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It Must Be So Easy to Be You
It had started like most events in Hermione Granger’s life, with a trip to the library.
She had tracked down a few practical DADA books for the first Dumbledore’s Army meeting and ducked into the Room of Requirement to stash them safely away from crazy Umbridge, when she collided with the last person she expected to see in a place dedicated to “helping those who need it.”
“Malfoy?!” she gaped.
"What are you doing here, Granger?" Draco had snapped, eyeing her like she was some unwelcome bug.
"This is my room, Malfoy," she'd countered, wand drawn in irritation. "You probably stumbled in here looking for a mirror."
He looked equally affronted. They traded barbs like old pros, something about him needing constant attention and her being an insufferable know-it-all.
“You wish. Bet you come here to escape from your tragic overachiever lifestyle. Must be exhausting being so perfect all the time.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, sooo perfect. I love to be hated by over half the school just because my parents are Muggle dentists.”
They paced, snapped, and then, suddenly, the door vanished, without so much as a whisper.
“Oh, come off it, you have support!” he shot back, voice rising. “You don’t have a father who constantly berates you for not living up to his exact pureblood ideals and classmates who’d sooner curse and manipulate you because of your last name.”
She blinked, not expecting that.
“I just meant—”
“Forget it.” He sulked, the heat leaving him.
“Wait, what?” Hermione realized what had happened and ran to where the door had been. “No, no, no… it always lets you out!”
“Brilliant deduction, Granger. Why don’t you knit us a bloody escape rope?”
They argued for nearly an hour before the shouting gave way to silence, both of them brooding in separate corners.
Then Draco muttered, “Must be nice. Teachers love you. You get top marks, perfect Prefect badge… everyone calls you brilliant.”
Hermione blinked. “Oh, please. You’re rich and a pureblood; you never have to prove yourself. You could fail every class and still get a Ministry job through nepotism alone!”
They stared at each other.
“You’ve got it easy,” they said at the same time.
Neither of them noticed the way the air shimmered faintly around them.
The door reappeared all of a sudden, and they both breathed a sigh of relief to escape.
Hermione fled. Draco swaggered off.
Waking Up Wrong
The next morning, Hermione blinked her eyes open to find… heavy curtains. Slytherin-green curtains. A chill that didn’t belong in the cozy Gryffindor Tower, and a longer, heavier body. One very much not hers.
She screamed, but it wasn’t her voice.
Draco woke to a neat dorm room smelling faintly of lavender, surrounded by red-laced curtains and… oh no. Something very wrong was happening beneath the covers.
They both ran, separately, to the nearest bathrooms. And screamed again into the mirrors.
“AHHH!” Both Hermione and Draco screamed in each other’s voices.
They avoided their dormmates as best they could (Lavender made a comment about “Crazy Hermione” as if the yelling straight out of bed was not much of a surprise), grabbing whatever uniform clothes they found close by the bed they woke up in.
They also avoided anyone in their mixed-up respective common rooms and started running to the opposite room.
Thankfully, it was still way earlier than breakfast. They met in between the tower and the dungeons, in the corridor by Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, both looking very much like a panic attack in progress.
“You’re in my body,” Hermione whispered in his deeper tone.
“You’re in mine,” Draco snapped in the shrillest of her tones. “This is a nightmare!”
“We need to get back into the Room of Requirement. It’s got to fix this.”
In the Room of Requirement, again, summoned in a panic, they glared at each other.
Draco, in Hermione’s body, folded her arms and tapped a dainty foot. “Okay, Granger, what sort of mad girly hex did you throw on us?”
“I didn’t do anything! You were the one stomping about complaining how you wanted my life!” she hissed, adjusting the tight collar on Draco’s uniform, which felt all wrong and smelled faintly of cedar and arrogance.
They tried to reverse it. Willed it, repeated their angry insults word-for-word. Nothing worked. The room hadn’t even removed the door this time.
“I highly doubt anyone would believe I’m actually me inside this ridiculous boy body…” Hermione huffed, trying to think through ways to avoid embarrassment.
“Yep, they’ll hex you as soon as look at ya! Well, I suppose I have to go pretend to be you,” Draco said with exaggerated misery. “Answer questions, take notes, scowl at boys who look at me, and be a total uptight prude.”
