“Put me down this instant, Weasley, you utter utter prat,” Draco snapped. “I am in terrible danger!”
Weasley’s oversized and still-ugly face crumpled into an expression that… somehow reminded Draco of that savage Hagrid, the bastard who has misread the dictionary definition of “set wild beasts upon” for “teach.”
Oh no, he thought… that was how the madman looked at his precious Blast-Ended Skrewts.
“Isn’t it adorable?” Weasley cooed.
“Weasley, let go of me right now, I have no time to deal with your apparent bestiality!”
He waved Draco in the air, making Draco feel distinctly seasick. Granger’s curls and Potter’s messy black hair wobbled alarmingly into vision.
“Put me down!” Draco howled. “I don’t want to play rat Quidditch. I will visit the dreaded Malfoy vengeance upon you, Weasley! Tremble in your miserable secondhand robes, because you are going doooo—oooh, I’m going to be sick…”
Weasley did not seem deterred by these dire threats.
Potter’s tones made Draco feel even more like vomiting.
“It’s a—nice rat, yeah, Ron, but I think it wants to get down. It’s squirming. It could be wild.”
“It could be diseased,” added Granger.
“Same to you, Granger,” Draco snapped.
“No, it likes me,” Ron said defensively, hugging Draco to his chest. “It hasn’t tried to bite me.”
“You think I want to die of poisoning? Put me down, you delusional psycho!”
The three Gryffindors stood around, looking blissfully unaware of Draco’s enraged howls.
“I think you should put it down before we go to Care of Magical Creatures,” Granger advised in her bossy tones.
“Anyway, remember what happened with your last rat,” Potter said in a lower voice.
Ron was still cradling Draco.
“Harry, don’t be paranoid. It’s just a little rat. It’s not even quite full-grown. Did you ever see anything as cute and harmless in your life?”
“I’ll get you for that, Weasley!” Draco shouted.
“So… what?” Harry asked. “You’re going to keep it?”
“I’ll show it to Crookshanks first,” Ron said defensively.
“Is that your name for your fat mother, Weasley?”
Ron petted Draco, who began to seriously consider the biting option.
Granger was looking anxious.
“We’re going to be late… Let’s discuss this after class…”
And so Draco found himself tumbling around in that damned Weasley’s hands as the Three Musketeers who had plagued his life for six years ran to that insane Hagrid’s class.
Where there were mad animals.
Mad, ferocious animals.
Jaws able to crunch up a rat in one bite.
Damn you, Murphy!
“I mus’ say, it’s a fine specimen o’a rat,” Hagrid boomed, holding Draco up to his horrid bushy face.
“I’ve had just about enough come-ons for today, you filthy half-giant,” sniffed Draco in his most Malfoy manner. “Unhand me.”
“I’ll jus’ check if it’s a boy ‘r a girl,” Hagrid continued.
“Excuse me?! Excuse me, you will not! Oy! No! Stop that! Isn’t it clear that I am all man? Hey, hey, those are very special places…”
“A li’l boy,” Hagrid announced, handing him back to Weasley.
“What exactly do you mean by little?” Draco demanded, outraged.
“Thanks, Hagrid,” Weasley grinned.
“Thanks?! Oh, yes, insult, sexual abuse—”
“I want to keep him,” Weasley continued.
“Yeah? Yeah, well you and that oaf can keep your desires to yourself!”
“Don’ see any problem wi’ tha’. Looks quite healthy. An’ clean.”
“I bathe a hell of a lot more than either of you!”
Weasley’s face was glowing like his hair.
“He does, doesn’t he? And I think he likes me. What do you think I should call him?”
“Well… come t’think of it… He does remind me of someone,” said Hagrid. “Tha’ li’l face…”
“Draco,” Draco prayed. “Draco Malfoy! Come on, your most stunning student! He reminds you of Malfoy!”
“Tha’ sweet three-headed dog I used to have,” Hagrid concluded.
“YOU IMBECILE!”
“You genius, Hagrid!” Weasley looked at Draco with that unsettlingly boneheaded air again. “You know, he does look like a Fluffy…”
“FLUFFY?!”
Oh, that just puts the tin lid on everything, that does.
