Chapter One: Changed

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He felt the weight of the cloak suffocating him before he realized he was awake. Instantly he became aware of the various cricks in the muscles of his back and in his neck, the result of falling asleep in his chair, hunched over a forbidden book. His glasses seemed to have become permanently embedded in his face, pushed up against his eyes in his sleep.

He muttered a curse under his breath and sat up groggily, remembering to evaluate his surroundings before ripping the Invisibility Cloak off his head. His indomitable raven black hair sprung up, released, and his lungs filled with the cool, stale night air of the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library.

Harry removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, fragmented thoughts and images still drifting through his head after his impromptu nap. He was exhausted, the result of several nights of missing sleep while he poured over the ancient books. He realized this would have been much simpler if he’d had Hermione's or even Ron's help. It was so hard to have to block them out, to know that he'd have to do everything without them for the first time since they'd come into his life. But he must, for their sake. And he would.

Harry stretched, feeling his muscles ripple and unclench, and let out a relieved grunt. He drew in a deep breath, and for a moment there was silence in him. And then, something else.

What was that nagging him, like a tug on the back of his head? Underneath the physical and mental wear there was something he realized he was neglecting. Something had happened, something he should be aware of... Yes, there it was: a feeling of excitement, of something important.

And now he remembered.

Fingers still cramped and tingling, Harry quickly scanned along the page he'd been reading before falling asleep. His heart palpitated quickly, feverishly, as his eyes fastened on the words he had been in search of for days.

It was a draught, and it was surprisingly simple.

This would change everything. It had to.

"Memoria," he murmured, quickly running the tip of his wand over the potion's ingredients and preparation instructions.

Inevitably, he thought of Hermione, who had developed the quick copy spell out of practicality and had later regretted her creation once she saw the various uses Harry and Ron had for it.

Hermione and Ron. The Weasleys.

He saw their faces and felt a tightness in his chest, not unlike the feeling of being prodded with the tip of a broomstick.

This had to work.

He was finished here, and now he must return all books to their original places in the shelves, erasing all evidence of his presence. He would next visit Hermione's supply closet in the third floor to gather the necessary ingredients; all but one - the human element - which would not be acquired so simply.

In fact it would be days before he finally managed to collect it.

He would work well into the night, and when at last he collapsed into his bed, fully clothed as in previous nights, he would immediately succumb to sleep but not to rest, his mind plagued by uneasy dreams.

The sun shone through the bright green canopy of leaves, its rays bouncing off the smooth surface of the lake and shining down her back at that precise angle that made her fierce red hair glow as if it were fire. He glanced at the tresses wonderingly, resisting the urge to reach up and thread his fingers in them. He wondered if her hair would be as soft as he imagined it to be, like silk through his fingers.

She spoke his name, and he pretended to ignore the pang in his chest, a tiny flower of pain blooming somewhere deep within him. His eyes flicked back up to hers, pools of liquid amber, as he schooled his features into simple askance.

"Yes?"

"When you...I mean..." She paused, and his heart caught at what she might say. "Is everything alright with us?" she asked finally.

"What can you mean?" he asked, genuinely intrigued.

Their eyes remained latched onto each other, and that single moment seemed to stretch on to infinity.

"Nothing," she murmured finally, looking away.

But he had noticed the hint of red in her cheeks. His hand ached to touch her so much that his fingers actually contracted where they lay inches away from hers. He ached to feel her skin against his, but he remained unmoving.

She stared at the surface of the water, and he stared at her.

Draco Malfoy awoke from a bizarre dream. His mind was still drifting through the haze of phantom images, and when he opened his eyes he experienced a brief sense of disorientation.

He struggled to remember what had happened this time, but already the scraps of images and sounds, words and feelings that had been so blindingly intense mere moments ago were vanishing in the light of the sun. All that remained was the strange, uncomfortable feeling of dissociation from himself. As if he were someone else.

It was the third night in a row he'd had such dreams, and he was beginning to become irritated with himself for what he deemed adolescent behavior.

He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun, then turned away until he was facing the blood red velvet of the curtains, which remained undrawn at the foot of his bed. He could hear a persistent snoring in the distance, like the sound of an old engine.

I must be dreaming still, he decided, stretching his back lazily and giving a quick, silent yawn.

Red curtains in my room... He almost scoffed, but the pain behind his eyes made him want to lay very still.

He knew that lately he'd been smoking too much, drinking too much, shagging too much and sleeping too little, but he hadn't realized just how hungry his body was for sleep until this very instant. He rubbed his eyes hesitantly – ouch – and opened them again, letting his eyelids flutter experimentally.

There they were – red curtains. Unmoving, unchanging. Blood red.

Draco blinked.

He stirred, sat up and looked around the completely unfamiliar lay out of his surroundings. The room continued to refuse to change into what it should be, though he was certain that he was by now wide awake. Fuzzy, but awake.

He blinked again.

There were other beds here. There were other people. And everything, from the curtains, to the rug, to his own bed sheets, was done in bright red and gold, together almost triumphant in their gaudy splendor.

And what on earth was he wearing, he thought in alarm, clawing at the front of his chest. A Canon's shirt over worn navy blue jeans he didn't even own.

He inhaled sharply, his breath hitching, a curse unuttered as he looked around in disbelief.

This had to be some kind of joke – yes, that was it.

That bastard Zabini, Draco thought with a strange feeling of relief. I wonder how he managed this.

