Hour Zero
“Are you going to tell me why you’ve kidnapped me now?” she asked.
“For the last time, you haven’t been kidnapped,” he sighed heavily, adjusting the seat in the Aston Martin to accommodate his large frame. “I asked you if you were busy, and you said no.”
She tapped her fingers on the dashboard in frustration while she glared at him. “Then you yanked me through the front door and dragged me into a car,” she held out one finger.
He opened his mouth to reply but she held up a finger, indicating she hadn’t finished. He fiddled with the rear-view mirror instead.
She held up a second finger and continued her rant, “That car took us to an airport where you forced me to sit, in silence, for the entirety of the six-hour flight.” A third finger. “Now, I’m sitting in a rental car, and I have no idea where we are going. And lastly,” she narrowed her eyes at him as a fourth finger shot up, “we hardly know each other!” She motioned finally inviting him to speak and folded her arms across her chest and waited.
“We’re neighbors. We know each other well enough,” he said plainly as he started to add his destination to the TomTom.
She squinted. “What’s my name?”
He placed a finger on his chin and feigned intense thought before nodding. “Mongoose.”
She stared blankly back at him.
He tried again. “Badger.”
“Unbelievable,” she huffed in exasperation as she flopped back into her seat. “My name is Ginevra. My friends call me Gin.”
“No.”
“No?” she shot back.
“Not that name. Your other one. The animal- ferret?” he decided.
She coughed a laugh. “Weasley. Ginevra Weasley.”
He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, “If you say so, Weasley.”
She gaped at him. “You cannot call me by my last name.”
“Why not? I expect you to call me Malfoy. Only my mother calls me Draco,” he stated, clearly finally finished fiddling with the car as he put it in drive.
“I moved into the neighborhood two weeks ago. All of you do that. Why?” Ginny inquired, settling into her seat.
“I-“ he stopped, genuinely thinking, “It probably started because there used to be two Harry’s on our block. Last names became an easy way to differentiate.”
Ginny nodded in understanding, “Well then, you still can’t call me Weasley. I have a rather annoying number of brothers. I imagine it’ll be a bit confusing if you call us all Weasley,” she paused to glance at him, “you’ll just have to call me, Gin.” She grinned.
Draco shook his head. “Absolutely not. Tradition is tradition. I shan’t have you spoiling it because your parents decided to give you siblings.” He shot her a smirk. “We’ll call you, Weaselette.”
Ginny rolled her eyes and lifted her feet to sit on the dashboard when they merged onto the interstate. “Fine, but I’m not calling you Malfoy.” She pondered for a moment before pulling her feet to the floor quickly and sitting up straight. “Ferret.” Ginny beamed.
Draco groaned in annoyance. Perhaps this drive would have been better solo.
Before he could settle into a blissful state of peace and enjoy the thrum of the wheels as they rolled across the road, she started drumming her fingers on the window. His eyes shot to his right.
“You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” she sighed as they passed the last exit for Seattle.
Hoping his answer would keep her silent for the remainder of the drive he replied, “We’re going to L.A.”
~***~
An hour.
She had been quiet for one hour before she burst.
“Oh, look! Mt. Rainier!” she squealed while she twisted her body and pulled out her phone to start snapping pictures.
Draco’s hands gripped the wheel tighter, his brows furrowing in concentration.
It didn’t take long for Ginny to decide she was no longer interested in being a complacent passenger.
“What’s in L.A.?”
Draco sighed, “Everything.”
Ginny bent her legs as she pulled them into the seat. “Gonna need a bit more than that, I’m afraid.”
“It’s a very long story,” Draco replied, hoping she would just drop it.
Ginny clapped her hands together, clearly about to do no such thing. “Good thing we’ve got-“ she dramatically glanced down at her wrist, pretending to note the time off the watch that she, very obviously, was not wearing, “-roughly 15 hours until we reach our destination.”
Draco said nothing.
“It’s a girl, isn’t it? It’s always a girl,” she prompted.
Draco set his gaze on the road, staring intently at the horizon in the hopes it would deter Weaslette from blabbering on. To little avail.
Ginny squealed in excitement.
“Tell me everything.”
~***~
Forty-five minutes later, they stopped at a gas station. Draco leaned casually against the side of the car, happy to be stretching his legs.
Ginny skipped out of the building, a bag in each hand. Draco eyed her warily as she approached. He leaned over to peer into the bags and grabbed a chocolate bar nodding in approval.
“So,” Ginny started, plucking out a bag of chips out and pulling it open, “let me make sure I understand. You and your friends,” she started counting on her fingers again, “Nott. Zabini. Parkinson. Potter. Longbottom. Lovegood.” She raised a brow as she lifted another finger, “Granger,” she paused again, waiting.
Draco gave a curt nod of confirmation before Ginny continued.
“You started playing hide and seek when you were younger, and slowly your childish game became more and more competitive, causing everyone who wasn’t competitive to eventually drop out? That left you and Granger to play your silly, little game by yourselves?”
“Hide and seek is not silly,” he snapped, removing the gas nozzle from the car and placing it back in it’s spot. “Only the best, most skilled minds excel at it.”
