A Change'll Do You Good

This part is dedicated to my fellow shipmates on the S.S. Prim and Improper.

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Part 10:
The Lady in Red

It was one of those painfully bright days that made Draco wish Mother Nature would take it down a few notches. Instead of spending the day in his blissfully-not-so-bright indoor classes, he was stuck doing this. Playing goodwill ambassador to the Headmaster's latest insane endeavor. He followed an even-surlier-than-ever Snape across the castle grounds flanked on either side by Potter and Weasley. A little ahead of Draco was his body automated by one Hermione Granger.

Draco was actually quite thankful for the view. He very rarely got to see himself from this angle and he could see why many a girl fainted at the very sight of his tall, blonde, and gorgeous form. His body had been artfully carved from the finest alabaster, his eyes molten silver, his hair the purest strands of silken platinum, his body was a work of art: the purest, perfected form of masculinity, a dream sculpted in such a way as to bring tears of joy to the very eyes of Michelangelo. He was a god among mortals, a lord among peasants, the kind of bloke who could make every woman between the ages of eight and eighty fall madly in love at first glance, and he was the source of hot flashes and slick knickers in every female he met. In other, simpler, cruder words: he was dead sexy. Plus, he was modest.

Ron fell back a bit and grabbed Harry's arm. "Er...Harry is Hermione, uh, checking Draco out?" he asked.

"No, no, of course not...right?" Harry stated. They exchanged a look.

There, walking down the path toward the motley crew of Weasel, Scarface, the Prince of Slytherin, and the owner of the body of the Prince of Slytherin, was the reason that Draco was stuck in the blindingly-bright sunlight instead of the cool, dank, dungeon darkness working on his favorite subject: Potions. Life was just unfair.

A man, who was as wide as he was tall, with an impressive and neatly-trimmed mustache, looked around warily, his double-chins wobbling. A frightened-looking boy with shellacked blond hair (who bore a striking resemblance to a pig in a wig) clutched his enormous rear end in a death grip. Wringing her hands beside them was a tall, thin, long-necked woman with a horse face. Harry swallowed hard and closed the distance between Snape and himself to stare at his aunt Petunia, uncle Vernon, and cousin Dudley.

Snape had a strange look on his sallow face that Harry had seen before...on Hagrid's face...when he looked at Norbert...besottedly. Draco moved to Snape's other side to get a look at the first Muggles he had ever seen. "Who is that enchanting woman?" came Snape's breathless murmur.

Harry and Draco stared at Snape, then at the only woman they could see. "Excuse me?" Harry inquired.

"That beautiful, vibrant woman! The lady in red," Snape said, his voice still breathless.

Harry turned his gaze once again to the only woman they could see. The only woman dressed in red. "Aunt P--Petunia?" the Boy Who Lived stammered hoarsely.

"Petunia," Snape moaned. "A beautiful name! I should have expected no less!"

Draco looked from Petunia to Snape and back again. Oh, no! Please! Think of the children! he thought. He did.

He had a momentary vision of a sallow-skinned, black-eyed blonde with a horse's face, long neck, and a hooked nose. He, then, had a vision of the act of said child's conception. He vomited in his mouth. Draco had a sudden, desperately overwhelming desire to scrub his mind's eye with bleach and a scouring pad.

GODDAMN YOU, MALFOY!!! Hermione's enraged voice filled his head. I can wash and wash and scrub and wash some more and I will never be clean again! Draco felt the same way.

The groups paused a few feet from one another and Draco could make out the same besotted expression on Harry's aunt's face and felt a margin of joy at the desperate and horrified look on Harry's face. Oh, it would be too wonderfully evil if the professor ended up with Harry's auntie! The woman's green eyes -- the same as Harry's, Hermione noted -- looked at the Potions professor in a way that made Hermione feel even more unclean. It was Harry's turn to vomit in his mouth.

"Are you wearing a dress?!" the large man demanded, his mustache bristling.

Snape looked appalled, smoothing his traditional black robes. "Of course not!" he cried.

"Of course not, dear," Petunia murmured in a giggly, girlish voice that turned Harry's stomach and made panic rise on the scarred boy's face. "I--I'm...oh, dear, I seem to have forgotten my name...it's a flower, yes. Daisy, no, that's not it..." Petunia twisted her blond hair around her fingers with their menacingly-long nails as she tried frantically to remember her name.

"Petunia!" her husband proclaimed, his face bright red and his chins jiggling threateningly.

"Oh, right! Of course! My name is Petunia Evans--"

"Dursley!" Vernon cried. "Petunia Dursley! And I'm her husband" -- he said the word "husband" in a tone of voice that clearly said "so keep your filthy, dress-wearing, freaky, wizard hands away from my woman" or something very similar -- "Vernon Dursley and our son, Dudley."

