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

Surface temperatures in the salt flats of Death Valley National Park can reach two hundred degrees Farenheit in the summer months...

--Actual National Park Services Brochure handed out at Death Valley National Park

First Prize, An All-Expenses Paid Two-Week Trip to Death Valley! (Second Prize, One Week.)

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"Ah'm drunk! A-gin..."

Click.

"And today on Fresh Air, the thirty-fifth of a forty-seven part series on Wally Lamb's new excruciatingly post-modern confessional, Sex, Lies, and E-Bay--"

Click.

"Now nobody never accused Bubba of being mentally stable, so none of us drew an easy breath till he laid his piece on the table. Bubba shot the jukebox last night, said it played a sad song, and played it right--"

Click.

"Today on Click and Clack, drivers who take out the old filter and drive fifty miles before realizing that they didn't put any new oil in their car. Now, Bob, do you think this indicates a lack of mental acuity? Well, Ray, I think it means they're dumber than lobotomized aphids. If that's what you're trying to say."

Click.

"Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of life--"

Ginny and Hermione exchanged glances. It had to be done swiftly, of course, since Hermione was driving-- not that they'd passed another car in the past two hours-- but still, the situation had become rather desperate, and that fact needed to be acknowledged. Ron had been going round the radio dial nonstop since Barstow, California. The British teenagers in the car had long since discovered one of the cruel facts of the American landscape-- once you get to the middle of nowhere, there's nothing on the airwaves but NPR and bad country.

Should I ask him to stop? Hermione mouthed at Ginny, narrowly missing running over a large group of sidewinders sunning themselves in the middle of the road.

The redhead shook her head vehemently, pointing down at the prostrate form of Draco Malfoy on the seat. Hermione nodded sadly, seeming to understand, and continued to drive.

Hot. It's so terribly hot. Order a house-elf to bring me a drink of water, Mother... But the shadowy form of Narcissa Malfoy only shook her head placidly and turned back to her bridge game. Draco shook his head to clear it, cracking one swollen eyelid and looking up at the face of Ginny Weasley.

"Shh. Don't try to talk," she said, running a cool hand over his forehead, just under his hair. It was the only spot on his face that wasn't blistered a bright red. "Hermione?" she called up to the front seat. "Do we have any of that strange lemon-squash substance left?"

"A bit," the other girl answered, tossing the bottle of Gatorade back to her. Ginny uncapped it and held it to Draco's lips.

"Ugh! No!" he said, suddenly coming to life. "Get that horrid stuff away from me! It tastes like salted cat's piss."

"I expect you'd know, Malfoy," muttered Ron, but he was swiftly quieted by a death glare from his sister.

"Not another word, Ron," she hissed. "Not one... more... word."

"That was absolutely dreadful. Like something you'd use to torture prisoners. Hmm, I'm not sure I haven't seen it lying about the dungeons at home, come to think of it... " Draco shook the bottle upside down. "Is there any more?"

"I'll stop at the next gas station I see," sighed Hermione.

"Do you expect to have everything handed to you on a bloody silver platter by servants waiting on you hand and foot, Malfoy?" snapped Ron.

"It always has been up to this point," shrugged Draco.

"I'm sorry you didn't burn to a crisp!"

"Well, I'm sorry your parents didn't use retroactive birth control on all the Weasley males. But you don't see me making a great fuss about it, now do you?"

With an incoherent snarl, Ron attempted to catapult into the back seat. This maneuver might have worked in, say, an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. Its effect in a Honda Civic, however, was most unfortunate. "Serves you right," Ginny said coolly before turning back to Draco with a little cry of alarm. The blond was grimacing in pain as his badly sunburned legs were jammed up against Ron's knee, which had somehow ended up wedged through the bottom part of the bucket seat.

"Are you all right?" she asked softly.

Draco bit his lip, his eyes widening slightly. It all produced an effect he had practiced frequently in front of mirrors, which always sighed and swooned if he kept it up long enough. "I-- I think I will be," he said bravely. "Your hands are so cool, Ginny. Keep running them over my legs like that, do."

"Like this?"

"Higher."

"Or this?"

"Higher."

"Or this?"

"Ah. Yes. I think if you just go on that way for, oh, the next day or so--"

"I really don't think it's a good idea to provoke Ron like that," said Hermione. "He may have tied the seatbelt into a Gordian knot for now, but he's bound to get out of it sometime before we cross the state line."

"After what he did," Ginny said, lifting her chin, "I'll provoke him as much as I please."

