Chapter 6
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favourited, etc. Special thanks to SkyMistle214 who went through and reviewed every chapter as she read them. Okay! It is 4:04 am here... And I can't sleep, so I got some editing done! So here's chapter 6.
Disclaimer: Not mine... Etc.
Hermione was left in shock in the aftermath of Malfoy's startling declaration that he was going to be staying at the Burrow over the Christmas Holiday. Did he expect her to clear it with the Weasleys? Was he even aware that everyone would not be grateful for his presence? Knowing him, he thought they should be grateful for deigning to grace them with his presence. Instead of chasing him back to his room and demanding to know what he was talking about like he seemed to want her to do, she got into bed and decided to ignore it until morning – he was probably waiting for her to come after her with some kind of trap... or something.
Draco was in fact waiting with some kind of trap for her; he had expected her to come running after him and tell him all the ways he was an idiot and how his idea was absurd. He waited, occasionally snickering, with his wand pointed at the door. His plan had been relatively simple; leave before she had processed what he had said, wait for her to come bursting into his room after him, then transfigure her into a hairbrush - he even had a witty comment all picked out, something about this being closer to a hairbrush then she had been in years.
After a while, he sighed and lowered his wand; a perfect plan ruined, and it would have been so much fun...
Hermione woke up refreshed, but with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach that clashed with the sunny winter morning outside her window. Something was wrong... Something... Malfoy! He wanted to come to The Burrow for some reason that was most likely idiotic.
"Malfoy!" she yelled, stepping out of her room as soon as she remembered the reason for her dread.
He was sitting calmly on one of the couches, "Yes Granger?" he asked, looking up from his book. She glared. "I suppose this is about my decision to grace the Hovel with my presence?"
"Why?" was all she said, but he understood what the usually verbose girl was trying to say; she must not be a morning person he pondered.
"I've decided that they come as a packaged deal, and if we're going to get back at them properly we need to both be there, united front and all that," he waved his hand dismissively, as if this was all perfectly logical, not needing to specify who 'they' were. Hermione was not convinced; it would take more than that for Malfoy to do something he considered so far beneath him. Seeing her skeptical look, he added: "Plus, revenge is so much sweeter when I get to witness it". Ah, that made more sense; she nodded curtly and went back into her room.
Now that she had sorted out the reasoning behind Malfoy's apparent insanity, Hermione had an entirely different problem to conquer; getting him to the burrow - and she only had three days to solve it in. Normally, she would have argued with him, but he was right, the twins were a pair and she'd need a partner in crime if she was going to beat them at their own game – they were very good at their game.
Predictably, whenever Hermione had a problem that needed solving, she went to the library. Classes had ended the day before, giving the students Friday as well as the weekend to pack their bags without their schoolwork suffering as they struggled to get everything packed.
This was how Harry and Ron found her a few hours later. "Hermione!" Ron yelled when he saw her, ignoring the fact that her was in the library and he had to be quiet; the boy always did have trouble using his indoor voice when he was thinking about something else.
Hermione wasn't the only one who had to shush him, but she was one of the few that was happy to see the loud redhead in the library; she had found what she was looking for and it was time to start working on her plan. "Ron, do you think your mum would mind if I brought my pen pal for Christmas with me? She sent me an owl today saying her parents had finally given in and gave her permission to stay with me like we had been planning... Could you ask your mum for me?"
"Sure Hermione," Ron shrugged, "but there's not many spare rooms at home during Christmas time, so she's going to have to room with you and Ginny." Hermione cringed, if her pen pal had actually existed, she would have been fine with this, but if her pan pal was Malfoy in disguise... She'd have to cross that hurdle when she got to it.
"We actually came to see if you had remembered to eat your lunch during your research on..." Harry read the title of the chapter in the book she had in front of her "altered perception spells". He gave her a funny look, trying to figure out what subject she would need to know about those for.
