My babies!

Draco bolted upright and clutched his spinning head. He'd regained consciousness in an unfinished bedroom he didn't recognize; dressed in the same pale blue pyjama bottoms he'd been wearing at Snape's before his misadventure had begun. He shook off his dizziness and clambered from the bed. He had to get to his kits.

Sunlight filtered through the window opposite the door. Draco grabbed the knob and twisted. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. "Let me out. Let me out!" Draco banged on the door with his fists and jerked on the doorknob with all his strength. "Potter, I mean it! Let me out!"

His shouting went unanswered, though he shouldn't have expected otherwise. He stopped banging when the sides of his fists began aching and rested his forehead against the door. His kits needed him. He had to get out of the bedroom.

A cloud passed in front of the sun and the light dimmed in the bedroom. Draco looked over his shoulder at the tall window. Of course. He hitched up his pyjama bottoms and hurried to the window. The latch unlocked easily and the window swung open on its hinges. A gust of sticky air buffeted Draco's bare skin.

Draco leaned out the window and peered down. He was on the second floor, a good four meters from the ground. He gulped, his fingernails digging into the windowsill. The last time he'd gone out the window this high, he'd severed his spinal cord on a sharp rock and ended up stuck in bed forever as Snape's healing potions did their work.

But he needed to get to his kits and he'd be jumping, not falling accidentally while under the Cruciatus Curse, out the window. Knees shaking, he climbed onto the sill, grasped the sash, and closed his eyes. I'm coming, my precious ones.

Draco opened his eyes and jumped.

Pain shot through him as he landed on the grass and tumbled onto his side. Sitting up, he rubbed his shoulder and eyed the distance he'd leapt. He let out a relieved breath to have made it uninjured, rose unsteadily, and bit down on a yelp when he put his weight on his left foot. Brilliant. Gritting his teeth, he hobbled towards the door he saw, tried the knob, and thankfully found it unlocked. He opened it and poked his head in cautiously. The door led to an empty kitchen.

Voices drifted from further up the narrow corridor outside of the kitchen. Draco hobble-crept up the hall, his bare feet cold from the hardwood floor.

"Whoever cast it merely changed the genitive on the spell," Granger was saying. Draco inched around the edge of the stairwell, keep out of view from the library doorway, where the Gryffindors had congregated. "Otherwise, it's a standard transfiguration."

"So, he knew exactly what was going on, then. Listened and understood every word we said," Potter said flatly.

"Well, yes," Granger said. "As in all human-to-other transfigurations, Malfoy attained awareness of his conscious self while his physiology had been completely transformed into that of a ferret."

"And then he got himself up the duff, and gave birth!" Weasley exclaimed gleefully. "This is the best day of my life."

Draco made it up the stairs and hurried as quickly as he could down the second floor hallway, Weasley's braying laughter following him. The portraits eyed him warily as he passed. It took a moment for Draco to recognize which was Potter's bedroom door, as he was seeing it for the first time from a different perspective.

The door was closed, but unlocked, and Draco didn't hesitate in entering. Cries from the kits for their mother greeted him like a slashing curse, and Draco's own cries joined their voices as he ran painfully over to the cage. "I'm here. I'm here. Shh. I'm here."

Draco hefted the cage onto the bed, climbed up beside it, and unlatched the door. His kits leapt into his arms, sniffing and honking wildly. "Honk-honk-hooooonnnnk."

"I know, I know." Draco shoved the cage off the bed, letting it crash to the floor, and curled onto his side in the empty spot. He curved his arm around the kits and drew up his knees. The kits climbed over one another in the space made by the circle of his body, sniffing and nipping at his chest. His vision blurred, his throat closing, as he petted their tiny heads. What am I going to do?

Someone had to be willing to turn him back into a ferret. Maybe the house elves at the Manor would do it, if he ordered them. He'd have to rely on them to care for him and his kits, as well. The thought made him nervous, as did going to his friends. He wouldn't trust them not to botch the transfiguration and then where would his kits be?

"Malfoy. I see you escaped from the other room."

Draco sat up quickly and rubbed a hand across his damp eyes. "No thanks to you," he said thickly.

The bedroom door snicked shut and Draco stiffened. He cupped his hands protectively over his noisy kits. "Don't."

"Don't what?" Draco could feel Potter's eyes boring into the back of his head.

"Either turn me back or leave us alone," Draco's voice cracked uncontrollably, "but don't take me away from them."

Potter was silent. Draco swallowed the lump in his throat, preparing to grovel if necessary. He'd do anything he had to, to remain with his babies.

"Changing you back won't do any good," Potter said eventually. "You won't have any milk to feed them. That's a different kind of magic non-transfigurable with a wand."

"But they aren't fully weaned, yet." Draco chanced a look over his shoulder, his kits nibbling on his fingers. Potter leaned back against the door, his wand dangling from one hand, an invisible black cloud hovering over his head. He was unhappy, to say the least.

"Hermione's gone to the pet shop for information on what to do," Potter said.

Draco refused to be thankful to the mudblood on principle, though secretly he was glad. He licked his lips anxiously. "What's going to happen to me, then?"

"You're stuck here, for now." Potter's lips curled in disgust, though whether it was aimed at Draco or to himself wasn't discernable. "You've heard everything and we can't chance you telling anyone, even at Azkaban."

Draco's stomach clenched at the mere mention of being sent there. "I haven't done anything!"

Potter scoffed. "Spying on us is the least of your offenses."

"I wasn't spying on you. I could care less what you Gryffindors are up to," Draco said.

"Right. You just happened to be turned into a ferret and sent here, out of anywhere in Britain."

"No, I was turned into a ferret and tossed over the gates of Hogwarts," Draco stated, corralling his son before he escaped the bed. "Apparently, Snape thought I'd be protected there." Draco snorted. Fat lot he knew.

The bed suddenly began vibrating and inkbottles rattled on the writing desk. Draco cringed and hovered over his kits protectively. "Potter! Get a bloody hold of yourself!"

"Honk-honk-honk-honk-honk!"

The shaking halted abruptly and Draco rounded on Potter. "Don't you lose your temper around my babies. If anything happens to one of them, I'll kill you with my bare hands."

Potter glared murderously at him. "Snape sent you here?"

"Snape didn't send me, he got rid of me under my mother's orders," Draco snapped. "Do you think I wanted to be a ferret? Do you think I longed to be a girl, so I could experience birth and feed my babies with my own nipples? Do you think I wanted to find out that the best part of my life has been the past five months spent with you?"

Draco felt the heat burning up his chest to his cheeks the second the words escaped his mouth. Obviously, the trauma of the day had made him touched in the head.

Luckily, Potter seemed not to believe him. "Whatever, Malfoy. Pack up the kits and the cage. We're moving you to another bedroom. I'd lock you in again, but none of us wants to be responsible for taking care of you."

Draco glanced warily at him. "What's the catch?"

Potter smiled, though it wasn't nice. "We've just cast multiple charms. You won't be able to tell anyone where you are, and bad things will happen to you if you mention anything you've overheard. If you leave the house, you'll never be able to find it again. Oh, and we're keeping your wand."

"But you won't separate me from my kits?" Draco asked the most important question.

"They're all yours, Malfoy," Potter said dismissively. "Actually, I'd prefer not to see any of you again."

Draco nodded and gathered his kits.

The hurt he felt was solely because of his ankle.

tbc...