CHAPTER 16: The Boy in the Girl

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Sorry yet again for the delay. I've got six stories working themselves out in my head, not to mention a few original novels in the mix. Would you forgive me if I started posting a bit more frequently?

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"How the fuck did you know it was me?" screeched Draco, welcome words coming from Pansy's careful tongue. He was a bit loud so Hermione took him back to the staircase.

She pushed him up against the wall. "Come on, Draco! Do you really want the list? The walk, the smirks, the overly-confident attitude that makes you think you can get every man in this place now that you've got a vagina."

He gagged. "Don't remind me. I've been in Pansy before but I've never been IN Pansy before. It's ridiculously unnerving."

"Oh but flirting with other men isn't?" She felt like banging her head against the column but it might have drawn attention. "You physically switched bodies with her, didn't you? It has to be because there's no way she took a PolyJuice after downing that much booze. Draco, I can't believe she let you do this."

"She agreed to it, you know. I didn't force her! I think she was just excited to have 24-hour access to my manly bits," he said and took a glass off a passing waiter's tray. It must have been absinthe by the green color though, if it weren't for their werewolf eyes, it'd be impossible to tell in this light. Hermione snatched it from his hand before he could drink and drank it herself in one gulp. He watched, wide-eyed.

"Those manly bits belong to me and she damn well knows it," she mumbled, already slightly slurry.

Draco chuckled hoarsely. "Well, if she breaks them, you're more than welcome to take revenge on her girly bits. I promise I won't complain if you let me watch."

Hermione shot him a look that made him want to dig his own grave and bury himself alive. He gulped, loudly, and shot her an apologetic look in reply. He wished he could conjure his old voice back so that, even in the dark, she could feel a little reassured. There was no way anything coming out of Pansy's mouth was going to make her feel better. In fact, Draco was pretty sure she was two steps away from turning murderous.

He let her sober up a little against the column though he knew that didn't help much and reminded her, "We should really start looking for this guy."

She nodded, though it only aggravated the impending headache, and took his hand. It was small in hers and she remembered it was Pansy's hand. She quickly dropped it and stiffened. This is so fucking weird, she thought. She didn't know how to feel safe in his presence. She just felt… alone. And drunk. Very, very drunk.

"That's it," she mumbled to her shoes as she followed Draco up the stairs. "I want a divorce."

"We're not married, Hermione," he reminded dully. He hated seeing her drunk. It was only funny when they were alone in her bedroom.

"Oh… right. I forget."

He rolled his eyes and opened the door to the next floor. "See? If you'd married me like I wanted, you could be divorcing me right now."

"What are you talking about?" she answered, throwing her arms in the air as though no longer in control of her own limbs. Draco was starting to wonder if that'd been absinthe at all and went for her waist instinctively to hold her up. "You never wanted to marry me. Despite being the most strangely faithful primate I have ever met, you are also the least domestic."

Their argument up the stairs caught the attention of the entire floor which, to their dismay, had silenced to hear an announcement from one of the members and all now faced the stairway with deeply furrowed brows. It was also almost entirely made up of men.

"Uh, hello," said Hermione, waving lamely.

Draco pulled her along the wall to the staircase on the other side of the room. "They think we're lesbians, idiot," he growled. "Just play along and ignore them."

She'd started slurring and he was quite sure every sentence after that was made up of at least three separate thoughts put together. She started to slide down the wall and Draco began to feel the stupidity of his choices that night. He couldn't carry her out of there. He should have made sure she never left Grimmauld Place.

"PANSY!" a man sounded behind him. He knew it wasn't his name but his body automatically twitched and stiffened in response. "Pansy, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at school?"

Fuck. He knew that voice well. Actually, he knew it better several octaves lower and screaming at him to get his filthy hands off his daughter. He quickly realized that he was the man's daughter and that it was relatively safe to turn around. Just in case, he kept an eye on all nearby exists. As well as Draco knew Pansy, this man was still her father and he could probably see right through any bad act.

This man was also one of the most dangerous Death Eaters around. If he got even an inkling that Draco was out of the Order's protection, Draco and Hermione were as good as dead. Then again, nowadays, there was little they could do outside their rooms that didn't ultimately put them in some sort of mortal danger. Draco, unlike Hermione, understood this clearly so more of his decisions were based on the possibility that he might die at any moment. He didn't fear this man, even though he knew he should be in Azkaban with all the other lords of death.

