Chapter 5

A/N: I'm kind of sad that they're not bunnies anymore, but there was only so much I could do with that. I was aiming for eight chapters, but I'm going to have to make it bigger than that. 10 or 11 chapters and a short epilogue is what it's looking like now... I never thought to check before, but my little *** I use to break up the story aren't working when I upload the document, sorry, I'm working on it, in the process of fixing it, I deleted and then resubmitted chapter 4... I'm not sure if it sent alert e-mails out for that, sorry if it did and threw you off. As an apology for anyone who clicked on this story yesterday, thinking there was something new only to find a reposted chapter four I have chapter five! Hooray! Also, I didn't make it clear that they were still fully clothed when they changed back, otherwise Fred and George wouldn't be able to sell very many of their chocolate bunnies because turning back would be kind of awkward... Plus they'd have to replace their clothes... Or risk getting tangled in them.

~Frosty

Disclaimer: They're MINE! All the characters and everything! ... Now if I really believed that, would I be posting on a site dedicated to fanfiction? No. So they're not mine, tragically.

When she finally woke up, Hermione was in the hospital wing. "Ah, you're up dear," said Madam Pomfry from beside the next bed. "You and Mr. Malfoy gave poor Mr. Weasley quite the scare, he came running in here saying something about you two having finally gone and killed each other," Hermione smiled, thinking of the scene Ron must have walked in on, and the resulting freak out. "Don't try and move yet, you had a concussion and aren't completely healed, you'll be too dizzy to get up for the rest of the day," Hermione was warned when she moved to sit up. Obeying the mediwitch, she laid her head back onto her pillow.

Draco was feeling much better when he woke up in the hospital in time to hear the end of Madam Pomfry's warning to Hermione. Apparently, a simple broken nose could be healed with a swish of her wand while the after effects of a concussion were more difficult to banish with fancy wand work. "I'm afraid, Mr. Malfoy, that I can't remove the green from your hair, you'll have to wait until it grows out," Madam Pomfry told him without any sympathy; she had been on the receiving end of his foul temper on more than one occasion and felt he deserved to take a hit where it would hurt him most – his vanity.

Draco groaned at her diagnosis of his poor hair and glared at Granger in the next bed. He knew she was the mastermind behind this, but Blaise was the one who did all work to make it happen. Since he needed Granger on his side to properly get the Weasel twins back, he was going to have to be satisfied with just getting his revenge on Blaise – only until the twins were cowering and completely regretting crossing a Malfoy, of course.

He pulled a strand of his hair to where he could see it, sighing despondently and closing his eyes for a minute to mourn his previously awe inspiring hair. Taking a deep breath, Draco pulled himself together with a reminder that he was a Malfoy; he could pull off any look. Shuddering, he remembered his mother's brief experimentation with the muggle "sweater vest", she had added it to the wardrobe of all the Malfoys in the manor, including a poor, impressionable, seven year old Draco and a very sullen Lucius. Ever since that sweater vest incident, Lucius banned Narcissa from ever reading the muggle fashion magazines again.

Just then, Ron and Harry burst in to see Hermione, interrupting Draco's musings and causing Madam Pomfry to roll her eyes; she never could keep those three apart for long when one of them was under her care, if she didn't let them in they'd sneak in!

"Hermione! Are you all right? What did Malfoy do to you?" They both yelled at almost the same time, this time it was Draco's turn to roll his eyes; his father had some evil tendencies, it didn't mean he was planning on killing the girl he shared a dorm with. Besides, that would make him the prime suspect, and Draco's well developed sense of self preservation kept him from doing something so stupid.

"I'm fine. Malfoy didn't do anything, it was actually kind of my fault," Hermione tried to comfort her friends – unsuccessfully; she was immediately bombarded with protests that she couldn't possibly have been the one to blame. Malfoy snorted at how naive they were when it came to their female friend; she was fully capable of instigating conflict when she wanted to, she just usually chose methods other than the physical violence her two friends preferred.

