By: DaDomz (Branw3nand Lestat)
DISCLAIMER: WE DON'T OWN NOTHING.
WARNINGS:
1.) This is a HP/DM fic. But not entirely. Read it and understand.
2.) Also an R/Hr fic so be warned!
3.) Idea derived from the Travelers Incognito.
NOTE: LESTAT, YEAH, YOU, READ THIS!!!! Noticed you didn't post this and well, I decided to go through with it and by the way, I'm back. So if you're offended or something I'm sorry.
CHAPTER FIVE: STRANGE REVELATIONS
"Parkinson, take your filthy paws off my body, immediately!" Draco roared, his cheeks tinged with a furious crimson as he glared at Pansy murderously.
She rewarded him with a simpering sweet smile as she pulled his gray cashmere sweater over his head and apathetically discarded it behind her, flitting out of harm's way as he made a mad swipe at her.
"Your trousers, if you please, Mister Malfoy," McGonagall barked like a mad Crup.
He turned to her, nearly ready to scream the professor's head off as he laid a withering glare upon her.
She was undeterred. "Miss Parkinson…"
Pansy hopped up to him and snickered, her hands inching up his waistband. He visciously slapped her hand away, blushing furiously amid Weasley's roaring laughter.
"I bet that this isn't the first time she's done that, now is it, Malfoy?"
He growled, sneering at him. "This predicament seem familiar to you, Weasel? If you were in my shoes, it wouldn't be the first time a teacher caught you with your pants down, now would it?"
It was an absolute waste that his retort had been drowned out by the new bouts of laughter Weasley's crack had caused.
Pansy seemed like a volcano about to erupt. "If any of you are suggesting that I've been sleeping with this git, then you all could go fuck yourselves, then."
McGonagall's countenance palled, her eyes settling on Pansy who was growling at every person which was in her immediate vision. "Miss Parkinson! Watch your tongue! This is not some rowdy pub in which a young lady such as your self should not have been in in the first place!"
Pansy continued to ignore the sanguine faced educator as she screamed a colorful set of blasphemies at her classmates. Draco took this as an opportunity to slip away amidst the bedlam but McGonagall had spotted him before he could make a clean getaway and his attempt to leave the premises only seemed to fuel her anger even more.
She manhandled him, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt, carrying him onto her table and setting him down onto it none too gently. She was quite strong for an old bat. She then proceeded to remove his trousers with her wand and then instructed him to remove his soaked shirt.
He shook his head vigorously, his saturated hair spilling droplets of excess potion onto the desk. "No, bloody hell, no! The potion hasn't even seeped through the cashmere, it couldn't have soaked my skin then."
McGonagall's mouth was set in a tight line. "Now, Mr. Malfoy or do you want me to do it myself."
His gray eyes clouded, his expression that of a caged rabbit prepared to run at the first sight of an opening. McGonagall hadn't been a teacher in Hogwarts for nearly fifty years without learning a thing or two about children and she noticed that look right off the bat. Growling at the young Slytherin before her, she muttered the leg-locker curse on him just as Draco leapt off the table, freezing him in place.
"You'll be hearing from my father about this, you Muggle-loving garbage!!!" he yelled as a sort of last resort as he stood there, shivering in his boxers and his now thin shirt.
She disregarded his outrageous comment, taking note of his womanly pitch as she again utilized her wand to remove his shirt and gasped in shock at what she saw before falling to a dead faint before her furiously blushing student.
The resounding crash that the educator's unconscious body had created reverberated throughout the classroom, drawing a lot of unwanted attention for the young blonde.
Students who had just been mindlessly screaming indignities at each other now stood tacit, mouths hanging agape at the sight before them.
The Slytherin stood before them, shivering amidst metres of beige cloth, his red and black checkered boxers barely concealing shapely legs. His relatively flat albeit toned belly clenched and released with every shivering breath he took. Yet there was one essential detail that not one of them missed.
He was wearing some sort of garment over his bulging chest. It was a… plain white sports bra.
"My God! You're a…a girl!!!"
For Merlin's sake, that Weasley was a smart one, he had also summarized the entire situation, as well. Pansy slapped her forehead repetitively while Blaise's eyes were wide with what could only be apprehension while Crabbe and Goyle wonderingly scratched at their foreheads.