"Professor McGonagall mentioned it the other day when I went back after transfiguration to ask her a question about the lesson, remember?" Harry nodded, he did remember when Hermione had gone back after transfiguration; that part was true, but he doubted her story about the subject of the discussion was the truth. Harry shook his head; this was Hermione, why would she lie? This war was making him doubt the people he trusted the most, and he really didn't like that. But she was just so quick with her explanation, like she had something to hide and a prepared excuse all ready for her to use if someone asked her about it... He field this information away for later use.
"Yes, that's all very interesting," Ron said impatiently, "but we were going down for lunch, remember?" The other two laughed as his stomach growled loudly, as if to voice its agreement. The three of the m left the library and headed to the great hall for lunch.
"There's no way I'm going to pretend to be a girl!" Malfoy exclaimed when she finished explaining her plan to him.
"You wouldn't actually be a girl," Hermione explained for the second time, "you would just look like a girl to anyone who didn't know who you really were". It was really a genius spell, to anyone who knew who you really were, you would appear as yourself, but to everyone else, it would look as if they were seeing a completely different person.
"Even if I wasn't actually a girl, everyone else would think I was a girl," Draco shuddered, it was bad enough he was willingly going to stay with Weasleys, it was worse that one of them might actually hit on him – which they would, Draco was sure he would make a very attractive girl, how could he not?
"Stop complaining about it, if Molly says it's all right, then you're going to be my pen pal Mallory for a while," she told him sternly, getting annoyed with his complaining; she was doing him a favour and solving their problem of getting him to the burrow.
"Besides," she added, suddenly coming up with something that would convince him, "if they knew you were a boy, you'd have to room with Harry and Ron, or worse, Percy," he looked sufficiently horrified.
"Fine, I've decided that I wouldn't mind people thinking I was a girl," he told her, doing his best to make it seem like he decided to do it on his own, and it had nothing to do with Hermione convincing him. This was unsuccessful, even Ron would have been able to see through him on this one – probably.
The next two days were a blur to Hermione and Draco, he had a lot to learn if he was going to pass as a girl. His first lesson was the hardest. "You're going to have to talk to Harry and Ron like they're real people instead of something particularly disgusting you found on the bottom of your shoe," Hermione warned him. He scowled, but nodded, he would think of it as going behind enemy lines to learn their weaknesses... He'd bide his time until he was himself again, and then he would strike.
Hermione was hesitant to impart her second lesson on him, it was going to be weird. "You're also going to have to call me by my first name, none of my friends call me Granger," she told him.
He cringed, she was right, but it was going to be weird.
"Why not start now?" she suggested, guessing he was going to have difficulty with it.
He gave her an annoyed look but attempted it anyway. "H... H... H..." He couldn't seem to get past the H sound, only managing to seem like he was choking on something. "It's too strange!" he whined at her. "Couldn't I just make up a nickname and bypass the whole name calling thing?"
She tilted her head and contemplated the idea; it had potential, as long as he didn't get out of hand with the nicknames... She waved her hand for him to continue with his idea.
"Personally, I like Harpy, because you are one. I'm also partial to nagging cow, and –" He was interrupted by Hermione.
"How about bookworm?" she asked, thinking it was appropriate.
He thought about it, but shook his head, cringing again. "That one sounds so... Affectionate".
Hermione rolled her eyes, "you're going there pretending to be my friend, you can't go around calling me a harpy the whole time!"
"Well, I can't say your first name; I choke on it when I try. It gets stuck here," he told her, pointing to his throat. She rolled her eyes; he was such a drama queen.
"How about just bunny? Then you could tell people that's the only thing he could call you after you wrote a letter to him about the incident?" someone suggested from the direction of the portrait hole. Hermione and Draco whipped around to see Blaise leaning there with amusement written all over his face.
"Do none of you Slytherins know how to knock!" She exclaimed as she stormed towards the stairs to her room, not in the mood to deal with the two of them, she had packing to finish.
"Blaise," Draco acknowledged, "decided that it's been long enough that I wouldn't kill you for this?" he asked, pointing to his green hair. Blaise couldn't stop himself and burst out laughing. Draco rolled his eyes to the ceiling, asking for patience.