“All ri’, class!” Hagrid shouted. “Now we’re goin’ to examine those cute Saber-Toothed Butterflies again—you know, the ones tha’ grow four feet across…”
To a collective groan, Hagrid turned to Weasley.
“Mebbe ye should take your li’l pet outside an’ play wi’ him. Don’ wan’ him gettin’ eaten.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘play’?” snapped Draco, who was really getting grouchy, as he was carried off.
Weasley foiled every one of Draco’s cunning plans to escape by the simple expedient of being six foot four with hands which were like walls for a rat.
Then he carried him back to Gryffindor tower. He had a free class and he seemed eager to show off his new pet.
Draco was becoming convinced he had died and gone to hell.
On the other hand, he was sure hell would be filled with more likable people than Gryffindors.
“He’s the most adorable rat I’ve ever seen,” cooed Lavender Brown.
“I’m real sorry your Irish boyfriend doesn’t satisfy you, Brown, but get your nasty Gryffindor hands off me this instant.”
“Look at him,” purred Parvati Patil. “I bet he can understand every word we say, can’t you, diddums?”
“The name is Malfoy!”
Weasley’s face was bright with pride. He kept grabbing Draco back from the girls to give him an extra pat.
“He has such beautiful fur,” continued Lavender. “So unusual—it’s almost white blond.”
“Remind you of someone’s hair?” shouted Draco. “Idiots! Prats! Damned damned Gryffindors!”
“We’ve already started to bond,” Ron told them proudly.
“Bond! You kidnapped me!”
“What are you doing?” shrieked Lavender.
For a moment, Draco thought that somebody had heard him at last.
Then he realised that Potter and Granger had come into the room. Granger was carrying a cat.
If Draco’s fur had not already been white, it would have become so.
Oh my God, Draco thought. I’m going to die.
But I’m too young and devastatingly attractive to die!
Weasley’s grip on him grew tighter.
“Just to make sure, Ron,” said the Boy Who Fed Fellow Students to Felines.
And, with Draco squirming frantically all the time, Weasley held him up to Crookshanks’ face.
“I’ll kill you, Weasley!” Draco bellowed. “I’ll report you to the MSPCA! I’ll tell my father! I’ll bite you really, really hard, just you wait and see!”
It wasn’t fair. He liked cats. He had even fed this one and patted it a few times. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d known it was Granger’s.
He wouldn’t have done it if he’d known it was going to eat him!
The cat squinted at him.
“Are there no animals who are really animals in this place?” he asked.
Draco gasped. “You know who I am?”
“Of course. You’re that nice boy with the fish heads, Draco Malfoy, the one who annoys my mistress. You’re a bit more rat-shaped than usual.”
“Can you help me?”
Oh, that’s nice. A true touch of Malfoy dignity, begging household pets for help.
“How can I? I’m a cat. I’ll do my best, as I did for Sirius, but if you don’t mind—I was in the middle of romancing Mrs Norris. Now there’s a foxy kitty—”
Crookshanks leaped out of Granger’s arms and trotted away.
Sirius? Draco thought. Sirius Black? The criminal?
Of course! He turned me into a rat, and now he’s come to kill Potter!
It’s an ill wind…
“You see?” Weasley said triumphantly. “He’s just a sweet, innocent little rat.”
“Oh, please bugger off.”
Granger leaned forward and her hair almost smothered Draco.
“Watch it!”
It smelled quite nice… Shame her shampoo didn’t straighten her hair as well.
“You’re cutting off my air supply, imbecilic Mudblood.”
She smiled. She didn’t have a bad smile.
“He is terribly cute,” she said.
“Oh no, not another one. Are none of you Gryffindors getting any—oh, wait. Stupid question.”
Granger began to stroke him.
“Madam, keep your hands to yourself. I must insist—hey! With the fur, not against it!”
Granger continued to stroke him. At least her hands were gentler than Lavender’s.
She came and sat beside Weasley. Potter joined them, sitting on a chair nearby. Draco was extremely thankful that Potter made no attempt to touch him.
“Hey, can I hold Fluffy?” Granger requested.
Weasley beamed with pride. “I knew you’d take to him. Of course, you take to anything that’s cute, Hermione,” he teased.
