Chapter 8

A/N: I had to repeat the last line of chapter 7 to make the starting of this chapter work... There's a link in my profile to a picture of the owl mentioned in this chapter (I'm not telling you what an owl's doing in this chapter, it woul d ruin the surprise). I'm still fascinated by the stats page. It's just so... Graph-y. Also! It has been suggested that the content of the last chapter wasn't quite K+, so I've put the rating up to T to be safe. Does everyone think it's more of a T? I've posted a second story... It will be short! This time for sure.

Disclaimer: Not mine...

"Mallory is MALFOY?" Ginny yelled in horror, running to the other side of the room to put as much distance between herself and the Slytherin as she could. His disguise was no longer effective against her once she knew who he was, so she was seeing his normal appearance instead of Mallory.

Any answer she might have received was interrupted by someone clearing their throat in the doorway. Hermione and Draco both panicked and shot the first spell that came to their minds at the pair standing in the doorway, changing them into a hamster and a small pot bellied pig.

"A hamster, Granger?" Malfoy asked with amusement, glad he didn't have to call her Bunny at least some of the time now that someone else knew who he was.

Hermione huffed and glared at him, also glad that he wasn't a secret and she didn't have to pretend to be his friend all the time. "It's no worse than a pot bellied – Catch them!" She broke off, chasing after the escaping twins, closely followed by Malfoy.

Draco leaped across the hallway to catch George, the pig; grabbing him around the stomach and dragging him back into the room before shutting the door to keep him in there and going back into the hallway to help catch the other one.

Hermione had chased Fred and cornered him, but he had turned to run down the stairs and was rapidly gaining ground; for one so small, he was fast. Before she could manage to catch him, he was out the door and in the garden, where he found a hole into one of the many gnome burrows and disappeared down it.

Draco found her a few seconds later, kneeling on the ground with her butt in the air as she tried to reach down the hole with her hand to catch the wayward Weasley. "Problem, Granger?" he asked once he was close enough to be heard.

"Yes there's a problem, Malfoy! I turned Fred into a Hamster and then he escaped down a hole. We might never find him to change him back." Her little rant had started out angry, but as she went on, Hermione realized how serious the situation was; by the time she had finished, she had tears running down her face. It would all be her fault if something down there ate Fred, and she would never forgive herself.

Draco was uncomfortable; very, very uncomfortable. It was bad enough when his mother cried, she did it all the time to get what she wanted, but Granger wasn't one to use her tears just to get her own way. Granger was genuinely upset to the point of tears and Draco had no idea what to do – well, he had an idea, but he really, really didn't want to do it. Draco grew more and more uncomfortable as Granger continued to cry, until eventually he gave in.

"Fine, Granger. I can get him out of there," he sighed. He was rewarded when she stopped the crying and looked at him hopefully. He was glad she stopped crying, but people weren't supposed to look at him hopefully, he was Draco Malfoy; they were supposed to look at him with fear, loathing, or adoration, not hope.

"How?" she asked him, still looking at him hopefully, it was starting to make him uncomfortable all over again.

He took a deep breath. "If you try to tell anyone about this, you'll be dead before you finish the sentence," he warned her before turning into a small brown owl with long legs and white speckles. He glared up at her with his still grey eyes, as if warning her one more time to not tell anyone about this.

Draco was down the hole and out of her sight before he had the chance to hear Hermione's awed "you're an animagus". Hermione was left alone to wait for him to come back out and hope that no one would notice that the twins were missing.

She didn't have to wait long; it had only been around five minutes when he came back out of the hole with a very distraught hamster in his beak. Some of Hermione's awed look must have remained because once he was human again Draco asked her: "What? Were you expecting a ferret?"

"No, I wasn't expecting you to be an animagus at all; it's supposed to be really difficult. What kind of owl was that? You have to teach me to do that!" she said in a rush, excited about the prospect of learning something new.

Draco hesitated, it was great to know how to do something that Granger didn't, and being her teacher would allow him to lord it over her, but it went against his nature to be so... helpful. He conjured a box to toss the hamster in while he decided what he wanted to do, she looked so hopeful that he actually didn't want to disappoint her. To stall for more time, he answered her question first.