Not one brainless witch or wizard in the entire damned class made a move to offer her their robe and when they had finally come to their senses, it took an eternity before even one of them made a move to remove their plain black coat. Unfortunately, it that considerate soul just happened to be Finnigan, known womanizer of Hogwarts.
But before he could reach the shivering girl, her case of the chills highly contradicting the furious blush that tinged her cheeks, the door to the Transfiguration classroom opened and who should burst in but Snape.
Harry noticed that Draco's cross demeanor had lightened considerably at the sight of his-rather, her, favourite professor. Snape quickly surveyed the tumultuous room before his eyes landed on Draco, quaking in her knickers in the middle of the room amidst dozens of gaping mouths. And, unluckily, he had also noticed Finnigan's position before his student and took this as a threatening action. A malicious act. More than once had he caught Finnigan and some random doing perverse actions behind the Transfiguration classroom during his nightly rounds. If Finnigan had touched her, there'd be hell to pay, from both him and Lucius Malfoy.
"Stay where you are, Finnigan!" he barked, face purple with rage as he hurriedly removed his own cloak and draped it over Draco's shoulders, its wide breadth engulfing the petite girl under its bulk as she struggled to button it closed.
"What happened here?" he demanded, which all the Gryffindors deemed unnatural. Shouldn't he be wondering why his star student wasn't a boy but a girl?
Nobody stepped forward and as if it were entirely Seamus' fault, Snape's wrath was solely directed on his person. He stared at Snape, he was nearly as tall as the Potions master and shouldn't have had to cower beneath that patronizing and biased glare but this was Snape after all, who wouldn't be intimidated and a bit scared. That was a lie. Seamus was quaking in his shoes, cursing the gods. Why couldn't he have gone to Eton instead?
"Parkinson, would you mind explaining?" he growled ominously. "Now!"
Pansy strutted up to him. "Well, we were supposed to cast this spell on our partners, Draco was mine. The spell was supposed to well, I can't quite understand it myself, due to Weasley's vociferous snores."
Leave it to Slytherins to somehow lay the blame on others when it was so obviously their own.
"Draco had me go first and, well… since she hadn't quite listened as well, we didn't know the right spell and I accidentally set her robes on fire. That was when McGonagall decided to intervene and made well to douse Draco with some highly acidic solution which immediately extinguished the unnatural fire."
It seemed quite natural to Parkinson as she referred to Malfoy as a she. Quite unnerving, really.
"And McGonagall had her remove my clothes, which she complied to, quite eagerly, I might add. Looking for revenge, Parkinson?" Malfoy's voice had softened, it was now unforced and very musical. She now sounded like a girl, as well.
"How in the world was I to discern that the acidity of the potion would render the adhesive in your bandages useless, then?" she sneered at Draco. Wait, how could someone name a girl Draco? "Not my bleeding fault you decided to wear bandages rather than that corset contraption of yours."
"Is it my bloody job to foresee every idiotic action you are to commit?" she replied just as hotly.
Parkinson opened her mouth to reply but Snape had by now, analogous to everyone else in the classroom, heard enough and had decided to arbitrate.
"Stop. No," he pointed a finger at Pansy. "Shut your mouth," he whirled to give Draco a quelling glance. "You, as well. Now, I'll have to contact your father. Come."
"Where?"
"To my office."
He stalked towards the door, unconsciously glaring at any teen who dare gape at Malfoy, when he realized she hadn't followed him.
"What is it now, child?" he barked, turning to face her.
She made a face as she pointed at her feet. "Leg-locker curse. Only way McGonagall could've gotten my trousers off, only way she could get any man's trousers off."
Snape sighed impatiently and moved towards her, muttering the counterspell as he reached her and laid his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Walk," he ordered, leaving no room for contradictions.
She obeyed and sneered as she passed Ron.
"You're a-a…girl!" he concluded, staring at her in disbelief and well, stupidity.
She growled, though it seemed delicate coming from her vocal cords. "Brilliant observation, Weasel. And if you haven't realized what a girl looks like, then you're either utterly vapid or your girlfriend just isn't screwing you right."
Ron hung there with his mouth wide open with indignity while Snape did his best to suppress a chuckle. He dug his fingers into her shoulders, and reprimanded her with a soft, "Draco."
