The sensation was bizarre, to say the least.

For ten years, he had been trapped inside a body - his own body - but no longer was it the same one that he had spent the first nineteen years of his life growing accustomed to. His hair was slightly longer than it had been before, his skin slightly more golden, his eyes just a bit more old and tired, wrinkling just a little around the corners. He could feel that his body had filled out, that his muscles had strengthened. Around the bridge of his nose there was the tiniest trace of freckles, although his face had otherwise begun to fill out and look more and more like his father's.

But still, despite the minor changes he could see, he was still most definitely a Malfoy by appearance. Draco Malfoy. The heir to a fortune, the prince of Slytherin, and the rotten, arrogant boy who had antagonized anyone he knew who had ever even slightly challenged what his father had taught him.

Things had certainly changed, though. He was standing in a men's room of a dingy, classless Muggle diner in the center of the United States, a restaurant that did not even provide napkins for him to rest over his lap, nor did they offer a wine list. The Draco Malfoy he remembered would not have been caught dead in a place like this. Not even if his mother's life had depended on it.

And if somehow Draco Malfoy had chosen to come to an establishment such as this, he most certainly would never have allowed himself to come in the company of a Weasley. He would have never been anywhere with a Weasley. He could barely comprehend the thought of having a conversation with one, let alone a meal. Let alone what else he had been doing with her.

Yet there he had been, in the alleyway of a disgusting restaurant, shagging a Weasley against a brick wall. She had been clutching onto him, holding his body so tightly to hers that he could barely decipher where she ended and he began. And when he had pulled away from her, she had whispered in his ear that she loved him, her voice husky and totally spent. How in Merlin's name was he supposed to respond to that?

"I need to use the loo," he had said. And he had remained there ever since, looking at his reflection and trying to understand what had happened to the person he used to be.

Because while the man looking back at him in the mirror was certainly a Malfoy by appearance, he was certainly not the Draco Malfoy he once was.

Memories of his new life were trickling back at the speed at which a snail runs. Every thirty seconds, something would flash in his mind. It didn't take long for him to realize that Ginny Weasley was his wife, and by the time Weasley had driven them - along with the two brats in the back seat of their horribly plebian vehicle - back to their disgusting lodging accommodations, he had remembered enough to at least converse with the rest of them. He also knew that he was supposed to call her Gwen, and that the children were his. He was also no longer inclined to be irritated with any of them, which in itself was irritating.

But there was still something missing. There was a gap. From the time he had turned nineteen to when he had come to America, he had almost no memory, and the events from coming to America to the present day were foggy at best. There were some moments of complete clarity, but for the most part he felt like he had just awoken from a very long coma.

"Drew, sweetheart, is there something wrong?" Weasley asked.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her. He knew he was this "Drew" that she was speaking to, but he didn't quite understand why she was calling him by a name other than his own. He opened his mouth to correct her, but she cut him off.

"Do you think the twins are working yet?"

"Er - twins?"

"Yes, Fred and George. Do you think they've started their shift at the hotel?"

Fred and George Weasley were two men Draco could never forget. Despite their antics - or perhaps because of - he had always found the men rather funny. The question was, why was Weasley calling her brothers by their real names, but calling herself and himself by different ones?

And of course, what in the bloody hell were they all doing in America?

"Maybe?" Draco responded with a shrug, as he didn't really know or care to know why the twins being employed at a hotel was relevant.

She sighed and bit her lip. He found himself desperately wanted to reach out and kiss those lips, but the impulse was horribly confusing to him, and so he restrained himself and looked away quickly. Draco knew he was supposed to despise her - she was, after all, the epitome of everything that those of his wealth and class hated - but for some reason, he didn't. He couldn't. Her skin was glowy and clear, and her eyes managed to somehow be dark and bright at the same time. The way her bright hair began to wave as it crossed over the curve of her breast, the perfect shape of her pink lips, the way the bridge of her nose crinkled when she smiled. Every tiny detail in her face - every freckle, premature wrinkle and imperfection - made his heart skip a beat.

The rest of the ride back to the hotel happened in silence. After a few minutes of driving, Draco glanced in the back seat to notice that both of the children had fallen asleep. The corner of his lips turned up inadvertently. It was a strange sensation for him to feel so close to the kids in the back seat - for their entire lives, Draco had been a completely different man - but it didn't seem to make much of a difference once he recognized them as his own. They were his flesh and blood, and he had fallen in love with them.

Weasley turned to him and smiled. "Should we wake them, or should we try to carry them up?" she asked, her voice a low whisper.

He looked at her again - her kind eyes, her delicate features, her sincere and calming smile - and he couldn't help himself. He leaned forward, ever so slightly, watching as her eyelashes fluttered closed, as her soft lips parted just so, and he kissed her. It was gentle and slow, and he took the time to let himself feel her, to experience her. As the other man -the Muggle - he had kissed her, had made love to her, but as the man he was now and who he was when he had first met her, he had never been so close. They had barely known each other, and he hadn't ever had the desire to change that, but all of a sudden he realized that he loved her - really, truly, and honestly - even though there was so little he knew about her. Even though there was so little she knew about herself.