Hermione sighed again, feeling caught between a rock and a hard place indeed (although, in truth, that latter description applied more to Ginny's position.) Yet she knew, too, that none of them would ever be able to forget what was forever after referred to as "The Maw's Kowboy Kitchen Incident."

It had all begun so innocently. They'd left the last suburbs of Los Angeles behind them after several hours of driving, including more than one occasion where they got lost and consulted maps. Ron invariably insisted that they must have been driving in perfect circles, since they always seemed to run up against either a Wal-Mart or a Starbucks wherever they went. By following the arc of the sun in the sky, however, they eventually managed to head out into the vast open lands of the Great Basin, broken only by Joshua trees, yucca plants, and dubious characters yelling "Yahoo!" as they popped wheelies on the desert landscape and threw Bud Lite cans out of the windows of their Humvees.

Looking back on it later, Hermione and Ginny agreed that the first danger signal, really, had been what Ron had bought the hat. They'd stopped at a gas station in the middle of the desert run by a wizened little old man in an enormous sombrero, who offered them rattlesnake seeds at a small extra charge. Hermione had sternly declined for all four of them, and proceeded to buy a National Enquirer for some light reading material on the road. Like all tabloids, it contained a special wizarding section that Muggles couldn't read, seeing those pages only as a series of ads for 1-900 psychic hotlines. Draco had laid in a supply of Gatorade, and nobody realized that Ron had done some purchasing of his own until they all saw him in the technicolor spray-painted plastic cowboy hat. The crazed gleam in his eye caused Draco to rethink the wisdom of the extensive fashion commentary he'd planned to deliver on the subject of the hat. After all, he thought, if I were as brave as all that, I'd be a Gryffindor in the first place.

"Ron," Ginny asked cautiously once the car was in motion again, "er, where did you get the money for that hat?"

Ron pulled the brim further over his eyes, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the last one. "Are you talking to me?"

"Well--uh--"

"I don't see anybody else named Ron around here. So you must be talking to me." He began muttering something incoherent under his breath.

Ginny, Hermione, and Draco exchanged glances. All three independently decided that silence was the better part of valor in this instance. The desert miles stretched on.

"I'm starving," Ginny had said as the sun approached its noon zenith.

"Bit peckish myself," observed Draco absently from the back seat. He had been watching Ron closely for hours now, a plastic butter knife from the time they'd stopped to get muffins at another gas station concealed in one of his leather loafers. True, it was unlikely to be as satisfactory a dueling weapon as a wand, but then necessity was the mother of invention, and Malfoys had always been untroubled by such shibboleths as hitting below the belt.

"We just passed a sign that said we're in Barstow, California, Home of Old Route 66. Look--there's a Maw's Kowboy Kitchen. That sounds like they serve food, doesn't it?" asked Hermione.

"Yes," said Ron calmly. "That would be lovely." A beatific smile spread over his face. Hermione felt a deep shiver of unease, and wondered if this would be a good time for one of her stirring lectures about how important it was for them all to develop a strong sense of camaraderie, rather like the shipwreck survivors on a raft she'd read about in primary school before she'd received her Hogwarts letter.

"Oh, dear, no, that won't work at all," she murmured distractedly. "Some of them definitely ended up eating each other at the end of the book..."

"Really?" asked Draco, with a leer that it really wasn't fair to expect him to control, since he was peering surreptitiously down Ginny's blouse at the time.

Hermione groaned inwardly, glancing at Ron. She fully expected him to be snarling extremely creative death threats by now, most likely ones involving rabid Nifflers, Razor hexes, and detentions cleaning out every bedpan in the Hospital Wing with one's tongue once they all returned to Hogwarts. But Ron was silent. Hermione shook off a dreadful sense of foreboding and pushed open the glass door to Maw's Kowboy Kitchen.

"Dinnertime!" she said brightly.

As Draco stepped through the double doors, he staggered back slightly. A wave of punishing cold had struck him with all the malevolence of evil itself.

"Draco?" asked Ginny, her big brown eyes soft and concerned. "Whatever's wrong?"

At any other time, he would have enjoyed the sight of her worrying about him--after all, any tender emotions she had could only aid in his schemes to drag her off to the aforementioned Italian villa and get started on the entire sex slave plan. But at this moment, a paralyzing fear had risen in him, blotting out everything else.

"They've found me," he croaked.

"Who's found you?"

He shivered uncontrollably. "So cold... so cold... the Dark Lord does not forgive, Ginny." He knows I'm weakening. And now I'm doomed. Oh, why did I ever even think about giving up the single-minded pursuit of ultimate evil! Ginny's lips parted slightly and her considerable bosom heaved in alarm, and he remembered. Still, that wasn't helping him much at the moment.

