Chapter Text
At 6:48 am, Draco Malfoy sat bolt upright in bed. He slapped a hand to his eye, where a deep, stabbing pain had begun out of nowhere. It felt as if his brain was trying to escape through the eye socket, armed with a sharp sabre.
He rushed to the adjoining bathroom and squinted in the light, waiting in greater and greater agony as he slowly got used to the brightness. But even as the light became less harsh, Draco found he could not open his left eye completely. He bent forward, pulling his eyelashes upward to inspect for one that had fallen in, but the pain seared hotter every time he attempted it.
Draco sighed shakily. Perhaps it was no mere eyelash, but a scratch to the cornea. That might better explain why exposing his eye to the air made it worse.
He looked at himself in the mirror, one eyelid closed and (leaking, which was a whole other mess) the other open, grey, and frightened. He turned on the sink, still hoping it was only an eyelash, and splashed cold water onto his face.
The water seemed to help for a moment, but then the pain was back, and this time it felt as if the optic nerve had been severed and was thrashing around helplessly, looking for a connection that was no longer there. Draco knew no amount of water could fix a problem like that. He knew of no spells to fix it, either, and if he had known any, he was intelligent enough not to try on his own.
But then the optic nerve found its tether. The pain vanished. Draco could open his eye. The sight he was met with in the mirror made him dizzily grab the sink. His left iris was now a brilliant green, and half of his vision was incredibly poor.
“Bollocks,” he muttered to himself. He knew that green. He knew it all too well.
When Draco returned to his room, Blaise sleepily called out, “You weren’t sick, were you?”
“No.” Draco grabbed his wand. “I think someone’s cursed me, and—” he collapsed onto his knees, clutching his other eye, which had begun throbbing. He swore. “I need the hospital wing.”
“You need help getting there, or are you good?”
“I'm fine, Blaise,” Draco said primly, more out of frustration than truth. “Go back to bed.”
“If you insist.” Blaise tugged his sheets up past his ears.
Draco scowled, wrapped himself tightly in his dressing gown, and left the dungeons.
The hospital wing was dark, save for a lonely light over a single bed. The occupant was shrouded by two figures that Draco could not make out, even when squinting. They turned at the sound of someone entering the room. Madam Pomfrey and Weasley’s faces took shape as Draco approached, but they were still somewhat out of focus. On his way to the hospital wing, Draco’s other eye had become as blurry as the left. Though he didn’t have a mirror, Draco figured they were both green now.
“Malfoy,” said the Madam-Pomfrey-shaped blob. She seemed a little shocked to see him.
“Madam Pomfrey,” Draco said, nodding to her. He went to stand on the other side of the bed and was unruffled to see Potter there, looking up at him with cold grey eyes. They contrasted nicely against his dark brown skin, but green suited him better. He also, Draco noticed, wasn’t wearing his glasses, though his nose bore the pinkish marks of their nibs.
“Ah, Potter,” Draco said. “Good. You’re here. Give me your glasses.”
“Excuse me?”
“I thought I recognised the green eyes. Was it not obvious when your vision became much clearer? Or when your irises turned grey?”
“Are you saying we’ve switched eyes?” Potter’s were very large.
“Yes. We’ll see if it stops there. Your glasses?" Draco demanded, holding out a hand for them. “I refuse to spend another moment squinting. It’s undignified.”
Wordlessly, Potter held them out. Draco snatched them up, unfolded them, and held them up in the light, peering warily through the glass.
“If you really have got my eyes,” Potter said, “they should be the right prescription.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Draco said sharply, but still, he put them on. He could now see perfectly, save for a blurry halo where the glass stopped.
Weasley was smirking at him.
“Think this is funny, do you, Weasley? I’d curb that amusement if I were you. If I’m right, your best mate’s about to turn into me, for who knows how long.”
“If you are indeed correct, Malfoy,” said Madam Pomfrey seriously, “you have a long night ahead of you. And if Potter’s…discomfort is anything like yours, a painful night.”
“You don’t actually think Harry’s going to turn into you?” said Weasley, ignoring what Madam Pomfrey said.
“Good lord, you’re thick,” Draco responded. “And Potter, you could look a little less surprised yourself. What did you think, that this was going to stop here? Who would curse us so that only—?” He cut himself off. Potter’s hair had begun streaking itself with blonde. The effect made him appear as though he was rapidly aging. “See for yourself. I imagine my hair’s got black in it now.”
