The Love Beetle

A/N: This story is a response to the Mix-and-Match Challenge on the Fire and Ice forums (forums. dracoandginny. com).

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Prompt #5:

Theme: While escaping from a life-threatening crisis, Draco learns to drive a car - not just any car, but a bright yellow Beetle.
Item: A Muggle record
Quote: "Which is why I've been thinking about moving to Iceland."
Location: Paris, France
Cameo: Oliver Wood

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"Ginny, that's not a bloody steering wheel!" Draco shouted, absolutely furious with his redheaded dunce of a partner.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Ferret!" Ginny yelled back, equally livid. "My dad owned a flying car, and the steering wheel looked just like this!"

Draco yanked at his own hair, exasperated to the point of insanity. How had he, a Malfoy, come to know more about Muggle Studies than a supposedly Muggle-loving Weasley? "That," he spat out from between gritted teeth, "is a cee-dee. One of those bloody stupid Muggle cee-dees that play the worst songs imaginable to humankind!"

"No, it isn't!" Ginny snapped. "A cee-dee is small and silver! This is large and black! It must be one of those newfangled remote-controlled steering wheels! And look!"

She shook the flat round object in front of Draco's face.

"It says right here on the label, 'The Beatles.' And what's the name of the car we're in? The Beetle!" Ginny declared triumphantly.

Draco was about to point out that there was a serious spelling discrepancy between the two words, but then noticed that the steering wheel he was looking for was mounted on what he believed was the board-dasher in the backseat. Or maybe they were in the backseat. It was nearly impossible to tell with Muggle vehicles. With a broomstick, it was obvious which was the front end. With carriages, the way the horses were facing also made identifying the front end rather obvious. But with a little round yellow car that looked the same from the front as it did from the back? Well, it was obvious that there was nothing obvious about it! Damn stupid Muggles, Draco thought. Always making things so complicated.

With an irritated huff, Draco clambered over the seat and settled himself into the driver's seat. Now, he needed a key. "I need a key," he announced.

"But I haven't got a key!" exclaimed Ginny. "And neither of us are ever going to have to worry about keys again if you don't get this car started! They're coming!"

And indeed, they were. The French Aurors were hot on their tail, and they appeared to be a lot more knowledgeable than their British counterparts were when it came to the Muggle world. Unlike Draco and Ginny, who realized too late that they were dressed in raingear on a perfectly sunny day, the French Aurors were dressed exactly like the Muggles Draco had seen in textbooks. The large blond man riding what could only be described as a skateboard with handlebars was wearing an outfit highly reminiscent of King Louis XIV's. No wonder the passing Muggles were stopping to stare jealously at his opulent clothing. But this was no time to appreciate fashion. It was a time for action.

"Come on, Draco, concentrate," Draco whispered to himself. "You've done wandless magic when you were five, and you can definitely do it again!" And he willed every drop of magic in his body to start the blasted car, and with a wrenching sort of noise, the N-gene turned over.

"Go, go, go!" Ginny screamed.

Draco stared bewilderedly at what he remembered was called the trans-mition - funny name, that. He eventually decided that 'R' must stand for 'Rapid,' and that was exactly the speed he needed. He jerked the trans-mition into 'R', floored the gas, and howled in pain as the steering wheel smashed into his face.

"Wrong way!" wailed the useless woman, quite uselessly.

Blinking the stars out of his eyes, Draco tried again. Perhaps 'D' stood for 'Do or Die,' which was certainly the case here. Like a small but miraculous miracle, the car flew forward. Now there was the little problem of steering the damn thing. Cars were nothing like brooms. Draco despised whoever it was that thought a massive hunk of too-bright-yellow metal would best be controlled by a spindly-looking wheel.

Draco cursed fluently - in multiple languages - as he crashed into a funny-looking object on the street that spewed water everywhere, much to the dismay of the tourists passing by with armfuls of expensive shopping.

"That must've been a fire-hider-ant," Ginny informed him, turning in her seat to get a look at the mini-geyser that was now far behind them.

