**Author's Note: Welcome to my new piece of fanfiction! This will be a companion piece along with an R/L fic coming down the pipe much, much later. This was just a plot bunny that worked its way into my head and refused to go away. Thanks for everyone and everyone who stuck with my last story (or any of my stories) and thanks to sugarbear_1269 and Violet Jersey for betaing my stuff. I highly recommend you read their stuff!! But first… read mine…**
CHAPTER ONE- Shaking Off Dreams
Still got an assignment to finish, blast it all…
She rolled over in her bed, a groan already slipping from her lips as she thought of the day ahead. If school started perhaps an hour or two later, she'd be just fine. Hearing her brother banging around in the next room, she reluctantly let loose of those wonderful, fuzzy moments between sleeping and waking, sitting up sluggishly and running both hands through the coppery tangles of her hair.
She'd had the most wonderful dream the night before, she recalled, complete with castles and magic and adventures...
You're just compensating for the complete dullness of your life, love, she told herself, wiggling her bare toes on the cool hardwood floor.
And as newly minted Muggle Genevieve Wesley started her day, the dream-the memories-of being Ginny Weasley slipped from her mind.
~~~
He'd been out entirely too late with the chums-as always. Not as though it mattered, anyway. Everyone knew who he was, who his father was, and it wasn't likely they'd give him any guff over breaking lousy curfew.
I absolutely ought to skive off classes today, he thought, stifling a yawn as he reached the door to his room. He pulled out a wand and was left standing in front of the ornate door with his wand hand outstretched, fingers empty.
Wand hand? he thought, his cruelly refined features twisting into a sarcastic smirk. Gone a little 'round the bend, mate. Had a few too many. Abracadabra, he thought with a snort.
He let himself into the lavishly furnished bedroom, rolling his eyes at the sound of his father downstairs, already berating one of the servants.
For Draco Malfoy, life was good in some ways-rich, spoiled, and unfailingly superior.
And in this Muggle world, rich, spoiled, and superior were three fantastic adjectives to describe Drake Mallory.
~~~
"Don't you think it's even a little strange?" Hermione's voice was insistent as she dogged Harry's steps down the wide hallway. "No one says a word, and suddenly fourteen percent of the Hogwarts populace is whisked away to be 'house ambassadors'?"
It had given her quite a start to begin her day without Ginny, without Ron. She'd gone half-mad searching the castle high and low for Gin, shouting herself almost hoarse and resorting to attempted location spells which were far beyond even Hermione's advanced capabilities. She'd been trying to vanish a particularly stubborn batch of toadstools her attempts had produced when the students had been called into the Great Hall for the "announcement."
With a "harrumph," Hermione shot a pointed look at the incommunicative Harry. "Well? Don't you?"
Harry made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and let his mind wander to Quidditch. What, exactly, were they going to do about games when half the players were missing? Harry certainly couldn't imagine playing a game against Slytherin without that scowling prat Malfoy to contend with. Admittedly, no matter how much of a git the ferrety Head Boy was, Harry had noticed immediately that his nemesis was gone.
"If they're going to assign representatives, I find it a bit odd I wasn't even considered," Hermione continued, the tiniest note of hauteur creeping into her voice. "After all, the last time Hogwarts sent out students as contacts was in 1902, and they sent two of each house, each with Prefect or Head Student experience, high marks and good relations with-"
Knowing she would go on forever if allowed to, Harry interrupted her, his voice good-natured as he laid a hand on her shoulder. "'Mione, think of it like this, eh? You can have a rest from bickering with Ron." Though there was a bit of a gaping absence with the redhead gone, Harry had to admit. Ron filled the silence rather admirably and rather often.
And he was a hell of a mate.
Hermione stared at Harry owlishly, her mouth snapping shut, and when he walked away, she followed him wordlessly.
They'd just have to learn to interact without the others, she supposed logically, watching the young man who had once been a very uncertain boy.
It shouldn't be too hard.
~~~
"Rob!" Genevieve's voice careened into deafening decibels as she shouted up the stairs. "Honestly, Rob, if you don't get your arse moving, I'm leaving without you and you'll have to make it to school by your bloody self!" Rolling her eyes, she snagged her bookbag off the floor and hooked the strap over her shoulder. "And you'd probably wander off and traipse onto the rails." She was just preparing to count down from five when the brightly-colored note on the outside of the bag caught her attention.
Appointment with Professor Dunmore, 1:32 p.m. The insanely precise reminder, written in her own handwriting, compounded her already mounting miseries of the morning.
Since her father was at work and her mother off marketing, Genevieve let loose every single curse word her brothers-all six of them-had taught her. It was words like that which had gotten her into an appointment with Dunmore in the first place. The nutty, albeit lovable, headmaster was known for his creative punishments, and Gen was more than certain her shouting match with Melissa Bulfinch would warrant at least some quirky castigation.
She vaguely recalled calling the bullying girl a daft bint, among many, many other things.
A shame, she thought, that a person could be punished for telling the truth.
After exhausting the bluer side of her vocabulary, she opened her mouth to yell once more at her brother.