The way Weasley looked back and forth between him and Potter confirmed it.
“You had better lie down, Malfoy. Here,” Madam Pomfrey gestured to the next bed, and Draco sat on it. She started examining him with her wand. “This doesn’t appear to be Polyjuice; it’s too slow-acting. It seems the process is staggered, as well. One eye and then the next, rather than at the same time. Very peculiar. Have you drunk anything in the past several hours?”
“No,” Draco said, flipping the pillows behind him so he was more comfortable. “I haven’t.” He pushed his (now black) hair aside, but it flopped back into his eyes. He tried again, only to get the same result. This was going to be deeply annoying, he could already tell.
Madam Pomfrey’s eyebrows came together and she lowered her wand. “Neither has Potter. Have either of you eaten anything?”
Both boys shook their heads.
“Oh, spare us the time, Malfoy, and tell us what you did,” said Weasley.
Before Draco could say anything in his defence, Madam Pomfrey said, “I’ll ask you not to assume anything about my patients, Weasley. Malfoy and Potter are both suffering, and I kindly ask you to leave so that I may deal with them.” She started moving toward him, flapping her hands to shoo him from the bed. “Goodness knows I’ve let you stay much longer than I’d have liked already. Good night.” With that, she ushered him the last couple steps toward the corridor.
“I’ll come visit you tomorrow,” Weasley called. The doors shut loudly behind him.
“Now,” Madam Pomfrey said, turning around. She huffed. “Let’s see if I can’t stop this.” And she began examining the pair of them, every so often trying spells to stop the changes. It was only after their noses and chins had switched that she decided to call it a night.
“Are you both comfortable? At least, for the moment?” she said.
“I think so,” Potter said.
She looked to Draco.
“For now,” he said.
“Right.” Madam Pomfrey made a sweeping motion with her wand and curtains closed around their beds, isolating them from the rest of the hospital. “You two have been here enough times to know where my office is. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to come get me, or to shout. Do not leave until you have been released. Okay?”
“Yes,” the boys chorused.
“Good. I’d give you something for your pain, but I’m not sure how that will react with whatever’s going on with you. I’m afraid all we can do right now is wait this out.” Her face softened. “I…realise that’s not the most encouraging thing, but we will stop it, somehow. I’ll go write to a couple of friends over at St Mungo’s, see if anything like this has ever been reported.
“Rest up now,” she said with a nod. Then she ducked out of the curtains and left them alone.
*******
Neither boy got much sleep that night. As Madam Pomfrey had discerned, the transformations were oddly staggered. One moment Draco would be perfectly fine, and the next, one of his feet would start to feel like it was being shoved into a very small bottle. As Draco was somewhat taller than Potter, he had plenty of time to figure out the correct analogy for the sensation. The worst was arguably when his spine, and only his spine, constricted so violently he thought that every single vertebrae had been broken.
Draco did his best to remain silent during the spine shrinkage, but it was difficult. Potter’s whimpers and yelps were fairly loud too, despite being muffled by his pillow— Draco wondered if it was perhaps worse to feel yourself be stretched than shrunk. It certainly sounded that way.
But like every other change, the pain down his back eventually stopped. When it did, Draco sat up and said, “This is ridiculous. We’re obviously not going to be able to sleep, might as well suffer together.”
“Yeah? And how do you suggest we do that?” Potter said hoarsely. “Turn on the light and hold hands?”
“No,” Draco growled. “And don’t go anywhere near that light.”
“Why? Are you scared, Malfoy?” Potter’s words were mocking, but his voice was thinner than usual. Higher. Potter was scared.
If Draco was honest, he was too. He was terrified of the potential abomination he might see if they had not fully transformed yet. He couldn’t tell which parts of his body had changed and which had not — pain has a nasty way of clouding memory — and he was also afraid to look down at his own body, even in the darkness, even with his now-limited sight. But instead of relating any of this to Potter, he said, “How long has it been since the last change?”
Potter shifted beneath his sheets. “Er, I’d say about three minutes?”
“Blast it.” Draco ran a hand over his forehead, pushing back hair of unfamiliar thickness and colour. It sprang back into his eyes for the millionth time that night.