Draco thought that 'fire-hider-ant' was a very stupid name. Yes, its color was fire-red, but it would still make so much more sense to call it a 'water-hider-ant,' since water was actually what it was hiding. As for 'ant,' Draco had no idea what kind of blind idiot would have thought the thing looked like an ant. Maybe it was short for something? Antique? It did seem pretty antique. Wizards had stopped storing water underground millennia ago, when a clever witch had discovered the Aguamenti charm. But now was not the time to appreciate magical history.

"Did we lose them?" Draco asked, turning a corner so sharply that Ginny flew across the seat and smacked into a window.

"Yes," came her gruff reply. She sat up and rubbed her aching face. "But now the Muggle cops are after us!" Ginny cried as a dark blue car with flashing lights and a wailing siren began to chase after them.

"The who?"

"The cops! You know, the Muggle version of Aurors?"

"You mean the police?"

"No, the cops!"

"They're called police!"

"Cops!"

"Police!"

"Argh! The bloody stupid Muggle law-enforcement officers are after us, okay?"

"Okay!"

Draco spotted the Arc de Triomphe. It was, he thought, rather like half of a Quidditch goal hoop. He decided to complete the analogy by making like a Quaffle (albeit of the wrong color) and speeding through the arch. Draco had a feeling he was the first tourist to ever drive through the thing, and that it was probably illegal, but it was too late to worry about legal matters at this point, anyway. The terrified tourists dove out of the Beetle's way, some only narrowly avoiding a future as road kill. The Muggle police - or cops, or whatever - apparently did not want to risk injuring people or destroying the famous landmark, and did not pursue any further.

"Did we lose them, now?" Draco asked again.

"Yes, but not for long, if we stay in this bright yellow car."

"And our bright yellow raincoats."

"And your bright yellow hair."

Draco bristled like an angry Kneazle. "My hair is not yellow! It's a refined sort of platinum!"

An angry driver honked furiously as Draco cut in front of him. Draco waved a half-hearted apology.

"Of course it's yellow! It's just as yellow as this '70s Beetle!"

Draco was almost as appalled as the little old lady he almost ran over. "My. Hair. Is. NOT. Yellow," he enunciated clearly. "I repeat: NOT yellow!"

"Oh. You're absolutely right," Ginny replied tauntingly. "And that bright yellow light in front of us is also not yellow."

"Well, of course it's not," Draco snapped. "It's red now, as you can see - just as red as your garish hair."

Ginny opened her mouth to throw a retort, then paused. "Wait," she began, "don't red lights mean something, Malfoy?"

"Yes, but I can't remember -" Draco stopped speaking as he swerved mightily to avoid mowing over a crowd of Parisian pedestrians. Ginny shrieked as she slammed into the glass, again. "Actually, I think it meant 'stop,'" he observed.

"It'th tho wonderpool that 'ou remembered thith jutht in the nick ob time," Ginny said, her voice dripping sarcasm and her nose dripping blood. "Ow."

"Sorry, Ginny," said Draco, and he was surprised to find that he actually was really sorry, even though it was all her fault that they were in this mess in the first place. He hesitated for a moment before pulling out his pristine white, monogrammed silk handkerchief. "Here's a hanky."

Ginny snatched the kerchief away, muttering something that sounded like 'thank you' - or was that 'no thanks to you?'

Draco made one last wild turn, causing an elderly couple to skitter out of the way so fast that they could have won an Olympic medal, had 'Skittering-for-your-life' been an Olympic event.

"There," he said, pulling over and parking. "I think we should stop right here."

"Here? Why here?" Ginny asked, mopping the last remnants of blood off her throbbing nose.

"I've successfully parallel parked. I heard that it's rather hard to do," he said smugly.

"I thought you had to be parallel to the sidewalk, Malfoy, not another car. I also don't think that you should've parked quite so closely. I can't even budge the door open and - oh, Merlin! Did you break off that car's side mirror?"

Draco shrugged, getting out of the car and absentmindedly giving his troublemaking partner a hand. "Their insurance will take care of it all. Without magical contracts, it should be easy for the car owners to weasel some extra money from the insurance companies."