"What's wrong?" Ginny asked.

"Some sort of--Freezing spell--" Draco said faintly.

"But how could anybody have cast a spell on you all the way from England?" Ginny asked fearfully. "You don't think the Death Eaters are here, do you?"

"The Dark Lord has powers that mortal men know not," said Draco weakly. "That's what Snape always said just before forcing Gryffindors to clean out his private office in the dungeons with a toothbrush, anyway. Of course, he always had to Obliviate them afterwards. But he did so love to say it--"

Hermione glanced back at the pair. "I've found a table in the corner. What on earth are you doing?"

"I'll never make it," said Draco, feeling the spell creep into his very bones. "The cold--it's too powerful."

"Oh," Hermione said, looking blank. "The air conditioning's not bothering you, is it?"

"Air... conditioning?" echoed Draco. "No, no, Granger! It's a Dark Freezing spell cast by the powers of evil."

Hermione's lips twitched, and she seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh. "They do have it turned up a bit high, don't they?" she said diplomatically. "Americans always do, I think. Come on, Ginny, I'm starving!"

Draco sat in his chair at the end of the table with a very red face. "As if I'd know about idiotic Muggle tricks undoubtedly thought up by Mudbloods who aren't fit to lick the shoes of--" He saw Ginny give him a gimlet-eyed look, and stopped. "Er, I mean, highly interesting technological advances that aren't half bad as a barely acceptable substitute for magic, when used by the unfortunates who don't know any better."

"I suppose that's as good as it's going to get," muttered Ginny.

He felt highly insulted. "I almost vaguely began to come within the distant vicinity of thinking about slightly toning down my devotion to ultimate evil for you, Weasley! Is this all the thanks I get?"

"Keep this up and you're not going to get anything, Malfoy." Her tone was mutinous.

Such insubordination ought to have made it as easy to dismiss her once and for all, as simply as he might have got rid of a house-elf who whistled his favorite tunes just a bit off-key whilst drawing a bath for him, but... well, if only her bosom would stop heaving in the way it kept doing, the entire battle would be a lot easier, Draco decided. Unfortunately, she was still quite miffed, and so it didn't stop, which made Ginny Weasley impossible to dismiss. For a Malfoy, at least.

Few people knew the actual origin of the family name, nor what "bad faith" referred to. It had been bestowed on the first Malfoy by a highly irate Gallic druid in the fifth century, after he had promised to guard his overlord's lands whilst he was away at battle with the Romans. However, he actually spent the entire time having sex with the druid's wife, mistress, sisters, cousins, serving maids, village peasants, local crones, cows, horses, sheep, chickens, and ducks, as well as a particularly pretty little cat or two. The returning druid had cursed the first Malfoy with both the name and a family penchant for indiscriminate sex. In the twelfth century, they'd been able to add an amendment to the Magna Carta that removed the provision relating to livestock, although the occasional invertebrate would keep slipping through.

Draco was also a bit of a departure from the family norm in that he confined himself to beings on the corporeal plane, was not particularly omnisexual, and preferred bed partners who were capable of something resembling intelligent conversation. Also, he had a tendency to mumble Ginny Weasley's name in his sleep, which highly disturbed Lucius Malfoy. He'd tried taking his son to the infamous Crystal Palace in Hogsmeade one summer with an eye towards breaking him of this distressing habit. But after working his way through all the girls employed there, the waitresses, the clerical staff, the bouncers, and several random visitors who had got lost in their search for a loo, Draco was still prone to writing dreadful sonnets for Ginny, all of which he immediately burned. This was probably a good thing, since the sheer amount of bad poetry written by sentient beings in the universe has been threatening to reach critical mass for quite some time now. (In fact, the horribly bad haiku written by a crystalline energy being on the planet Zookusium, which is located just beyond the Kuyper Belt, came quite close to causing a reversal of the Big Bang just last week.) Still, it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, Draco found himself rather confused by the rectangular paper placemat on the table in front of him, which depicted a plate of chili cheese fries and bore the legend "Have a heapin' helpin' of Cowboy Vittles!" He glanced around to see if lunch would magically appear on the table as it did at Hogwarts, but this did not seem to be the case. He cleared his throat. "Yes, well... I suppose I'll have that. It looks edible. Oh, and some '78 Caubernet Savignon. Don't chill it or I'll see it that you're sacked. Hurry up, now."

"Malfoy," Hermione said patiently. "It doesn't work that way in Muggle restaurants."

"Well, then, how does it work?" he snapped.

