I know I should be working on my other stories, but I write what I want to write, when I want to write it. It just blows my mind you people like reading it. But this little idea has been most insistent as of late. The other ones are not abandoned, just going at a crippled snail pace.

Basically this one disregards the last book entirely, the twins are alive and unmarred, as are a lot of other characters of which I won't tell you who yet.

And Through the Gates of Hell I Enter

"Doth my eyes deceive me, brother…" said Fred to George one fine Monday morning while attending to the inventory in their latest shop located in Godric's Hollow, so recently opened that the christening champagne was still drying on the side of the building. "But is that a Malfoy I spy lurking around the Box 'O' Rockets?"

"Why indeed it is," replied George to Fred, and both, as one, leaned over the counter to better catch the shock of platinum blond hair that could belong to none other than a full blooded Malfoy, half hidden behind a colorful display of Weasley's Wildfire Whiz-bangs.

"Not just any Malfoy," Fred mused to his twin.

"But Draco Malfoy," George added.

"Curious and curiouser," both concluded together, for the Malfoy's have become a rare and endangered species indeed.

At the end of the Second War the tabloids couldn't get enough of the infamous family, especially after The-Chosen-One-Savior-Vanquisher-of-Evil-and-Most-Famous-Wizard-of-All-Time-With-Far-Too-Many-Titles-to-His-Bloody-Name, Harry Potter, claimed that the Ice Queen, wife of the biggest and badest Death Eater, Narcissa Malfoy had saved his life. That erupted the conspiracy that the Malfoy's had been spies all along, just like Snape, and had been working for the light side since day one.

And house elves shat golden eggs.

The more believable conspiracy was that Narcissa had betrayed her husband, that she had never believed in Voldemort's reign and that, in fact, she had been kept prisoner in her own home by him and his Death Eaters. She had feared for her life and that of her son's, and dared not to disobey her husband, the right hand to the Dark Lord, lest he retaliate upon her and Draco. The reporters waxed that conspiracy beautifully, making Narcissa out to be a strong yet tragic figure, trapped by her husband's ambitions and unable to fight against him to insure the safety of her son, fearing the man that she had once loved so dearly, silently waiting for the opportunity to one day escape. The papers flew off the shelves with that one, and much sympathy was garnered for the Lady Malfoy, despite the fact that she had not confirmed nor denied anything that had been printed.

In fact none of the Malfoy's had said a word to the papers.

Not even when Lucius was sent to Azkaban. Again. For life this time. Thirty consecutive sentences of life in fact. Without a single comment from the family.

After that the Malfoy's just vanished into thin air. Gone from the public eye. Not a sight or sound, nor hide nor hair for nearly three years.

And now, wandering into Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, was Draco Lucius Malfoy, nervously browsing through the trick wands.

Fred and George exchanged a look. And like cats deciding it was a good day to die, they went to investigate.

Fred jumped over the counter while George exited through the swinging door. Going opposite ways they used the pincer maneuver, a classic that had served them well over the years, stalking in arcs through the aisles and approaching the blond man on both sides. By the time the supposed Malfoy looked up he was already trapped.

"He looks like a Malfoy," Fred mused as he stepped into the man's personal space. There were the ice blue eyes, the pale skin, even paler hair, the regal bordering on delicate bone structure, but something was terribly off about the handsome snobbish face. Like the fact that it didn't look snobbish at all, and that it was flushed with color, and might have been just a little bit terrified.

The man backed away from Fred, only to bump into George.

"He doesn't dress like a Malfoy," commented the twin, as he eyed the far too plain, almost thread bare black robes the man was wearing. No Malfoy would be caught dead in anything less than silk, Egyptian cotton, or crushed velvet, but those robes were easily pulled out of a second hand robe shop. George and Fred have received enough of them to know one when they see one.

The man shied away from George, and hunched himself between the twins trying not to touch either of them, his eyes set on the ground as his cheeks began to flame.

"He's not acting like a Malfoy either," Fred observed, and the Weasley brothers took a step back from the blond man and stood closer together, studying the enigma from the same angle. It was almost doubtful now that he was an actually Malfoy, because by the rules of logic, any member of that family should have promptly burst into flame by sheer indignation of walking into a Weasley store.

"It was a mistake to come here," the man said, his hands fisted as he shuffled his feet as if ready to beat a hasty escape, except that Fred and George were blocking the exits.

"But he sounds like a Malfoy," George said.

"Polyjuice?" Fred asked.

"Long lost twin?" George suggested.

"Look alike cousin?" Fred offered.

"Doppleganger?"

"Clone?"

"Impersonator?"

"Stunt-double?"

"Cosplayer?"

The man's head turned from twin to twin like he was watching a tennis ball match, a look of utter confusion upon his face as they volleyed out things half of which he didn't even understand.

"No! I am Draco Malfoy!" he cried.

"Really?" asked George, "Because last I heard he was off in the Bahamas hiding from the wizarding world with brown skin coconut ladies wearing grass skirts."