"I don't think the companies will just sit there and let customers ferret away their funds," Ginny replied coolly, taking off her unsightly raincoat and tossing it into the Beetle's backseat. "Now, we really should go back to doing what we came here for in the first place."

"Oh yes," Draco drawled disdainfully. "What were we doing here in the first place? Oh, I remember. Here, let me assign myself a non-existent case in Paris, and maybe while I'm dutifully doing my job hunting down imaginary criminals, I may coincidentally come across Oliver Wood, who just happens to be in Paris, too!"

Ginny, at least, had the grace to blush. "This is not about Oliver being here!"

Draco pretended not to have heard her, and rambled on, "And I'll just completely forget that Auror visas need to be approved by both countries, not just my own, and I'll go popping up in a foreign country without a valid visa and then get arrested!"

"Malfoy," Ginny interrupted, looking both embarrassed and peeved. But there was no stopping Draco.

"Then I'll contact my poor, hardworking partner to come bail me out, and because I'm ashamed to admit why I'm really here, I'll tell him that I was facing a life-threatening event! Yes, that's it! And maybe then he'll be so shocked that he'll forget that he doesn't have a valid visa, either and we can both be criminals!"

"Malfoy! Can you stop speaking in italics?"

Draco ignored her. "Then I'll go ahead and slap my arresting officer because he made an off-color wand joke while confiscating my wand, be horrified at my own actions, grab my innocent, unsuspecting partner, and hightail it out into the streets of Muggle Paris! Without either of our wands! Because I'm a bloody idiot!"

"Yes, you are," snapped Ginny, but without much venom. "You continue your monologue any further, and the French Aurors, or the cops, will find us again! Even without the car and the raincoats, we're still very visible, with my stop-light hair and your '70s-Beetle-yellow hair!"

"My hair is NOT yell -"

"Oy! You there, with the yellow hair!" someone called.

"My hair is NOT... Wood?"

"Well observed," Ginny said dryly. "Your hair isn't wood. Pure genius."

"Ginny?" the someone said. "What are you doing here?"

Ginny whirled around, and to her surprise, saw Wood. Oliver Wood. Who was looking very, very irritated.

"Oliver!" she exclaimed.

"And this is Malfoy," Oliver said flatly. "Surprise, surprise. Malfoy's here to ruin the day. Thanks to your horrible parking - if you can even call it that - my getaway car can't be moved! And you also broke my side mirror! Now, thanks to you, I can't escape from my fans who're in hot pursuit! I have fans everywhere! Except Iceland, I think. Which is why I've been thinking about moving to Iceland. But that's beside the point! I can't very well ride a broomstick in Muggle Paris, so now I have to run! Thanks a lot, Malfoy! And you too, Ginny. I thought you were above hanging out with Slytherins!" And with one last scowl in Draco's direction, Oliver sprinted away, just as a mob of screaming fanwitches caught sight of their favorite Quidditch star and followed.

"Humph!" Ginny said, looking affronted. "That was rude! Stardom's gotten to his head! I can't believe I came all the way here to see him!"

"You can't believe it? You can't believe it?" Draco shouted. "I am the one who can't believe it, Ginny! I came all the way to France just to be pursued by Aurors in lace and velvet tights and -"

"And you're under arrest!"

Draco and Ginny spun around to face their arresting officer. Without a doubt, the Louis XIV look-alike was there, in all his lace-and-velvet-tights glory. He was balancing precariously on his skateboard-with-a-handle, pointing his wand at the two of them.

The bright yellow Beetle, Draco realized, was too far away for them to make another getaway without being hexed to bits. Getting arrested seemed inevitable. "Getting arrested seems inevitable," he told Ginny.

"Oh, bugger!" Ginny cried, stamping her foot like an angry child.

---

In the end, it was Harry Potter who came to their rescue, although Draco would rather be Crucioed ten times over than admit that it was a rescue.