“You’ll ruin my reputation! OR worse, my academic standing!” Hermione yelled.
“Oh, relax. I’ll even brush your stupid bushy hair.” Draco sneered with her facial features.
“Urg, this is so awkward, seeing myself through you.” She raised Draco’s long arms in exaggeration.
“Make sure you swap those wingtips for the oxfords or loafers before our first class, Granger. We aren’t going to a ball!”
Draco’s small Hermione-hands went to straighten the Slytherin tie against Hermione-Draco’s chest, and picked off an imaginary piece of lint, admiring himself from her shorter stature.
Hermione frowned with Draco’s mouth, disgusted seeing her own face with such a blatant seductive quality on it.
The Perks of Being a Girl
To Hermione’s horror, Draco adapted quickly.
Too quickly.
He started answering questions in class and casually flaunting his intelligence as her’s in her body. He corrected Snape on a potion ingredient and received an actual nod of approval.
Hermione was shocked, having never earned a nod before and had always chalked it up to Snape’s Slytherin bias. She detested being proven wrong.
She was also not enjoying being in Draco’s form as much as she may have initially thought when reveling in his height (reaching the upper cabinets in the Potions storage was an absolute pleasure) and long strides.
Going to the men’s loo was abhorrent and dirty. She tried to quell all glimpses of his “member” by pushing it back with some tissue and sitting whilst using the toilet; a development that earned a few too many “going for another shite, Malfoy?” jokes from his fellow Slytherins standing to piss with yet more weiners she didn’t want to see.
His body felt foreign in every way. Sharp elbows, longer fingers, and this lingering scent of broom polish and cedarwood she could just not escape.
Draco, alternatively, was having a grand ol’ time from her perspective. Though he discovered bras were a puzzle to put on (being much more used to taking them off, wink wink), skirts were breezy, and his handwriting with her smaller hands was immaculate.
He flirted with his housemate, Blaise Zabini, in Transfiguration, just to test the waters.
“I’m hot,” he whispered to Hermione later, smirking. “I mean, you’re hot. I guess,” He laughed in her voice, “This is very confusing for me.”
Hermione, stuck and not enjoying his body, glowered. “If you so much as wink at Pansy, I will hex you.”
“I’m more into the boys' attention these days,” he joked, rotating her hips in a repulsive way, “but you should definitely avoid her. Lately, she’s been angry with me. Wouldn’t want you catching a hex to my handsome face!”
Draco lightly slapped his own jaw and took a moment to think about some girl-on-girl action, leaving Hermione in his body to sulk.
Another Terrible Day
Draco, in Hermione’s body, strutted into class like a supermodel on a catwalk, flicking his curls (that have never looked better, Hermione needed to ask what he had done) and fluttering his lashes.
“Malfoy, what are you doing?” Hermione hissed from his body in the back of Charms class.
“Blending in,” Draco purred. “Is this how you walk around with these… hips?” He leaned on the desk and tilted his head at Ernie Macmillan. “Ernie, darling, what is the incantation for Aguamenti?”
Hermione scoffed it was a stupid question because the incantation was literally “Aguamenti,” but Ernie blushed so hard he almost drowned in his own nosebleed.
“Stop flirting,” Hermione barked.
“I’m experimenting, Granger!” He whisper yelled back at his body, “Gender is a construct, and I am the architect!”
By midweek, Draco was getting too comfortable flitting around in Hermione’s body. He’d discovered lip gloss was much different than balm, the allure of twirling her soft curls around his fingers when bored, and the unholy high of raising his hand with the confidence of someone always right.
Draco was also pleased, for the most part, that Hermione was keeping her head down in his body. She seemed to be really honing in on his surly, unapproachable, pureblood, rich, snotty attitude.
He was on his way to the library, where else, when he wanted to avoid her common room and “friends” as much as possible, when Ron Weasley caught up to him.
“Hey, Hermione!”
Draco rolled his— her —eyes. “Oh joy.”
Ron trotted beside him, cheeks pink. “You look nice today.”
Draco gave him a blank stare.
“…Like—like you always do,” Ron stammered. “Anyway, er, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go to the Three Broomsticks this weekend. You know. Like a—like for a friendly butterbeer?”