He huffed. “You know, I can’t decide what’s worse about this: getting your woefully shameful vision, your complete disaster for hair, or the sheer agony of turning very slowly into you. And not just the physical pain. The emotional pain. I dread the interactions I’m going to have with your fans, and worse, your friends.”
“You were one slight away from getting a full bingo card, there. You forgot to mention my family.”
“What,” Draco asked, “is bingo?”
“Never mind,” said Potter.
“And, I might add, you have no right to tell me how to insult you. You’re even worse at that than you are at flying.”
Potter gave a breathy laugh. “I stand corrected. Three slights away.”
Draco huffed again.
“Would you stop that?” said Potter. “It’s annoying.”
“I’m sorry,” Draco said sarcastically, “was I distracting you from something important? By all means, we can sit here in silence if that’s what you want.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Draco pressed the side of his face more firmly into his pillow. “I don’t know what you mean. If I’m to become Harry Potter, it’s in body only— I haven’t gotten access to your thoughts. Though if I had, I bet they’d be really mundane — you aren’t very interesting, you know — so maybe I’m better off…”
From the corner of his eye, Draco saw Potter turn toward him. “Everything’s always an insult with you, isn’t it? Can’t you be normal, for once?”
“You wouldn’t like me to be normal,” Draco spat, and turned resolutely in the opposite direction. “It would be very boring. Since I’m your enemy, that wouldn’t be very good of me, would it? Being boring?”
Potter chuckled brightly. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard you say, ever.”
“Happy to be of service,” Draco said through his teeth.
Then his ribs decided to unfurl. He let out a ragged scream as he felt them scrape menacingly against the inside of his skin.
“Malfoy?” Potter asked. He leapt out of his bed and bent over Draco’s.
Draco shut his eyes. He swatted at Potter, wordlessly trying to get the boy to go back to his own bed before the same thing happened to him, too. He knew that he wouldn’t want to feel his ribs rearrange themselves while he was left stranded on the cold stone floor.
Unfortunately for both of them, things didn’t happen quite like Draco had been expecting. Rather than falling to the floor, Potter fell to his knees. In the process, their bare forearms touched and the scraping sensation immediately dulled to mild discomfort. Their ribs started meshing back together, and within a matter of seconds, the rest of their bodies decided to start changing as well.
“What,” Draco wheezed around a perceivable lump in his voice box, “were you thinking?” He pushed Potter off of him.
“What was that?” Potter countered, still kneeling at Draco’s bedside. “Why did it all suddenly get faster? Was it brought on by contact, or proximity, or—”
Draco pulled the chain on the bedside lamp and blinked, both in the bright light and at the blurry sight of Potter squinting dramatically. No— himself squinting dramatically. He turned the light back off.
“Was that really necessary?” Potter said in Draco’s voice. The hair on Draco’s — Potter’s — Draco’s arms leapt up. “Woah. I don’t like that.”
“Then stop talking,” Draco said in Potter’s voice. He sounded less threatening that way. He didn’t care for it.
“We can’t not talk about how weird this is,” Potter said.
“Have you never taken Polyjuice Potion before?” said Draco, feigning boredom to keep the anxiety at bay. “It’d be suspicious to turn into someone else in every way but their voice.”
“I know that,” said Potter, leaning his elbows on the mattress. “But this isn’t Polyjuice, is it? We’ve established that. There’s so much we don’t know about what’s happening. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“Of course I am. Obviously I want to figure out what’s going on, who’s cursed us and why, but right now I’m more concerned about whether we’re done.” Draco dropped his voice to a whisper. “What if we’re not?”
The mattress shook as Potter nodded. “When I touched you, everything else that hadn’t transformed began to. That must mean we’re done, right?”
“Must it?”
“There’s one way we could figure it out, Malfoy,” said Potter. He said it softly, like he was afraid of upsetting Draco.
This, too, upset Draco. He pulled on his sheets so that Potter’s elbows skidded out from underneath him. “I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow, then,” he said nastily.
Potter sighed and stood, brushing himself off violently. “Fine.” He strode to his bed and jerked his sheets aside, crawled beneath them, then faced the opposite direction. “If you want to be childish about this, fine.”
“Good night, Potter,” Draco teased.
Perhaps he was enjoying this more than he should have been.
“Yeah, whatever,” was Potter’s response.