“For the fifteen millionth time, I do not!” said Granger.
“For the fifteen millionth time,” said Weasley, and coughed out the name “Lockhart!”
“Oh no, Granger,” said Draco. “Not old Loveheart. Not you, too. I thought you were supposed to be intelligent!”
“I was twelve!” Granger said indignantly. “I don’t still just go for looks. Otherwise, wouldn’t I be camped outside the Slytherin common room with a placard saying ‘Draco Malfoy, I luuurve you’!”
She laughed casually. Both the Gryffindor boys had frozen in horror.
“What?” chorused Weasley, Potter and Draco in shocked unison.
Of course, nobody heard Draco.
Granger looked mildly amused.
“Oh come on, guys. I don’t fancy the ferret, if that’s what you’re looking Confunded about.”
“Fancy…” Weasley seemed to be rendered speechless by sheer disgust.
“Weasley. It’s not that outlandish a concept, and besides you have me on your lap.”
“Hermione, I think that gargling noise Ron is making means that you just indicated Malfoy could be considered in any way attractive.” Potter added hastily, “I’m sure you didn’t mean it.”
“I am in every way attractive!”
“Ron, Harry. His personality is more corrosive than Bubotuber pus. He’s a nasty, prejudiced scumbag. I’d like to see him fry. But objectively, you have to admit he’s attractive.”
“Damn straight! Oh, and hey about all that other stuff.”
Everyone was still utterly deaf to Draco.
“You can’t be serious, Hermione,” Potter was saying weakly.
The gurgling that came from Ron sounded a little like ‘foul, rat face.’
“Okay, that’s—really pretty accurate,” Draco had to admit.
Granger sighed. “Parvati! Lavendar!”
The two girls came over from the other side of the common room, and immediately began to fuss over Draco again.
“Draco Malfoy,” said Granger.
Lavendar pretended to swoon. “Where?”
“Stop rumpling my ears, Weasley. This is getting interesting.”
“What do you think of him? In a physical sense.”
Lavender and Parvati clearly had not been thinking of any other sense.
“He’s gorgeous,” Parvati sighed. “I mean, ever since fifth year—not that he was bad before then, but once he grew up a little…”
“Got those muscles,” added Lavender. She shot Potter a look that suggested Finnigan had competition. “All Seekers have that sexy lean-yet-muscled thing going on.”
Potter went red.
“Go back to me,” urged Draco.
Parvati clearly needed no encouragement.
“Those silvery, piercing grey eyes…”
“That preschool-blond hair…” Lavender chimed in.
“Those cheekbones,” said Parvati.
“That face,” added Lavender.
“That body.”
“I heard he had Veela blood in him.”
“I bet he does have Veela blood in him!”
“Careful, now. It’s nice to know I have a fan club, but you are drooling an awful lot and I am a very little rat.”
“He got sixty-three singing Valentines last year. I hope he liked mine.”
“I keep watching when Quidditch matches are on,” Parvati grieved, “but so far he’s always been wearing trousers under his robes. So many from the wizarding families don’t.”
“Everyone seems to these days,” Lavender said.
Potter went puce.
Draco swore to God that if he ever got out of here, he was giving everyone on his team an extremely urgent warning.
“I saw him without his shirt on once—” Parvati confided girlishly.
“WHAT?” yelped Draco and Weasley together in pain.
Granger looked horrified. “Thank you, that’s quite enough. No need to overshare…”
“But he’s an evil Slytherin,” Parvati said hastily. “Ugh, Slytherins.”
“Eeeew, Slytherins,” Lavender agreed quickly. “Down with the Slytherins. Uh—on an unrelated topic, Parvati, could I see you over there for a minute?”
Lavender and Parvati sped off, giggling.
“Well, that was… interesting,” said Draco.
“Well, that was… disgusting,” said Potter.
“You see what I mean?” Granger asked. “Though I wouldn’t have put it like that. He’s a horrible person, and no girl who respected herself would have anything to do with him. But the fact remains that he’s much more handsome than is fair—and he knows it, too.”
“Listen, I have ready access to several mirrors. How could I miss it?”