"This whole mess is your fault Malfoy," she told him once her friends were reassured enough to leave her in peace. Draco was baffled as to how the daft girl had managed to spin events so the blame was solely on him.

"I suppose you're going to explain to me how this is my fault?" He drawled.

"This is your fault because you woke me up with your girly scream! I was so confused about how a first year Hufflepuff girl got into the bathroom that I didn't even notice I was human again. And then you were standing much too close when I finally realized!"

Draco stared at her in disbelief before pointing at his hair, "you turned my friend against me and dyed my hair green! I had a right to be angry!" He would be wondering why Blaise hadn't come to visit him in the hospital wing yet, but he knew his friend too well, and it was mutual. Blaise would turn up once Draco had some time to calm down and plot his revenge; instead of the nasty, potentially permanent hex first, and ask questions later approach that was usually Draco's reaction to these types of situations.

Ginny chose that moment to speak up, "I hate to interrupt this bizarre mating ritual/fighting thing you two have going on, but mum insisted I came to ask you immediately Hermione".

Draco rolled so his back was facing both of the girls, choosing not to dignify that question with a response; Hermione however, was required to answer. "For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to ignore the first part. Now what did your mum want you to ask me?"

"Even though I told her that it wasn't necessary because you're coming already and everyone knows it, she wanted me to formally invite you to spend Christmas vacation with the insanity that is my family."

"Of course I'm coming Ginny! I was already planning on it anyway, my parents decided to go on a romantic cruise for the holiday," Hermione wrinkled her nose in distaste; she thought romantic cruises were kind of cheesy. Ginny clapped happily and the girls continued chatting until Madam Pomfry kicked Ginny out.

No one noticed Draco's contemplative look as he lay quietly in his bed.

Both Hermione and Draco were released the next morning with a clean bill of health. To Draco`s mortification, his hair was the talk of the whole school; some saw it as an extreme example of house pride, some saw it as a way for him to separate himself and rebel from the very blonde Malfoy family, and some (Loony Lovegood) saw it as an early warning sign that Nargles were starting to build nests in people's hair instead of just in mistletoe.

Draco wasn`t sure whether to be pleased that no one seemed to believe that anyone could prank him, or insulted that people thought he'd do something suicidal like openly rebel against the Malfoy family – his parents weren't as bad as some people seemed to think, but they could be pretty horrible when they wanted to be.

He realized that the people of Hogwarts weren't the only ones who thought he had done it for rebellion and separation from his family when he walked back into his common room after finishing classes for the day to find a very distraught Narcissa Malfoy.

"Mother," he said carefully, but his greeting went unheeded; the second she saw him she shot out of her seat on the couch and took a step towards him, eyes only on his hair. She gave him a look as if to say: 'why are you doing this to me?' before she passed out onto the floor. Draco sighed; his long day just got a whole lot longer.

"So that's where you got your tendency to pass out from," Hermione said, having come into the common room in time to witness the scene; suddenly better understanding his fainting spell after she broke his nose. Draco looked to the ceiling wondering 'why me?'. "Aren't you going to check on her?" she asked, once she noticed he made no move towards the woman lying on the floor.

He glanced at his mother for a second before shrugging and kneeling down beside her. "I was getting to it, she fine – just being overdramatic," he said this all so flippantly that it surprised Hermione; the Malfoy family dynamic was more of a mystery to her than it ever was, she would never have thought the cold Narcissa Malfoy to be someone so... dramatic underneath the aristocratic exterior.

"It gets more disturbing; wait until she wakes up, there will be tears," Draco warned her, seeming to read her mind – or maybe just her face; she was probably showing her confusion and shock.

Narcissa proved him right when she woke up a second later to find a green haired Draco leaning over her, and promptly broke down into tears. "Draco!" she wailed, "I didn't know you were so unhappy with your family, do you not love us anymore? Is this because I made you try on that dress with the breast enhancing charm in it over the summer? Why would you do that to your lovely hair! You know how much I love to style it!"