She shrugged her shoulders as they exited, rubbing at her crimson nose just as Ron called out, "Well, then, that makes two of us."
She turned and calmly articulated, "Burn in fucking hell, Weasley."
Snape glared at her. "I will not tolerate that sort of attitude from any young lady, especially from my own Goddaughter."
The latter part of his statement rang out behind him as they turned the corner, intending to enter his office. So did the cross-dressing Slytherin's reply.
"I will not have some sorry excuse of a Pure-blood scream insults at me!"
"Someone was stupid enough to assign Snape as a Godfather?" Seamus wondered out loud, collapsing onto the floor, dabbing at his sweat-glazed forehead with his tie.
"Well," Ron replied. "He was assigned to guard a Malfoy by a Malfoy, what can you expect from that sorta lot?"
Nearly every Gryffindor nodded in consent, while Crabbe stood there, insipidity finally deciding to temporarily leave him. "Draco's a girl?"
Hermione slapped her forehead.
*-----*
"WHAT?!" Lucius Malfoy raged, his fist unconsciously banging on Severus Snape's cold granite console, his face a distinct shade of tomato red.
Draco sighed and rolled her eyes. He had heard the first time she and Snape had explained, with great omission of earlier facts on her part, about the earlier event in the old bat's class. And she knew as much as the Potions master that he had understood when they had elucidated the circumstance for the second time, and the third and the fourth. They were in the midst of his fifth screaming seizure.
She sat on one of her Godfather's dark green, nearly a palpable shade of moss, really, couchette, her feet firmly planted on the floor, her back rigid and straight, shoulders pushed back, chin lifted just enough to emanate a powerful and condescending aura but in a subtle way and yet looking respectful enough to those of higher position.
As she had been constantly instructed. Analogous to the beliefs of her sexuality. That she was a boy, though it was only what she should be. The hands which she lay on her lap itched to rub at her arms. Though she was used to the nightly drafts that were thought to be nearly zero degrees, she had never encountered the chill with nearly nothing on her person.
Professor Snape's office wasn't as horrible as all her peers thought it to be, though. His office at least had a fire place and the windows were closed, so as to hinder the Fall breeze, though it did little but brighten the place up. It did not exude any warmth and it took all her discipline to restrain her urge of squatting before it.
It had served another purpose, though, and that had been to summon her father.
The place seemed like a tomb, though.
"HOW COULD YOU HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN, BOY???" Lucius Malfoy roared, struggling to grab her by the scruff of her neck and succeeding to only grasp at Snape's heavy black cloak, causing her to fall to the floor, frowning at her father as she lay in a heap on the dust-covered floor.
"Wasn't my fault, really," she grumbled, eyeing the cloak indicatively, rubbing her arms for emphasis.
He sneered at her and threw the cloak over her head, disregarding her improper, incomplete sentence, instead, turning around to face Snape. "AND YOU! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HIS GUARDIAN, HIS SODDING GODFATHER! HOW COULD YOU HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN! TELLING DUMBLEDORE ABOUT THIS EMBARRASSMENT WAS DEGRADING ENOUGH WITHOUT HAVING ANYONE ELSE FIND OUT!"
"Breathe, Lucius," Snape instructed calmly.
"Yes, daddy. Don't forget about your blood pressure," Draco added worriedly, pulling the cloak on and wincing as she thought of another time when she was forced by uncontrollable circumstances to don another man's clothes. But this was different. Snape's didn't smell half as good as Potter's. She growled at her wayward thoughts and decided to keep focused on the situation at hand.
"HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NEVER TO CALL ME THAT, YOU INSOLENT BOY?" Lucius returned his attentions back at her, glaring madly, fists continuously clenching, leaving angry unwarranted marks on skin nearly as pale as hers.
She decided to hide a wince, knowing that seeing her in a bout of weakness would only infuriate him further. She clamped her mouth shut, deciding that such action would be wise. She wrapped her arms around herself, staring at her father with a restless trepidation, assured that he would never cause her physical impairment for her mother's wrath was well-known around the Malfoy household. But a fearful thought suddenly dawned upon her. She had humiliated him, to what lengths would he go through to gain such respect back?
