Title: Rock & Roll Queen
Disclaimer: Nothing but the plot and the terrible song lyrics are mine. Frankly, J.K. would probably be appalled at the things I'm making her characters do. The story's title comes from the song of the same name by The Subways.
Author's Notes: Thanks to all of you who are reading, and especially to those of you who reviewed! If you want to review again, I wouldn't mind a bit ;)
Thanks to the very awesome Aduro for the beta!
Chapter 3 - Discoveries and Disguises
This is bloody crazy, Draco thought as he Apparated into the foyer of Malfoy Manor clutching a black purse tightly to his chest. He had no idea how the hell Pansy had talked him into it.
After glancing around quickly to make sure he was alone, Draco took another peek into the purse. Tubes of lipstick, blush, a tray of eyeshadow in vibrant, shimmery colors, mascara, various brushes and poofs - the sight of it all made him shudder in horror.
"Take it home, practice putting it on, get used to the idea," he said in a sarcastic falsetto. "Easy for her to say, she's a bloody witch."
First things first, though. He needed to get all this crap to his room before someone saw him walking around with a purse. Draco headed in the direction of the main stairs and then changed his mind. It wouldn't do to run into his mother - she was eagle-eyed even in her worst states of intoxication, and she had a sixth sense when it came to designer labels. Of course, the purse he clutched so tightly had to proclaim itself a Louis Vuitton in large, trademarked "LVs" all over. Damn Pansy.
He turned toward the portrait gallery and the servants' stairs that lay beyond it. Gamely ignoring the rows and rows of Malfoy ancestors who smirked down at him, he strode quickly through the gallery.
And then fell flat on his arse.
"Argh!" he shouted as his tailbone connected with the hard, apparently freshly waxed, marble floor. "Merlin's nose curlies, that hurt!"
Even worse, he had dropped the purse when he fell, and now its contents were scattered all over the floor.
"Bollocks!" Draco exclaimed as he scrambled to his feet and hastily gathered the incriminating products back into the purse. As he bent over to retrieve a lipstick that had rolled across the floor, he heard an appreciative whistle from behind him. Straightening, he turned to find a rather guilty looking portrait of his great Aunt Mildred staring back at him. Of course, all the portraits of the Malfoys looked guilty; they all were of one thing or another.
"See something you like, you old saucebox?" he drawled, waggling an eyebrow at the wrinkly old witch.
That's when he heard the giggling.
~*~*~*~
Ginny placed her hands on her hips and arched her back. Gods, mopping and waxing without magic was hard work! Not to mention the fact that she had to do it in bloody three inch heels! The worst part was that she had slaved away all morning, and hadn't learned one useful thing for the Ministry or M.E.S.S. Unless the fact that Narcissa Malfoy might be single-handedly supporting the firewhisky industry counted as useful information, but Ginny suspected it was hardly news. And with the way she was feeling right now, she thought Mrs. Malfoy might have the right idea.
"Mmm, a firewhisky sour with two maraschino cherries, a nice, hot bubble bath . . ."
Ginny was torn from her fantasy by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. Masculine-sounding footsteps. Quickly, she ducked behind an enormous vase and was gratified to see the target walk into view. He was moving fast, and holding something to his chest protectively. Ginny's heart began to race. Could it be a Dark Artifact?
Before she could get a better look at it, Draco's foot slipped and he went down, hard. Ginny had to clamp both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud and giving herself away.
With enormous effort, she got herself back under control and dared to peek at Draco again. He was gathering very small objects into some sort of satchel; from her position behind the vase, she couldn't make out what they were. One of the objects, a very ominous looking black cylinder probably no longer than Ginny's middle finger, rolled across the floor and Draco scrambled after it.
Ginny was surprised when she heard the whistle, but when Draco turned and confronted the portrait of some old hag ancestor of his, she lost it. She began giggling madly, and even her hands covering her mouth weren't enough to muffle the sound.
When Draco whirled around and spotted her, his expression became livid.
"Do you think that's funny, Weasley?" he growled. "Smear a half-inch of wax all over the floor and see how many people you can knock down? What kind of maid are you? Don't you know anything about floor cleaning?"
Ginny blushed. "I'm sorry, really! I didn't mean to make you fall! And I wasn't laughing at you. I mean, it was funny . . ." Ginny trailed off, a smirk forming on her lips. Then she noticed the murderous look in Draco's eyes. "But I wasn't laughing at that, I swear! It's just, you thought that old witch whistled at you, but it wasn't her. It was him."
She pointed to a portrait of a regal looking wizard clothed in ermine and silver. The portrait scowled openly at Ginny, but had the good grace to blush faintly. Draco looked speculatively from one portrait to the other.
