The Changing Lights by lazywonderland

chapter two

For a full week, Harry didn't spot Malfoy again in any of the classes they had together, nor in the corridors, nor even at meals. It was as though the hex had Vanished him completely, and the only reason Harry knew this not to be true was because on the Thursday that marked a week since the incident, he went to Madam Pomfrey himself to enquire after him. All Madam Pomfrey would tell him, however, was that Malfoy was alive and conscious, which, true, was good to hear, but "alive and conscious" weren't necessarily hopeful adjectives when the person in question had been absent from school for a week after being hexed in the back. He'd tried his hardest to wheedle more information out of her, but she'd sternly shooed him out of the Infirmary, thanking him again for having brought Malfoy to her in the first place and reminding him once again that that was where his involvement in the matter ceased.

At dinner that night, Harry had finally managed to stop thinking about it long enough to gorge himself on roasted turkey in preparation for the all-night study session Hermione had told him and Ron in no uncertain terms she'd be forcing them to attend beginning promptly at nine o'clock. Two weeks into term and somehow their N.E.W.T.s year was already proving to be twice, nay, thrice as difficult and overwhelming as the year they'd taken their O.W.L.s. Every professor seemed to have forgotten the fact that theirs was not the only class, and hour by hour the homework was building up until Harry found himself wondering whether Hermione's colour-coded schedules might not be exactly what he'd wind up needing.

Feeling full and sleepy and wanting nothing more than to relax in the common room before hitting his four-poster early, Harry dragged his feet along behind Hermione out of the Great Hall with Ron in a similar state beside him. Ron shot him a miserable look, his eyes pleading, somehow, as though he thought Harry might be able to come up with a way to get them out of this.

Harry had been stretching his arms over his head and yawning unashamedly when there came a dig to his ribs and his arms promptly fell, one hand going to the sore spot it left while he turned to glare at Ron.

"The hell was that for?"

"It's Malfoy!" Ron whispered loudly, and not only did Harry forget about the pain in his ribs to frantically search the entrance hall, but this seemed to have gotten Hermione's attention, as well.

He wasn't difficult to spot - for Harry he never had been, and Harry didn't quite know whether that was just him or if everybody's eyes always inevitably found that shining head of platinum blond hair in a crowd.

"Oh ... wait," came Ron's confused voice, and beside him, Harry was similarly lost for words. It had certainly looked like Malfoy from the back, except when he turned around Harry knew right away that they were mistaken. "He" was the wrong pronoun, that was the first problem - despite the short hair that resembled Draco Malfoy's identically, and despite the pointy features and grey eyes and the ghost of a familiar sneer on a mouth whose lips were just a little bit fuller than Harry remembered Malfoy's being, it simply couldn't be Malfoy, because it was a girl. "What the bloody hell ..."

"Oh my goodness," Harry heard Hermione breathe, and if he'd been able to form words, he might have told her that this was a drastically under-exaggerated reaction. The girl with Malfoy's hair and a radically more feminine face was wearing robes that were too big for her, and she was standing beside Pansy Parkinson, who was shooting death-glares at anybody walking by who stared too long. Malfoy - or whoever was wearing Malfoy's robes - had their head down and was fiddling anxiously with their fingers in front of them.

He'd always been bullheaded, but Harry liked to think that he usually had at least a smidgen more tact than Ron did; if this was true, however, it abandoned him completely when suddenly he was crossing the entrance hall in great strides towards Pansy and whoever the hell that was supposed to be that she was talking to.