"Sorry Dad," he played along, feeling odd calling someone else Dad when he could barely call his own father the bloody word. "I'm on winter vacation, remember?"

Mr. Parkinson's furrowed brow suddenly relaxed and he leaned back against the wall beside Hermione. "Right. Your mother doesn't tell me much these days. Sorry, love. Are you having fun?"

He chuckled softly. "Yea, Dad. Uhm, we were just looking to take my friend back to her father's," he explained. He leaned in closer and whispered, "He was in the basement, you know, and I didn't want her going down there in her condition."

Mr. Parkinson laughed, obviously just as drunk as Hermione. Draco knew he'd come to the party in that condition. His late-night theatrics were well known in their circles, just like Lucius' many trips to Club Daemos.

"This your girlfriend?" he asked Draco, whose eyes shot so wide that Hermione was briefly reminded of Mad Eye Moony.

"Uh… yea," answered Draco cautiously. "That okay?"

The older man shrugged. "She's prettier than the Slytherin hag I caught you having that threesome with. She was too skinny. This one's curvy. I like curvy."

Draco rolled his eyes. "You're not the one dating her, Dad," he grumbled, hating the fact that this drunken bastard was ogling his girlfriend, especially when he thought it was his daughter's. "Besides, she's got a mouth on her. I'm thinking of dumping her."

Hermione kicked him in the shin.

"Who's her father then?" the man asked but Draco couldn't quite answer.

"Uhm… well… turns out her dad wasn't here at all. So now we're looking for a friend of her father's named Murth."

"Zacharias Murth? Oh yea. The cheat just beat me at poker on the next floor. Come on. I'll walk you two. You spending the night with her?" Draco went to reply but Mr. Parkinson didn't let him. "Whatever. Just let your mother know or something. And don't drink that green shit they're passing around. Someone laced it with some roofie-like thing."

Draco and Hermione both groaned. "It's not a roofie," said Hermione, holding onto her waist as though in deep pain. "Definitely not a roofie."

Draco cursed and helped her up, following Mr. Parkinson up the stairs. He hated being the only sober one at the party. They were led through a crowd of people, all obviously snooty, drunk, or horny, to a room behind a ridiculously large, wooden door. It was like the Vegas backrooms Hermione had seen in gangster movies.

They noticed Murth right away. The American had been right. He was hard to miss, sitting a full foot above everyone else. Who knew how tall he stood. He was stocky and wore a scary scowl, permanently etched into his lips. But, what Hermione could tell even while heavily intoxicated was that his eyes showed something completely different from his exterior. He was sad, and very lonely. She knew the type well.

Draco just saw the Dark Mark on his arm, calling to him like a brother across a room. It'd been scratched out with a knife or something, scarred over, but it was still recognizable to Draco and every other Death Eater in that room. And it killed him that even in another body, another gender, the Dark Mark was still so scarred into his memories.

Hermione felt him tense beside her but just stumbled forward onto the poker table, laughing. Draco went to straighten her up as Mr. Parkinson disappeared somewhere, probably the buffet table downstairs. Draco was getting extremely tired of having so many undependable adults in his life. He was used to taking charge but this was getting ridiculous! Was no one dependable? Well, no one besides Hermione?

Draco pulled out his wand and went to lift her up but, at the speed of lightning, he hand shot to the scarred Mark on the man's arm and her eyes met his. Draco paused as everyone's eyes turned to her. She pulled Murth in closer across the poker table and whispered menacingly, "Seneca."

Everyone at the table rose around her. Her grip on Murth's hand loosened until she collapsed. Draco let out a long sigh, preparing himself for a battle. He lifted his wand towards Murth. "Stand back," he warned in a singsong voice.

"Who the fuck are you?" asked a relatively tiny man beside Murth.

Murth stood and his true size was suddenly apparent. He was a skyscraper in the middle of a shanty town. "I don't care who you are," he said. His voice was surprisingly soft as he turned to Draco. "Did she just get out?"