“And you and Granger-“
“Are the best.” He finished.
Ginny rolled her eyes as she opened her door and ducked inside the car. She kicked her shoes off, moving her feet to sit on the dash in front of her. Ginny reached for her seatbelt and twisted to click it in place. She could feel him staring.
“Have you no respect for this car?” he grimaced as he stared at her feet. “If we get into an accident, your legs will be crushed. Your spine likely snapped like a twig,” he clicked his own seatbelt into place, settling into his seat. When Ginny made no effort to put her feet down, he stretched his arm out to swat at her ankles. “I have no desire to return this car, covered in blood,” he mumbled.
Ginny rolled her eyes and let the leg closest to him drop to the space in front of her. “How pleasant,” she scoffed, bringing on finger up to tap on her chin. “How do you think my ass would fair?”
The sip Draco had managed to take of his coffee spewed across the console in front of him. Ginny smirked and brought her other foot to the floor in front of her.
~***~
Snowflakes had begun to fall gently, melting as they touched the ground. Draco had relinquished control of the radio in an effort to keep the nosy redhead sitting in the passenger seat from asking more questions. It was working.
Until it wasn’t.
“So, how do you go from a kids game to kidnapping your neighbor?” Ginny inquired as she crunched a chip.
Draco turned the volume to zero.
She reached forward to turn the dial back up when he smacked her hand away. “You can have music, or you can ask questions,” he scolded.
Ginny flung herself back into her seat with a dramatic sigh. “A gentleman would let me have both,” she shot him a glare. “Answers, then.” She waved her hand to prompt him.
“Once we were able to drive, nothing further than 3 hours away in any direction became common practice. Usually, we would play a couple random times a year,” his forehead creased in thought. “After graduation, we both wanted to travel, but we had obligations. So, Granger established rules-“
“Rules? It’s hide and seek!” Ginny interrupted in outrage.
Draco grinned, “Can’t have Granger without rules, so, yes. And we’ve kept to them rather well the last few years…” his voice quieted as the corners of his lips turned down slightly.
“Alright, color me intrigued,” she sighed. “What are these ridiculous rules?”
Draco’s mood shifted as he motioned with his right hand. “There’s a copy in the glove compartment. Go ahead.”
Ginny mumbled something about being forced to move when she was comfortable and pressed the button opening the compartment. A small, laminated piece of paper fell out. Well, if you could call it that. The paper was tattered and torn, as though it had been touched for decades before someone had the decency to laminate it, keeping it from further ruin.
She flipped it over:
Hide and Seek: Edition Three
Rules for the Hider are as follows:
- The hider must provide a clue to the seeker prior to starting.
- The hider is permitted a twelve-hour head start.
- The hider must establish a theme for the seeker.
- The hider must provide the number of additional clues that will be hidden along the way for the seeker to collect.
- The hider must include tickets of any chosen transportation to the seekers starting destination.
Rules for the Seeker are as follows:
- The seeker is allowed one passenger of their choosing.
- The seeker must collect all additional clues provided by the hider, prior to finding them.
- The seeker must arrive in attire that matches the theme given by the hider. Unwillingness to dress accordingly will result in forfeiture.
- The seeker must drive to the location in the clue.
- The seeker has seven days from the time of arrival at their starting destination to find the hider.
Inability to find the hider in seven days results in a loss, permitting the hider to hide again the following year.
Game currently limited to locations in the United States, once per year
Ginny let out a low whistle as she finished reading.
“What?”
“How long have you two been dating?” she asked casually.
Draco picked at the steering wheel with his fingers, “I’ve known her my whole life.”
Ginny rolled her eyes at his evasive answer. “You love her.”
Draco said nothing, gripping the wheel tighter and mumbling about the roads being slippery.
Ginny turned to gaze out the window. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. You don’t know me, but I get the feeling this trip we’re on has a few extra rules that aren’t on this list,” she waved the paper in the air, letting it make a crisp sound, before placing it back into the glove box.
“If by extra rules, you mean that we stopped playing by some of them, then yes. This trip is a bit different.” Draco lifted his coffee to take a sip, becoming agitated when he realized it had already gone cold.
“We could stop-“
“No. Not until we need gas,” he bit out harsher than he intended. “This isn’t a site seeing road trip, Weaselette. It stopped being one a couple days ago,” he clipped out, his voice tense.
Ginny shifted to look at the man next to her. His hair was a mess, and he looked…lost. “What happened a couple days ago?”
Draco said nothing as he stared blankly out the front window, letting the thrum of the tires on the road wash over him and send him back.
A softness spread across his face. He remembered how anxious he had been standing at the edge of Zabini’s recently acquired vineyard in California. He had broken one of the rules by asking her to find him a second time that year, especially since it wasn’t his turn to be found, but he didn’t want to wait.
Draco’s smile had only gotten wider as she stepped out of the car, her hair frizzy from days of travelling and her eyes full of fire at his blatant disregard for her rules. She was radiant.
The sound of Ginny clearing her throat snapped him back to the present. The soft features on his face morphing to an overall tension.
“I asked her to marry me.”