How had he gotten himself into this? Blaise Zabini gritted his teeth in frustration. He had not earned this detention, so why was he taking it?
McGonagall’s classroom was empty except for himself and the haggle of hedgehogs he was supposed to be transfiguring. He glared at them silently as they scuttled nervously across the mahogany desk. Blaise had done reasonably well on this assignment in class, but at the moment he was in a right temper and couldn’t concentrate.
A lock of sleek blonde hair fell in front of his eyes, giving him a bit of a shock. He used his surprisingly pale hand to brush it out of his eyes. He was still becoming accustomed to this new body.
Ah yes, now he remembered why he was here. It was all because of that backstabbing, manipulative, git Draco Malfoy, whose form he was currently wearing.
It was an ingenious idea, Blaise would grudgingly admit. He could not think of two people who looked more different: him with his ebony skin, dark eyes and hair versus Draco with his pale complexion and translucent hair and eyes. Still, why couldn’t Crabbe or Goyle be trusted to serve Draco’s detention?
Well, they weren’t exactly capable of performing NEWT level transfiguration. The real question, Blaise realized, was how Draco had uncovered his weakness.
It was not something he was proud of; in fact, he had tried every way to squelch his feelings for her. Taunting her in passing, jinxing her and her friends, and always treating her with cold disdain. Inevitably though, he found his eyes drawn to that trademark red hair and then the emotions he had believed dead would burst to life with alarming vitality.
Overall though, Blaise had done a very good job at keeping his obsession with Ginny Weasley to himself for the first four years he’d known her.
It had all fallen apart one New Year’s Eve when he’d helped himself to a bit too much Firewhiskey at the Parkinsons’. All the liqueur had loosened Blaise’s normally controlled tongue and he’d found himself admitting that he considered Ginny Weasley to be one of the better looking girls in the school. Worse, he had made this particular confession to Pansy Parkinson.
Pansy was a notorious gossip and could not be trusted with any secrets. Blaise realized it would only be a matter of time before she unwittingly divulged that piece of information. While Pansy may not have understood the significance, Draco certainly had, and exploited it to his best interest.
Personally, Blaise could not understand his own fascination with her. She was a blood-traitor, the black sheep of the pristine line of purebloods. He should feel nothing but disgust and contempt for her. And yet all these carefully rehearsed feelings were erased the minute he caught sight of her flipping her vivid red hair…or her deep, thoughtful brown eyes…
Blaise waved his wand without really concentrating and the unfortunate creature grew a small mane of red hair. Irritated, he flicked his wand again to quickly reverse the spell. He couldn’t properly transfigure the animals until Draco gave him the signal via the small, enchanted coin.
Why had Draco been so insistent on stealing the Polyjuice Potion? Surely it hadn’t simply been to sneak out of a few detentions. Blaise paused thoughtfully, gazing sightlessly at McGonagall’s immaculate blackboard in the front of the room.
Perhaps the claims Draco had made so boldly at the beginning of the year were true? Did he really have a mission from the Dark Lord? Blaise had assumed Draco was just bragging, expelling hot air as he often did.
Blaise didn’t particularly care for Death Eaters; his mother had married enough of them for him to realize that they weren’t the best company. Personally, Blaise did not find much fun in torture and pain and death. The swift mercy of Avada Kedavra was enough for him. Besides, one of his mother’s more amiable husbands had been Muggle-born, much to his mother’s disgust.
“Mr. Malfoy, how are you coming along with your transfiguration?” Professor McGonagall entered the room and fixed him with a stern look.
“Almost there, Professor,” Blaise answered lazily and flicked his wand for show. His hedgehog began to swell in size and grew into a very bristly chair.
“Not quite, I’d say,” Professor McGonagall remarked. “I highly doubt anyone would want to sit on that chair. But this is a good improvement, perhaps if you concentrated a bit more on what chair you want to achieve you might obtain a better result.”
“Yes, Professor,” Blaise hoped his smile was sickeningly sweet enough to pass for Draco’s.
All of a sudden, he felt his leg burn. The source was coming from his pocket, the coin, Draco’s signal. Relieved to escape the detention, Blaise concentrated on the hard, wooden chair he was sitting upon and waved his wand at a hedgehog. In the next minute a replica of his own chair sat on the desk in front of him.
“Excellent job, Mr. Malfoy,” Professor McGonagall approved. “A bit unoriginal, but it seems to be a good, solid chair.”
