I've been on my hands and knees
Crawling towards eternity
Looking for the piece of me
That always got away

- Jann Arden, Sorry for Myself

Another House Elf had gone and found Draco, curled up at the foot of a statue. It had been reluctant to disturb him, thinking at first that he was crying and worrying that he would shout at it... but he did neither. Draco didn't feel capable of crying or shouting right now. He barely felt capable of moving. He felt as if he were sitting in the single shaft of light in the middle of a huge, dark room, unable to see anything beyond himself.

He remembered looking up at the House Elf's terrified face, and it said something to him, although he couldn't quite recall the exact words. He must have gotten up and followed it, because he was in the quarters allotted to them when Gra... when Miss Malfoy arrived. They were small, but cozy, furnished in Hogwarts' usual Edwardian style – two small bedrooms with four-posted canopy beds, a bathroom not unlike the one the Slytherin prefects enjoyed, and a little common room with a fireplace, a bookshelf, and big, comfortable chairs. Draco – he could not think of himself as Alan Granger. It just wasn't him – collapsed into one of these and watched as the House Elf nervously lit a fire.

He wasn't sure how much time elapsed between that and Grang... and Miss Malfoy showing up. It might have been minutes. It might have been millennia. Draco's brain wasn't working well enough to be conscious of time. He heard her before he saw her, talking to another House-Elf outside the door. Her voice hadn't changed much, he noticed... the timbre was a bit different, lower and more sultry, like his m... like Narcissa's voice, but she still sounded like Liverpool instead of the precise Oxford the Malfoys cultivated. His f... Lucius would probably find a way to cure her of that.

And then she came in. Draco looked up for a moment, but had to immediately drop his eyes – Aurelia Capella Malfoy looked so much like a female version of his father, it was like being kicked in the nuts. He hoped feverently that she'd just go straight to bed, but instead she came and stood in front of him, hands on her hips. Her Gryffindor robes were a bit small on her – they bunched up across her shoulders as she moved.

"Are you just going to sit there and pout all night?" she asked.

Draco didn't answer.

"Malfoy," she said. The warning tone in her voice sounded horribly like Narcissa.

"Don't call me that," he said sullenly.

"Then what would you rather be called?" she demanded.

He didn't reply. He couldn't reply.

"You're not going to accomplish anything by sitting there and sulking, you know," said Miss Malfoy. "You're going to have to get up and do something about it someday, so better sooner than later, don't you think?"

"That's easy for you to say," said Draco.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

He finally made himself look up at her. "You're going to tell me I ought to just get used to it, or take it like a man, or something. And that's easy for you to say – you just found out you're the daughter of rich purebloods! I just found out I'm nobody."

She rolled her eyes. "Do you honestly think I want to be related to your stuck-up pigs of parents?" she asked. "I'd rather actual pigs. Believe me, if I could just give them back to you, I would."

Draco blinked. She wasn't serious, of course. He knew she wasn't serious. How could she not have spent her whole life up to this point envying the purebloods? And now that she knew she was one, she was going t spend the rest of her life after this point laughing at everybody who'd ever called her a Mudblood – him in particular, because as it turned out, he was the one who didn't deserve to be here. Every test he'd ever taken seemed to come back and float before his eyes... he'd always been second best, after Granger. No wonder. Anger momentarily boiled up inside him, then subsided again, too much aware of its own pointlessness.

"Now," she said, sitting down in the chair across from him, "having established that I don't like this any more than you do, we need to decide what to do about it."

"What did you have in mind?" he asked sarcastically.

"Nothing at the moment," she replied. "But you and I are in this mess together, and we're generally at the tops of our classes. If we put our heads together, we must be able to think of something."

"Knock yourself out," said Draco.

"You're not going to help?" she asked.

"I wouldn't be any help," he snapped.

She opened her mouth, then shut it again and nodded. "You're probably right," she said. "You're in shock. You'll need some proper time to snap out of it before you're any good for anything." She twined a lock of hair around her finger while she thought about it – or tried to, anyway. Her straight blonde hair slid off the digit rather than wrapping around it, leading her to drop her hand in frustration a moment later. "I'm not entirely sure what you're supposed to do for shock... I suppose I ought to go and get Madame Pomphrey. Wait here."

Draco certainly wasn't going anywhere. But neither was Miss Malfoy, if he knew anything about it. "Send a House Elf," he said.

"I'm sure they have enough to do," she said tartly.

"Send a House Elf," Draco repeated, more forcefully. "Your father wouldn't approve of you going yourself."

She stiffened. "My father's name is George Granger," she said. "He's a dentist. And he'd be proud of me for sticking to my principles, which do not include ownership of slaves."

"Look, you don't own a House Elf," Draco groaned, sitting up straight. Clearly somebody was going to have to make a Malfoy of this girl, and he was pretty sure that job was going to fall to him, just for the sake of adding insult to injury. "They sort of own you." He wasn't quite sure how to explain this – how did one go about explaining the bloody obvious. "You clean up after your cat, don't you?"

