Chapter Text
Love really sucks.
The moment you saw a glimpse of them in the hallway, your heart becomes a butterfly with a bass drum, pounding so loud you could hear it in your ears and your stomach was doing backflips. You hear their voice in class and you start to blush. You think about them before you fall asleep.
Harry James Potter knew this feeling far too well. For two and a half years, the feelings taunted him. Starting as a tiny trickle, but soon progressing into a raging river of affection. Even the mention of the scrawny Slytherin was enough to make the ends of his lips turn up in amusement.
Two and a half years of small smiles and stomach butterflies led up to one warm spring night in the Gryffindor common room, where the Boy-Who-Lived was getting drunk off his ass while being closely watched by a mildly amused Ron Weasley.
"I'm sick of it, Ron. I'm siiiiiiiick and tired of it." Harry sat down on the couch, grabbing another beer and popping the cap.
Ron groaned and sipped his drink. "Harry, I didn't have Fred and George steel the booze so you would drink it in all in one night..."
"Sssssshaddup, Ronald!" Harry pointed a drunken finger at the ginger, "I will drink however much I wanna drink. I am a brrrrroken man!"
Ron grabbed the last beer and set it behind him. "Who are you ramblin' on about? I bet the poor girl doesn't even know you fancy her."
Harry looked up at the ceiling and clicked his tongue, "Wrong!!"
"So she does know?"
"Wrong again!" He laughed and took another swing.
Ron was getting frustrated, "It's one or the other, Harry."
"It isn't a girl, ya dumbass."
Ron stopped what he was doing, "Wait. Is it... a... a guy?"
"DING DING! Get the man a prize!" He groaned. "Bloody little bastard, trotting around with his perfect blonde hair and damn cheekbones... I'm sssssick of it!!"
Ron was speechless. "You fancy MALFOY?" He yelled, flabbergasted. Harry jumped off the couch and put his finger on Ron's mouth.
"Shhhhhhhhhhh....... Secret...." He looked around and frowned, "Nnnobody knows..." He waddled back to the couch plopping back down.
Ron was quiet for a couple seconds before finally breaking the silence, “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter that its Malfoy...” He scoffed, “Out of all the boys in our year, you had to pick the snobbiest, bitchiest, whiniest git out of them all. What the hell do you see in him, anyways?”
“I don’t even know, Ron. All I know is that I’ve wanted to kiss his stupid face fer like... 2 years...” Harry was slurring badly, “Like, this one time in Potions, he got a bad score on his final, and he was all like “My father will hear about this!” and I got a bloody boner, a boner, Ron; right in the middle of potions. I was in the bathroom for like 20 minutes--” he hiccuped and leaned back on the leather sofa, “He makes me miserable.”
“I guess I know where you’re coming from...” Ron and Hermione were an unofficial item, but Ron had fancied her for a few months now. Then again, a few months is nothing compared to two years.
“Yeah, that's why I’m down here in the first place. .” He stood up and held in his hand a small bottle of what looked like silver liquid. “Dragons blood, damn near hard to find, but Hagrid had a bit.”
He wobbled drunkenly to the fireplace and grabbed a cauldron from behind the wood stack. “Now that I’ve got everything, I can finally get this started.”
“A potion? I’m not sure thats a good idea to do drunk, Harry...” Ron didn’t look to sure, and walked close behind the dark haired Gryffindor. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow--”
“NO!” Shouting, Harry nearly dropped the vial of dragons blood. “No, its gotta be tonight. Its a full moon, Ron. If I don’t do it now, I won’t be able to for a whole ‘nother month!” He set the cauldron on the ground like it was a baby, and started to stir.
“I don’t like this...”
“You’re acting like ‘Ermione, shut up and lighten up ya big lug.” Harry poured in the silver solution and watched as a puff of purple smoke billowed upwards. “Izzit supposed to be purple?” He mumbled. Ron stood behind him, looking around mumbling to himself.
“What is this supposed to do, Harry?”
“What?”