"I was a Florida Burrowing Owl," he told her absently, distracted by his inner struggle. He finally came to the conclusion that he couldn't do it – disappoint her by refusing to teach her.

"All right," he told her long silence as they were walking back towards the house.

"You'll teach me?" She demanded excitedly.

When he nodded, she was practically bouncing with excitement or eagerness, or one of those other things that Gryffindors seemed to have an abundance of. Draco was afraid for a second that he was in danger of a hug. "I'm warning you though; it takes a lot of hard work and studying... Never mind, I just remembered who I was talking to" Hermione actually laughed at that, shocking both of them.

"When can we start?" She asked him.

"After we deal with the Weasels we've transfigured into animals, and the angry she-weasel that's going to be waiting for us back in her room," he told her, surprised he had to be the one to remind her that there were more important things to do than learn something now.

They both hesitated outside Ginny's door, not sure they wanted to face her. Hermione took a deep breath and opened it, revealing her on the floor as she petted George's ears. Hermione understood George's pain – he was wiggling and trying to run, obviously desperate to escape.

Ginny looked up as they entered, and George took advantage of her distraction to run to the other side of the room and hide behind Hermione's legs. Draco made sure to close the door behind him before one of the evil twins could escape again.

"Would you please explain to me why I've been sharing my room with Malfoy and not even known about it." Ginny asked Hermione; disturbingly calm.

Draco knew better than to speak up; this was one of those things that needed to be sorted out between friends without outside interference, particularly outside interference from the problem himself. Plus he was a little afraid of the redhead; he knew she could be vicious when provoked.

"Well," Hermione started, before she realized that if she was going to explain properly, the twins needed to be somewhere else. "Can we change these two back to normal before I explain?" she asked hopefully. Ginny waved her hand in an 'if you must' gesture, and Hermione glanced at Malfoy to make sure he was willing to change them back – he was still contrary just for the sake of being annoying sometimes.

They carefully stunned the twins before they changed them back into their human forms. "We're going to have to obliviate them, or else they'll know who you are," Hermione told Malfoy, obliviating Fred. He did the same, and they both levitated the bodies into their room and onto their beds.

Ginny was waiting for them when they got back to her room. She had a strange look on her face. "You two work disturbingly well together..." she trailed off, shaking her head as if to clear out bad thoughts. Changing tracks, she started again. " Now, I'm only going to ask this once more before I start hexing; why have I been unknowingly letting Malfoy sleep in my bed while we slept on the floor?" she asked Hermione in a dangerous tone, obviously still preferring to only address Hermione.

"It was his idea." Hermione said, pointing at Malfoy and ducking behind the bed. Draco snorted, she apparently had selective courage; it only worked in some circumstances.

Ginny didn't even glance towards Malfoy. "I don't care what was going on in his slimy little brain, I want to know why you went along with it!" she yelled towards the edge of the bed where Hermione had last peeked up at her. Draco would have stood up for himself, but it was so much more entertaining to let Granger get yelled at.

"He made sense!" Hermione wailed sadly from her hiding spot.

"How?"

"We wanted revenge for being turned into rabbits, and he said it would be best to have two against two," Hermione explained; she didn't mention his second argument that it would be much more fun if he was there to witness the results.

Ginny perked up a little at that. "Then you're not having some sort of secret affair?" she asked, only half joking. The adamant no she received from both and their matching looks of horror were all the reassurance she needed that she was wrong.

Ginny grinned evilly. "I won't tell anyone about this, but in return, I get the bed, Hermione gets the mattress, and you get to sleep on the floor." She told Draco

Hermione and Ginny both laughed at the face he made at the suggestion that a Malfoy sleep on the floor, but he had no other choice now that home wasn't an option anymore. Draco paled a bit as he remembered the letter he had received before the incident with the twins.

"They won't find you here," Hermione told him reassuringly, correctly guessing what had caused his sudden reaction. Draco looked up at that, worried he was either getting too close to the Gryffindor to be able to keep his walls up easily, or that he was letting her know him well enough to guess what he was thinking.

"You're right," Draco said two words he never thought he'd say to her. He was still worried about what would happen when they found him, but that probably wouldn't be until he returned to Hogwarts, so he was safe for the next while.

