Chapter Text
His elf-shined dress shoes made a decisive click with each step he took across the ancient flagstones. “Not much has changed, eh, Weasley?” Draco said, turning towards his partner. “I can practically still see you in those ghastly robes you wore to the Yule Ball.”
“Sod off, Malfoy,” Ron said, not breaking his gangly stride. In their three years working together, they had managed to reach an arrangement after not-insignificant strife, including two black eyes, and countless dressing downs from their boss, and no fewer than six accusations of attempted homicide. Needless to say, there was still no love lost between the two. After a thought, Ron added, “It is a bit creepy, thought. Like time hasn’t passed at all.”
They rounded a corner of the corridor and slowed to a stop. “Well,” Ron said. “I suppose some things have changed.” They stared at the brick wall in front of them. Draco could have sworn that another corridor used to be here.
“I suppose so,” Draco said, turning back on his heel, irritation growing. This whole thing was already more trouble than what it was worth. He had not been back to Hogwarts since the Battle of Hogwarts nearly eight years ago, and if it weren’t for Potter, it was likely he could have gone at least another eight before coming back.
It seemed, like most of the messes Draco found himself in, it could be tied back to Potter. It had been three years since the Boy-Who-Lived had rocked the Wizarding world for the upteenth time by resigning from his position as Head Auror (an undeserved title, to be sure), dumped his fiance, and bunkered down at Hogwarts to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts in apparent seclusion from the outside world.
“I’m going to kill him,” Ron said calmly as they wound their way back down the corridor. Draco had no objections. He glanced down at his pocket watch, a nervous gesture that Ron never failed to comment on.
“What’re you in a rush for? Big date tonight?”
“Stop,” Draco interrupted him, halting in front of a wide oak door. “I think this is it.” He gave a firm rap on the thick door.
The door creaked open, and Draco found himself face to face with Harry Potter for the first time in nearly a decade. Behind Potter, there was a room full of curious faces peering out to see who was interrupting their class.
He looked … good. His hair was as unruly as Draco remembered it being, and his skin had a healthy color to it, which Draco knew was difficult to achieve for anyone living holed up in northern Scotland. While the famous lightning scar was covered by his shaggy hairstyle, there was a new scar, one that Draco had never seen before, that ran across his nose and cheek, a white line across his dark skin.
Ron pushed past him into the room, giving Potter a hug that was really more of two aggressive claps on the back and then Potter turned towards him, extending his hand.
“Draco,” he said.
“It’s Auror Malfoy to you, Potter,” Draco drawled, ignoring Potter’s hand and surveying the room. “Interesting choice for a classroom. I would think that the Chosen One would have done a bit better in the classroom draw.” There was a pile of rubble occupying nearly the back third of classroom from where the old wall had been blasted away. The new one was made of similar stone, although the mortar could hardly pass for a thousand years old.
“As I like to share with my classes, it is important to remember why we learn defense against the dark arts, Auror Malfoy,” Potter said smoothly, but there was subtle tightening around his mouth. Now, Draco smiled.
And that was the last thing he remembered.
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He awoke to a pounding headache and keen sense that he was in the Hospital Wing. It had been years since his last visit, but there was no mistaking the cheap sterile sheets, nor the odd powdery taste in the air. Slowly, he cracked open one eye and immediately regretted it. The light did little to improve his headache. Everything was too bright and ...blurry? He blinked, waiting for his vision to clear. It didn’t. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, but there was no improvement. Mostly he could just see different colored blobs that could only loosely be called proper shapes.
What had Potter done? If he had permanently blinded him, by Merlin he was going to-
“He’s awake!” Ron shouted. Draco winced at the loud voice. There was a flurry of footsteps moving in his direction. “Blimey, mate. I should have known better than to let you two duel each other,” Ron said, as though he were not the one to suggest it. “You always did manage to create a mess together. He’s still out cold, you know.”
The footsteps got closer, and then, “You’ve got a lot to answer for, Harry,” Madam Pomfrey said. “Just last week you promised me that I wasn’t going to see you in my Hospital until next term at the earliest.”
