The (Fairy) Godfather

Chapter Three

And Then There Were Two

"Well, Harry, you've finally done it," Ron said through a mouthful of sausage (much to Hermione's disgust. She hadn't thought it was possible to stuff three entire full-sized sausages in a mouth at a time but... as someone once said... you live and learn. "Snape's lost it."

"He has not," Hermione grumbled. "Personally, I think you're all being horrible to him lately."

"We're always horrible to him, 'Mione, that's the point. We're giving what we get," said Harry.

"Look, Hermione, I bumped into him in the corridor and he actually apologized," Ron reasoned, as though being polite was something that merited a stay in a nice warm room with padded walls and stylish straitjackets (although, Hermione thought, in Ron's mind it probably is.) "AND!" he continued, dropping his voice. Harry, Neville and Ginny leaned in close to hear. Hermione sniffed and moved away.

"... I heard him mumbling. About dresses. Pink ones. With... schiffin," said Ron.

"Oooh," said Neville and Harry. "Schiffin. That proves it."

"He must be trying to poison someone with it. That schiffin stuff is lethal," Ron said.

"Chiffon," Hermione corrected him absently. "It's a material. It's something like what they make ballet tutus from."

Neville blushed. Hermione could practically hear the gears in his mind clicking into place as the mental image of Snape in a pink dress made of chiffon began to assemble itself in his head. Harry pushed his porridge away from him.

Ginny giggled. "The man has no taste in dresses whatsoever," she said, watching the boys faces closely, "I mean, people don't actually wear chiffon nowadays except on stage. What's in, I think, is thin material. Stuff that's nearly see-through."

Ron swallowed the mouthful of sausage and, nonplussed by his collegues various states of disgust, mirth and nausea, began to shovel scrambled eggs into his mouth. Hermione shook her head and patted a choking Neville on the back.

"Ginny, did you have to do that?" she asked wearily.

"I could have brought up the story of the 'Emporer's New Clothes'," Ginny said helpfully. Ron went puce, swallowed the eggs and kept his eyes firmly on his plate. Every time they strayed even the nearest bit toward the teachers table, he'd whimper a little and call them home, shaking a little. Harry simply put his head into his food and sighed.

At the staff table, oblivious to the Gryffindor's scandalous gossip concerning his love life, Severus leaned past Minerva, wand in hand. Under his breath, he whispered 'bippity, boppity, boo,' and promptly went an odd shade of mauve.

And there were two, because there was always the possibility that one Fairy Godmother could be supporting the villain of the story. The children had to get out of the scary forest and back to their parents. The prince had to marry the princess. Most importantly, they all had to live happily ever after. The villain must never win.

At the Ravenclaw table, two pale blue eyes snapped open at the sound of those words. "I wonder if he knows he has to wear the pink pouf sleeved chiffon dress for the wand to work," said Luna Lovegood mistily.

Cho gave her an odd look.

"Just wondering," Luna shrugged.

***

Draco Malfoy was not the type to be paranoid. In fact, he had no need to be. Both the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs went to considerable lengths to stay out of his way (sometimes to the extent of slinking into empty classrooms to avoid the corridor he was sauntering down at the time) and while Slytherins were uninclined to turning on their own kind, Gryffindors were uninclined to turning on other houses. Potter could easily be dealt with by shadowing a favourable teacher for a while.

... In fact, besides the rare few obsessive admirers, Draco never worried much about conspiracies.

This sense of security Draco carried, as he'd gotten so used to having nothing to fear, blinded him to the dark figures in the shadows and deafened him to the footsteps that stopped a few seconds after his. Draco Malfoy was being stalked, and was blissfully unaware.

... he had entered the place where normal things don't happen... very often.

Doo dee doo doo, doo dee doo doo.

"Who's singing?" he asked irritably, looking up. The corridor behind him was empty and yet a light chuckle in a female voice floated back in reply. It set the hair prickling on the back of his neck (Making him wonder 'Does my hair actually look cuter like that? Drop dead gorgeous as I am, I could stand a little improvement. Nothing hair gel couldn't fix.')