"Yes, yes, you find it hilarious, now shut up for a minute," Blaise ignored this and kept laughing, but that was expected. "I'm willing to forgive you for this -mostly, but I want your help with something in return," he told the other boy, hoping this would get his attention.
It did; the retaliation for something as bad as messing with Draco's hair could have been truly terrible, and now he was offering a get out of jail free card? This must be one heck of a favour Draco was going to ask. Blaise motioned for him to continue.
"I need you to write my parents and tell them I'm going to be spending the holidays with you and your mother this year," he explained.
Blaise was confused; dysfunctional or not, Draco loved his family and enjoyed going home for the holidays – most of the time. "You know our parents would murder us if they ever found out we lied to them like that? Where do you need to go so badly that you'd risk that?" he asked him, more worried about the answer to his second question than the first one.
"You're just telling them this to repay a favour, the less you know the better. Now are you going to do it?" Draco asked impatiently; without Blaise on his side, this would be more difficult than it already was.
"Fine," Blaise said, "but if this gets found out, you threatened me and there was nothing else I could do."
Draco smiled, "I wouldn't expect anything less".
Hermione, who had come downstairs to pack some of her things in the bathroom off the common room, rolled her eyes. Slytherins.
Draco was nervous; the plan was to be put into action today. Permission had been gained from all the parents involved; now all that was left was making sure everything went off without a hitch. He was to get on the train as Draco Malfoy, spend the ride as he normally would in the compartment with Blaise, who was taking Draco's trunk home with him as well as his own, then he would be seen getting off the train with Blaise. This is where the more difficult part would start; he would have to pretend to forget something on the train and go back to his compartment, where Hermione would be waiting for him to cast the spell she had found that would turn him into her 'pen pal' Mallory Smith. They would sneak out of the train and then walk over to the Weasleys like they had met on the platform as Mallory was supposed to.
The ride went very fast for Draco; when you're expecting something to go horribly wrong at the end of something, its duration is usually dramatically shortened. He said goodbye to Blaise as planned and went back into his train compartment, where he panicked. Granger wasn't there. Where was she? She was supposed to meet him here and change him into Mallory. If she didn't show up, he had nowhere to go over the holidays; everyone thought he was somewhere else.
His inner panic wasn't showing on his face when Hermione burst into the compartment breathing heavily. "Sorry, Harry and Ron wanted to help me get my trunk off the train before they let me come find 'Mallory'" She explained, pulling out her wand and looking Draco over.
"I don't actually think that dye colour can be changed, it's magical so that glamour type charms can't cover it, as I'm sure you've found out by now," Hermione explained apologetically, "any last requests appearance wise?" She asked him, sounding more ominous than she had intended.
Draco thought about it for a second. "Don't make my breasts too large, it'll bring back bad memories," he told her, thinking of the dress incident and shuddering.
Hermione laughed. "That is probably one of the oddest sentences I've ever heard from you," she told him.
She cast her spell, shrinking his height from much taller than her to closer to her own height, altering his features and growing his hair to past his shoulders. She looked him up and down, changing his eye colour to brown, just in case the distinctive green hair and grey eyes tipped someone off about Mallory's true identity.
When she was done, he looked like a disturbingly pretty girl – Hermione was sure this was going to make his ego even worse; he'd claim that even turning him into a girl couldn't ruin his good looks. She gave him a last examination to make sure he would pass, before conjuring a mirror so he could see for himself – this was the only time they would be able to see him like this; they each knew he was really Draco Malfoy so the spell had no effect on them.
Draco turned in from of the mirror, slightly disturbed, but still smug. "Even turning me into a girl can't ruin my good looks," he said with a smirk.
Hermione whacked him in the back of the head, literally smacking the smirk off his face. "You can't smirk like that now that you're Mallory, you'll give yourself away!"
Draco glared, "you didn't have to hit me for it".
Hermione grinned him, "some lessons are best learned with some negative reinforcement," she replied in an innocent voice that was completely at odds with her evil grin. "Well Mallory, are you ready to go meet the Weasleys?"
Draco cringed, "Never, Bunny. But I am ready to get some revenge".