Draco blinked at her. “What?” He rasped. His voice felt unnaturally deep.
“I’m sure you want your glasses,” she continued. He felt two foreign bits of metal slide across the tops of his ears. And suddenly, he could see again. Pomfrey’s exasperated expression. Weasley’s worried gaze. The next thing that caught his attention were his arms, although they certainly did not look like his arms. They were dark brown, covered in fine black hair. The forearms were shorter and more muscular than his own, and instead of his long tapered fingers there were thick, rounded fingers and knobbly knuckles.
“What the fuck ?”
“Language,” Pomfrey chided.
He stared down at himself. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was fucking in fucking Potter’s fucking body . He tried to think of something productive, maybe an obvious explanation he was missing. Fucked , his brain supplied helpfully. You are fucked .
“Fuck,” he repeated, not heeding Pomfrey’s words at all.
“You alright, mate?” Ron looked worried. “If this is about Malfoy disarming you, I promise I’ll obliviate him if he remembers.”
Draco stared at him, mind desperately trying to make sense of the situation.
“You will do no such thing, Mr. Weasley” Pomfrey said at the same time Draco said, “Fuck no.” Pomfrey shot him a withering look.
“Well, Hermione can, then. She already heard what happened somehow, and she’s on her way over now. You and Draco are both in for it, I reckon.” He thought for a moment. “Actually, I probably am too,” he added gloomily.
“Now is not the time for your crisis of matrimony, Weasley,” he snapped. “I’m in Potter’s body, and I’d quite like to get out of it before either it or I become irrevocably damaged.”
Madam Pomfrey clucked. “You must have hit your head harder than I thought.”
“Potter’s got a thick head,” Draco said. “If nothing else, it should remain in it’s … optimal state.”
Ron’s jaw dropped. “Harr- Draco- you,” he began and then turned grimly to Pomfrey. “That’s definitely Malfoy alright. If you’re in his body, then where is he at?” He turned and looked at a bed at the other end of the hospital. Clearly Pomfrey, worried about a round two of whatever had happened, had decided to keep them as far apart as possible.
Draco did not know which thought was worse: that no one was currently in Draco’s body and he’d somehow managed to kill Harry Potter, in which case he could kiss his life goodbye, or that Potter was in his body .
Pomfrey gripped his chin, forcing his head up as she shone her wand in his eyes. “Don’t worry, Mr. Malfoy, we’ll get to the bottom of this. As soon as your body-” he had to suppress a shudder at that“-wakes up, it’ll all get sorted out.”
Just then he heard the sound of bedsheets shifting. It was followed by a loud yawn, a brief silence and then: “What the FUCK?”
“Speak of the devil,” Draco said, waving his newly acquired sausage fingers at Harry, who was now sitting up. His hair was ruffled and stuck up on one side, and his skin was so pale that he nearly blended in with the sheets. His own face looked back at him in horror.
There was a brisk tap, tap, tap from outside the wing that quickly increased in volume, and then Hermione Granger-Weasley burst into the room, hair bushier than ever. “I came as soon as I heard. Is Harry okay?”
For a moment no one said anything. “In a manner of speaking,” Pomfrey said.
She froze, hand clutching her noticeable baby bump. “What does that mean?”
“Have a seat,” Ron said, clearly trying to appease his wife before the news had even been spilled. “I’ll go get you some water.” He started towards the door, but she grabbed his arm in a death grip as she stared anxiously at Pomfrey for news.
“She means ,” Draco said from his cot, “That Potter has moved himself into my body and I am stuck here in his.”
“Hey, Hermione,” Harry said and Draco had never heard his own voice sound so sheepish in his life.
Her mouth formed a perfect O and turned from him to … him. His body, or Potter, or whatever. She whipped around, and Draco wondered if she should be moving that fast in her condition. “And where were you , when all this was going on?” Draco was too busy being poked and prodded by Pomfrey to focus on Weasley’s reply.