"Ring a ring a rosies," the voice continued. Draco stopped dead. It was late at night (it was against the rules to be out this late, and yet, funnily enough, he rarely did follow the rules. They were things that he didn't usually pay heed to, like Gryffindors, poodles and things with -orama at the end.)

"A pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes." He stayed stock still, but turned suddenly to find nothing but a silence and a draught before the voice trailed off in girlish giggles.

"We all fall ... DOWN!" Draco howled and pulled his hands up to shield his hair as a pile of black and blue-rimmed robes with some dirty blonde hair attatched bore down upon him and knocked him to the ground. In the mad scramble to protect his pride and joy (... no, not his hair. He wasn't that egotistic. There were more prized parts of the Malfoy person) he managed to produce his wand and point it at the offending attacker.

He found himself staring into a rather reproachful face surrounded by dirty blonde hair and sportng garish pink and purple make-up. Despite his shock, he couldn't stop himself saying, "What in the name of Merlin are you wearing?"

It was big. It was sparkly. You could even go to the length of saying that it resembled a large pink disco-ball. If electricity had worked in Hogwarts, it probably would have been surrounded by flashing fairy-lights. It was made of pink chiffon and had shiny pouf sleeves bedecked with little pink hearts.

It was the dress from hell.

And it was coming to get him.

"Malfoy, did you know your hair makes you look like you've been wearing a helmet for five years?" asked Luna Lovegood, smoothing out her dress and looking as though she hadn't just attempted homocide from above. The little pink plastic hearts clinked together when she moved. Draco half expected her shoes played 'bippity boppity boo' when she walked.

"... Oh, excuse me, I'm terribly sorry. Did you know that your hair makes you look like you haven't bathed? Ever?" Draco snapped sarcastically. "Take your pink-fluff dress and your pink-cloud brain elsewhere, Lovegood."

Luna, with much clinking and shuffling, managed to pull her chiffon clothed self to her feet. She brandished a wand decked with a much-chewed pasta star at him, looking mildly bemused and just the slightest bit calculating, as though sizing him up.

"I want to ask you something," she told him cryptically. Draco began to edge towards the doorway. Luna giggled again, the same slightly haunting laugh she'd sung with the nursery song. "You're funny!"

"If you met incredibly beautiful girl -"

"... how beautiful?" asked Draco, resting his hands on the doorknob that now pressed reassuringly into his back. "Prettier than me?"

" - pretty enough to hang on your shoulder and add to your look without drawing attention away from you," Luna said musingly, "and with an incredible personality-"

"Is she a Slytherin?" Draco turned the door handle and winced as the grinding noise told him the door was locked.

"She can be if you want. And she's pureblood. And you're utterly in love with her," Luna continued without the least bit of irritation in her voice. As far as she was concerned, these were perfectly plausable questions. Most Slytherins were heliopaths and it was important to know if you were marrying a heliopath. They tended to burn the bedsheets at night.

Draco nodded sceptically. It was rule number 34 in the Malfoy Handbook that Malfoys did not fall in love (between rule 33: Regularly support the Dark Lord 'insert-name-here' but secretly plot to overthrow him. And rule 35: Mirrors are useful. Use them often.)

"If you found out that she's really a muggle born, would you still talk to her?" Luna finished, finally arriving at the end of her heliopath trail of thought.

"... no," said Draco, as though she'd just asked him whether he was a natural blonde. Some things were just obvious.

... Shut up. He was so a natural blonde.

"Oh... oh well," Luna reached past him and comfortably pushed her head right under his elbow to get at the door. It twisted quite freely under her grip and swung open. As she made to leave, she raised her pasta-decked glowing wand and brought it down with all her strength upon his head. Then, clinking and ringing as she walked, she departed.

Draco pulled one pale hand through his hair. "She got sparkles in. That takes hours to get out!"