Disclaimer on the first page. Spoilers are through all of BtVS &AtS and the first five HP books.

o o o

Horrors Never Cease

o o o

It was with great hesitation that Draco got into Faith's car.

This in itself was proof positive that the harshest of Professor Trelawney's critics (up to and including Hermione 'Mudblood' Granger) were quite wrong and that one could in fact predict the future. Draco certainly had an inkling what his held in store should he spend another moment in that car and it most definitely involved vomit.

He'd been driven around before, of course. Cars were in no way the magical choice of transport if an alternative presented itself, and the cars that were kept around for such a purpose were generally subjects of a vast amount of enchantments, but they did exist here and there. His father and he had been chauffeured to the Quidditch World Cup in one of the Ministry's cars, seeing as they had been special guests of Minister Fudge, and hadn't there also been some ridiculous incident in third year involving Potty and the Weasel? That all seemed like a life time ago.

Still, no trip in a ministry car or even the Knight Bus could have prepared Draco for the mind-numbingly terrifying event that was Faith behind the wheel of a Landrover. While even with the best of wills he could not imagine himself to be anything approaching an expert in proper roadside behaviour, Draco did harbour some suspicion that zooming along increasingly narrower country roads while singing along to the Muggle equivalent of the wireless at the top of ones voice and cheering every time one turned a corner without toppling over was probably not quite the way to do it. He found himself thanking both his ancestors and whatever despicable Muggle responsible for inventing the automobile for installing handles at the side of the seats, and clung on for dear life.

o o o

Despite Faith's many faults – and not all of them restricted to the art of driving – Draco had found himself to be glad to be out of the house. Breakfast had been a strenuous affair, due mostly to his own reticence. While he had been informed several times that the Rectory permanently housed around ten teenaged girls other than Dawn, he had until this morning not been confronted by any of them.

From what Draco had gathered, the girls attended a local comprehensive school during the week – no doubt learning desperately important Muggle things like - …actually Draco couldn't even begin to hazard a guess as to what they might be learning, but he was sure it was both dirty and despicable – however, this being a Saturday, they were congregated en masse in the breakfast room when he came stumbling down the stairs, still mindful of the threat Faith had uttered minutes before in his bedroom. Draco was used to hordes of girls, staring at him wherever he went – he was a Malfoy after all, and a damningly attractive one if he said so himself (Which he did, at great length and with increasing frequency. Draco maintained that an inner monologue was the only way he was going to get any interesting conversation around here and what more natural topic could exist than his fiendishly - if admittedly somewhat pointy - good looks?) but these Muggle girls had showed a deplorable lack of manners, undressing him with their eyes as they had been. No decency whatsoever! He'd felt quite soiled!

He had been vaguely aware of Dawn introducing him and mumbling their names, but had made no effort to remember a single one of them. His mother…his mother had always said that learning the names of the lower classes only encouraged them, and these classes were definitely low. Why, one of the girls had been so busy staring at him that she chewed with her mouth wide open. Disgusting! Should the unimaginable ever take place where he would have to address one of these girls, he would give them names as befitting their stations. "Oi you, Mudflap!" had a rather nice ring to it, he felt. Alternatively, he could just call them all Granger.

Heartened somewhat be the prospect of insulting two unrelated parties simultaneously, without either of them noticing, Draco had been roused from his scornful musings when Faith shoved a rectangular pastry thing in his face.

"You want some breakfast, Draco? A poptart?"

"No," he replied stiffly. For all he knew, Andrew could have fashioned it out of erumpent spleens. He quite seemed the type.

"Suit yourself," she'd replied and eaten it in two quick bites.

Draco'd shuddered delicately. Neanderthals, the lot of them. "I'll just wait outside then, shall I?" he had asked in the coldest tone of voice he could muster, "let you get on with whatever it is that you are doing." Faith's only response had been to grin and wolf down another pastry, while around her the girls started giggling. Insupportable behaviour!

Draco had instantly made a beeline for the car he saw parked at the end of the garden path. It was small and shiny, and he thoroughly approve. Anything that sleek was guaranteed to go fast, very fast, though it could in his opinion benefit from re-colouring. That particular shade of bright red brought Gryffindor to mind.

"You're barking up the wrong tree there, buddy!" a shout had come from the direction of the Rectory's entrance. Faith – just as abhorrent in the light of day – posed on the steps, twirling what appeared to be a key. "That's Giles' mid-life crisis. We're taking the van. Fifteen people to feed and whatnot," she'd drawled, pointing to a boxy monstrosity Draco had not noticed…presumably because his eyes were attempting to shield his brain from the hideousness of it all. It was brown, ungainly, boxy and just plain horrid. Basically, Draco decided, trudging towards it reluctantly, if Hagrid had been a car, this would have been him.