Draco blinked, trying to understand. Was Weasley trying to flirt? With me? In this body?
He gave Ron a once-over. Freckles. That horribly choppy orange hair. Nervous hands, that were probably sweaty too. Wrinkled robes. Ugh.
“Tempting,” Draco said dryly, turning to walk away. “But I’ll pass.”
Ron deflated slightly. “Okay. Uh… well, maybe you could still help me with Snape’s essay? It’s due tomorrow and I haven’t even started, and you’re, you know… smart.”
Draco stopped walking.
He squared Hermione’s tiny, spine-of-steel shoulders, crossed his arms, and looked up at the lunk, who was much taller than him from her body, dead in the eye.
“Let me get this straight,” he said coolly. “You want to date me, OR want me to do your homework?”
Ron blinked, caught off guard. “What? No! I mean… I thought maybe… both?”
Draco narrowed his eyes. “Bugger off, Weasley. Hermione Granger isn’t your unpaid tutor-slash-backup date. Maybe try using your own bloody brain for once.”
Ron’s jaw dropped. “What’s gotten into you lately?”
Draco leaned in, eyes glinting. “Perspective.”
And with a dramatic flip of Hermione’s curls, Draco sauntered off, feeling weirdly victorious and a little proud.
Boys are Slime
“What’s a pretty thing like you doing all alone lately?” McLaggen drawled, backing Draco-Hermione into a corner outside the library, pushing her/his hands behind her back aggressively.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you avoiding Potter and Weasley.” McLaggen’s hot breath ghosted over his/her neck, and it made Draco shiver with disgust.
Well, this isn’t ideal, Draco thought, unable to break her thin wrists out of McLaggen’s grasp to get her wand.
“Oh hell no,” Hermione muttered in Draco's body and voice. Walking into the area, witnessing this affront on her body, lifting his wand, which she learned answered to her just as well as her own had. “ Incarcerous! ”
Ropes shot from his hawthorne wand, tangling McLaggen up like a Christmas ham.
“Thanks,” he gasped as Hermione-Draco yanked him away from the offending McLaggen and into a broom closet nearby, not wanting to get in trouble for hexing that creep. Hermione noticed that as a boy, she was frequently accused of being the aggressor in situations she wasn't even involved in... or maybe it was the fact she was Malfoy...
They stared at each other, breathing heavily from the tension they had just escaped. Then he laughed, which came out as Hermione’s tinkering frustrated laugh.
“You okay?” She leaned his taller neck down at herself, knowing full well that McLaggen had been acting more and more like a perverted pig, to her especially, ever since the Yule Ball last year.
“I mostly hate this,” he groaned, motioning between their swapped bodies. “I thought being you would mean I’d get praised for existing. But it’s like everyone either wants to get up my skirt, copy my homework, or question my choices. I feel like I’m under a microscope constantly.”
Hermione nodded at his assessment.
“Welcome to being a girl.” She commiserated, “Still… I hope we can figure out how to switch back soon. Although I wouldn’t mind you having to brave my period... which should start next week.” Her mischievous smirk earned her a shiver as Draco pulled a disgusted face.
They sat in silence for a beat. Draco, severely hoping he won’t have to deal with her time of the month, looked up at her, vulnerable, coming to grips with his lacking personality traits.
“I've been awful to you for years.”
She shrugged, fiddling with his robe. “I kind of figured it wasn’t really about me…”
Draco bit his soft, Hermione lips, agreeing with what she was implying.
“By the way… Lucius sent a howler to the dorm last night…” Hermione’s male face turned away, embarrassed for his sake. Draco huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Oh yeah? What was it this time? Charms or Transfiguration?”
“Both actually… I mean, I knew he was a total ass, but I never thought he’d take my good grades out on you. Honestly, I thought you were just coasting by with your family's inherited knowledge, coming in second place to me without having to study at all.”
“Yah, well, the powerful 'pureblood is better' rhetoric is just that, complete and utter bullshit. Father also doesn’t want people to think less of us by hiring tutors, although we certainly have the money for them, and they would want the prestige of working for the Malfoy name. Take the Weasel, for example, he’s Sacred Twenty-Eight too, but dumb as a box of rocks. I have to work hard for a place in this world, Granger, just in different aspects than you.”