Draco went to pinch the bridge of his nose, but was blocked by glasses that reminded him that he was not, in fact, where he belonged. He knew that this little field trip would be more trouble than it was worth. Granger paced back and forth across the floor until Pomfrey ordered her to sit down while she examined Harry.
When Pomfrey finally announced that she could not determine what had happened, and therefore had no immediate solutions, Granger began to calm and immediately shifted to problem solving, asking Pomfrey rapid fire questions about potions and spells he knew to be theoretical at best. Of course, Granger already knew that.
“Obviously this whole situation is less than ideal,” she said, tapping her chin in thought while she stared at him like he was a specimen in a jar.
Ron, unlike his wife, grew more agitated as he came to terms with the situation. “Less than ideal ? My best mate looks like a prat,” Ron waved aggressively towards Harry. “And he,” this time the gesture was in Draco’s direction, “Is practically catatonic. I’ve got to let my boss know that my partner is out of commission due to the shock of being in the wrong body.”
“I’m sure it’s a real hardship for you,” Draco sneered, finally breaking out of his nearly fifteen minute silence. “I can’t imagine.”
“I think we might have to face the reality,” Pomfrey said, “that for the time being, you two are going to be…”
“Stuck,” Potter said flatly, breaking his own stunned silence.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Pomfrey said. Ah, there was that warm bedside manner Draco remembered from his own time as a student.
“Well, clearly, we don’t want this getting out,” Granger said, crossing her arms. “The Daily Prophet would have a field day.”
“So we don’t tell anyone,” Potter said, nodding, like it was decided. “We tell no one who is not in this room. With the exception of McGonagall, that is.”
“And Ginny,” Ron said. “She’ll know for certain something is off.” The trio nodded, clearly all in agreement about how to handle this ‘situation’.
Hermione snapped her fingers. “Oh! And Kingsley.”
“Roberts, too.”
“And my mother,” Draco said suddenly. Since apparently half of Wizarding Britain was going to know about it anyway.
Potter gave him an odd look. “Your mum?” He asked as if confused by concept. Actually, perhaps he was, growing up an orphan and all.
“Yes, Potter, mother. Typically the person that gave birth to you? Ringing any bells?” He could hear Ron and Hermione’s sharp intake of breath. “She’ll notice immediately if she doesn’t hear from me, and there’s no way that you can pass yourself off as me.”
Potter blinked. “Right,” he said. “Her too, then.”
“Do you want us to call any of your friends?” Ron asked, dragging him from his thoughts. Draco was almost touched by the gesture.
“I don’t have ‘excuse me, I’m in the wrong body, can I stay with you for an indefinite period of time’ sort of friends, Weasley,” Draco said. Truthfully, he didn’t have many friends to speak of. He and Goyle met occasionally at a shoddy pub now that he was out of Azkaban. It was mostly frequented by squibs and Muggles, existing just on the edge between the Muggle and Wizarding worlds. It was the sort of place that before they had become Death Eaters, they never would have gone. It was too dirty. Too mundane. To Muggle . Now, it was the only safe place that they could speak. Anywhere in the wizarding world immediately raised suspicions, even in their own houses. Neighbors talked.
“Then you’ll stay with us,” Hermione said firmly. She cut off both Draco and Ron’s protestations, “No, no. There’s no way I am going to let Harry- and his body- out of my sight until this thing is resolved.”
Harry, apparently realizing belatedly that he had been roped into this, began his own round of protests. “I’ll stay at Grimmauld Place.”
“But-”
“And Malfoy can stay with me,” Harry said quickly. “You have a baby on the way. You don’t need the two of us messing up your flat.”
Merlin, what would father have said?
Hermione and Ron exchanged a look.
“Well, that’s that,” Pomfrey said, returning. Draco hadn’t even noticed she had left. “Now the lot of you, out of my infirmary. I just received word that the entire fourth year Transfiguration class is on their way here now, hooves and all. Gentlemen, I expect to see you back within the week.”
Thus, mere hours after stepping foot into Hogwarts, Draco found himself trailing after his body to the Apparation point at the front of the school, wondering how long this slumber party with Potter at his ancestral home would last.