"Don't have a kitten, Gen, I'm right bloody here," Rob said, thundering down the last few stairs with a clamor akin to elephants stampeding. Seeing the dour look on his little sister's face, the 17-year-old impulsively leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Can't be all that bad, eh?" With a lopsided grin, he snagged a single book off the table by the door and whisked out as though he'd been waiting on her.
Muttering one last curse word, Genevieve wondered why she couldn't have had at least one sister.
~~~
Some fool was knocking on his door. They were either very stupid or very brave, he thought as he woke halfway up.
"Bugger right the fuck off!" His voice, though scratchy and sleep-muffled, traveled through the thick door effortlessly, and when he heard the antique hinges squeal in protest as the door was thrown open, he groaned.
This was absolutely, positively not the best way to sleep off of a bender.
It got immeasurably worse when the door-knocking fool-still unidentified-entered the room and jerked back the covers of the bed, leaving Drake completely starkers… and completely enraged.
He sat up, shameless in his nudity, his eyes squeezed shut against the assailing light. Trying to dredge up words, he sorted through his brain in an attempt to conjure up the name of the manor's most recent maid, then decided it didn't matter anyway. "Painfully obvious I'm trying to sleep here," he said plaintively, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.
"Yes," a very male voice commented dryly, drawing the word out. "That much is painfully obvious, oh spawn mine." Definitely not the maid.
The half-grimace of pain that had settled upon awakening onto Drake's fine-boned features hardened into a distasteful sneer, and he reluctantly opened his eyes.
He'd be damned if he'd bother showing any sign of the pain the agonizing shards of overbright light was digging into his brain, or the dryness of his mouth and throat.
"Good morning, oh father mine," he returned mockingly.
"Afternoon, Drake." Lucas Mallory said, his voice tight and disapproving as he strolled around the spacious room, his tailor-cobbled low-heeled boots clicking on the hardwood floor. "It is well into afternoon, which would go a long way toward explaining why, precisely, I had the privilege of a ring from Holforth this morning. It seems the staff wonders why, precisely, my dear son was not present to fulfill his scholarly duties." He turned cold eyes to his son, so pale they were nearly colorless, eyebrows lifted in a false show of guilelessness. "Hm?"
Resigned to the tragic loss of a few more hours' sleep, Drake sat up and snatched the coverlet off the floor where his father had left it. "I thought I'd stay in and spend some quality time with my father," he said snidely, one corner of his mouth lifting in a maddening smirk.
Lucas lifted a hand, serpentine quick, reflexively moving to strike his son. Drake did not flinch, and Lucas covered the movement by smoothing his hand over his carefully combed white-blond hair.
A Mallory did not stoop to striking his family.
Oftentimes, words would do just fine.
"Pity you're an only child; we could have drowned you like an unwanted kitten," Lucas said mildly, enjoying the infinitesimal flash of anger on his son's face.
Drake stood, drawing himself up to his full height and making obvious the few inches of height and breadth he had on his father. "Pity you're nigh to impotent," he said sweetly, his own smoky silver eyes lighting on his father's face. "Else you could have had more than one child."
Lucas's lips trembled with the effort of keeping them sealed shut, and finally his breath left him in a hiss. "Get dressed and go to school. I'm sure even a halfwit such as yourself can manage that."
"I'm sure," Drake repeated as his father left the room.
~~~
She'd had all day to prepare her speech, and she thought she'd put together a very good one. Her arguments were logical, her academic history nearly spotless. When compared with Melissa Bulfinch-who had started it all by shoving Gen in the hall- Genevieve knew she looked like a veritable gem.
Reasonably speaking, Genevieve thought she could weasel her way out of punishment.
She sat in the headmaster's office of Holforth Prep, drumming her fingers restlessly on her horticulture textbook. She'd been a few minutes early, thinking they could start the meeting at 1:30. After all, what sort of cockeyed notion was it to call a meeting at 1:32?
She checked her watch, momentarily lulled by the motion of the second hand, then looked back up with a sigh.
The sigh caught in her throat, half-expelled in a tiny, heart-thumping shriek.
The headmaster was sitting directly in front of her.
"Good heavens!" she gasped, pressing a lightly freckled hand to her chest, feeling her heart beat through the burgundy and hunter green uniform she wore. "Honestly, Professor Dunmore, you should wear a bell around your neck."
She stood to shake his hand, tucking her long, bright hair behind her ear. Her fingers trembled slightly with the shock of moments before, but her grip was firm.
He really was an interesting old bird, Gen thought, sitting down. His hair was pure white, cropped close to his head, as was his silver goatee. His eyes were a shocking blue behind the lenses of his rimless spectacles, and he constantly looked bemused at something.
Any man who assigned a skiver to sit atop the school building every morning for a week and announce the weather had to have a sense of humor, she reckoned.
A slightly twisted one, yes, but a sense of humor nonetheless.
"I've come prepared to plead my case, sir, if you'll only hear me out-" she began, but he stilled her with a wave of his hand.
"No need, Miss Wesley. Though I'd be greatly interested in hearing your reasons for calling Miss Bulfinch a 'diseased sow,' I'm afraid I've already made some irreversible arrangements in the matter of your retribution."
"Oh." The syllable was flat, dismayed, but didn't seem to affect the professor at all.
"I've a dire need for a tutor, Miss Wesley. It's time for you to put your… extensive vocabulary and your stubbornness to use."