Ron sat down on the hardwood floor, “What is this going to do?”
“Its a forget-me-not potion! It erases all feelings for a person... kinda like a love charm, only with opposite effects.” Harry pulled a few blonde hairs out of his robe pocket and winked (more like blinking, he was so intoxicated,) at Ron. “Found the spell in the Potions book I got this year.” He held up a green book with a worn cover. Ron had seen it a couple of times beforehand, but never actually got a good look at it. He took it into his hand and flipped through the pages. There were notes written in the margins and some words were highlighted or crossed out. “Need to keep this stuff handy.” Harry dropped Malfoys hair in his cauldron and stirred for a few minutes, then moved to the window, setting the cauldron on the sill. “Its now or never.”
“Harry...” Ron nudged his friend, but was shaken off.
“Not now, Ron!” He snapped. He filled up a cup and held it tightly with both hands.
“Harry, someones coming.”
Harry turned around quickly, knocking the cauldron off the sill and causing it to fall out of the window. It hit the ground with a clang and Harry swore loudly. Ron grabbed his arm and pulled him behind the couch right as McGonagall walked down the stairs. The boys stayed behind the couch for a few minutes until her footsteps fell away, and they let out a collective sigh. Harry looked like he was about to cry.
“Damn it all, Ron! You knocked over my cauldron!” He whimpered.
“Me?!” Ron snorted, “You’re the one who hit it with your elbow. Besides, ya still got that cup full of it!”
“But it wasn’t done moonlighting...ing... yet!” he snapped. “I guess it’ll have to do...” Harry looked down at the cup and gulped. Remembering the foul taste of the polyjuice potion he had taken his second year, he was reluctant to drink his concoction.
“Just drink your forget-me-not, I’m going to bed. Good luck getting up the stairs without me.” Ron rolled his eyes and hit Harry’s back, walking up the stairs to the boys dormitory.
“Fine. I didn’t need you anyways...” Harry mumbled, looking down at the purplish-grayish filled cup. He took a deep breath and held his nose, quickly downing the entire cupful of it. Expecting it to taste of rotten eggs or cabbage, he was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn’t. In fact, it tasted like buttercream and honey. Harry wasn’t too fond of honey, so it didn’t taste wonderful, but it tasted better than he had hoped. He set the cup down and could feel his eyes start to grow heavy, like someone had just placed a kilogram of lead on each one. He groaned and somehow managed to pull his way up the stairs and to his bed, tripping over his feet almost every step of the way. He sent up a silent prayer to whoever was listening, thanking them that he had dressed himself in his pajamas before going downstairs with Ron, and climbed onto his mattress.
He pulled his knees to his chest, tucking his chin under the covers of his bed. Please, Harry pleaded, please let this have worked...
Not more than 5 minutes later, Harry’s eyes closed and he fell unconscious.
Harry woke up early that next morning, feeling slightly off but pleasantly unplagued by the headache he was sure would be waiting for him. It was a Sunday so he didn’t have any classes, so he didn’t hurry to open his eyes or get out of bed. As his body slowly started to wake up, he realized that something didn’t feel right, besides the absence of the hangover from the night before. He reached out for his glasses on his bed stand, but upon opening his eyes, realized that he could see clearly without them. His surroundings weren’t his, and he wasn’t even sleeping in his bed. Instead of the red and gold banners that decorated the walls of his dorm, silver and green ones replaced them. This isn’t right... He thought, jumping out of bed and instinctively going to the boys loo. He pulled the door shut and looked himself in the mirror.
His darker skin was replaced by pasty white, and his curly brown hair was suddenly a flop of platinum blonde. He was taller than normal, all bones and angles instead of his softer complexion. The face that he had fallen in love with was now reflected back at him, the mouth twisted in confusion and eyes wide.
The door opened behind him and a tall, dark skinned boy walked in with a toothbrush. “Oh, good morning Draco. you’re up early.”