Draco made a mental note to look into the Gryffindors. He had dated several Ravenclaws, but had kept well away from Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors on general principles. But if the girls were gagging for it…
Then he remembered he was a rat, and his only close personal relationship was likely to be with a cheese rind.
Oh, terrific.
Draco sidled out of Weasley’s hands, trying not to attract attention, heading for the inkpot and paper on the little table by their sofa.
Weasley seemed to be in shock and didn’t notice.
Draco dipped one paw in the ink and began to write.
I AM
Weasley, not looking, dragged Draco back onto his lap.
“I don’t care what you say,” he said. “Malfoy is vile slime and looks it. Don’t you agree, Fluffy, you adorable thing?”
“Go kiss a Flobberworm,” snapped Draco. “Let go of me! I want to—whoa! What are you doing, Weasley? No touching of personal places!”
My life is destroyed, Draco thought. I’m a rat, the Gryffindors fancy me, there’s no way out of this mess I can see and Ronald Weasley appears to be trying to tickle my stomach.
I have hit rock bottom.
“Professor Flitwick’s out,” Weasley told them all. “I’m going upstairs to change into my pyjamas. I fancy an early night. Come on, Fluffy.”
While you’re getting changed?!
Now, Draco thought with deep bitterness, rock bottom has just hit me.
There was absolutely no reason Draco could see for Weasley wanting to take his rat with him to Quidditch practise.
Unless, of course, the sadistic Gryffindor wished to scar him for life.
Draco, as the captain, got his own Slytherin changing room. And his own room. And a certain amount of privacy, and a blissful freedom from nasty, accidental looks at Crabbe and Goyle in their distinctly unwashed glory.
And now…
Gryffindors. Naked Gryffindors.
Not even the female kind.
Not that he would have looked if they were.
Much.
“Oh, honestly, Weasley! Little pink elephants?”
Draco turned around with dignity and then fell off his bench with… less dignity.
“Potter! Oh, good going! Now I’m blind! Blind and traumatised. Not even my father will be able to afford the therapy bills for this!”
Spin around.
Finnigan.
Thomas.
If Longbottom had been on the Quidditch team too, Draco would have committed suicide.
“In the name of God, you Gryffindors! All pink elephants?”
“Could you take care of Fluffy while I’m practising?” inquired Weasley pitifully of Granger.
Draco was delighted to see Granger looking at the redhead as if he were half-witted.
“I wanted to take him up on the broom,” Weasley pouted, “but Harry said he might fall off…”
“I’m touched by Potter’s concern.”
“But I know he will miss his Daddy, won’t you, Fluff?”
“You are losing your mind,” Draco informed him frigidly. “And you are, most certainly, not my father. He’s much wealthi—ugh—oh my god, Weasley, what are you doing?”
Weasley was looking at him in that disgusting besotted way again, and inching Draco up to his face.
“Wait. No. We can work this out some other way. I’ll give you any amount of money you want. No. Stop. Help! Sexual abuse! Rape!”
Granger reached up and grabbed Draco.
“Ron, don’t even think about giving your rat a goodbye kiss. It probably has fleas.”
“How dare you, you filthy plebeian! I wash every day! I am sparkling clean and kissable.”
Draco reconsidered what he had just said.
“He might give me fleas, though.”
Is this how my life is going to be? he thought. Even shorter than Potter, covered in fur, living in Gryffindor tower and fighting off Weasley’s advances?
No, it was too horrible. It couldn’t be.
In the grip of desperation, he trotted over to Granger’s eternal schoolbag and the ink and parchment that lay beside her.
He tipped over the bottle—no time for neatness, this was life or death!—and dipped his paw into the ensuing flood. He began to write.
I AM D
“Ron!” said Granger. “Ron, your rat’s doing something weird!”
Oh no, here was Weasley back again like a bad penny—which was probably more than his family had in Gringott’s.
A flash of diabolical red, and Weasley had Draco in his grip once more.
“Do you know what this means?” bellowed Weasley, in a state of high excitement. “My rat’s…”
“Draco Malfoy!” Draco shouted back. “Malfoy! Malfoy! Malfoy!”
“Magic!” said Ronald, glowing. “Isn’t that cool?”
Draco wriggled away, and began to scribble frantically once more.
