Draco

"I can't believe Granger gave you full marks on Ancient Runes. Again." Theo glowered at the self-satisfied bighead across the dining table.

Draco pointed at Theo with his fork, which had a floppy piece of bacon on the tines. "Four times. In a row." He bit off part of the bacon and grinned. "And I made a fantastic breakfast."

"It's passable." Theo's plate was already clean, as he'd practically inhaled his meal. He was now looking over the latest batch of 'graded' homework from Zabini. Lancelot was perched on the back of a dining chair with his head tucked under his wing. Draco had the feeling Zabini was using the eagle owl for more than their direct correspondence.

"Oh God," Theo groaned. He narrowed his eyes at Draco, entirely unamused. "She gave you kudos. I'm going to be sick."

"Do I hear the sounds of jealousy falling from your tongue?" Draco put down his fork and snatched a scroll. "Ooh, an 'Acceptable' on Arithmancy? That's painful." He looked down at the actual essay. "Oh."

Theo cackled. "My Arithmancy assignment is sitting right here. An 'Acceptable', hmmm? That's painful," he echoed. Draco threw the parchment at him.

"Why is she grading us in green ink? Just because we—well, Zabini—are in Sly—" Draco stopped before the Taboo Stunned him and sent him falling into his plate. "Isn't green ink a little cliché?"

"Or maybe that's just what she had on hand," Theo reasoned. "Nice catch, by the way, though I was looking forward to seeing you with egg on your face. Then again..."

Draco managed to cast a silent Shield Charm a split second before Theo blew up his plate and sent the eggs and bacon flying. After almost six months, he'd finally learned Theo's tell—a minute twitch of his left eyebrow meant nothing good was about to come out of his mouth. As the destroyed breakfast dripped to the floor, Draco growled. "That was my food, you git. I made that! And I'm still hungry!"

"So go make more," was Theo's disinterested answer.

"You're paying for lunch."

"As long as you count out the money, I'll be happy to flirt with the waitress."

Draco glared at his roommate. "I hope we get the ugliest male Muggle this side of the Channel."

Theo shrugged. "Either way. I'm an equal-opportunity flirt. So where are we going?" he asked before Draco could retort.

The room suddenly felt a bit too small, but Draco hid his discomfort behind a careful mask. "There's a Muggle town a few miles from here. I scouted it a few times—had to Obliviate a woman who started shrieking when I Apparated once—but it was pretty clear there's not any magic in the area."

Theo sighed. "You Obliviated a Muggle?"

"I couldn't let her go around telling people I appeared out of thin air."

"You performed magic in a strictly Muggle area. You broke the International Statute of Secrecy. What if the government tracks magic usage in Muggle areas? There are some countries that do that."

Draco let a smirk slip across his face. "Theo, my friend, I'm a Malfoy. The International Statute of Secrecy is child's play to a family like mine."

"You cast charms to make your magic undetectable, didn't you?" Theo groaned at Draco's smug expression. "Those are illegal."

"We're on the run from the Ministry of Magic for performing far more dangerous and illegal magic than a couple of innocent charms," the blond pointed out.

"I'm not conceding to your point. You Obliviated a Muggle, which the Ministry will not take kindly to. We should not be getting ourselves into more trouble than we're already in. You're just asking for the French government to discover us. After we leave the house today, no magic. We're Muggles. Understood?"

The devoutly pure-blood part of Draco's mind protested the notion that he would have to give up the basis of his identity. The self-preservation part of his mind shut down the pure-blood instincts. This was for the best.

"Fine. But that means you can't hex or jinx me at random."

Theo's lips twitched into a chilling grin. "I'll manage."

Transfiguring their clothes into something acceptable for their voyage into the Muggle world was the least daunting task of the day, even if Draco's wand decided to take up the hem of his trousers a bit too far. Theo laughed for six minutes at Draco's exposed shins before he helped the frustrated blond achieve a respectable length. Fred Weasley's wand got a stern talking-to before Draco attempted his next feat: charming his hair colour.

Fifteen minutes passed as Draco sat against the wall of the bathroom, staring at the floor. The door was closed and locked, keeping Theo and his questions far away while Draco worked up the nerve to do something he hadn't done in almost eight months. It didn't help that the room kept getting warmer the longer he stayed still, making it harder to breathe. It was becoming warmer, right?

A knock rapped at the door. "Draco? Are you done yet? Flitwick's going to have kittens if he ever finds out it took you twenty minutes to cast a colour-changing charm. Alohomora."

