Draco
He stood before his cauldron, meticulously counting his clockwise turns as their new professor droned on from the front of the laboratory. His station was in the far corner of the room where he could try his best to ignore those around him and sink into the comforting, mindless routine of brewing, though he found it rather difficult to tune out the incessant chattering of Blaise and the she-weasel from the station behind him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a dark plume of smoke begin pouring from the cauldron of Tyr Falk, a seventh-year who’d previously been in Gryffindor. He prepared himself to cast a bubble head charm if no one intervened, but just as he lifted his wand, he saw a taunting head of curls march forward and vanish the contents of the pot before she proceeded to reprimand the younger student for nearly imploding the dungeons.
Watching the altercation, he was grateful not to be on the receiving end of one of Granger’s infamous mighty lectures. She was so emphatic and spoke with her entire body, taking up more and more space as Falk shrunk down smaller in shame. She quite reminded him of a musical conductor wildly waving her hands around in sharp strong movements the way that Flitwick often did with the school chorus. While he wasn’t keen on fighting with her, he found a small part of him wouldn’t object to being on the receiving end of other forms of her passion. He jolted from the mesmerization; unsure where that abysmal idea had come from.
The crisis having been averted, he returned to his own brew and made a willful effort to keep his gaze from wandering back across the room to observe the passionate witch.
When Draco entered the common room after his back-to-back course schedule, he found an inkling of disappointment in his chest not to find Granger at her usual study table in the corner. Instead, he found his friends lounging amongst the armchairs and rugs passing around a bottle of Ogden’s in front of the hearth. Pansy lay across one of the chesterfields, her legs sprawled over Daphne’s lap. Blaise, Theo, and Millie claimed seats of their own while Greg leaned against one, running his fingers through Tracey’s hair as she lay with her head in his lap. The scene warmed a hidden part of Draco’s soul; all of his friends had survived some of the most horrid experiences. They had survived. They were still together. They were all okay.
He stood there for a moment simply taking in the sight.
“Well, are you just going to stand there staring at us like a creep or are you going to be joining us?” Theo called from across the room.
He rolled his eyes at the brunette as he hoisted his school bag a bit higher on his shoulder before making his way over to join them, summoning a spare chair from the corner of the room.
Once he had made himself comfortable and the warmth from the fireplace had finally eased into his hands from the freezing corridors outside, he was passed the glass decanter.
He savored the heat of the whiskey as it trailed down into his stomach, relaxing his shoulders.
“I know it’s Friday but is there a reason we’re getting pissed at only five. Dinner hasn’t even been served in the Great Hall yet,” he asked. Not that he was complaining, he had found that a bit of liquor could be quite soothing and quiet his mind on occasion.
Daphne shifted in her spot turning toward him, “We’ve been waiting for you to arrive. She wouldn’t tell us the details until we were all here, only demanded the whiskey and that we all be together tonight.” The blond witch nodded in Pansy’s direction.
Well, while he wasn’t quite sure if this news would be something to celebrate or grieve, nonetheless he was already there so he turned his attention to the witch in question and lifted a brow at her.
She reached towards him with a grabbing motion, requesting the bottle and once she had it, nearly drained it dry.
So, this was not celebratory, he took it.
Watching her face until he was satisfied that the whiskey would not be rejoining them on the rug, he quietly waited. If there was one thing he had learned about Pansy throughout their years of friendship, it was that she would not be commanded or rushed into anything. If you tried, she would refuse out of pure spite. He would never forget one of her birthday parties when they were small when Theo had been whining and whining about how excited her was to eat cake and wouldn’t stop pestering her to blow out her candles.
She sat there and watched the wax drip and melt until the wicks were nothing but soot in pools of pastel, flames extinguished because there was nothing left to burn.
The memory brought a soft smile to his lips before he was snapped from his reminiscence by the clearing of her throat. She waved her wand to silence their area before she began speaking in earnest.
“I take it none of you have had your polyjuice assignment yet?” she looked at each of them analytically. Satisfied that their silence was honest, she continued. “Well then,” she let out a bit of a terrifying giggle. Clearly, the alcohol was beginning to reach her head. “Let’s just say that I now have first-hand knowledge of what it is like to have a willy, and not just any willy…” she wiggled her brows and the laughter had now taken over and she could hardly contain herself. He watched as she tried to fight to get more words out but streams of tears were beginning to flow down her cheeks between bouts of cackling.
Draco met Blaise’s wide eyes in shock. What on earth had gotten into her? He turned and eyed Theo to see that he was trying his best to hide his own growing laughter behind the palm of his hand, and failing miserably. Daphne looked quite ready to faint.
“Merlin, and who just might you have had the lovely opportunity to be Pans? Clearly, it was quite an enlightening experience,” he chuckled.
Leave it to one of the most proper, young witches of their generation to completely lose her marbles because she was paired with a wizard for a school assignment and had to have a cock for a day…
She gasped for breath as she tried to calm herself enough to get the name of the wizard out, “Oh you aren’t going to believe this. And oh Merlin, to think! He had my tits for a day too!” The hysteria took over once again, the laughter quickly catching on with the others and contagiously spreading through their group. They didn’t even know who the lad was, but surely he had quite the day in her body as well. Surely, this is not what the Ministry and Headmistress intended when they created this assignment.
“LONGBOTTOM,” she squealed. “NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM!”
Theo burst out, “Are you saying that gentle giant, Longbottom, has a giant cock?” He practically shouted! A grin so wide it nearly overtook his entire face spread across his cheeks in glee.
The group of them was overtaken with boisterous laughter.
They continued to make several horrible jokes about Neville living up to his family name for at least another half an hour before they were all finally calm enough to have a proper conversation about it.
Once the bottle had been drained dry, a quiet had fallen over them. Tracey was the first to speak up, “So other than getting to spend a day in a man’s body, what was it like Pansy?”
Pansy stared into the flames of the hearth. “Well, after the initial shock of it all, the instructions with the potion are pretty clear. They give you their timetable and tell you to go about your- well their day. There was no way that I’d be able to have a conversation with anyone and be believable so I tried to stay hidden for the most part. Had a bit of a nasty encounter with Marcus’s younger brother Leander though. If I despised Marcus when he was here, Leander is far more wretched. At least Neville is a pureblood, but Leander didn’t seem to care. Said something along the lines of wishing that ‘Lady Lestrange had gone ahead of put you in Mungo’s with mum and dad.’ There is a debrief portion at the end of the day when the potion wears off where I had to ask Neville what that meant…” Pansy’s voice had gotten progressively tighter and more shrill the longer she spoke, clearly being overcome by a vastly different emotion.
“It’s so horrible. I had heard the rumor and remember my father speaking about the Longbottoms when I was young, but when Neville told me about what Bellatrix had done to his family. He’s never known his parents outside the hospital ward… How he was raised by his grandmother…” Her shoulders were shaking violently now as she openly sobbed.
The sight left him feeling uncomfortable. Pansy rarely cried, and when she did it was a dignified, quiet tear or two. This was anything but. This was trauma evolving into something unimaginably ugly.
Daphne pulled the girl into her and held her tight against her while they all sat in silence and considered how far their families had gone and how unforgivable they had all truly become.