After Head Auror Joseph Brand had shown up and unsuccessfully tried to cover for his subordinates - he had tried to convince the French Aurors that all of this was a simple misunderstanding: "See, I had told them to investigate a robbery at the Paris Bakery, which is down the street from our headquarters, but they must not have heard the 'Bakery' part!" - Brand had, in desperation, resorted to enlisting the help of his least favorite Auror. ("Celebrity Aurors," he sometimes said, especially when Harry felt it necessary to bend every rule in the book, "How I hate them.")

All Harry had done was show up, ruffle his hair - casually revealing his scar, and grin that lopsided-hero-grin of his, and the French Aurors were falling over themselves to offer him tea and biscuits.

"Nice outfits," was the first thing Harry said to them, as he handed them their wands back.

"What?" Draco asked testily. "At least we got rid of the raincoats."

"Raincoats aren't so bad," Harry said cryptically, and refused to say more on the subject, leaving Draco to wonder what could possibly be wrong with his luxurious green silk kimono (the closest that Muggle clothing got to wizard's robes). He wondered even more how anything could be wrong with the little black dress that Ginny was wearing - it was just like the one he'd seen a Muggle star wear to a party - and Ginny looked rather fetching in it, though he would never admit it.

After Apparating back to Britain, a very upset Auror Brand decided that in addition to putting them on probation, he would throw them in jail for an entire day.

"You saved us from jail to throw us in another one?" Draco asked crossly. "It wasn't even my fault!"

"At first you force me to be his partner, and now you lock us in the same cell? This is cruel and unusual punishment!" Ginny declared.

"You are not in the position to complain!" Brand barked, and slammed the cell door in their faces.

"I'll tell your mum you've been assigned on an emergency overnight case," Harry offered kindly, peeking through the bars.

"Thanks, Harry," said Ginny, resigned.

"Oh yes," sneered Draco once Harry left. "Thank you so much, Harry! Forget Draco, who rushed to my help even without a visa. Forget Draco, who put his life at risk driving a stupid Beetle just for me. Forget Draco, who's locked in a jail cell as punishment for being a good partner! And people wonder why I'm not nice."

"Malfoy," began Ginny thoughtfully. "Why did you come to get me anyway? I'd just asked for any Auror with a visa to come get me, and the next thing I know, you've materialized right next to me, asking if I'm all right."

Draco blinked stupidly for a few moments before replying, "If something happens to you, I'll get in trouble for not looking after my partner. You know what Brand says." Draco assumed an exaggerated, gravelly tone to mimic Brand. "Your partner is like an extra hand...'"

"You must always know what your hand is up to..." Ginny continued, giggling at mocking the Head Auror.

"If you don't, whatever happens is your fault as much as it's your hand's fault..."

"Because you and your hand are one!" Ginny finished dramatically.

"Merlin!" laughed Draco. "How can you become Head Auror with a head full of such cheesy rubbish?"

"It's almost as cheesy as you falling in love with me," Ginny said casually.

"Yes, it - What?" Draco looked flabbergasted.

"It's true. I can see it in your eyes."

"My eyes?" Draco was now starting to look alarmed, and his voice was becoming decidedly squeakier.

"Yes. They're normally pigeon-feather gray. But when you look at me, like you're doing now, they turn the exact same shade as the cement wall behind you."

This was crazy, Draco thought. Pigeon feathers and cement? But he supposed he shouldn't expect much - not from the same witch who once, quite notably, wrote Potter a lamentable poem in which she claimed that his eyes were like fresh pickled toads. And besides, cement was much better than pickled toads, wasn't it?

"And I also have definitive proof," Ginny continued.

"Proof? What proof? What are you going on about, woman?" Draco demanded to know. He couldn't have been that obvious, could he? Wait - what was he talking about? Of course he wasn't obvious! He wasn't obvious at all, because he didn't like her, right? Right?!

"Have you noticed that you've been calling me 'Ginny' all day?"

"But that's your name!" Draco protested. "What else would I call you?"

"See?" Ginny grinned triumphantly. "You've been thinking of me as 'Ginny' so much in your private thoughts that it no longer even occurs to you that you should be calling me 'Weasley.'"

Draco looked rather like a deer caught in Lumos-light. "Er..."

