking your lips right now. Don't make me chain you to my wrist again." He looked with approval at the manly, muscled men playing volleyball. "Now that's what I like to see," he said. "Good, healthy, thoroughly masculine outdoor sports."

A ball went under the net, and a particularly muscular wizard dove for it, skidding into the legs of a shorter, thinner player on the other side.

"Personal foul!" screeched the player.

"You wish it was personal, bitch." The wizard sprawled on the sand glared up at him.

"Castro clone."

"Barbie."

"Cake boy."

"Light in the loafers."

"San Francisco Accent."

"Miss Thing."

"Nice to see you finally recognize it." The second player preened slightly, running a hand through his suspiciously blond hair. "I am the one and only Miss Fine Thing."He put one hand to his hip, which he rotated in a circular motion, making an indistinct "mm-mm-mm" noise. Then he gave a long, long sigh. "Goddamnit, but this is really exhausting."

The other wizard wiped his brow. "How much longer do we have to keep it up?"

The second player consulted his watch. "Seven hours."

"I don't know if I can make it-- hey!" The wizard looked up, saw Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny staring at him, and sashayed over to them. "You must be those British students we've been waiting for! I'm Todd, and this is David!" He glanced at Ron. "Is he about to have an apoplectic fit?"

"I'm afraid so," said Hermione apologetically, struggling to hold Ron back from diving into the ocean facefirst. "He's a little-- well-- you see, he's lived rather a sheltered life, and--"

"I understand, honey," the wizard said sympathetically, patting her hand. He peered at the roll of parchment she held out to him. "Says here to get on Highway 10 and start driving east until you hit Pheonix, Arizona." He looked dubiously at her black robes. "Who designed those, baby?"

"A twelfth-century Irish witch named Fiona the Fashion-Impaired, I think," Hermione said glumly. "Supposedly, they were quite the thing at the court of King Henry IV."

"You can't wear them while driving through the desert. You'll die. And you won't leave a good-looking corpse." Todd clapped his hands together. " I know what we're going to do."

"What?" asked Ginny. She'd been quiet so far, but with her brother under restraint, she pushed her hair aside far enough to reveal one eye. A beautiful eye, too, thought Draco, huge and pure as a bottomless well of clover honey; he could drown in the sweet magical depths of her eyes and never, never come back to the surface, content to endlessly swim through the wonder that was Ginny, and--

"Where is that horrible sappy music coming from?" exclaimed Hermione.

"Haven't you noticed?" shrugged Todd. "Wizards and witches are always followed by theme music in Southern California. It's in our contracts. Anyway." He put a hand on Hermione and Ginny's shoulders and grinned at them consipiratorially. "How would you girls feel about... makeovers?"

"Oohhh," they sighed in rapturous unison.

"But what about Ron?" asked Hermione.

"He doesn't seem to be makeover material," Todd admitted. "We'll send him off for a couple of hours with Butch, how's that?"

"Does he have to come back?" asked Ginny.

Hermione's mouth dropped open in shock. "I thought you were a loving little sister!"

Ginny looked down at the sand. "I am," she said. "I'm sweet and shy and sheltered and naive-- It's just that-- oh, I don't know! I've felt strange ever since I got here. Not like myself at all."

"Maybe you're finally getting in touch with your inner bitch," said Todd musingly.

"Help," came a weak voice from the direction of the sand volleyball court. It came from Draco, who had been backed up against the net by several shirtless wizards.

"Hmm, did I just hear something?" said Hermione. "I could have sworn that it was Draco Malfoy asking for help. But that's impossible, so I suppose I didn't really hear anything."

"I know I've been an insufferably evil git, but they're asking me what my sign is. Don't leave me here," said Draco pleadingly. '

Todd and David both looked at Draco with glazed eyes. "The possibilities," they chorused.

"Next stop," David said, "Sister Innocentia's House of Style on Santa Monica Boulevard."