He had already failed his family by failing to produce an heir. She was the first in quite a notable number of Malfoys, meaning all the Malfoys to ever exist, to be a female. There were twins, yes, but those were scarce, one in a thousand, actually, both male and the younger of the two had been slayed, to preserve the purity of their lineage. She was the only female and being that Malfoys could only impregnate their wives once, she had been spared, only to be thrust upon the world as a Malfoy heir. A male Malfoy heir.
Lucius' normally carefully paced out steps had suddenly become uneven and erratic, that indicated that he was not in a normal state of mind. "WELL, ANSWER ME, BOY! DID THOSE ETIQUETTE CLASSES I HAD SET UP FOR YOU DO NO GOOD? I'LL HAVE THOSE TEACHERS FLOGGED!"
Snape placed a consoling hand on her father's arm, pulling him away from her. She awarded him with a grateful nod that she was not sure he saw for the Potions Master did not acknowledge it.
"Lucius," he began unflinchingly as Lucius Malfoy's vehemence, as notorious as his wife's, if not more so to his business partners, focused in on him. "The problem here, I think, would be that you are not speaking to a boy-"
"YES! HE'S NEARLY A MAN, NOW! IF HE INSISTS ON ACTING LIKE A CHILDISH IMP I-"
"The problem is, old friend, that you are speaking not to a child, nor a boy but to a woman."
She frowned at the insinuation of his words. She had never thought of herself in such a manner. A Malfoy, absolutely, a female in a male's clothing, yes, a disgrace, sometimes even as the man she was to be once the wizards her father had set to creating the potion that would make her everything the world had always thought her to be but never a woman. It seemed too foreign, too final, that she would never become what her father expected her to be.
"OVER MY DEAD CARCASS! HE WILL BE A MALFOY! IT IS WHAT WE HAVE WORKED SO HARD FOR!" he turned, absolutely livid, looking down at her. "AND WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THIS UNWARRANTED MISHAP, BO-GI…CHILD!"
"It wasn't my fault, father," she sniffed disdainfully. "It was that bloody Parkinson's blunder! This wouldn't have happened if not for her ineptness to listen to the simplest instruction!"
Lucius Malfoy's beet-red visage turned an alarming shade of purple as his eyes sparkled with malevolence.
"And you better not think that, Lucius," Snape reprimanded. "Killing her is out of the question, same with casting a memory charm on all those students. This is Hogwarts, if you can remember. By now, everyone up to Filch most likely knows about Draco."
Lucius eyes came to rest on Draco as she nodded in agreement. "That rumor about Sirius Black trying to kill Weasley traveled like the wind. Reached us in about five minutes, don't know how, though. This place is a bleedin' gossip mill."
"Then what do you suggest we do about this?" Lucius steepled his fingers, seating himself behind Severus' desk, elbows perched on the lackluster wood, the firelight casting threatening shadows on his already treacherous visage. He gave both his daughter and her Godfather perfidious expectant glances.
"Well, Draco, what do you suggest?" Snape turned to her, a fervent look upon his features. She growled at him for laying the quandary on her shoulders.
"In any case, I think that we shouldn't do anything at all," she proclaimed boldly, then wincing at her words. What in the world was she thinking? But she couldn't take those words back, it was as impossible a wish as hoping to have been born a male but as Professor Snape had stated, Hogwarts was an ever-functioning grape-vine. It was an absolute phenomenon that that escapade with Potter in the Infirmary hadn't leaked out into the student body.
"WHAT DO YOU EXPECT US TO DO, THEN? EVEN IF I SEND YOU OFF TO DURMSTRANG, THIS IS BOUND TO LEAVE THESE BOUNDARIES AND SPREAD INTO THE OUTSIDE WORLD!"
"Father, please, calm down," she soothed, laying a placating hand on his shoulders.
"CALM DOWN? CALM DOWN!" he heaved, taking in large amounts of air. "YOU EXPECT ME TO CALM DOWN AFTER THIS PRED-"
His possibly ceaseless tirade thankfully came to an end as his child fed him a vial of heart-potion, provided by one very irritated and apprehensive Professor Snape.
"Yes, Father, take deep breaths…" she emphasized her point by demonstrating, looking quite like those parents in some Lamaze class. "Think of how Mother would react if she sees you in this state of disarray. You'd once more send her in shock. Now, how would that scene seem to society, then?"