Harry looked at his cousin, finally noticing him after being so thrown off by his aunt's frightening apparent infatuation with his most-hated teacher. Dudley had lost weight; instead of being roughly the size of a baby elephant, he was now only the size of Crabbe and Goyle put together. He looked back to his aunt and Snape, hoping that he had mistaken the signs. No -- he hadn't. This was so...so very wrong.

In Dumbledore's opening of Hogwarts to the Squib and Muggle relatives of Hogwarts students, the Dursleys had been forced (almost at wandpoint) to come to Hogwarts to keep them safe from Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Harry really wished they hadn't. Not that he wanted them dead. Not really. Most of the time. Well, sometimes...

---

The next day in N.E.W.T. Potions, Snape was running late. Really late. "I heard there's a rule that if a teacher's fifteen minutes late, class is canceled," Ron said hopefully.

Seven minutes passed. Eight. Ten. Thirteen. Fourteen. With thirty seconds to go until the fifteen minute rule was in place and most of the students on the edge of their seat for a harried exit, Snape strolled into the room, whistling. Hermione was almost certain that he was whistling "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." His hair wasn't nearly as greasy as usual and had been pulled back in a ponytail, gone were his trademark black robes in favor of green robes that added color to his pallid skin and made him seem less sallow. A Ravenclaw girl fell off her stool at the sight.

He's almost...attractive, Hermione mused. Don't you dare say anything, Malfoy!

Wouldn't dream of it, came Draco's snide reply.

"Today, we're going to make the Potion of Happiness. Begin." The instructions appeared on the board and the class went to work. Instead of his usual vulture-like hovering, Snape sat in his chair and plucked petals from a petunia in what seemed to be "loves me, loves me not."

Hermione stared at him in shock, nearly spilling her cauldron's contents in the process. At the end of the lesson, Snape examined the potions. "Excellent, Potter, ten points to Gryffindor!" Snape proclaimed.

Even from her vantage point in the back of the classroom, she could tell that the thick, gloppy orange potion was nothing at all like the purple, translucent potion it was supposed to be. Harry stared at the Potions professor in shock. "Ten points to each House for just being here!" Snape exclaimed.

A Hufflepuff fell off his chair and seemed to be having a massive coronary. "I think he's having a heart attack," a student cried.

"Wonderful! Wonderful! Five points to Hufflepuff!" was Snape's distracted reply.

---

"That was...that was...just...just wrong," Ron finally managed after five minutes of attempting to string together a coherent sentence.

Harry couldn't speak but one of his eyes seemed to be twitching an awful lot. He murmured something garbled and Draco could make out the word "therapy." After some time, Draco finally decided that Harry had said something along the lines of "There isn't enough money in the world to pay for the therapy." Draco was inclined to agree.

---

By the time lunch had come around, the news of Snape's apparent break with reality along with the first Muggle arrivals was the talk of Hogwarts. A table had been set up on a dais just below the dais that held the head table. Vernon, Petunia, and Hermione's parents were the only ones there. Hermione winced and fervently hoped that they wouldn't look for her, hoped that Draco wouldn't ruin her already-strained relationship with her parents.

She sighed softly and allowed her disappointment to fill her. After Potions, she had become rather depressed. The only bright spot in the foreseeable future as Draco Malfoy was the idea that she'd finally get the recognition in Potions that she deserved. Well, sort of. But her first day of Potions while wearing Draco's skin was the first day (possibly since ever) that Snape was in a good mood. It simply wasn't fair.

Blaise sauntered up and Hermione eyed him warily. "So, what do you think of the charming new developments?" he asked. She didn't answer. "Personally, I feel positively sorry for the Muggles. No magic! How horrible. How positively...primitive." Blaise continued with a little smirk of his full lips. "The boy, the very fat one? Millicent Bulstrode's fallen for him." He nodded toward a spot further down the Slytherin table where Millicent was sitting with Harry's enormous cousin, putting her best flirt on. It was frightening since Millicent looked like the closest living relative of a Neanderthal, but Dudley Dursley seemed to be loving the attention.

Hermione turned her gaze to the Head and Muggle Tables. Petunia and Snape were exchanging surreptitious glances at one another; Snape would blush, Petunia would giggle behind her hand, and then they'd repeat the process. Vernon was turning a rather violent shade of violet at his wife's antics. At the Gryffindor table, Harry's face had turned a sick shade of puce.

Petunia Evans-Dursley and Severus Snape? Dudley Dursley and Millicent Bulstrode? Hermione Granger in Draco Malfoy's body? Draco Malfoy in Hermione Granger's body? Had the entire world gone insane and Hermione just hadn't gotten the memo?