His question was answered at that moment by the appearance of the waitress, who was dressed quite startlingly from the point of view of four British teenagers who had spent the last several years at a boarding school where everybody wore black robes every day, rain or shine.

She wore a flounced turquoise polyester skirt, cowboy boots with four-inch heels, and a yoked shirt with pearl buttons and a blinding array of red bugle beads. A cowboy hat was precariously perched on her pigtails, and she wore enough blush and eye shadow to camouflage a rather large herd of Holsteins. "Welcome to Maw's Kowboy Kitchen, pardners!" she chirped brightly through what must have been at least an inch-thick layer of iridescent pink lipstick. "I'm ready to round up your orders, if you've a mind to place 'em."

Draco sneered incredulously. Ron was bent over something on his placemat. Ginny looked at Hermione in a panic-stricken way, as she seemed the only one even vaguely capable of understanding what was going on or responding to it.

"Er... we'll all have the chili cheese fries, hamburgers, and salads. And three Cokes, please," said Hermione.

"Y'all are riding pretty far from the range," said the waitress. "Hey! I know. You're from Yurrip, aincha?"

"Yes. Of course. Whatever you say," said Hermione hurriedly. The waitress was starting to look curiously at Ron, who was apparently building a little fortress from the toothpicks in a bowl in the center of the table.

"I'll get those orders right out," said the waitress uneasily, seeing that Ron had succeeded in barricading himself off from the others with a toothpick fence. "I think y'all could all use some grub."

The meal went smoothly enough, even though Ron made a protective tower out of his French fries, muttering to himself all the while. When Hermione tried to lay a tentative hand on his arm, he said, "Don't touch!", a menacing smile stretching his lips. Ginny watched with wide eyes.

"Hermione," she asked in a quavering voice, "what's happening to my brother?"

"Ron may have to go away for a little rest at St. Mungo's after we get back," sighed Hermione.

"Virtually inedible slop," grumbled Draco while inhaling his burger. "Barely capable of sustaining life... beneath all decent wizardkind... are you going to finish those French fries?"

Both Ginny and Hermione breathed a little easier when all four of them made it out into the parking lot without incident. "Hermione, there was something that sounded a bit odd about this car," said Ron, in a perfectly normal tone of voice. "A queer noise I heard. Why don't you get in and start it, and I'll listen at the bonnet."

"All right," said Hermione, and she started the little car while Ron cocked his ear towards the engine.

"It almost sounds like it's coming from inside the car," Ron said thoughtfully. "Ginny, why don't you get in as well, and tell me if you can hear it."

Ginny hopped in readily enough. "I don't hear a thing," she said. "Ron, why don't you come in here and listen to it yourself?" She reached for the handle of the door. It didn't open. "That's strange," she said, frowning. "Hermione, why don't you try your side?"

The driver's side didn't open either. Nor did the two rear doors. Ron began to laugh maniacally, rubbing his hands together. "Mwah, ha ha!"

"Oh dear," said Hermione.

"It's a spell!" sobbed Ginny, rattling frantically at the handle of the door.

"No, childproof locks," said Hermione. "But it works out to the same thing."

"Ron, if you hex Draco, I'll never speak to you again!" yelled Ginny threateningly. "Er, I mean, even though all Malfoys are the epitome of darkness and evil and corruption and everything that isn't nice."

"But he can't," said Hermione. "Our wands don't work."

"What on earth is he trying to do, then?"

"It doesn't make much sense," Hermione admitted.

Ron pulled his hat more firmly over his head and leaned up against the car, watching Draco. The blond boy had tried every door of the car, pounded on the windows, and even tried unsuccessfully to climb into the boot. He started to look panic-stricken.

"What's going on?" shrieked Ginny. Draco was beginning to collapse into the gravel, and a pink flush was spreading across his face and arms.

"I've got you now, Malfoy," sneered Ron.

"How can you do this, Weasley?" Draco wept.

"Easily! I can stand out here just as long as I need to. Why d'you think I bought the hat?"

"I'm British! My skin has never been exposed to the sun before! I'm melting... melting... all my beautiful evil... ah, what a world, what a world..."

"There's got to be some way to help him!" Ginny exclaimed.

"Actually, I think there is... I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't think of it before," mumbled Hermione.

"What? Tell me now, before it's too late!" demanded Ginny, staring at Draco. Every visible inch of his skin had now turned a bright red.

"Power windows."

Ginny scrambled out the passenger-side window and dragged Draco, who had now gone the colour of a boiled beet, into the back seat of the car. Then she whirled on her brother.