“May I be excused now, Professor?” Blaise asked with forced politeness.
“How about you give it a couple more tries,” Professor McGonagall cast a meaningful look at the other hedgehogs whimpering on the desk.
Fortunately, Blaise only had to transfigure three hedgehogs before they were interrupted.
“Minerva!” Hagrid, gamekeeper, worse teacher in Hogwarts and half-bred oaf, exclaimed bursting through the classroom door. “There’s been an attack! Katie Bell””
“Rubeus!” McGonagall hissed and nodded her head in Blaise’s direction. She turned to Blaise. “Thank you Mr. Malfoy, you may go.”
“Thank you Professor,” Blaise bowed slightly to her and grabbed Draco’s book bag before exiting the classroom. The oaf, Hagrid, shut the door behind him. Blaise lingered, riffling through Malfoy’s book bag for pretence.
“Katie’s been cursed,” he heard Hagrid convey roughly. “Somemat cursed object touched her.”
“Where is she now?” McGonagall demanded sharply.
“Took ‘er to Madam Pomfrey,” Hagrid replied.
“Did anyone see what happened?”
“Yeah, Harry, Ron, Hermione ‘n’ some other girl. They’re comin’ up to the castle,” was the answer.
“Thank you Rubeus,” McGonagall’s voice caught slightly. “Do you know if””
“Madam Pomfrey said she wasn’ too affected, ‘pparently only a small part of her glove touched the necklace,” Hagrid assured.
McGonagall heaved a sigh of relief. “Well I’d best get down and talk to Potter and the rest and hear what they have to say.”
Having no desire to be discovered eavesdropping, Blaise strode away from the Transfiguration classroom as fast as he could. Once he’d turned a corner he slowed his stride and processed what he had heard.
Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence, the Bell girl’s mishap and Draco’s signal. But why would Draco curse Bell? Blaise could imagine people claiming it was all a Quidditch conspiracy, but Blaise knew that sport was the last thing on Draco’s mind.
And placing a curse on someone was serious business, why would Draco risk it?
Could Draco really have received orders from Voldemort? Blaise wondered again. It was slowly becoming the only explanation for Draco’s increasingly odd behavior. His secretiveness, his sickliness, his constant dissapearences…
Blaise cast a haphazard glance at his watch and received a jolt when he realized that his hand resembled a marble cake, patches of ebony skin grew visible on his once-white hands. His legs lengthened as he hurried down the hall, looking for a convenient nook to de-transfigure in peace.
But where could he go? He was on the second floor and the Slytherin quarters were a long way away. Vaguely he remembered Draco saying something about a bathroom…what had it been?
Oh yes, a girls’ bathroom. Haunted, so he could be sure there wouldn’t be any girls in it. It was relatively close to the Transfiguration room. Blaise turned another corner and recognized the door with relief. He stumbled inside gratefully.
Amazing, he’d discovered a past time even more dull and frustrating than watching hedgehogs play on a desk. It was de-Polyjuicing. Surely it wasn’t always this slow? Blaise had grown up reading novels in which mischievous children took Polyjuice to play pranks of Muggles and they had always needed to escape quickly because they were rapidly un-transfiguring.
True, he was now his own height and breadth. And his hair was its usual coarse, short self. But his skin…why wouldn’t the white patches go away?
“Wow, you must have caught a bad jinx,” a melodic voice remarked.
Blaise jumped and turned. Ginny Weasley stood by the door, arms crossed over her chest and stared at him coolly, silently asking him what he was doing in a girls’ toilet. Blaise felt a slight panic encroach. At least she assumed it was a curse.
“The door was ajar,” she explained casually. “I decided to check in and see what was up.”
“Weasley,” he acknowledged coolly.
“Yes, good job, you know my name,” Ginny smirked. “Apparently you don’t know your own gender though. Either that or how to read. This is a girls’ toilet, you know.”
“The ladies’ room? Fancy that, I don’t see any ladies here,” Blaise answered.
“Witty comeback,” Ginny drawled sarcastically. Blaise had a sneaking suspicion she was imitating him. He could faintly smell her flowery scent. Eager for a stronger whiff, he took a few steps closer to her.
“Well I confess, you caught me in a romantic rendez-vous with Moaning Myrtle,” his tone was as flat as Professor Binns.
“I should’ve known you would be desperate enough for that,” Ginny scowled.