It was as he closed his eyes that he began to remember Drew Montrose, to remember and to relive all of the things that his lost self had experienced. The first time they had made love, when he had gotten her pregnant and she had cried because she was so frightened of being alone with their baby, when Jeremy was born… all of it came rushing back like a flash of lighting and a burst dam happening at once.

Draco jumped back, startled.

"What's wrong?" she asked, her eyes wide and full of concern.

"No - nothing," he said quickly, no longer looking at her directly. "Let the kids sleep for a bit. I'll be right back, all right?"

She bit her lip. Her face was unreadable. "Sure."

Once he exited the car and entered the hotel, he was immediately relieved to see that the clock read a quarter past three. Behind the front counter, he saw the men that he was suddenly desperate to speak to.

"Weasleys," Draco said, his nose just lightly in the air, "I reckon it's about time the three of us had a conversation."

All the twins could do upon seeing him was nod. There was no mistaking that Draco Malfoy was back.

Gwen had been sitting alone in the car for over an hour before Jill and Jeremy woke up.

During that hour, she had gone through a range of emotions that she hadn't realized she was capable of. At first, she was irritated. Drew had said he would be right back. Being gone for twenty minutes didn't seem like he was in any sort of rush to return, did it?

Then she went to angry. Forty-five minutes was really bloody pushing his luck.

But once an hour hit, Gwen felt nothing less than panic. Her husband hadn't returned. What if something serious had happened to him? What if whatever they had been running from had caught up?

And then she felt helpless. If something had happened to Drew, she would be all alone. She would still be in whatever danger they had been in the first place, but now she would have no shoulder to lean on. She would be responsible for herself and two other lives, with no means of support and no idea what to do. She wouldn't have him.

When the kids woke up, she was anxiously biting her fingernails. On the one hand, she could have woken them up ages ago when she had first started to get worried, but some part of her was hoping that at any moment, Drew would walk back out of the hotel and get in the car, smiling ashamedly for making her wait so long. But it didn't happen, and in her heart she knew that it wasn't going to.

"Where's daddy?" Jill asked immediately, her voice still sounding tired as she suppressed a yawn.

"Your daddy…" Gwen trailed off. "He had to run an errand."

"What kind of errand?" Jeremy asked.

"Hey, kids," she asked brightly, hoping to distract them from further questioning. "How about we go swimming? It's hot out today, and the hotel has a lovely pool."

They both began cheering and clapping instantly, and Gwen smiled back, although hers did not quite reach her eyes.

Her heart was pounding furiously in her chest as they approached the building. With each step she took, she could feel her emotions pooling in the pit of her stomach. She was going to be sick. Where on Earth was Drew? Where could he have gone? Why did he leave her in the first place? Questions were flowing like rapid fire, filling her with more and more dread. She had a feeling something was terribly, terribly wrong. She couldn't explain it, but she knew it. She just knew it.

Her eyes darted all over the lobby. Drew was not there. She walked over to the the front desk and rang the bell, knowing that it would be the twins who were there to answer.

Except it wasn't.

A young woman with straight black hair was there instead. Her smile was sincere and her eyes were kind. "May I help you?" she asked, her voice cheerful and calm.

"I… I thought the twins were working tonight," Gwen said, realizing immediately just how bizarre of a comment that really was.

"Oh," said the woman, her eyes widening instantly. "They were both here. But they both got sick after about a half hour or so into their shift. Luckily there was a doctor in the lobby, and he knew right away that they needed to be rushed to the hospital!"

"A doctor?" Gwen repeated. "Were you here when they got sick?"

"Oh yes," she said. "It was quite awful. Their noses just started bleeding like waterfalls, and they couldn't do anything to make it stop! And it happened in just a moment! It was like nothing I had ever seen before, I tell you."

Gwen swallowed hard, a hint of trepidation present in her voice. "And the doctor?"

"Yes, lucky he was there," the girl went on. "He walked in the door and looked at Fred and George and told them that he needed to speak to them. I suppose he must have noticed some kind of symptom. What an incredible doctor he must be! If only he practiced locally..."

Gwen bit her lip. She knew she was fishing for any information she could, and she knew she was pushing her luck because her children were both pulling at her hand and tapping their toes impatiently as they awaited their time to go swim. But she couldn't help it. It all sounded so off, and a voice in the back of her mind kept telling her that Drew had something to do with all of this. He just had to.

"What did the doctor look like?" she asked.

The girl scrunched her brow. "Let's see. He was thin, handsome. His hair was super blond - almost white. And - oh! He had a tattoo on his forearm - a skull maybe? Or was it a snake? It was something like that..."

The description was unmistakably her husband. Her gut feeling had been right. Something had happened that had caused him to leave her behind, and the burning ache in her chest told her that it was nothing good.

"Come on kids," she said, her throat dry. She put on the best fake smile she could manage. "Let's go take a swim before dinner."

She hoped upon hope that Drew would be back before bedtime, but she knew in her heart that she might never see him again.