Draco shrugged. "Out of what? Seneca?" Murth nodded. Draco took advantage of his current body and realized that playing the damsels in distress was going to get him a lot further than looking scary and unapproachable. "Look, I don't know anything about that. She's sick and we need to find Dennis Milgrahm. We were told you could help us. Please?"

There was a moment of silence and the rest of the room went about their games. Murth lifted Hermione with a single arm and picked her up into his arms effortlessly. He nodded towards a back door for Draco to follow, then locked it with a swoosh of his hand. Draco got the idea that Murth came from old-school magic, much older than he appeared. Dumbledore old.

He walked them to the fireplace in the back. "This floo is safe. Come on," he murmured and they were gone in a blaze of powder and green smoke. They arrived in the lobby of a hotel. It was mostly blue and white and they were obviously in another country because there was no a hint of the London skyline in the distance. The rain was heavy outside like they were caught in a hurricane and then Draco heard the other people talking in a variety of languages. Nobody was coming into the hotel and there was no one at the front desk. People were just coming in and out of fireplaces and rooms and nobody seemed to care that Murth had an unconscious girl in his arms.

"This is a safehouse!" hissed Draco, following Murth up the stairs.

He nodded and the door to room 222 opened for them. It was a pretty basic room with green linens everywhere. Whoever designed the hotel was really into monochromatic color coordination which, coincidentally, Draco abhorred.

"We don't know where the actual hotel is," explained Murth. "It's invisible to anyone outside and the doors don't open without a wand. You're perfectly safe. Now… she said something to me. Seneca. Do you know what that is, little girl?"

Draco blinked twice. He hated being called a girl. It made him feel like shit, and not just because he was actually a guy. It was almost derogatory like he was supposed to be afraid automatically. But Hermione was never afraid and Ginny was never afraid. They were the strong ones who kept idiots like him and Harry and Ron in check. He promised himself that if he got out of that hotel room alive, he was never making another sexist joke ever again.

He thought he knew what Seneca was. Obviously, Hermione knew a lot more. But he figured that pretending to be weak and afraid had gotten him safe harbor for a bit. Might as well keep playing and maybe he'd get a few more answers.

"Name's Pansy. And she said it was a place. That's all I know."

Murth nodded and set Hermione on the bed, running a hand over her face. She coughed and writhed for a moment and then the alcohol and whatever else had been in her drink seemed to evaporate from her pores. Oh yea. Murth was old school magic and powerful enough to go wandless. He looked down at his watch then gestured for Draco to sit. He took a spot on the other side of the bed and began to give and receive information as he'd been taught.

"Seneca Hill was the home of the Prince family," he said, his voice sadder and sadder as he went. "It was abandoned. You-Know-Who took it over and began clearing out Azkaban bit by bit, just enough to evade suspicion until he could take over the relevant parts of the Ministry. Now, he can do whatever he wants with whomever he wants and there's nobody to stop him."

Draco noticed that Murth would stare off in the distance as he said it as though just reciting his life story in ten minutes or less. He'd been caught up in it somehow.

"The Order can help," suggested Draco timidly. He didn't want to talk for an organization he barely knew but he also knew it was what Hermione would have said were she conscious. He could feel her inside his head, looking in on the conversation, and wondered if she was awake or if their connection went beyond consciousness.

Murth just chuckled. "The Order of the Phoenix was founded by Aurors, good men. They may be able to help but it'd be back to Azkaban for most of the prisoners. They have two choices: try to escape – and most likely die at the hands of those damn werewolves – or join Voldemort."

"So what? You help them escape? They were in Azkaban for a reason!" Draco shouted.

Murth shrugged. "Maybe. Some just made some bad choices back in the day. We help the ones who try to escape, who deny Voldemort. We have men on the inside."

Draco knew he couldn't fight with the man. He had his points, his convictions. Draco knew of such things himself, though most were spearheaded by or for Hermione. "Then why tell me?" asked Draco. "Why tell someone you just met?"

Murth chuckled. It was an eerie sound that made Draco break out in bumps and shivers. "Because you're like me, little one," he answered. "I can feel you've been Marked somehow, though I can't quite see it. I wonder—"

"That's not his body," said Hermione, sitting up groggily. They both turned to face her as she rubbed at her face as though afraid her skin were melting off. It wasn't. She still looked like the distorted version of herself, affectionately known as the Niece of Staf.