In the rush before Christmas everyone was too busy to have the spare time to worry about anything. Molly was throwing a Christmas party for the entire order and her whole family on Christmas Eve – a very large gathering of people who needed a lot of food. Everyone was put to work, including Mallory, leaving him not time to start teaching Hermione how to become an animagus, much to her disappointment.

Draco was appalled when he was assigned decorating duty along with Hermione and Ginny; they were the only 'girls' there and Molly didn't trust any of her boys with something involving taste – she loved them, but they were clueless a lot of the time.

Draco was still placing tinsel on the tree when the fireplace flared green and Dumbledore stepped out, looking around the room that was nearly deserted, save for Draco, of course. "Ah, Mr. Malfoy, your parents are getting quite distraught over your disappearance," Dumbledore told him, shocking Draco with his ability to see through the charm hiding his appearance. "This is one of the last places they'd think to look for you," he added with a chuckle, seemingly amused with the childish shenanigans of his students.

Draco was actually too surprised by Dumbledore to even acknowledge Hermione when she came in the room. "Professor Dumbledore! Is there something you needed?" she asked, looking a little worriedly between the other two in the room.

"Yes, Miss. Granger, I'm here to see Arthur and Molly about some important business. I was just telling Mr. Malfoy here about how worried his parents are – I assume you had something to do with this?" Hermione blushed shamefully, and looked at the floor, nodding.

"Don't tell my parents where I am, I'd rather not face them until they've had some time to cool down," Draco told Dumbledore, as close to pleading as he had ever been.

"How about this; I won't tell them where you are unless they come to me and ask if I know?" Dumbledore suggested.

Draco knew that this deal was the best he was going to get, so he was forced to agree. Dumbledore smiled at them both, and went off in search of the older Weasleys.

All the Weasley children and Harry came into the room as Dumbledore was leaving; they demanded that Hermione and Mallory tell them everything they knew about his visit.

"He's probably here because Snape's betrayed us or something, I wouldn't put it past the slimy git." Fred decided loudly as the fireplace flared up green again.

"The overgrown bat shouldn't even be allowed to..." George's comment trailed off as everyone facing the fireplace paled. "He's just came out of the fireplace, didn't he?" He asked with resignation, already knowing the answer. Draco smirked, this could be entertaining. Hermione elbowed him and glared, reminding him not to smirk until he was himself again.

Apparently her elbow came too late, because Snape was staring at him pretty hard. "You!" he said, pointing to Draco, "Come here, I have a favour to ask you," Snape ordered. Draco obediently walked over, thinking Severus was going to kill him for worrying his parents and then give them the body so they'd have something to bury, but he was dealing with Severus Snape, he'd look the same right before he murdered someone as he'd look while calmly discussing the weather - the man didn't have a polite bone in his body.

"What did you need Sir?" Draco asked, trying to sound girly and unMalfoylike. Severus just rolled his eyes and dragged him out of hearing range of everyone else to hiss, "Draco, I have no idea what you're doing here, but your parents are going insane with worry!" He started to add more, but Draco interrupted him.

"I'm here to get revenge against the Weasley twins, Severus. They turned me into a rabbit; I can't let them get away with that!" Snape observed his godson for a second, glancing between him and the Granger girl, who was shooting worried looks over at the two in the corner every few seconds.

"I know a thing or two about wanting to get revenge on a Weasley," Snape told him, glaring over at the twins. "I actually have an idea..." He appeared to contemplate something for a little while, before giving a smile that could make a basilisk slither home to its mother – luckily, Draco was used to it. "I won't give you away if you do something for me."

Snape leaned down and whispered a few things in Draco's ear, motioning to the twins and he did. An evil grin spread across Draco's face, and the twins actually shared uncomfortable looks, they were sure to be on their guard for the next little while. Draco nodded to Snape once he was finished listening, still with the evil grin on his face. Snape left the room to find Dumbledore, leaving the twins to share worried glances again.

Draco looked over to Hermione, and noticing she had been watching his exchange with Snape, motioned her over. The twins looked even more uncomfortable and then downright disturbed after Hermione heard what Malfoy had to say and shared the evil grin, both of them turning to look at Fred and George.