YOU REDHAIRED SOD, I AM
“Hey, everybody!” crowed Weasley. “I have a magic rat!”
“There’s a switch,” said Potter, who was leaning against Granger’s seat looking at Draco with suspicion.
Draco felt comforted by this scrap of normality in a life gone mad.
The world may become flat and the seas may turn to blood, but Potter and I will always hate each other.
“Hey,” he snapped, “at least you’re not tiny and pathetic and forced to live in Gryffindor and covered in hair and… oh, wait, hang on…”
At least Draco didn’t have a scar.
The news got out pretty fast that Ronald Weasley had a magic rat.
That is to say, they told Parvati, and suddenly everyone knew.
And suddenly the corridors was packed with people pushing Harry Potter aside to see Ron Weasley and the Amazing Fluffy.
“Hands off, Hufflepuffs,” Draco snapped. “No manhandling. You idiot, Weasley, they’re going to drop me! I’m telling you, if they get this excited over a rat, their lives must be pathetically empty… wait, we’re talking about Hufflepuffs here. Never mind.”
Weasley grinned with moronic pride every time someone asked to hold Draco, and then watched them like a neurotic hawk while they did so. He even managed to stop Longbottom dropping Draco, which led Draco to believe Weasley must be far more magically talented than he had ever given him credit for.
This led to Weasley being shockingly late for class all the time, which was at least good for a laugh.
He was racing towards Herbology when he slammed into a wall.
Wait, no, Draco thought. My mistake.
It was Crabbe and Goyle.
The Slytherins had arrived to show a spot of interest in the magic rat too.
Draco wondered desperately if this interest might be harmless, and then was insulted at the thought that people had been training for years could ever, in any circumstances, be harmless.
“Oh, Weasley,” piped Goyle in a falsetto. “Can we play with the rat?”
Goyle had twice Crabbe’s braincells. Well, two was twice one, after all.
Crabbe merely grunted.
Wonderful, Draco thought. I’m going to be crushed to death by my own minions. Bitter, bitter irony!
“No,” said Weasley.
Was he crazy? All right, he was tall, and not that badly built, but Crabbe and Goyle could have picked him up and tossed him like a salad in a sieve.
They were probably going to, as well.
And me, Draco realised, touched with cold fear.
Which exploded into panic as Crabbe’s fist exploded into Weasley’s face.
“No!” Draco shouted. “Beating people up is the sort of thing that gets you caught and then gets you expelled, idiots! Have I taught you nothing! Besides, it’s…”
Wrong…
“Me!”
I did not just have that other thought.
Weasley fell down and Draco streaked out from his hands, between Crabbe and Goyle’s feet, towards…
Another pair of feet, hiding around the corner.
I know those feet! Those were the feet in the bathroom when I changed!
Which means this is…
Oh God, what am I supposed to do? Headbutt him in the toe? Rat gives himself mild concussion running into enemy’s shoe?
Fearsome.
Draco waited until a hand reached out for him, and then he did something he had sworn he would never ever do.
He bit down.
Bleagh, bleagh, tastes of plastic and Muggle artefacts. Oh, for some Magicmouthwash!
Then he ran, ran, ran down the corridors, ran until he felt a hand seize him and lift him up to…
A worried face. A cloud of hair.
“Fluffy?” said Granger.
He could have kissed her.
Except for his current lipless situation.
He opened his mouth to insult her and rail at her about his life, and generally make himself feel better.
“Come and help Ron!”
This extraordinarily selfless speech of Draco’s did absolutely no good, of course, because Hermione had no idea what he was saying.
“Where’s Ron?” she asked wonderingly. “Oh, well. Let’s go find him.”
She looked as if she was considering putting him down.
She had mentioned Ron as soon as he had…
“Yes, put me down,” Draco said urgently. “I know where Ron is.”
She put him down! And she ran after him when he ran, although that was possibly out of fear that she was going to lose Ron’s precious rat, and so she came upon Ron just as Crabbe and Goyle were kicking him unconscious.
“Stop!” shouted Draco, in the ringing Malfoy tones of command.
Crabbe and Goyle hesitated for just a second, as if they aware of something just on the cusp of hearing.