Theo walked into the room and evaluated Draco with curious golden eyes. "Why are you staring at the tile?"

"I can't do it."

"What? Weasley's wand isn't cooperating again?"

Draco closed his eyes and swallowed. Keeping his left arm wrapped around his stomach, he raised his right hand and pointed at the mirror. "I can't."

Understanding dawned on Theo's face. "When's the last time you looked in the mirror, Draco?" Draco shook his head, not responding. "It's not as bad as you think."

"It's not as bad?" Draco snarled, glaring at Theo. "I barely look like myself anymore! Any time I feel them, I remember—I failed. I failed and I failed and I failed and some part of me wanted to fail because I knew it was wrong, but I didn't deserve this! I didn't deserve—" He looked past Theo and glimpsed the mirror and the disfigured face he was afraid to see. The left side of his face was covered in a web of puckered scars, too thick for the injuries that created them.

"Just do the charm, Draco. Do the charm and you can pretend you're someone else. You can act like the scars belong to someone else."

Draco closed his eyes and whispered the incantation. When he looked at the mirror again, his disgust at his own face was rapidly chased away by a new problem.

"Why does it look like this?" he whined as he tried to smooth down his now light brown hair with frantic pats. Because he kept it rather long after the Hair-Lengthening Jinx, his hair wasn't sticking straight up, but it did have a noticeable disregard for gravity. "It's frizzy! Why is it frizzy?"

Theo couldn't hide his glee at Draco's new dilemma. "Maybe Parkinson will let you borrow some Sleekeazy's."

"This isn't funny! I look like Granger!"

"Nah, I think her hair's tamer."

Draco sent a hex at Theo, which the troublemaker easily dodged. A blue porcelain vase twenty feet away blew to pieces.

"Oooh, Blaise's mum is going to kill you."

"Shut up." Draco cast a silent Mending Charm and returned the repaired vase to its perch. "Help me with my hair."

Theo conjured a stretchy fabric circle. "Here you go. Muggle hair tie."

"How do you know what a Muggle hair tie looks like?" Draco took the unfamiliar object and tried to stick his hair through it from the bottom up.

"Tracey uses 'em. Good God, you're hopeless. Turn around." Theo snatched the hair tie from Draco, pulled the bushy brown hair together at the nape of his neck, and looped the band around the ponytail twice. "There. You still look ridiculous, but less ridiculous. At least no one will recognize you as one of the infamous Malfoys."

Draco looked in the mirror, carefully focusing on his hair and nothing else. "It's still a disaster. It looks like I have hair growing out of my ears."

"It does not. Now, are we leaving sometime today, or are you going to sit in here for another ten hours?"

"I hate you." Draco grabbed his travelling cloak and fastened it around his neck. "Let's go."

"That is definitely not Muggle attire."

"It's winter. It's cold and I'm not wearing some godawful jumper."

"The point of this is to NOT stand out." Theo frowned and pulled at his own jumper. He had transfigured it from the robes Draco kept charming a blinding shade of yellow.

Draco raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Out of the two of us, you're the one people are going to notice."

As they left the cottage, the sun peeked through heavy clouds promising snow. Draco turned to his friend and shaded his eyes from the jumper. "God, that's bright."

"It's your fault."

"I don't know if I can be seen in public with you."

"If you can be seen in public with that hair, you can survive my jumper."

Draco stopped walking and looked longingly at the house. "Maybe we shouldn't do this."

"I will levitate you to the outskirts of the town by your ankle if you decide to chicken out."

"What about the Statute of Secrecy?"

Theo rolled his eyes. "I said 'the outskirts'. Unlike you, I'm not daft enough to perform magic in front of the Muggles. Now let's go."

The pair Apparated to a wooded area just north of the town and walked the rest of the way. Upon first glance, the snow-dusted town looked quiet and calm, and not so different from Wizarding communities of a similar size. The differences were subtle in the beginning: the heavily-bundled children weren't playing with tiny brooms, nothing floated in mid-air, and the smoke escaping the chimneys were white.

As the men neared the heart of the town where the residents bustled around busy shops, the differences became more noticeable. There was no apothecary selling potions ingredients; instead, a hand painted window advertised 'lotions, potions et produits de beauté' ('lotions, potions, and beauty products') beneath a sign reading Belle Peau. Grocers stood outside storefronts with carts of produce and salted meats. The scent of fresh bread wafted from a bakery.

Draco's stomach growled, reminding him of the breakfast Theo had destroyed.