Hermione frowned at his example using Ron, but she couldn’t fault the logic that he wasn't just given everything, and now she knows the biases people have towards him firsthand.
He paused, assessing her agreement with him, then smirked with her mouth. “Though, I admit having a pair a tits certainly makes manipulating people so much easier.”
Hermione rolled Draco’s eyes as he puffed her chest out with a little shimmy.
“Yeah, sure… they’re a relatively new asset. I guess I haven’t really explored my puberty as much as you have for me.” Her face sneered, and Draco grinned.
“You do have to show me what you’ve been doing to make my hair look this good, though.” Hermione-Draco’s hand touched her curls softly, enjoying how sleek and bouncy they were since he’s been in charge.
“No problem, Granger, just some quick charms.” He smiled, making a move to the door, opening it for them both, “You, however, need to step it up! What was that yesterday, being cordial to Pothead?!”
“Oh, come off it! Did you see the look on Harry’s face when I picked up his quill WITHOUT a disparaging remark?! That alone was well worth it for me!” She giggled, which came out more of a chuckle with his deeper voice.
Draco smirked in her body and unassumingly walked her back to the Slytherin dorms like the gentleman he was raised to be.
A Kiss in the Mirror
They tried again, a few moments each day, to try and switch back in the Room of Requirement, but slowly the days were passing, and nothing was working.
The more time they spent together, in the room, working on switching back unsuccessfully, they mostly just did homework together, and the more their sniping eased into banter.
Each of them was having their own opposite experiences in class with their classmates each day, and it was feeling surprisingly normal now and not as privileged as they used to think about the other.
Hermione noticed how Draco’s posture in her body has changed. How he brushed her/his hair out of his face while studying. How he stared too long at himself in mirrors (and Hermione shuddered to think what he had probably done with her body in private), but he genuinely seemed amazed by the way her mind worked and the life she led.
Hermione severely missed how her body was used to being hunched over books, how her eyes didn’t get tired as fast as his did.
Draco had actually told her where he hid his reading glasses in the nightstand in his dormitory, even though his father didn't approve of their use in public, thinking it was another weakness.
What a god awful man, she thought yet again about Lucius, but since then, she’s been wearing them more frequently, and they’ve been abundantly helpful in keeping up with her usual reading schedule.
Although she had noticed more than a few girls giving her increasingly sultry looks when seeing him/her in them. She was pretty sure someone spiked her morning tea with a love potion yesterday, but she didn't risk taking a sip to find out… probably not a good idea for Draco’s ever-expanding ego to tell him he looks great in glasses.
She also kind of hated the way people stepped aside for her now. At first, it felt powerful, the unspoken deference they gave Malfoy’s tall frame. Power, she realized, wasn’t just magical—it was physical, and decidedly male, and it felt wholly unfair, a few days into this awful experience.
Plus, it seemed like Malfoy really didn't have ANY friends, which was initially fantastic, Hermione didn't want to have to pretend to be a purist chauvinist. The Slytherins mostly just avoided him, quietly gave him their chairs without her asking, or shared barbs about people from any other house, and it was starting to feel pretty lonely.
And Draco began to understand that Hermione’s brilliance came at a cost, with pressure, expectation, and isolation.
One night, sneaking back from a failed reversal attempt, they ended up having to avoid Filch and Mrs. Norris, and they were now alone near the Astronomy Tower Steps. The moonlight through the stained glass painted soft, colorful shadows on Draco’s—Hermione’s—face.
“You don’t look half bad with my face,” Hermione murmured.
“Yeah?” Draco stepped closer, eyes searching hers/his own. “You look… bloody tragic in mine. ” He smirked, and pulled the glasses off her/his face, “But it’s kind of cute.”
They stared at each other, awkward in their swapped, all too-familiar bodies.
Then Draco leaned up and Hermione leaned down, and he kissed her mouth on his body.
It was strange. Warm. soft and Wrong in all the right ways.
She broke away, and they rested their foreheads together, lightly panting into each other's mouths.
“Some kind of… self-love attraction, I guess.” She stuttered in Draco’s tone, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of themselves.
