Disclaimer: I own Harry Potter (books, movies, etc.), I own Draco, I own Ginny, I came up with the idea entirely on my own, however I lay no claim to the ten made-up characters. . . "Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."(In the words of the original Willy Wonka).

Author's Notes: This was written for the "We Love You, Mr. Draco" Challenge on fictionally, posted by moonbeam333. Thanks to her for the idea, as well as to my awesome Beta, Queen-of-Pi and my "delta" Hannahannah. Without you two, I would never get anything done (except maybe my homework).

I understand that this chapter is a bit slow, as it's much more description than action. I promise, once you get the ten 4-and-5-year-olds in a room with Draco and Ginny, the story will pick up immensely.

--Jellicle-in-the-Box

"This better be worth it," Draco muttered under his breath. He walked through the halls of the Ministry in the powerful walk he inherited from his father, his black cloak billowing behind him. One foreign transfer new enough to the Ministry not to know the Malfoys smiled cheerfully at him. If scowls could kill, the man would have dropped dead.

Draco looked down at the paper in his hand. Checking a sign on the wall next to him, he turned down the corridor to his right. The sight he saw there literally stopped him in his tracks. It was horrendous, the epitome of evil. It was worse than anything he had encountered before; more gruesome than anything he'd seen in the dark arts books in his father's library, crueller than anything the Dark Lord had ever asked him to do.

In pink bubble letters, a brightly painted door decorated with flowers, bunnies, and rainbows proclaimed, "Magical Beginnings Day-Care."

Draco took a deep breath and stepped forward an inch closer to the abomination. "Just three months," he told himself. "Just three months and Malfoy Manor will belong to me again. Just three months and Father's name will be cleared from the debt list. Just three months, and then I'll never have to come back here again. Just three months."

He took another step forward and saw a note stuck to the door. The handwriting looked familiar, but he couldn't place it. His name was written on the top. Walking the rest of the way to the door, he pulled the parchment from it. Finding no sticking spell, Draco wondered how the bright yellow parchment had stayed on the door. Curious as always to find new methods of magic, he ran his fingers over the back of the sheet. Something sticky lined the top of the page. He held the piece up to the light and saw a watermark stamped "post-it."

"Muggle-lover," he swore. Pulling his finger away from the gluey part of the note, he turned his attention to the actual words on it.

Malfoy-

The children and I are in the courtyard for recess. If you arrive before we return, feel free to have a look around the suite. For the safety of the kids, the ministry has warded the door from being forced open by non-magical means, and it is guarded from alohomora as well. To get in, you need to place your wand tip in the keyhole to your left and state your personal password. You will be able to change your password from inside, but until then, I'm sure you can figure it out what I programmed for you. It involves your fourth year, Moody, and a certain punishment. The children and I will be back within 45 minutes for lunch. If you can begin preparing the food that is laid out in the kitchen, please do so. We will discuss further teaching and living arrangements after the parents have picked up their children.

Your Supervisor and Co-teacher,

Ginny Weasley

PS. In the five years since You-know-who's defeat, I may have come to believe that you truly were sorry for what you had done. But in the eight years since you finished Hogwarts, I have still never forgiven you for being a stupid git.

Draco sighed. He should have known Ginny Weasley would become a teacher. She was always too smart, kind, and patient for her own good, waiting for Potter even when he broke up with her "for her own good." And it was just his luck that now he'd have to work and live with her for three months. Draco drew his wand from the gilded holster that hung from his waist. He put the tip into the keyhole and his lips twisted into a humourless smile. There was only one thing Weasley could have been referring to in her note.

"Ferret," Draco said, speaking in a clear and calm voice as if using floo powder. He heard something in the door click, and it swung inwards to reveal the suite of rooms beyond. Holding his wand out, he stepped into the room. To his surprise, he didn't need to do anything before the lights came on. The room was lit by regular light balls, like most wizarding establishments. The round crystal spheres each held the power of one lumos spell, and they hovered in a geometric pattern an inch below the ceiling. When the spell began to wear off, the crystal turned blue and began to sink. All a wizard needed to do was cast a lumos directly over the ball and it'd return to its normal colour and position. Seeing no danger as well as no need for light, Draco put his wand away.

Draco looked around the brightly lit room and saw that it was an office of sorts. On one side there was a large desk and a filing cabinet. Papers were strewn across the desk. Draco couldn't understand how anyone could find something in those piles, but it looked like the mess was organised in some way that the owner, probably Weasley, could understand.

On the other side of the room was a wall of cloak-hooks and cubbies, all coming only up to shoulder height. Some cubbies had little pouches of floo powder above them, each with a child's name, parent's name, and floo address on a tag attached to it. In one cubby, above a black cloak and a very old and worn Hufflepuff scarf, there was a large bag with a diaper or two showing through the open top. Draco wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Hanging from the top of each cubby was a piece of blue, green, or red parchment coloured with crayons and stating each child's name. Draco scowled as he read some of them.

"Lupin? They actually let that werewolf breed?" Draco said out loud, startled out of his silence. He looked above that cubby and saw a box of dog biscuits there. "Figures," he muttered. "That minister would let anybody's kids into this program." Walking down the row, he saw a toy crystal ball inside the cubby labelled "Tyviva Videbam." Further inspection showed that the cubby next to that had a drawing showing a lot of redheaded stick figures, and the shaky handwriting spelled out "Annette Weasly." Assuming that the child had just misspelled her own last name, she must be Weasley's niece. The labelled floo powder confirmed this, naming her parents as "Bill and Fleur Weasley" and the emergency contact as "Molly Weasley-Grandmother. The Burrow."