"Get in, treacle," Faith had rasped at him from the driver's seat and Draco had spent a moment reflecting that her nicknames for him made him feel sad and a little dirty.

o o o

So began the thirty most terrifying minutes of Draco's life.

At a particularly sharp bend in the road, which Faith seemed to have caught by pure accident; seeing as she'd been busy lighting a filthy Muggle cigarette and rooting through a compartment in the car's interior – looking for a DC or something – he realised that this is what the Triwizard Champions must have felt like during the first task, only in this case, he was already inside the dragon.

Absently, he wondered whether dying in a fiery mass of shorn metal and billowing flame really hurt all that much and glumly came to the conclusion that with his luck, he'd probably just lose all his limbs and be forced to live out the remainder of his years; hideously disfigured and dependant on the charity of Muggles. It was enough to make him want to fling himself off the Astronomy Tower, though his bedroom window might do in a pinch. Andrew would no doubt cook his earthly remains and serve them to the Muggle rabble under some insupportable name like 'Draconian Death Pie'.

To be fair, Draco had as yet seen no indication that these Muggles were cannibals as his father had warned him, but he felt that it was better to be safe than sorry. Vegetarianism seemed like the thing to take up during these summer holidays.

As the countryside gradually gave way to a vaguely suburban setting, Draco admitted to himself that he might be behaving a touch hysterically. His godfather would never leave him in a situation that might lead to his being eaten. Sure, there was that unfortunate Hippogriff incident in third year, but Draco might have been exaggerating the severity of his condition just a touch. It was still traumatizing!

Sometimes, late at night in the Slytherin boy's dormitories, Draco had dreams that a big slavering monster was leaning over him - ready to rend his flesh from bones and devour him whole, but in the light of day, he was always able to dismiss them as slightly ridiculous. Poor Millicent just couldn't help herself! He was shockingly good-looking and she had a pre-existing condition! It was perfectly under control as long as she adhered to a strict regiment of potions, and Snape himself said that they had the fits nicely under control now.

It did no good to rest on these macabre thoughts however, as Faith finally pulled into a space at the side of the road.

"Welcome to Cambridge," she said, flinging the cigarette butt out of her window; narrowly missing a mother pushing her pram, "population: some. Home to about a gazillion students and ninety-million pubs," she added, getting out of the car and tapping her feet impatiently in a gesture for Draco to follow, who was not entirely sure his shaky legs could be trusted. On the one hand, he was feeling really enthusiastic about pavement and steady land in general right about now. On the other, climbing out of the car would require brushing past a group of garishly clad Japanese tourists busily snapping pictures of each other posing in front of a perfectly innocuous looking park bench. Hesitating no longer than a split second, Draco chose the lesser of two evils, practically launching himself at Faith in his effort to get out of the van.

He resisted the impulse to cling to a near-by streetlight and shakily informed Faith that she was the worst driver ever.

"Actually, I'm not that bad compared to some," she replied thoughtfully, locking the van and setting off down the road, clearly expecting Draco to trot beside her, listening to her vile vile words. "You think I'm bad, wait 'til you see Buffy drive. I won't get into a car when she's behind the wheel, I mean, I'm not crazy!"

This statement was met with some incredulity on Draco's part.

o o o

They spent the next two hours touring what felt like every dreary Muggle shop imaginable. Faith was entirely unsympathetic when Draco expressed the wish to wait outside whenever she entered yet another wretched establishment and forced him to help with the shopping. Choosing between twenty Muggle brands of toothpaste was not how he would have expected to spend his holiday even two weeks ago, but Draco had to admit, that Muggles seemed to have a certain amount of ingenuity. Of course Diagon and Knockturn Alley's were far classier and patronized by the right sort of people, but he had to say that TV's for instance held a certain amount of allure. (Faith had taken pity on him when it came to replenishing the Rectory's tampon supply and had directed him to wait in electronics' shop next to the pharmacy instead.)

o o o

Their last stick of bread and head of broccoli finally secured in the back of the van, Draco was bracing himself for the horror that awaited next: the drive back to the Rectory. He was about to bash his head against the handy park bench to see whether the drive would be more acceptable if he were unconscious, when Faith thrust several colourful pieces of paper at him.

"Right, there's twenty pounds. Meet back here at two!"

Draco blinked in incomprehension.

"Frankly, I'm sick of the sight of you and I'm sure the feelings mutual. So there's some money. Piss off! Go do something fun. Buy yourself something nice or whatever. Maybe then you'll be in a better mood when we drive home, capice? But I'm warning you, don't make me come looking for you. At two on the dot, I expect to see you standing here. Now go on, scram!"

Draco needed no more invitation than that. Hastily stuffing the paper money into his pockets, he set out in a direction at random, only keen to get away from Faith and with absolutely no intention to return.