"Er? That's all you can say? Er?"

"Er...!"

"What happened to that sharp tongue of yours? Cat got it?" Suddenly, Ginny smiled rather wickedly. "Or perhaps you're imagining that I've got it," she drawled, and licked her lips.

Ginny Weasley was a very forward woman, observed the part of Draco's brain that hadn't short-circuited yet. She was very Slytherin. Was that a good thing? And why was she coming closer? And that little black dress of hers seemed just a bit too little. And they were in a cell! And were those handcuffs in the corner, back there? And...

"Close your eyes, Draco," Ginny purred seductively.

This is too good to be true! Draco thought. Too good to be true!

"Open your eyes, Malfoy!" she suddenly yelled, all traces of seduction gone from her voice.

"What?" Draco snapped his eyes open in shock. Had he done something wrong?

"You're drooling over the paperwork again," Ginny said, looking both exasperated and amused. She was no longer in her little black dress. In fact, under her scarlet Auror robes, she was wearing a lumpy maroon sweater that clashed horribly with her hair.

They were also, Draco noticed with some dismay, no longer in the cell. Instead, they were in their office.

"Come on, Malfoy, get up!"

Draco got up, feeling extraordinarily disappointed. Ever since the Glasgow Incident a few weeks ago, during which Ginny had saved his life and had gotten injured as a result, he'd felt decidedly different about his redheaded partner.

"Did you even read the file before slobbering all over it?"

He had tried to deny it for weeks, tried to convince himself that it was a feeling of gratitude and nothing more. Now, however, his true feelings were cropping up in his dreams.

"It says we have to investigate a robbery at the Paris Bakery down the street."

He could no longer deny it. He had to admit it.

"At first, I thought Brand said just 'Paris' and was so pleased, then he had to go and add 'Bakery.' How great is that?"

He was in love with his carrot-topped, freckle-faced, bad-tempered coworker. He was in love with Ginny Weasley.

"Malfoy? Are you still not awake? You look out of it."

Without any warning whatsoever, Draco seized his unsuspecting partner and kissed her soundly.

Ginny pushed him away, startled. Her shoulder jerked a bit, and Draco knew she was restraining a slap - either that, or one of her famous Bat-Bogey Hexes. She took a deep breath and snapped, "Malfoy! Explain yourself!"

"Do you really want me to stop and explain?" His voice was low, husky.

Ginny blinked owlishly at him for a long moment before the corner of her lip curled up into a half-smile, half-smirk. "No. At least, not now," she said, and being the forward woman that she was, she slammed him against the wall and kissed him feverishly.

Who needed Paris and a little black dress when she was kissing him like this? If a musty office cubicle and a lumpy maroon sweater could make her kiss like this, Draco was perfectly fine with that. Reality, he thought, was much, much better than a dream.

But he did sort of miss that yellow Beetle. He had come to think of it as 'The Love Beetle,' and it had bitten him. Merlin, did it bite him!

---

When Joseph Brand came around Cubicle #5 to ask why its occupants hadn't yet reported to Paris Bakery, he got his answer. He didn't like it at all, especially since the reason he had assigned the two enemies to be partners was to prevent another office romance, and they had completely disregarded his reasoning and gone off to have an office romance anyway. He didn't like having his reasoning disregarded. He also didn't like walking in on his subordinates when they weren't fully clothed, but Malfoy and Weasley really didn't seem to care about what he thought.

Having decided that not even the Imperius curse could force him to pry apart the two lust-crazed ex-enemies, Brand instead went to find Potter. It would be a laugh to put the Savior of the World on pastry-robbery duty. Celebrity Aurors. How he hated them. But they still had their uses. For example, maybe he'd ask Potter to bring him a doughnut on the way back. Then he remembered: he'd lost his appetite walking out of Cubicle #5.

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The End

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A/N: Ginny did not wear a seatbelt (she didn't really know about it), and got a bloody nose as a result. In real life, the consequences could be much worse, so please, always remember to wear your seatbelt!

With that said, I hope you enjoyed this story. I had a blast writing it!