"Ginny, do be careful," begged Hermione. "I wonder if we could find some antipsychotic drugs in the next town?"

But Ron backed down before the expression on his sister's face. "Oh! Uh, you got out of the car, I see." He gave her a feeble smile. "It was only a joke, Ginny..."

"What was the one piece of advice Mum always, always gave us?" she snarled.

"Don't eat the yellow snow?

"No! That was Fred."

"Never whittle towards yourself, or pee against the wind?"

"No! That was George!"

"If you ever go back in time, don't step on anything?"

"NO! That was DAD! On Bill's wedding day to Fleur!"

Ron shrank back. "Oh. I think I know what you mean now. 'Always be polite to a guest, even if he's Beelzebub on a hell-beast bringing a message of unholy death.'"

"Yes!"

"But that doesn't apply! This is Malfoy we're talking about!"

Ginny bared her teeth. "If you're rude to him the rest of the trip, even once," she hissed, "I'll tell Hermione that you wank off to omniocular tapes of Greatest Quidditch Bloopers of All Time, Volumes I and II!"

Ron gulped, and got in the car.

Now, several hours later, Ron had behaved himself reasonably well. At least he hadn't tried to kill Draco with the straw from his 64-oz Big Gulp, thought Ginny. It was better than she had expected. But driving through the desert was so boring!

"Is there anything to read I haven't read?" she asked, rummaging through the glove compartment.

"That Enquirer should still be somewhere in the back seat," said Hermione.

""I've read it already."

"The wizarding section changes according to the latest news. There's probably something new there now. You can read it to us, Ginny; that'll help pass the time."

"All right." Ginny picked it up. "Loch Ness Monster and Hogwarts Squid's Love Child Signs Deal for New Reality Series on Fox... no, I've read that. Shocking List of Lesbian Nazi Ex-Nuns Teaching at Beauxbatons... I've read that, too. Oh, here's a new one." She scanned the article, and suddenly looked stricken.

"What?" demanded Hermione.

"Oh, no," moaned Ginny.

Draco picked the tabloid off her lap, wincing as the newspaper pulp touched his burned skin. A smile spread across his lips, painfully. "Well, well, well."

"What is it?" demanded Ron.

"Nothing!" said Ginny in a high-pitched voice.

"I suppose you could say that," said Draco. "If you call this headline nothing, that is." He spread out the paper so that Ron could see.

Evil Malfoy Heir Kidnaps Ministry Official's Nubile Daughter, Keeps Her As Sex Slave

The Malfoys have always had a lot of descriptive names for the Weasleys. "Wizard trash." "Pernicious vermin." "Blood traitors." But these days, pureblood heartthrob Draco Malfoy just calls teenage hottie Ginny, youngest daughter of the poor but prominent Weasleys, his personal love toy. Rita Skeeter brings you the exclusive scoop on Draco and Ginny's cross-country flight in America to escape the wrath of their families, complete with all the juicy details that Enquiring minds need to know--"

"I'm going to kill you now, Malfoy," said Ron in a matter-of-fact way, raising a crumpled muffin wrapper in one hand, as it was the only available weapon at the moment. "What? I'm not being rude, Ginny. It's a simple statement of fact."

"You're no fun at all, Weasley," said Draco in bored tones. "Killing me when there haven't even been any juicy details. Yet."

Hermione immediately steered the car off the road and brought it to a grinding halt in the sand.

"Stop it, both of you!" she said, in a tone that brooked no dissent. "Don't you understand what this means?"

"It means that Malfoy's been thinking about Ginny in impure ways, and for that he's going to die a hideous death!" shrieked Ron.

"Think," said Hermione impatiently. "How did Rita Skeeter know anything about this? How did she know Ginny and Malfoy were travelling together at all?"

"That little red car," said Ginny slowly.

"I've been noticing it for days," said Draco. "Nobody's been listening to me, of course."

"You're right," said Ginny. "Oh, Draco, we should have listened to you." At the sight of her penitent face, Draco made little notes on a mental chalkboard. Let's see... add that onto how dreadfully sorry she is for me because of the sunburn, then add on my devastating and irresistible personal charm, which she's been exposed to throughout the entire trip... I'd say that I should be able to get a hand job by Friday, at the very least, he thought smugly.

"Never mind all that!" said Hermione. "Don't you see what this means? She's been following us! We have to get off the road."

"But then we won't get to go to Las Vegas," whined Draco. "I wanted to see Cirque de Soleil."

Hermione steered the little car onto a bumpy dirt side road, her lips set into a grim line. "Sorry, Malfoy. We're headed for Death Valley."