"Excuse me?"

Draco made throat slitting gestures behind Murth's back to try to silence her. She didn't even notice. "Mr. Murth, my name's Hermione Granger. I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix. This midget in the corner was at one point my boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, formerly of Satan's entourage. We're looking for Mr. Milgrahm because Draco here is on trial for the murder of his brother, hence his less than clever disguise."

Murth looked back at Draco in Pansy's little form and started to laugh a little harder. "This is the Draco Malfoy?"

Draco would normally have narrowed his eyes at him and spouted something witty but Murth honestly scared the shit out of him so he kept quiet and wide-eyed as Hermione continued, "Don't. He's not… He's not what you've heard. Now, Mr. Murth, we need your help and we're going to need you to take us at our word that we're going to do whatever we can to help your escapees. We have our ways."

Silence filled the hotel room. A few minutes of staring later, Murth sighed and reached into his cloak for his wand. In a flash, it was aimed at Draco's throat and the large man was hovering over him menacingly.

Hermione stood without hurry and pulled the wand away. Her fearlessness took both of them by surprise. "Please, Mr. Murth. What would you do with the dead body of a 17-year-old girl? Even if you don't kill us, if you just stun us and leave us here, we know how to get to the hotel now. And, to top it off, my best friend is Harry Potter. Have you heard of him? He was on the roof of that party we just left. He knows your name and if we're not back in time, if he tells Dumbledore we disappeared in your company, he's going to send the entire Order after your people. They know about Seneca, Mr. Murth. They want to help. Don't force our hand. You'd be sending innocent people to their deaths."

He snatched the wand back, seemingly furious, and pocketed it. "I wasn't going to kill him, Ms. Granger. I was going to give him his face back. I knew his father. I would never kill a Malfoy."

"That wouldn't be very nice either. It's not a disguise. He's switched bodies. If you undo it, he'll be caught and the real girl put in jail, probably, for aiding a fugitive."

That seemed to catch his interests and sympathies. He understood fugitives. He understood helping people who everybody turned their backs on.

"Dennis is a friend. If you expect me to protect you, you better have proof of his innocence."

Draco looked to Hermione because they knew they had nothing but Draco's story. So they told it. Everything they remembered. It took two hours and a lot of angry staring but Murth finally spoke again.

He cleared his throat and said, "So let me get this straight. You two are together? He practically attacked you, turned you into a werewolf, forced you to rescue him countless times from life-threatening situations, set your underwear on fire – which you really must let go, dear – and is currently in the body of his ex-girlfriend instead of being safe in house arrest surrounded by family, friends, his soon-to-be Auror stepfather, and Harry fucking Potter?"

They both nodded.

Murth shifted a little in his seat again and continued, "And, to top it off, you have no real evidence of your innocence because you blacked out after they turned and tortured you and just woke up in Spain in a field with two dead bodies?"

That was all more or less correct. Hermione just kept her eyes on Draco, waiting for him to reveal something new. There was something beneath the surface, something he didn't say. He was blocking her all across the board and she didn't like it one bit.

"Then what do we do now?" asked Murth. "I can't just take you to Dennis. I don't even know where he is right now."

Hermione shook her head. "You know damn well where he is because it's where you go to save people. He's at Seneca. With Voldemort. And you're going to take us there, right after tell Harry and the others."

Draco shot up to his feet, very nearly tripping on Pansy's god-awful shoes. "Hermione, you can't be serious. I know I'm the king of crazy plans but even I wouldn't walk into Voldemort's secret stronghold like this. In fact, I'm quite sure it's impossible. The Order's known what Seneca is since before we rescued my mother. They have its previous owner on their payroll and still they haven't invaded."

Murth stood too, high above them. His shadow alone silenced them. "You have me now. I have snuck out a dozen prisoners. I can certainly sneak one in."

Hermione exhaled loudly. "And, if the Ministry wants to get him back, they have to chase him into Seneca."

"One problem," added Draco. "The Ministry thinks Draco Malfoy is still back at Headquarters."

Hermione rubbed at her eyes. "Why oh why is it never easy?"

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