Note: None of the characters have met before, except Harry and Draco because they go to school together, and they are all Muggles. This is a completely AU oneshot, and is rather weird, so just sit back and wait for everything to be explained.

Disclaimer: attempting to sing If I was a rich girl… lalalalalalalalalalala… I'd buy Harry Potter from JK… If I was a weathy girl! HEY!

Summary: Harry, Draco and Hermione meet in a haunted house at an amusement park, but not all is as it seems.

It was Saturday again, meaning that once again there was absolutely nothing to do. Harry was bored out of his mind and Draco swore his brain would implode from even attempting to comprehend the utter monotony of the Saturdays that had ensued over the year.

It was late fall, around the end of October, and the winds were starting to pick up, just as the leaves came tumbling from their branches. London was bathed in a sea of red, gold, yellow, and brown, and it was starting to get old.

"Draco, we have to do something." Harry stated irritably. Draco understood how he felt.

"I agree, but what?"

Harry was stumped.

"I dunno. Oh! Let's go see a film!"

Draco shook his head; "We've seen all of the ones in the theater, some of them twice."

"Oh…" Harry's shoulder's sagged. "Um… we could… catch a bus to Cornwall and spend the weekend there!"

Once again Draco shook his head. "We've done that already, and my mum still won't let me out of the house unless I've given her a detailed itinerary and confirmation from at least two adults." Ah… the irony, Harry thought.

"Er… well, can you think of anything?" Harry noticed the glint in Draco's eye and cut him off. "And don't even mention trying to write porn, it didn't work last time and this time won't be any better." Draco's ego faltered at being caught, but he soon regained his composure.

"I'll have you know I wasn't even thinking about writing porn…" Lies, lies, lies, Harry thought. "I was GOING to suggest that we check out the theme park, you know, the new one down by 5th Ave?"

Harry nodded. "That sounds good. You wanna go now?"

"Sure. Will your dad let us take the bikes?"

"I think so, it shouldn't be a problem. I'll ask." Harry ran off to locate his dad and virtually sprinted back after receiving confirmation. He threw Draco one of the many color-coded keys on the rack behind the door and they left to the garage.

Harry hit the button to open the garage door, and then the switch that turned on the lights, revealing seven different colored motorcycles. Draco crossed to the red Suzuki Katana 750 and revved the engine. It was his favored bike out of the seven. Harry unsurprisingly took the black Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 without even a thought. The two were almost instantly out of the garage, and off to God knows where, just glad to be free for a moment.

(Now please do not suspect that I like Harry better and therefore he gets the cooler bike, it's just that the Ninja fits his personality a little better for this story.)

The boys parked the bikes and stored the helmets, before marching into the theme park. They rode the biggest roller coaster first, then something called the Shooting Star, and then (my personal favorite) the Booster. After a while Harry and Draco decided to take a walk through the Haunted House. They strolled through carelessly; laughing at the plastic skeletons that leaped out of the walls and the floor. The two were about to the middle of the House when someone tapped Harry on the shoulder.

He spun quickly, startled, to find a small brunette about his age smiling apologetically up at him. Her hair was rather bushy, and her skin pale, but overall she was rather pretty. Harry blinked.

"I'm sorry. Did I scare you?" Her voice was small, shy. Harry shook his head.

"No, just a bit startled, is all." Draco turned at the sound of conversation, and strode over from where he was inspecting a grinning plastic skeleton sitting in a barrel.

Being the womanizer that he was, he immediately turned on his 'famous Malfoy charm'. "Hello, doll. I'm Draco, and who might you be?" Harry rolled his eyes at the boy, laughing.

"Dude, give her some space for a minute. There's no need to be hitting on her just yet." Draco glared at him. The girl's face fell, and she looked at the blond sympathetically.

"You should know," She began seriously. "I'm a lesbian."

Her perfect mask cracked when Draco's eyes widened, and he pouted, like a child deprived of candy. The girl burst out laughing. "That was totally worth it!" She cackled. "By the way, I'm Hermione Granger."

Harry, grinning also, reached out to shake her hand, but dropped it quickly when Hermione flinched violently. "I'm Harry, Harry Potter. How can we help you?"

Once his hand was out of reaching distance of her body, Hermione relaxed a little. "Well, I was wondering… I'm, er, kind of lost. My friends ditched me to go snog their boyfriends and left me in the middle of this labyrinth." She glanced around and sighed. "I'm not exactly the best navigator, and I've been in here for about a half and hour, so do you think… I could… maybe walk with you to the other end? Please?" She smiled hopefully up at Harry, who nodded and smiled back.

"Sure, I don't see why not. It's this way." Harry started walking again, and Hermione and Draco fell into step. Draco kept sending woeful glances at Hermione, and eventually she turned to him while walking.

"Draco, I'm not really a lesbian." She laughed at the outraged expression on his face. "It's just what I tell all the guys that hit on me at the worst times. It effectively gets them to leave me alone."

"But… You… I… We…" Draco spluttered, having a hard time putting together a grammatically correct sentence.

Harry and Hermione just laughed at him. Harry leaned over to talk to Draco around Hermione (their walking three abreast, and Hermione is in the middle) "Draco, you look like a confused goldfish."

Hermione laughed again, and Draco snapped his mouth shut, making his teeth click together.

After a few minutes of good-natured bantering, Hermione suddenly stopped in her tracks. The boys faltered in their step, and went back to see what was wrong.