"Yes," she said. "But Crookshanks can't clean up after himself. If he could, I'd expect him to do it. Now stay here, and I'm going to get Madame Pomphrey."

"No need!" exclaimed the mediwitch's familiar voice, and the door swung open to admit her. "One of the House Elves came and fetched me when she heard you talking about something for Mr. Malfoy."

Draco couldn't quite repress a snicker.

Miss Malfoy just stood there looking mildly annoyed while Madame Pomphrey poured out a dose of potion, which Draco quietly took... mostly because he honestly didn't believe that anything could make him feel any different than he did right now. He expected it to taste terrible, but it really didn't taste like anything in particular.

"There," said Madame Pomphrey. "That'll help you sleep, and hopefully make you a little more clear-headed in the morning. Would you like some, Miss Granger?"

"Don't call her that," murmured Draco – but the potion was already working. Suddenly he was so relaxed he could barely feel the chair he was sitting in... and the next moment, he'd drifted off to sleep.

--

Draco woke up the next morning, sat up, stretched, scratched... and then realized there was a stranger in his room. He yelped in surprise and scrambled out of bed, drawing himself up to his full height to face down the intruder – a boy about seventeen, with dark eyes and curly brown hair, standing at the foot of the bed in his pajamas.

"What are you doing here?" Draco demanded. And it was only when the intruder aped his actions precisely that he realized he was looking at a mirror.

Oh. Right.

Damn.

Remembering what had happened last night was like having to go through it all over again... in fact, it was worse, because now that he knew he'd been asleep and awake, there was the possibility that last night had been a dream... or would have been, if the mirror hadn't told him otherwise. But there it was, and there he was, and somehow or other he was going to have to attend classes today.

Madame Pomphrey had promised that her potion would make him feel more clear-headed this morning... and it was working depressingly well. He would really have preferred to just sink back into shock and self-pity like he had last night, but that really wasn't a possibility now. Instead, he took a shower – and was somewhat reassured by the fact that while he'd lost an inch or two, that was only in height – got dressed – his robes fit him now; somebody must have altered them while he was asleep – and, realizing that in spite of everything, he was hungry, stepped out into the sitting room.

Gr... Miss Malfoy was sitting there, pouring over a spellbook. Her hair was in bouncy sausage curls, and it was bright green.

Draco stared at her, unable to come up with anything, intelligent or otherwise, to say. It wasn't until she looked up at him, plainly expecting a comment, that he managed to make his vocal cords work.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked.

"I am attempting to dye and perm my hair," she replied, turning a page. "Let me see... caesaries fruiticat!" she said. The sausage curls relaxed into much more natural waves, not nearly as bushy as her old hairstyle, but definitely curly nonetheless. "Much better," she said approvingly, glancing in a compact mirror she had sitting on the arm of her chair. "Now... caesaries suffusca!" And the green darkened into a medium brown. She checked the mirror again. "Not exactly," she sighed, "but it's the first time I've tried the spell. Do you want me to do yours?"

"What?" asked Draco.

"Your hair," she repeated patiently. "Do you want me to bleach and straighten it?"

He looked at her. The change in hairstyle was in all honesty a bit surreal. She no longer looked like a Malfoy... but she definitely didn't look like the old Gryffindor Granger, either. The result was, frankly, completely unrecognizable. Draco would have killed to look the way he used to... but what she was suggesting wasn't exactly an improvement.

"No," he decided. If he couldn't look like Draco Malfoy again, then he wasn't going to bother.

"Really?" she sounded surprised.

"Yeah," he said. He'd looked in the mirror after his shower and he looked like a mess. It wasn't any wonder she'd always looked like she'd been dragged backwards through a hedge, because he'd brushed and brushed and brushed this stupid rat's nest and it hadn't done a thing. But no, he did not want to make any drastic changes to his appearance. Once was plenty enough.

She shrugged. "Well, that's up to you, I suppose. Now, I'm going down to the great hall for breakfast. Dumbledore said we don't have to if we don't want to, but we do have to turn up for classes. What you do is up to you." She picked up her schoolbag and headed out the door.

For a moment, Draco wanted to follow her – might as well get this over with. Then he changed his mind. He really and truly didn't want to know what his friends were going to say about this. Whatever it was, it would probably be much worse than anything he could imagine, and he could imagine some pretty terrible things. No, he couldn't face that. They'd have less chance to talk to him during classes. He would just hide in here until then.

"Any House Elves in here?" he asked aloud.

One scurried out. "What can Dizzy do for you?" it asked politely.

"Get me some breakfast," said Draco, slumping into a chair again.

"Yes, Master Malfoy," Dizzy bowed.

"And don't call me that," Draco snapped, but the elf was already gone.