Draco-Hermione’s lips found his own on Hermione-Draco’s face again with a quick, taunting kiss.
“I’ve always loved myself a lot,” he chuckled, Hermione’s girlish giggle, and they both shook their heads at the irony and smiled at the nonsense of it all.
Back Again
The next morning, they woke up back in their own bodies.
Hermione flailed her short legs beneath the Gryffindor duvet. “I’m ME again!”
Draco stared down at his own pale hands and smoothed down his own flat chest in relief. “Merlin, thank Salazar.”
They met in the hallway, by Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom again, just like the first day, with awkward grins on their faces. Clearly, each much happier and at home being back in their own bodies.
“So…” Draco began.
“We’ll never speak of that kiss again,” Hermione said quickly.
He nodded. “Definitely not.”
A beat.
“I wouldn’t mind continuing our studies together, though…” She wondered when Lucius would figure out his only heir was slumming it studying with a mudblood and what consequences Draco might face.
“Yeah… that’d be nice…” Draco scratched the back of his long neck. Pothead and Weasel will probably give her shit for the time she’ll be spending with him, because they had started questioning it even while he was still in her body.
Knowing they were already both in for some retaliation because of their new friendship, he made his proposal tentatively.
“Maybe we should kiss... As us, our real selves, this one time… just to, uh, see how it goes?” he said quietly.
Hermione tilted her head, and a slow smile graced her pretty features, “Yes… for purely academic experimentation's sake.”
Draco leaned down, Hermione tilted her chin up, and their lips caught each other. A perfect fit.
Warm and soft and not at all as weird as the previous out-of-body kiss.
Her bottom lip was between his, and she sighed with pleasure. Draco nipped that lip and deepened the kiss with his tongue against hers and moaned a bit himself.
Their foreheads rested against one another now, so much like before, but much better at their respective heights.
“I wouldn’t mind doing more of that either.”
And it was Draco’s turn to smile slowly at her and repeat what he said earlier, “Yeah, that’d be nice.”
Before kissing her again.
Epilogue
They never figured out exactly how the switch happened. Some strange mix of frustration, the Room’s enchantment, and pent-up teenage hormones, probably.
But what they did figure out—over long afternoons in the library and quiet walks through castle corridors—was that they were better together.
Hermione brought logic, conviction, and an unshakable sense of purpose. Draco brought cleverness, restraint, and just enough snark to keep her from burning herself out. She reminded him he didn’t have to be his father’s son. He reminded her that she didn’t always have to be right to be worthy.
She made him believe he could be brave. He made her laugh when she most needed it.
Draco started staying later and later in the library. Not just for homework, though his marks continued to climb. He liked the quiet, the way the lamplight made the mahogany shelves glow, and the way Hermione's eyes lit up when she found something new to explain. He even brought his reading glasses now without prompting, despite the teasing he'd endured from his dorm mates in years past and his father's thoughts on the matter.
Hermione loved those glasses. She never said so aloud, but the way she looked at him when he pushed them up his nose, those sharp grey eyes peeking over the rim, made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and he knew it from his swapped experience with her.
If Lucius knew of his son’s newfound “friendship” with this particular Muggle-born witch, he thankfully didn’t voice it, and at least for now, he was reveling in the praise over Draco's rising grades.
She started borrowing his jumpers. He started carrying extra ink pots and quills just for her. They practiced together in the secret DA meetings, backs pressed close, wands raised in unison to learn dueling strategies. He even helped her fine-tune a hex that made McLaggen keep ten feet of distance at all times.
Her friends noticed the shift before either of them put a name to it. Ron grumbled. Harry asked cautious questions. Ginny gave Hermione a look that said Finally.
Draco’s housemates weren’t as understanding. So he stopped caring what they thought. They weren't really his friends anyway, just sycophants and money-hungry sheep.
Sometimes Hermione would find little notes tucked between the pages of her textbooks in the common room: charmingly smug doodles of himself in her shoes, literally, that gave her the giggles or elegant scribbles of spells he'd researched for her. In return, she’d slip chocolate frogs and candy apple lollies into his bag during stressful exam weeks.
And when the time came to stand against Voldemort—well, Hermione had her wand.
And Draco had her back.