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“Okay, everyone’s here,” George said, clapping his hands together and rubbing. “If you could please line up. We’re going to give each of you one of these,” he held up a little packet. “You’ll swallow what’s inside.”
“Swallow it whole, trust me, you don’t want to taste what’s in there,” Fred said as he handed them out.
“Just gullet it,” George agreed. “It should take effect within a minute.”
“How long does it last?” Hermione asked. “Because I have a date tonight.”
“Yes, yes, we know,” Ron drawled from her left. “You’ve only mentioned it every fifteen minutes since you made your plans—”
“Shush, Ron, let her be excited,” Ginny admonished him. “I would be too if I was finally going on a date with someone I’d fancied since sixth year.”
“Oh my god, Ginny,” Hermione slapped her shoulder in admonishment.
“Sixth year? Bloody hell, ‘Mione,” Ron griped, and Hermione glared at Ginny.
“I hadn’t mentioned that,” she gritted between teeth. “Because your brother,” she gestured with a thumb toward Ron. “Still has it in his head I was madly in love with him our whole bloody childhood—”
“It’s madness that you didn’t work out, considering you two bicker like old marrieds,” Harry said from Ron’s other side. Hermione threw her little packet at his head.
“Oi! Don’t mistreat the merchandise!” George said. Harry laughed and retrieved the packet, handing it back to Hermione. She waved it at George, who rolled his eyes. “As I was saying, the effects will take about a minute. You’ll each transform into something fun.”
“Define fun,” Lee Jordan said from Ginny’s other side.
“Fred turned into a fox,” George said.
“And you?” Ginny asked.
“Parrot,” George grinned. “Best hope you turn into something with wings. Nothing like it.”
“Okay, so we’ll all become some sort of animal,” Ron said. “Hope I’m something cool. Like a wolf or a bear or something.”
“Bet you become a turtle,” Harry teased.
“Oh, shut up.”
“The effects should wear off in roughly half an hour,” George said.
“Any more than an hour and we have a counterspell,” Fred added. “We’ve tested it on ourselves loads of times.”
“Don’t worry, Hermione,” George said. “You’ve got hours before your date.”
***
“Quit laughing!” Hermione snapped. “Are you even trying to resolve this?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Fred chortled as he tried yet another spell to no avail. “Merlin. I really don’t know, Hermione. We haven’t run into this before.”
“You absolute gits.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I’m running out of time! I really don’t think he’s going to give me another try if I cancel last-minute, I’m going to murder the both of you—”
“I’m sure you can just tell him something came up,” Harry offered. From her left, there was a shuffling and a derisive snort. Ginny, who had transformed into a unicorn, was unable to speak.
Hermione, with her damnable luck, was a full-fledged centaur. Not only was she enormous, but the transformation had shredded her clothing and left her naked from the waist up, her hair the only thing that had kept her friends from seeing her bare-chested. She had forcibly purloined George’s button-down, leaving him shirtless while he worked frantically with Fred to try and rectify the glaring error in their product: they hadn’t accounted for magical creatures and beings in their transformation spells, and something about it kept Hermione and Ginny from transforming back.
The others, all lucky enough to have become regular animals, had long since returned to their original forms. The only snag was Ron had transformed into a walrus, destroying his clothing and causing his return to human form to come with a mad dash for something to wear. The other two had become adorable, small creatures. Lee had become a squirrel, and Harry a pygmy owl.
“I’m too tall to floo him like this,” Hermione groused, and she looked pleadingly at Harry. He raised a brow.
“You want me to floo Malfoy for you?”
“Well I’m not about to ask Ronald,” she hissed. Ron frowned up at her.
“Won’t it make things worse for you if it’s me telling him his date is cancelled?”
“Postponed, Harry! And I’ll be right here, he’ll be able to hear me, I just… I don’t even know if kneeling would help, I’m so bloody tall right now.”
“All right, all right,” Harry acquiesced. Ginny made a huffing sound, a distinct warning that Harry took for exactly what it was, raising his hands in surrender. “I’ll behave!”
She dipped her head to drive the message home and Harry swore under his breath.