Lucius nodded, completely agreeing with her. He had already been thought of as a sinister man, there were enough circulating rumours of his abusing his wife and torturing his child, never mind what one stating him to posses a wife with an ailing heart would do to their perfect image.
"It seems to me Father, that once I become what you have led them to believe I am, this wouldn't matter anymore. After those damned wizards finish up that potion, I will have become a true Malfoy heir, wherein nothing they may say or do can ever alter that fact."
"But they will have known what you are."
"But I would have completely become what I am to be that there would be no doubt that I never was."
Snape nodded. "Draco has specified most of the important points in this argument. I, for one, think her decision is fitting for other than killing the entire Hogwarts population would be suicide and would accomplish nothing."
Lucius sneered at him before turning his gaze on his child. "Very well, I see no other way out of this whole godsforsaken mess. Your mother will be quite enthralled by this recent piece information."
Yes, Narcissa Malfoy had always wanted her child to be female and had nearly bullied Lucius Malfoy into presenting her to the World as one, had she not mysteriously taken ill at the moment of Draco's entrance into society. We say mysterious for she had suddenly recovered the day after that party. She had also been accountable for Parkinson's knowledge about Draco's sexuality, forbidding her child to associate with muddied boys playing Quidditch as a child and encouraging Pansy and Draco to spend their time indoors, buying an extensive collection of Celestina Warbeck dolls and a dollhouse the size of an entire room to appease both children's restlessness.
Draco nodded, quite relieved that her father wouldn't be decapitating her life-long playmate any time soon. That task was left entirely up to her and she was glad for that opportunity, indeed.
"Now, since we've that cleared up, I expect that you not change anything about yourself, your dress, your manner, your speech, your physical appearance to suggest that that incident in Professor McGonagall's had ever happened. Do you understand?"
She nodded, once before he turned to Snape.
"I also entrust you, though it may be a misplaced confidence, at that, but since no one in the immediate area is available, I will have to rely on you to ward off any unwanted attention or distractions. Keep her away from them."
She couldn't quite comprehend their conversation, but she rarely ever did. Snape, on the other hand, knew, of course. He wasn't blind enough to not see how charming Draco's appearance was. Why anybody ever believed her to be male was incomprehensible to him. He reasoned it out to be stupidity and fear of Lucius Malfoy's wrath. Though he knew he might have been a bit biased about her appearance.
She resembled Narcissa Malfoy to the hair.
He and Lucius had discussed this long ago, the moment Draco had been old enough to distinguish the divergences between her and other children. Male and female. He was to keep away any unappealing male attention, meaning all male attention. He wasn't sure on how Lucius Malfoy would go on about preserving his lineage, seeing as to Draco was not and never would be attracted to females. Maybe he had bribed that Parkinson woman to have her child promised to Draco, but that was insipid, they had suitable enough affluence to make them part of wealthy society. No amount would have been large enough for them.
Besides, Parkinson seemed to fancy Zabini and treat Draco as the vacuous younger sibling she would never have. No romantical emotions could ever come out from that. This was all too complicated for anyone to figure out.
But if there was one topic he and Lucius agreed on, it was Draco. Draco's well-being at that and keeping her away from hormonal teenage boys was their number one priority.
"Of course I will," Severus Snape replied, casting Draco a wayward glance, knowing full-well that she could not grasp their conversation.
"Very well, then. Severus, I bid you good day," he then turned to Draco. "And I expect proper Malfoy behaviour from you."
She nodded, hair falling into her face causing her Father to grunt in disdain. He patted her shoulder before leaving the office and entering the fireplace, clearly stating his destination before disappearing in a cloud of emerald smoke as jade-gold flames licked the hearth.
The enduring light it left reflected off his child's eyes as she wished they were less than what they were, imperfect, unlike what they were, paragons of old Wizard blood. She couldn't display any of her true emotions. Disdain was the only emotion people most likely thought he exhibited.
Allowing her Godfather to distract her attention from the fireplace, she had him lead her out of his office and off towards the Slytherin dormitories, careful to relieve the floor from his robe and once again drape it over Draco's lithe frame, casting murderous glances at all that dare to cross their path.
* * * * *