"No you're thinking of Zabini," Fred corrected, "I heard that Malfoy was captured by some angry Death Eater that managed to escape and now he's rotting away in their dungeon."

"Huh, you think the dungeon could be in the Bahamas?" George asked.

"If ever I wanted to be rotting away in a dungeon, I'd choose the Bahamas."

They said Bahamas in a way that made Draco uncomfortable, baha-maaaaaas, rushed in the beginning and then ending in a long sigh and a smile, making it sound like an innuendo where there shouldn't be one.

"Please stop saying that word," the blond asked meekly.

"Just imagine, Hawaiian shirts and little umbrellas everywhere," George said gleefully.

"Tortured in the most relaxing place on earth," Fred said, "The scenery would just sort of cancel out all the pain wouldn't it?"

"Well I'm not in the Bahamas!" Malfoy exclaimed.

The twins stopped their tangent, their matching brown eyes zeroing on the once proud Slytherin. He had their full attention and it was unnerving.

"I'm here….." he began with some difficulty, "I'm here, to humbly ask for a…a job." It took all of Draco's will power not to grimace and crumble in on himself at the feeble request. He at least kept his head up, but he did not have the strength to look directly at the Weasley twins.

When he finally did he found the two staring at him as if his hair had suddenly transformed into a pile of writhing snakes, set on fire.

"That must have caused some internal bleeding," Fred said.

"Are you feeling a little faint?" George asked, "Do you need to sit down."

Well at least they believed he was a Malfoy now.

The old Draco, the Slytherin Prince of Hogwarts, might have spluttered indignantly that anyone would infer that he was weak, especially if the suggestion coming from a Weasley, but this Draco, in threadbare clothes and a worn look about his eyes, gave a simpering smile.

It was a strange expression upon his once proud face, but oddly, it fit him better than the sneer the twins remembered so well.

"Yes, perhaps," Draco said, finding enough humor in this situation to joke, "I…I'm fairly sure I've gone numb on my left side."

Fred pinched his left arm. Draco flinched back with a hiss of pain.

"Well, he isn't an apparition," the red head concluded.

Draco gave them a pleading look as he rubbed at his arm. "Please, all joking aside, I really do need a job."

"This puzzles me," George said as he placed his hands upon his hips, "That a Malfoy, with all of his great standing and reputation, and all the connections that comes with his name, would come to lowly us, a humble joke shop, for employment."

"Aw, but you forget brother," Fred pointed out, "That the Malfoys are ruined, the patriarch rots in prison, and the estate has fallen to the dogs. Not even the house elves want to be associated with that name now."

"So then, the money must be gone," George said.

"Every knut, for the heir to be searching for a job," Fred agreed.

"And every reputable place of good standing, they all must be turning him away."

"Wary to have an ex-death eater in their establishment."

"Even if he was pardoned."

"By the Ministry and Harry Potter himself."

"So then, we must conclude, that he is desperate." Fred said with an unkind smile.

"Very much so, I should say." George retorted, his expression mirroring his brother's.

Draco did not even flinch at the accusations they flung at him, even as they stabbed him like knives, because all of them were true, "You have every right to be cruel to me," Draco said as shame colored his cheeks, his voice tight in his throat "I deserve all of it and more."

What had he been thinking, coming here?

He knew it had been a long shot, a last frantic attempt for good, decent work before subjecting himself to the filth and deluge of Knockturn Alley. His very soul shuddered to imagine the things that place would do to him, but if that's what it took for him to get a galleon in his pocket, then so be it.

He turned away from the twin's, resigned, defeated, and humiliated. Like a lead weight, his heart was firmly lodged into his stomach as he shuffled his way to show himself out, when suddenly an arm blocked his path.

Confused, Draco looked up at the freckled man standing in his way.

Fred's dark brown eyes looked intently into him, as if searching for something within his gaze. It was a judging stare, invasive, as if the Weasley was rifling through his every secret thought, rummaging them up and mucking them about, then plucking out one he found interesting, held it up to the light, and sniggered at it.

Draco felt no prods at his mental barriers, so it wasn't real Legilimency, but that did not soften the sensation of being weighed and found…amusing. Like a mouse trapped by a more than usual sadistic cat. Make that two cats.

Fred turned to George, and they shared a quick and silent conversation between them, their expressions so completely unreadable that Draco didn't know what to think.

But suddenly, in their eery way, both twins broke out into wide grins that bared their canines and made their eyes sparkle like newly polished knives. Fred took Draco's left hand, and George took his right, and the brothers as one shook his hands so vigorously it jostled Draco back and forth between them.

"Welcome to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes!" they both exclaimed.

Draco was so shooken up he didn't know what to feel. On one hand, there was elation that finally someone had said yes to him, and the other hand, it was the Weasley twins who did.

Later, Draco thought he should have taken his chances in Knockturn Alley.

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