Harry couldn’t believe what he was seeing, or hearing, but decided to play along. If he didn’t, he would be seen as insane. “Oh, um, couldn’t sleep.” His voice wasn’t his. It was higher than he was used to. It felt weird, yet oddly natural coming from his mouth. “What about you, Neil?” Harry picked out the name easily, and it came to him quickly.
“I’m always up this early. Are you doing alright? You don’t look so great.”
God, for a big guy hes really polite. “Yeah, just not feeling the greatest...”
Neil raised an eyebrow sighed, finishing brushing his teeth. “I’ll leave you be, I guess. Talk to you later.” He went out of the room and Harry let out a sigh.
What the hell was going on? He made a potion to forget Draco, not become him! What had he done that would screw him over this much? He gripped the sink counter, and felt his arm muscles flex. Bloody hell, when did Draco become this fit?
Against his better judgement, Harry lifted up his -- er --- Dracos night shirt and started into the mirror. Dracos body looked so much different than he imagined, There were a few scars that were planted on his ribcage, but that didn’t stop him from being as lean and muscular as he was. What had Draco done to get those thin lines that were placed on his body? There was one in particular that sat dangerously close to his groin, and Harry once again went against his conscious. He pulled the pajama pants that Draco wore out a few inches and instantly went red in the face, his heart catching in his chest.
Bloody hell.
It was very apparent that Draco didn’t like to wear underwear, not that Harry minded much. The elastic of his pants snapped back against his skin and he gulped. Was all this just a dream? It had to be, there is no way that he had switched bodies with Draco Malfoy. He pinched his arm once, expected to suddenly jolt awake in his own bed, in his own body. He closed his eyes and waited to wake up.
Nothing happened.
Harry tried again, this time pinching harder and a couple more times. Again, nothing happened.
“Alright, so I’m either actually awake, or just in a really deep sleep.” He said quietly, running his fingers through Draco’s slightly-greasy mat of blonde hair. He smelled surprisingly good, like Licorice and cologne. Was this considered Narcissism? Harry didn’t particularly care, this felt like some sort of really weird, surprisingly good dream in which he switched bodies with the boy he’d been falling head over heels for for the past two years. Harry stopped messing with his/Draco’s hair and came to a sudden realization. If he was in Draco’s body... was Draco’s in his?
Oh, Merlin, this wasn’t going to end well.
Harry rubbed his eyes and decided to look around. He had only been around here once, in his second year when the had taken the polyjuice potion with Ron, and they pretended to be Crabbe and Goyle to try and get information out of Malfoy about the Chamber of Secrets. He walked down the stairs to the common room, which was located below the school where most of the dungeons were. They had moved a few things, couches to different sides of the room, the fireplace seemed to have moved since the last time he was here, and it was a little bit larger than the Gryffindor common room. Ron would be jealous out of his mind, saying as they had multiple house cups mounted on the wall. Oh, Merlins beard, Ron. How was he going to explain this to him? He couldn’t stand Malfoy, how was he going to believe anything that came out of his mouth, even if it was Harry?
“Draco?” Harry turned on his heels and came face to face with a girl who he instantly recognized as Pansy Parkinson a Slytherin girl in his year.
“Oh, Hello Pans.” He jumped backwards.
“Are you alright? I heard someone down here, figured I may as well check it out.” She looked suspicious. “Are you up to something?”
“Up to something? Oh, no.” He bit the inside of his cheek. His tongue could feel the scars that had built up on the inside of his mouth, and quickly realized that this was definitely a habit for Draco. “It appears I’ve been sleepwalking, must have been the pills father gave me...” Where were these lies coming from?
“Oh, well...” she looked at a loss for words. “That makes sense. You’re not even dressed yet and not even you would walk around looking like a mess.” She smiled and patted his shoulder. “Go take a shower, I’ll see you at breakfast.” She turned around and trotted back to the girls dorm.
Harry smirked and looked up towards the boys showers, (Draco’s instincts showed him where they were.) “You know, I think I will.” he mumbled to himself. How bad could this be, Harry wondered, becoming Draco Malfoy for a couple of days?