“She’s your fiancée,” Hermione said.
“Not if she skewers me, she’s not,” Harry replied. “Come on then, let's get this over with.”
The floo was in the back of the shop, and Hermione had to duck carefully to get her top half through the doorway. Harry started up the floo call, and before long Draco Malfoy’s aristocratic face was looking back at him with confusion.
“Er, hello, Malfoy,” he started. “There’s been a bit of a mess at the shop today, and—”
“Shop?” he asked, and Harry sighed.
“Right, yes, sorry. We were testing one of the new Weasley creations here at the Weasley shop. It wore off most of us after half an hour but Gin and Hermione got sort of… stuck. She’s asked me to see if you’d be willing to reschedule your date?”
“Reschedule our date,” he replied skeptically. “The date it took me months to even get her to agree to in the first place?”
“Er,” Harry glanced at Hermione pleadingly, and she wrung her hands.
“I’d rather be on the date, I promise you,” she blurted out, and Malfoy looked around, unable to see her from his vantage point.
“How stuck can you be if you’re—”
“Please, Draco, I swear to you—”
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he said with a frown. Panicking, thinking he’d end the floo call before she had a chance to say more, she took a breath and shouted.
“Draco, I’ve got bloody hooves!”
“What?” His response was so incredulous that Harry lost it, a peal of uncontrolled giggles escaping him as he scooted back from the floo.
“Fred and George turned me into a bloody centaur, I can’t even properly get near the floo, I’m enormous,” she lamented, and she winced as she watched his face turn with amusement. He made an effort not to laugh.
“Forgive me, Granger, that’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard—”
“Well then come through and see for yourself, if that’s what it takes to make you believe me,” she sighed. “I really do want to go. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
“And talking about,” Harry muttered. In the flames, Draco raised a brow at that.
“Right. So you’re at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes?”
“Yep,” Harry said. “Pretty sure this floo’s limited to family only, but the closest public one is just around the corner. I’ll come let you in myself.”
“Well, Granger,” he said with barely-suppressed curiosity. “It’ll certainly be a memorable date.”
***
“Well.”
“Well,” Hermione looked down at Malfoy, who stood in front of her, eyes shining with mirth he was barely containing. All she could manage was a mortified grimace, face caught in an anxious rictus as she suffered the worst possible opening to a first date of all time.
There was an irritable huff from the unicorn in the corner, and Malfoy turned to see where it had come from. “So that’s Weaselette?”
“Yes, that’s Ginny,” Hermione said.
“Well,” he said again. He put a fist to his mouth as he laughed, unable to contain it any further. Hermione sighed, torn between annoyance and finding the sound of it rather charming. She’d never really seen Draco Malfoy looking so cheery, as much as she hated the way she’d made this particular discovery.
“Okay, okay, I think I’ve got it. Want me testing it on you or her?” Fred said, approaching Hermione with his wand already up.
“How much worse could today possibly get?” Hermione asked. “Go on, then.”
Fred waved his wand, muttering to himself, and Hermione felt a strange sensation in her spine before everything went white for a moment. When her vision returned, she found herself back in familiar territory: looking up at all of the taller men in her life.
And Draco was grinning at her, trying very hard to keep his eyes on her face.
She looked down.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” she hissed, tugging at the hem of George’s shirt and giving silent thanks that it at least reached partway down her thighs. After a moment, a shirtless Fred crossed in front of her, and she turned to see Ginny tugging similarly at the hem of the shirt she’d just thieved from her older brother.
“I don’t know what you’re upset about,” the redhead muttered. “At least you could talk.”
***
“Wait here,” Hermione said, leaving Draco in her living room. Once she’d collected her wand, she’d promptly taken him by the hand and dragged him through the floo with her so that she could get dressed. She could feel his eyes on her as she padded toward her bedroom.
“I know we have reservations, Granger, but I quite like what you’re wearing now,” he said, a flirtatious glint in his eye. “If you’d rather get takeaway.”
“This shirt is George’s,” she said, leaning out of the doorway and glancing back at him with her tongue between her teeth. “Wouldn’t you rather woo me thoroughly enough to see me in yours?”