"Food," Draco said, and marched for the bakery.

"But I'm not hungry," Theo protested.

"Too bad." As they stepped into the warm bakery, Draco took a deep breath and felt the tension over their trip disappear. Fresh bread was one of the things he smelled when he arrived in the room filled with Amortentia during sixth year, though he'd never confide that to Theo.

A smiling woman in her early forties greeted the men. Her curly brown hair was held back from her face by cheap jewelled combs, and her hands were tucked into the pockets of a black apron. Draco's nerves returned as he stumbled over his words. How was he supposed to talk to a Muggle? How did one order food at a Muggle bakery? Was it the same as in a Wizarding bakery or were there different customs?

The woman's smile faltered as she waited. "Puis-je vous aider à decider de quelque chose?" May I help you decide on something?

Something about the way she formed the words made Draco examine the woman while Theo remained oblivious to everything but the display of cupcakes.

"Es-tu anglais?" he asked the Muggle cautiously. Are you English?

Her eyes lit up, crinkling the light wrinkles in the corner. "Yes! Oh, it's so good to hear another native English speaker. It's been such a long time since my husband and I have been able to speak with anyone who didn't sound like they were perpetually sneezing. Don't get me wrong, we love France, otherwise we wouldn't be here, but good lord, it's nice to hear your voice."

Draco raised both eyebrows in surprise. Were all Muggles this friendly?

"I'm surprised you could tell my accent from three words," he responded. "My French is normally better than that."

The woman shook her head with a tiny smile playing on her lips. "You speak like you were taught by a governness. It's a subtle difference, but there, all the same."

Theo broke away from the cupcakes and ran a hand through his short brown hair. "English? Thank God, all of this French is enough to drive a man to drink. Maybe that's why they drink so much wine here. They can't stand their own language."

The Muggle laughed as Theo continued talking, making good on his oath to flirt with anything with a pulse. Unnerved at being discovered so quickly, Draco moved his attention to the food. He settled on a sandwich (what kind of bakery sold sandwiches?) and a muffin before snapping at Theo. "Are you going to get something?"

Theo rolled his eyes and asked for a cupcake with obscenely pink frosting. At the shopkeeper's request, they paid in British pounds since she was annoyed with the 'impending disaster' that was the franc to euro conversion (whatever that meant).

The woman's husband came in just as they were leaving. "I hope to see you again, Mister...?"

Draco's heart started beating faster and he tried to keep the panic from his face. He didn't have an alias prepared. He needed a thoroughly Muggle name. What kind of surnames did Muggles have?

"Granger," he choked out. Theo's eyes widened but he quickly hid his surprise.

"It was nice to meet you, Mr. Granger and Mister...?"

"Granger," Theo said without missing a beat. "We're brothers."

"It's like you stepped out of a fairy tale; two handsome brothers in a small French village, one with golden eyes and one with silver." The Muggle smiled and glanced at her husband, who was stacking baguettes in a dangerously tall cross-hatch formation. "Honestly, husband," she chided with a chuckle. She turned back to the visitors. "I'm Monica, and my husband Wendell. I hope you gentlemen will come back and visit us soon."

Stepped out of a fairy-tale? Somehow, Draco felt he should have been disconcerted by the compliment, but he felt warm instead. Wanted, in a good way.

The men made vague promises as they left, though Draco's partially-made up mind was fully made up as soon as he finished the muffin. "I'm eating there every day for the rest of my life. This is amazing. What was it called?"

Theo squinted in the direction of the store. "Looks like 'Wilkins Family Bakery'. That's generic. Can't imagine a name like that brings in a lot of customers."

Draco shrugged. "More for me." He relaxed in his chair and looked around at the town. "Are all Muggles as nice as the Wilkinses?" The thought disturbed him on a deeply psychological level. Muggles were supposed to be vapid, unintelligent, and sub-human. His singular experience already challenged that long-held belief. He wanted to go back to see the Muggles again, and the realization chilled the warmth he'd felt.

Theo dusted the last crumbs from his cupcake onto the ground. "Only one way to find out." And they headed off to Belle Peau to see what exactly a Muggle potion was.

A/N: Raise of hands who saw that coming? No, seriously, I'm curious if that was the most obvious plot twist in the history of plot twists.

Thank you to everyone who has favorited and followed this story. I haven't had so much fun writing in ages and I'm actively working on the second story in the series as well as a few one-shots from the perspective of our non-POV characters.

See you all soon... :)