Draco moved on from the office and cubby-room through to door opposite the one he had entered. Again the lights went on with no prompting on his part. As he stepped into what appeared to be the main room, what caught his eye first was the giant, circular rug. It was decorated like a clock and, like most tapestries, it moved. A box of text in the middle of the clock said "Now: Recess. Next: Lunch at 12:00." The clock was indeed on time, as Draco checked it against his wristwatch. Each number was written inside a coloured square. Draco stepped onto the mat without looking, and stepped onto a patch of orange that said "circle time." Each square popped up and became a small chair, the number displaying instead on the seat. He noticed that although the chairs were made for a five-year-old, the 6 and 12 looked to be full size. When Draco finally looked at his feet, he quickly moved to the nearby patch of red with "play time" written on it. The chairs sunk back into the carpet and became designs again, and Draco moved on.

Draco looked to his left and saw the girls' and boys' bathrooms. He decided to go to his right instead, to the kitchen. There was a large table in the middle of the room. Surrounding it were ten small chairs with extra long legs so as to reach the table, but with rungs on the bottom to make them easy to reach. The two heads of the table were regular sized chairs. Along the wall opposite the door was an icebox—enchanted to never need ice replacement, of course—an oven, a double sink, and counter space, along with many cupboards lining the walls. Laid out on the counter were two jars each of peanut butter and jelly, two loaves of bread, and two knives. The table was already set for twelve with plates, cups, napkins, and a few bowls of fresh fruit. Another note was sitting in the middle of the table.

Malfoy-

I've left out PB+J and bread for you. If you can begin making sandwiches, that'd help. We need two for each child. I'll eat two as well. You can make for yourself as many as you'd like. Thanks—

Ginny

Draco glanced back at the food on the counter and snorted. A Malfoy, making sandwiches for a bunch of brats? He'd leave it for Weasley to do. Grabbing and eating a handful of raspberries from a bowl on the table, he made his way out of the kitchen to explore the rest of the day-care suite.

Back in the main room, Draco went toward the side he hadn't seen yet. To his right was a library of sorts. There were bookshelves and three tables, each with four chairs. A blackboard covered one wall. Posters showing the letters of the alphabet and the numbers through ten were plastered all over another. To his left was an art area. One wall was entirely painted over with a mural. It featured a non-moving drawing of Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger, the heroes of the wizarding world. Weasley and Granger held hands; they had gotten married in the real world a year after Voldemort's defeat. A speech bubble hovered near Potter's head reading "Knowledge is power!" Ginny Weasley's signature was printed in gold lettering on the bottom corner.

In the art area, five double-sided easels stood, each with a half finished painting on it. Cups of magical paint that never dries up were lined up under the easels, and there were paint splatters on the floors. One of the paintings showed a man with white-blond hair and grey eyes next to a red-headed woman surrounded by ten children. Names and arrows accompanied the picture, despite most being horrible misspelled. An arrow pointed to one short girl with black hair and brown eyes. It said "me, Tyviva." Next to the blonde was written "Mr. Drako, the new teecher." Draco leaned closer to get a better look. His eyes travelled from the drawing's face down its body, eventually stopping at its arm. The sleeve was slightly raised, and there was a blurry, dark blob there. He squinted to see it better. Suddenly, he opened his eyes wide, gasped involuntarily, and jumped back.

It was the Dark Mark.

Draco took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself. It obviously wasn't really the Dark Mark. The child must have spilled some black paint onto the arm of the man while painting her own hair. There was no way the girl could have known. Even if Ginny had told the class about Draco's coming, she surely wouldn't have told them of his past…would she?

His heart still beating frantically, Draco walked away from the art corner entirely. He walked halfway across the room to where a door led further back into the suite. Upon entering, he noticed that the lights did not turn on by themselves. Pulling his wand out of its holster, he held it in front of him in the dark room.

"Lumos," he said. A bright light shone from his wand. As if from a chain reaction, light balls on the ceiling began to glow, beginning from directly above him, and spreading until all of them were alight. Putting out his own light, Draco looked around the room. There were two rows of beds, five on each side. It reminded him distantly of his Hogwarts dormitory, if not for the colours. No Hogwarts house was blue and pink; however that's exactly how the room was decorated. Half the room was painted pink, with purple unicorn bedspreads on the beds and pink nightstands beside them. The other half was painted blue, with green Quidditch bedspreads and nightstands. Draco smiled despite himself when he saw that one bed on the pink side was sporting a Quidditch blanket as well as a purple nightstand. Seeing nothing more of interest in the room, he walked back out and towards the kitchen. With a bit of time to waste, he thought he might as well grab some fruit before the brats came in.

As he stepped on the carpet on his way to the kitchen, it suddenly began to chime. Looking at his watch rather than down at the carpet-clock, he saw that it was exactly noon. The front door opened, and a wave of noise filled the room. Draco groaned, and tried to put a cheerful smile on his face. The children were back.

End Notes: To find a picture of the layout of the Daycare suite go to: http://www,geocities,com/mbtantomile/MBDCsite,html (replace the commas with periods)