Facing both of them, head hung, Hermione whispered, "The end is just around the corner… And I want you to be prepared for what you'll see." The boys looked at her like she was speaking Chinese. She just shook her head.

"Just look."

Harry took the initiative to walk around the corner and swore loudly. Draco sprinted to his best friend's side, eyes widening to take in what he was seeing. A pile of human flesh lay mangled in the corner, and blood was pooling around the body. It was a young girl, having obviously been assaulted and raped, and then was left for dead. Her blood soaked hair crowned her face that was, beneath all the bruising, familiar.

And then it hit Harry like a ton of bricks. His head snapped back to where Hermione was standing, shifting back and forth on her feet, staring at the floor as if ashamed.

"It's you!" Harry gasped.

The ghost of Hermione began to cry, as she held her hand out into a shaft of light coming through the ceiling, and it passed right through, showing that she had no flesh.

"My God, what happened to you?" Draco whispered.

"Not now. I'll explain it to you later, but please, you have to find someone, tell someone that I'm here. I'm still alive, you have to help me!" Hermione's astral projection pleaded, desperate. She still had a fighting chance if she got help soon, and she had never been one to call it quits.

Harry, ever a quick thinker, snapped his head back to Draco. "Draco, go quick. Find help. Call 911, and get a paramedic in here as soon as possible. I'm going to stay with Hermione." When Draco didn't move, Harry yelled, "GO!"

Draco needed no further prompting, sidestepping the mangled body and sprinting out through the corridors, screaming. "HELP, SOMEONE HELP! SHE'S BLEEDING TO DEATH. CALL 911!" The people at the amusement park stared at him as he came speeding out of the Haunted House, running for the ticket booth.

"Sir, there's a girl in the Haunted House. She's been assaulted and we've only just found her. My friend is still with her but if we don't go now she'll bleed to death! Please sir!" The man in the ticket booth called 911, then the two ran into the Haunted House through the back door, followed immediately by three paramedics that had been on scene when Draco came running out.

Harry looked at the half-transparent Hermione with a scared look in his eyes. "Is there anything I can do?" He asked, in a half-whisper. The brunette shook her head. "No more than you've already done." She replied. "They're coming. Don't worry, they can't see me. Just you and Draco. Oh God, I hope Draco wasn't stupid enough to tell them that he talked to me…"

Harry shook his head. "Draco's smarter than that, he wouldn't."

Hermione's head shot up. "Look at my body, not at me." Harry snapped his head to the mangled mess just as the medics and Draco rushed in.

After she had been stabilized and they'd bound all the major wounds, two of the medics pulled Hermione onto a stretcher while the other asked Harry and Draco questions. Hermione's ghost stood behind, supplying them with creative lies as to how they knew her name (they'd gone to summer camp together once), describing what her attacker had looked like (tall, thin, light brown hair and a unibrow), as well as explaining how they knew this (they had seen him running off, but were unable to catch him).

Once they were alone again, Hermione turned to the boys. "Thank you." She whispered. "So much. You have no idea how grateful I am. I've got to go back to my body now, but be assured that I'll remember you when I wake up…" she hesitated. "That is, if you want to stick around until then… er… I'm sorry, for putting you through this, but--"

Harry cut her off. "Don't apologize. It's not like it was your fault. And of course we'll stay. You're our friend, Hermione, even if we did meet in a rather awkward situation." The three laughed. "I don't think anyone could go through what we've gone through and not become friends."

Draco nodded, and Hermione smiled. "I'd hug you, but I'm sort of disembodied right now, so I won't even try." She grinned. "I'll see you guys when I wake up." With that, she turned and walked over to the stretcher.

Hermione turned and smiled at them one last time resting both hands on her body's head. In a burst of white-gold light Hermione's soul clicked back into place and Harry and Draco flew to her sides, grasping a hand each.

Her eyes flew open and she cried, "Draco! Harry!" She laughed, but then moaned as a sharp pain in her chest enticed her to be quiet. "Talk about an out-of-body experience!" Now her voice was lower, so only the trio could hear her.

"Gosh, Hermione," Draco started with a sarcastic lilt of humor, "That was some show you put on there. Were you trying to blind us, with all your fancy glowy lights?"

Hermione's eyes widened with the same dramatic flare as Draco. "There were fancy glowy lights and I missed it! Blasphemy!" The three laughed again, and a few feet away the paramedics began murmuring.

"I've never seen a rape victim be so open and cheerful before," one whispered. Hermione heard this and called over to them, "I've always been a weird kid. Now's no time to change that philosophy!" The trio laughed again, as if it was some sort of inside joke, which, in an odd way, it was.

In a matter of days after meeting, the three teens were inseparable, even though they went to different schools. They almost immediately found things they had in common with one another. Harry and Hermione both loved to read, and Draco thought they were the most bizarre creatures on the planet because of it. Draco and Hermione both had a knack for being cheeky and sarcastic, as well as conniving and mischievous (though Hermione hid it well). All three of them swore an oath on their great-great-grandmother's 2nd cousin's half-sister's grave that they'd never enter another Haunted House again (figuring that the farther you went back, the more likely you'd keep the oath.)

They spent every weekend together, and each summer was spent at Hermione's parents' beach house in Maui. They rarely spoke of how they met, but subconsciously they all knew that a friendship based around an event as gargantuan as that would never break. Nothing, not even death, could tear them apart.

FIN