Clearly that little prick had somehow transported Draco into the heart of the Gryffindor boys' dorms during his sleep – Yes, that was it, and not something more ominous. That was the only explanation for the tackiness of the décor and the presence of the sleeping forms of Longbottom and a snoring Finnigan, whose beds were arranged not too far away from the one he occupied.

Draco shook his head in reluctant admiration, wondering how he would ever manage to get back at Blaise for this. This – this topped everything.

Now alert and recuperating from his initial shock, the Malfoy heir concentrated on thinking of ways he could conceivably make it out of this in one piece.

Rising to his feet, Draco tried his best to ignore the pounding in his head and the blurring of his vision as he crept cautiously towards the half-opened trunk at the foot of the bed. Casting the other occupants of the room a sidelong glance – or glare, in Finnigan's case – he quietly searched for a hood or something he could alter to cover his gleaming white-blond hair with. That hair in the lair of Gryffindor would attract more attention than Hagrid sipping Earl Gray at one of Narcissa's Saturday afternoon high tea gatherings.

Questionable fashion choices abounded within the trunk, however, he found no hoods. Curling his lip in distaste, Draco let a maroon wool sweater with a giant H sewn on the chest drop to the floor.

He decided the best he could do was transfigure a black sweater that looked like it could be promising.

Reaching for his wand, he was surprised to find not his own familiar 10" hawthorne wood with core of unicorn hair stashed under the band of his jeans, but a strange wand that was seemingly made of a lighter type of wood, possibly holly. He stared at it wonderingly. How could Blaise have possibly –

"Morning," Longbottom murmured from his bed, glancing up at Draco disinterestedly. He then proceeded to open his mouth and yawn widely, throwing his head back in the process.

Draco's eyes widened a few millimeters, but the rest of his body remained frozen. He stood stark still, as if by not moving he could avoid attracting Longbottom's attention.

But he looked straight at me! he mused, staring at the still yawning boy in amazement.

And then his eyes met the bright green ones that stared back at him from the mirror on Longbottom's wall.

"Potter!" he whispered, holding up his wand reflexively.

Indeed, Harry freaking Potter stared back at him from the mirror—the mirror!—jet black hair sticking up crazily, wand in hand, bloodshot eyes narrowed fiercely in a way Draco had never seen before.

"Harry! What are you doing?" Longbottom demanded laughingly, observing as Draco pointed his wand at his own reflection in the mirror.

Draco continued to stare at the mirror, and the expression on Potter's face slowly became a mask of horror, bright green eyes now round with shock.

"Crap," Potter's lips murmured, just as the door swung open and a very angry Ronald Weasley barged into the room.

He awoke on his side and automatically reached for his glasses, which were resting by the right upper corner of his pillow. His fingers searched blindly, found nothing.

He sighed.

Flipping on his back, he opened his eyes and blinked. He was surprised to find himself looking up into a dark green canopy, and even more surprised when he turned on his side again and found himself looking at a woman's bare back, the sharply defined curve of her side fighting for his attention as much as the unblemished expanse of bare, pale skin did. Rivulets of dark curls cascaded down to the mattress under her, and Harry could do nothing but stare in amazement.

She stirred in her sleep and turned to face him, and Harry's eyes widened when he confirmed that she was, in fact, a girl in his year – Daphne Greengrass, his mind supplied – and she was, in fact, completely and gloriously naked. A moment later her green eyes flipped open and came into focus, and she immediately sat up, staring back at Harry with the expression of a whipped puppy.

"What are you doing here?" he blurted, struggling to keep his eyes on her face, his hands attempting to disguise the massive tent he was pitching underneath the green silk of the sheets.

"I'm so sorry! Please don't be angry... I know you said I had to leave, but...it's just...you looked so beautiful asleep," she mumbled, blushing pitifully, and Harry's eyebrows knit in confusion at her words, at her demeanor, at her continued nakedness.

"What did I say?" he inquired slowly.

A sound like a whimper escaped from her throat, and she looked down at her hands. "That you didn't like sleep-overs," she whispered softly.

Harry stared. Part of him wondered what on earth was going on, while some other part of him was attempting to reconcile this creature with his image of the Greengrass girl. He had come across her in the hallways with Pansy Parkinson quite a few times, registered her as one of the prettier Slytherin girls, enveloped in the same varnish of superiority and indifference that all of them displayed by default. Never would he have pictured this submissive, child-like display of – fear? – as something to be associated with her. With any Slytherin. What was going on?

Why is she naked?

"I said that?" he said quietly, more to fill the silence than anything. What was wrong with his voice? He resisted the urge to clear his throat.

To his surprise, Daphne Greengrass winced and scurried out of the bed, gathering an armful of clothes and disappearing behind one of the doors in the large room they were in. Harry followed her with his eyes in silence, half-dreading her return.

When she emerged from the same door some time later, something in Harry had changed, a connection had been made in his mind, a memory emerged from the fog of his confusion.

He was not surprised to see her fully clothed in her Slytherin uniform, robes and all.

"I'm sorry," she murmured again, looking at his face but not meeting his eyes.

Harry didn't reply. He merely lay there, his eyes closed as he listened to the soft click of the door latch as she exited the room.

Yes, connections had been made. He now understood why the canopy was green, why his skin was so pale, his voice so deep. Why there had been such apprehension in the girl's eyes.

Even so, he still reeled from shock when he met the face that awaited him in the mirror.

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