The waiting game

Disclaimer: 'Tain't mine.

Authors note: Neeeearly there! Second last chapter! You excited?

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Draco paced up and down the highly polished floors of the ministry, while Arthur Weasly spoke in low tones to a magical reversal squad. Where WAS his father?

"Looks like your Dad's given up on you…" Harry smirked from behind. Draco wheeled around, glaring balefully
"Shut up Potter, at least I HAVE parents." He snapped, aiming the comment at Harry's tragic little orphan side. Hermione narrowed her eyes, however and shot back.
"Maybe he likes Ron better then you…" She said over sweetly, hands on her hips.
"Hardly!" Draco snorted. "Weasly's probably too scared to admit to my father he's not really me… Who KNOWS what father would do…" He smirked at that pleasant thought. Maybe his father had killed the stupid weasel.

"That'd be your tough luck then." Harry snapped, not seeming to have been effected at all by Draco's snippy comment. "After all, he IS in your body…"

That thought had never occurred to Draco, and worry started to gnaw at him
"Yeah, that's right…" Hermione grinned "You'd be stuck like this…"
"And think…" Harry continued, wearing an identical grin to Hermione's. "You'd be stuck looking like Ron forever…"
"Your father would hate the very sight of you…"
"EVERYONE'D think you were Ron…"
"You'd probably have to live at the Burrow"
"And be in Gryffindor…"
"SHUT UP!" He snarled, annoyed terribly by the fact that Ron's body reacted to embarrassment and anger FAR more obviously then his own, his ears burned terribly.

Hermione primly brushed off a fleck of spit that had landed on her robes.
"What's all this racket?" Arthur Weasly asked, smiling good naturedly. "Things a bit tense?" He eyed off the stand off.

"Nothing Mr. Weasly." Hermione said sweetly, throwing Draco a smug look "Just a heated discussion."

"Well, keep it down children." He advised, moving away a few paces, but still close enough to be in earshot.
Draco gave him, Potter and Granger a vile look.
"Just you wait till my father gets here!" He muttered.

An hour had passed, and even Hermione and Harry had tired of Draco baiting, and were sitting beside the large, gaudy fountain, talking quietly. Arthur Weasly was watching fireplaces tensely, and the Magical reversal squad were looking at their watches.
Draco sat on the opposing side of the fountain to Granger and Potter, and was trailing his fingers in the water, counting the coins on the bottom to keep wild speculations at what was taking his father so long out of his mind.

76, 77, 78, 79…
"Arthur, do you think we should summon him again?" One of the Magical reversers asked in a low undertone.
Mr. Weasly shook his head. "No… he's probably just tied up, it IS Christmas, after all."
92, 93, 94, 95…

"I wonder if Ron's okay though…" Hermione's soft voice sounded faintly over the tinkle of the fountain "If that vile Mr. Malfoy's done anything to him…"
"Come on Hermione, Ron's not stupid enough to tell them who he really is…" Harry soothed
"Yeah, but what if he gave himself away somehow?"
124, 125, 126, 127…

"You ever come across something like this before, Lester?" One of the magical reversers asked another languidly
"Yeah only once though, a couple of old wizards, been friends for years, thought it was a great laugh when they figured out what happened."

138, 139, 140….
There was an unmistakable whoosh of floo powder and Lucius Malfoy stepped through a fire grate to the left of the party, followed seconds after what looked uncannily like Draco himself.

Without thinking, Draco leapt up off the fountain and ran to his father
"FATHER!" he half shouted, forgetting that, for all intents and purposes he looked and sounded like Ron Weasly.
Lucius Malfoy reacted almost instinctively, but the callous coldness of the action made all around wince. He swung his cane with a negligent flick of his wrist, sending, unbeknownst to him, his son flying off to one side, scored across the face.
"Keep your whelp under control, Arthur." He said with a sneer, giving Draco a look of venom.
He didn't know! Draco looked up at Ron, inhabiting HIS body, with something close to homicidal rage. How DARE he! How DARE that filthy poor little sproglet fool HIS father! HOW DARE he impersonate him! How DARE he wear his clothes- and his BEST sable cloak! It was probably worth the Weasly hovel twelve times over. He staggered to his feet.
Ron was looking back at him, paler then normal, his expression strangely Ron Weasly molded on his own features. Ron looked scared. Well, at least that was SOME consolation.

"What on earth did you uproot Draco and myself from our FAMILY Christmas to drag us all the way to the ministry for Arthur? This had better be decent." Lucius spat frostily, much to Draco's pride.

Arthur Weasly, however, showed no outwards signs of apprehension. Probably too stupid to realize the full power of his father, Draco thought derisively.

"To clear up a little magical mistake, Lucius." He said firmly. Mr. Malfoy made a slight sound of disgust
"By God, Arthur, can't you fix up your own mistakes without screaming for people of much higher power? Unlike you, I have things that need to be attended to…"
"It's not just Christmas in the Malfoy house, Lucius." Arthur said, eyeing Draco's father with dislike "But this matter concerns us both…"
"Both? How could some petty worry of a muggle loving fool concern me?"  Lucius started, looking highly suspicious.  

"Well, you might have noticed your son has been acting quite strangely today…" Arthur said, flashing a smile at Ron, who was looking both thoroughly relieved, and dreadfully nervous. Lucius Malfoy's hand was on his shoulder. A gesture Draco knew quite well. A mark of pride, possession and restraint. At the moment it was acting more of the later for the desperate looking Ron.
"Draco?" Lucius asked with a disbelieving look, throwing a glance at what he thought was his sweating son. "What's he got to do with…?"
"Everything Lucius. See we have quite a great deal of evidence that your son and my son, Ron, accidentally performed a rare piece of magic, quite by accident, where they both… switched bodies…"
Lucius snatched his hand away from the pseudo Draco with a look of slight horror, staring at the now pasty Ron. Draco smirked.

It all concludes next chapter, sports fans, with the simultaneously uploaded Epilogue tacked on because it's kind of amusing, but really short…
Sorry this wasn't longer, but it really HAS to jump to Ron's POV now…