Narcissa had yet to notice Hermione, as she was standing behind the couch Narcissa was lying in front of – Draco however, had a clear line of sight from in front of his mother. He motioned Granger towards the stairs, praying that for once in her life she'd listen and just go. He could see her contemplating it for a second, head tilted to the side and eyes lit with amusement. She mouthed 'dress?" at him before turning and making her way up the stairs towards her room, blocking out the hysterical Narcissa when she shut the door.

An hour and many more tears later, Draco had finally managed to reassure his mother that his hair was merely the unfortunate result of a potions accident – his pride wouldn't allow him to admit that someone had gotten the better of him with a prank. After she was sure that he wasn't trying to leave the family or anything, she calmly got up, kissed him on the cheek and bid him farewell, leaving a thoroughly exhausted Draco to do damage control; Granger knew too much.

He opened her bedroom door without knocking to find her sitting on her bed reading. "Malfoy! What the heck are you doing?" She yelled at him when he opened the door, he would kill her for daring to do something like that and he just expected her to allow it?

She was interrupted from her inner rant when he spoke menacingly: "Nothing my mother said tonight leaves here".

"What's wrong Malfoy? Don't want the school to know you wear a dress and let your mother style you hair?"

Draco cringed, "I have a weakness for tears, okay?" he finally blurted out, eyes widening in horror when he realized what he had done – what kind of Slytherin just gave away a weakness like that?

"Okay..." Hermione said, filing this new information away for later use. "How did you end up in a dress?" This question was the one she had been dying to ask for the whole hour she had been waiting. She was even more eager to hear the answer when she saw him flinch as she finally got to ask it.

"Well," he started, "mother always wanted a daughter, but she always miscarried, so she never had anyone to do daughter like things, which is why I let her style my hair for me. The dress... Well, she insisted it made her look fat; when father and I disagreed, she claimed that it must have been charmed to make her look fat. She vanished my clothes and magically put the dress on me, which is how we discovered the breast enhancement charm. We also discovered that there was no charm to make her look fat; Mother was quite upset when the dress was slimming on me." He was cringing at the memory as he finished his explanation.

Hermione laughed hysterically while Malfoy scowled at her from the doorway. "I'm serious about this leaving these dorms, no one will know, or I'll tell everyone that you still have Lockheart posters up and that you hide them when your friends visit," it was Hermione's turn to be horrified as she looked around the room and realized that he hadn't knocked first when he came in, which would've automatically activated her concealing spell.

She wiped her horrified expression off her face and gave him an identical scowl. "Fine, and if you tell people about my posters I'm spreading it around that you've experimented with bust enhancement charms – on yourself". Draco had to admit, the girl probably would have made a decent Slytherin. He nodded, then turned and slammed her door behind him as he left.

Hermione shook her head, not sure she was ever going to understand Draco Malfoy and his contradicting ways. One minute he's sneering at her and mocking her and the next minute she finds out he lets his mother style his hair because she never had the daughter she had always wanted – which was odd, but sort of sweet.

She groaned and closed her book, too distracted by her strange new revelations to be able to focus on the words. Getting out of bed, she started packing some of the things she didn't use everyday in preparation for her Christmas trip to the Burrow. She still had three days before they were leaving, but she was never one to be unprepared. Her task was interrupted when Malfoy opened her door, once again without knocking. She glared at him, not bothering to yell at him about it – trying to yell some manners into him was about as helpful as banging her head against a brick wall.

"By the way Granger, I'm staying at the Hovel... The Lair? Den?" he shrugged, giving up trying to remember the name of the house. "That place where the Weasleys congregate and do their poor people things. Anyway, I'm going with you there for the Christmas holidays," he calmly stated, before closing her door and leaving – again.

Nope. She was never going to understand that one.