And Granger shouted, “Petrificus Totalus!”
Then she dropped to her knees beside Ron.
“Oh, Ron… what… why… Why didn’t you use magic on them?”
Ron spoke through battered lips. “Oh come on, Herm. When guys start a fight with fists, it’d be pretty sissy to whip out a wand…”
“So what?” Draco said irritably. “He who fights dirty survives, and gets to lie about the battles afterwards.”
It was a Malfoy motto, right after “Loot, Pillage, Burn!” and “In the Name of the Dark Lord Insert-Name-Here!”
“You stupid git,” he added.
“I’ll get Madame Pomfrey,” Granger told him. “Oh, they sure took you to the cleaner’s…”
“They took him behind the cleaner’s and then beat him up with the cleaner’s garbage cans,” Draco corrected her.
Which was when Ron, lying bloody on the ground, said,
“Is Fluffy all right?”
Granger sighed in exasperation. “Yes, Fluffy’s all right. Fluffy led me here.”
Ron’s face split into a grin.
“Isn’t he cool?”
Granger, who had been petting Draco quite often since his dramatic rescue of Ron, volunteered to take care of him while Ron was in the infirmary, since Madam Pomfrey refused to let him stay there. She said rats were unhygienic, to Ron and Draco’s mutual outrage.
“Be careful of him,” Ron said anxiously. “He likes to be cuddled.”
“No I bloody don’t, Weasley.”
“He needs affection.”
“You need a girlfriend.”
Granger promised to be careful with him, and carried him up to the Gryffindor girls’ room, where—surprise, surprise!—she began to do her homework.
Right after switching on a little machine, which piped at Draco,
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Yes, I was introduced to mirrors at an early age…” Draco returned.
“Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time…”
It was … music. Some form of Muggle… music.
Except it was different from music, more, sort of…
Fun.
It had a catchy little tune. Draco wished he could dance a bit, since he was quite a good dancer… unlike the Boy Who Had Two Left Feet.
Well, since Granger wasn’t looking…
Draco got up onto his two back paws and began to do a little cha-cha that was part keeping his balance, part getting down with his funky rat self.
“Yeah I get by with a little help from my friends,
Oh yeah I get high with a little help from my friends.”
He got quite into it.
When he opened his poor unsuspecting rat eyes and found Hermione, Parvati and Lavender all staring at him.
Besottedly.
Oh, bugger.
“Oh, the cutie!” squeaked Lavender. “Make him do it again!”
“Nobody makes a Malfoy do anything, madam,” Draco informed her coldly.
He had his dignity. He may have just been caught wiggling his little furry behind to the sound of Muggle music, but he still had his dignity…
Right?
“Dance for us, Fluffy,” coaxed Parvati.
His father had said the day would come when girls would beg him. He just hadn’t mentioned this whole rat thing.
“I will do no such thing!”
Granger was considering him, a small smile on her face.
“You know,” she said, “he is terribly precious.”
On the other paw, Draco was nothing if not an exhibitionist. And if girls were clustered around him imploring him to shake his sexy booty, well, it would be something to tell his grandchildren.
He got up on his back paws again.
And as the girls squealed in delight (ha! His father had said he seriously doubted this would happen, and look, it was so easy) Draco considered Ron.
Weasley.
Ron.
He’d been thinking of him as Ron ever since he hit the floor, anyway. It had been a damn fool and just-too-Gryffindor-ish thing to do, getting himself beaten up by Crabbe and Goyle, but it had been…
Nice.
Draco was not a big fan of nice, but then Draco rarely had it directed towards him. It wasn’t—entirely a bad feeling.
Besides, he owed the stupid git now. Even if he was poor and had that awful hair and some kind of rodent obsession. He wasn’t that bad a guy.
Once Draco got back to his old self, there would be the devil to pay for Crabbe and Goyle.
Worse still, the Malfoy.
Anyway, Draco thought, perking up, I was wasting far too much time torturing Weasley anyway. I should have fixed my concentration on Potter. With my personal, twenty-four hour attention, he should be in St Mungo’s before New Year’s.
Ahahaha.
You evil genius, Draco, he told himself, and twirled prettily to the sound of “I Believe in Angels.”