He was now within two feet of her. Even though he towered over her, she didn’t quail in the slightest. His nostrils were filled with her intoxicating aroma.
“Yes, well, I do like to take credit for her trademark moaning,” he yawned.
“Yuck,” Ginny wrinkled her nose in disgust. But he could see the corners of her mouth quirk. “So I take it you dumped Katherine?”
Katherine Boleyn had been the Slytherin he’d taken to a few Slug Club meetings. He’d been about to ask her to Hogsmeade before Draco had jumped him with his own plans. She was well-bred and known to be unhealthily possessive, and had assumed that Blaise was enamored with her from those few meetings. She’d been very disappointed when he’d failed to ask her to Hogsmeade and had given him the silent treatment ever since.
“We weren’t exactly going out,” he shrugged. “Though I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to her. She might get jealous and try to kill Myrtle.”
Ginny let out a snort of laughter and then stopped herself as though surprised. Her look of confusion prompted Blaise to laugh.
“What? Afraid that laughing at the jokes of a Slytherin will corrupt you?”
“No, I’m not,” she responded forcefully. “You’re the prejudiced bigot, not me.”
“Yes, my House automatically determines my personality,” Blaise rolled his eyes. It seemed that everyone was convinced Slytherins were all cookie cutter replicas of each other.
“I’m not referring to your house,” she scoffed. “I’m referring to the numerous occasions when you’ve called me a blood-traitor.”
“To some, that’s a source of pride,” he observed.
“Oh, obviously, I’m very honored,” she replied sarcastically.
“Happy to oblige, madame,” Blaise dipped into a shallow bow.
“Hey, you’re back to normal,” she noted suddenly, looking surprised.
Blaise glanced quickly at his hands, she was right he was now 100% Blaise Zambini. With a small jolt, he realized that he and Ginny had been conversing almost normally for the past five minutes.
“What kind of curse was it?” Ginny queried curiously.
“One too dull to imagine,” Blaise answered truthfully.
Ginny raised her eyebrows quizzically but did not pursue the topic.
“Oh will you two please stop it,” a moping voice complained behind them. They turned to see Moaning Myrtle poking her head through a stall door. “I’m about to have a really good cry and the last thing I need is the two of you flirting like a pair of … of happy””
But at that moment the mere idea of happiness cause Moaning Myrtle to dissolve into ghostly tears and she submerged herself back into her stall. Blaise could hear the water gurgling in her wake and realized it would be in their best interest to get out, and fast.
“Come on,” he moved over to the door and opened it, waiting for Ginny.
“Myrtle, we were not flirting,” Ginny insisted to the stall door, looking kind of dazed.
“Honestly, I promise I won’t tell Thomas,” Blaise sneered. “Now I think it’d be best if we got out.”
Ginny looked torn. “But she said…” she trailed off.
Blaise could hear the water rising and sloshing violently. “Umm…Ginny…”
She stared at him in surprise. “You called me Ginny,” she whispered.
Mentally kicking himself in the head for slipping up, Blaise motioned vigourously to the door. “Well it got your attention, didn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting your knickers in such a twist about,” Ginny replied rather savagely. “It’s not like Myrtle can do anything.”
Blaise winced at the fatal choice of words, the next second Moaning Myrtle somehow managed to direct a wave of water in their direction, drenching them completely. He pulled Ginny out the door and slammed it shut behind them before Myrtle could do anymore damage.
For one short glorious moment, he held Ginny in his arms as they both recaptured their breaths and their heartrates slowed. Then Ginny twitched uncomfortably so he quickly released her.
“Oh,” Ginny gave a small gasp. “I guess that’s what Myrtle can do.”
Maybe it was because a short hour ago he had been Draco Malfoy, or maybe it was because he’d had a civil conversation with Ginny, or it could just have been the fact that he had been drenched in toilet water by a mopey, teen ghost, but Blaise started to laugh. Ginny glanced at him startled before she too realized how ridiculous their situation was and started to laugh herself.
Standing so close to Ginny, with the color of her hair deepened by the water, and her soaking robes plastered to her body and her merry golden brown eyes dancing, Blaise was seized with a sudden impulse.
Grabbing Ginny roughly by the shoulders, he planted a kiss on her lips.
It didn’t last for long though because immediately Ginny threw a hex at him and he felt his arms burn lightly in a flash of bright light.
Panting, with her wand still raised, Ginny took one final look at him before fleeing.
A/N: What did you think? Please read and review!