"So the rumors about great-great-great Grandfather Nero are true," he said. "Well, I can't really blame you, old man. If I were a bum aficionado, I'd want to tap this arse, too."
The portrait of great-great-great Grandfather Nero sputtered indignantly, and Ginny rolled her eyes at the egotistical Slytherin. Sure, he was drool-inducingly hot, with his tall, sinewy frame, his cool gray, mysterious eyes, his soft white-blond hair, his long, graceful fingers, his-
"Weasley! Snap out of it!"
"Uh," Ginny said, coming out of her reverie, "what did you say?"
"Damn these good looks," Draco muttered under his breath. "I said, are you going to get back to work, or stare at me all day? The wax isn't going to come off of this floor by itself, you know."
"Oh, right, yeah," Ginny said, inwardly cringing at her lack of eloquence. Her gaze shifted to the item in Draco's hand. He was holding it partly behind his leg, but it looked unmistakably like a purse. A purse with large "LVs" all over it. LV? Were they someone's initials? Ginny gasped. Lord Voldemort?!?
"Er, Malfoy . . . I mean sir, may I ask you a question?" she said hurriedly before he had the chance to walk away.
Draco eyed the she-Weasel warily. Sure, she looked innocent, and sexy, not that it was relevant. She might have seen the makeup though, and neither innocence nor sexiness would save her from an Obliviate if she had.
"What is it, Weasley? I haven't got all day," he drawled in what he hoped was a bored, not at all panicked tone.
This is it, Ginny thought to herself. Act casual, but get information from him. Time to find out something useful for M.E.S.S. So many questions were going through Ginny's head that she felt like she was experiencing some kind of brain overload: Where have you been all day? What are your thoughts on campaigning for world domination? Tortured any poor, defenseless Muggles today? Why are you walking around carrying the Dark Lord's handbag?
But the question that popped out of Ginny's mouth was, sadly, none of these.
"Why does your mum call all of us `Smootchy'?" Ginny mentally cursed herself as soon as the words left her mouth. She'd been wondering about it all day, but damn it! Some "elite spy" she was turning out to be.
Draco, to her surprise, actually cracked a grin.
"Ah, Smootchy. It's a sad story really," he replied, talking fast. "Smootchy was Mother's house-elf - been with her ever since she married the Wanker. I don't think anyone knows my mother so well as that elf, nor knows how to fix a bourbon on the rocks exactly how she likes it. But with the whole House-Elf Freedom Act business of Granger's, they had a falling out. After the Act passed, Smootchy had no choice but to accept wages. She approached my mother shortly before her first paycheck was to be issued and asked, quite humbly of course, if ten percent of each check could be deposited into a little IRA she had set up for herself. Mother, naturally, had her thrown into the lake, and sent all of the house-elves away that very day. We've been hiring squibs and the like since then." Draco here paused and pointedly looked Ginny up and down. "Now if you'll excuse me, Weasley, I'm a busy man, and you have a floor to fix."
~*~*~*~
When Ginny wearily trudged back to the small room she shared with Hermione in the servants' wing, she found the brunette scribbling away on a long roll of parchment.
"Ah, Ginny, just in time," Hermione said. "I'm just sending off our report to Harry. So much to tell him! What did you learn today?"
Ginny felt a moment of panic. What indeed?
"Well, um," Ginny stalled, mentally reviewing the information she had gleaned over the painfully long day. There was the fact that Narcissa drank too much - not a surprise. The mystery surrounding the "Smootchy" business was solved, but was that really relevant to the M.E.S.S. operation? Ginny doubted it. Then there was the fact that the target apparently had a great-great-great grandfather who was a Fairy Mary, but again, the issue of relevancy came up. Suddenly, Ginny brightened.
"I saw the target today, and he was carrying a Dark Artifact!" she said triumphantly.
Hermione gasped. "Are you sure? Did you get a good look at it? Oh, this is big, Ginny! This confirms everything!"
"I'm sure," Ginny replied. "It said `Lord Voldemort' right on it!"
"What do you mean? Was it something he signed before he died?"
"Er, no. It didn't spell out `Lord Voldemort,' but it had his initials on it, so it was unmistakably his."
"That's odd. Could you tell what it was?"
"Well," Ginny hesitated. "It was a purse."
Hermione was silent for a moment and then burst out laughing.
"Oh, Ginny! You almost had me there!" she exclaimed as her giggles subsided. "Voldemort's purse. That's a good one. But seriously, did you find anything out today?"
"Hermione, I wasn't joking! I saw Malfoy carrying a purse that had `LVs' all over it!"
"So let me get this straight. You're saying that not only did Voldemort own a purse, but he had it monogrammed?"
"Apparently so," Ginny huffed.
"And somehow the target acquired this purse and was actually walking around with it?"
"That's what I saw."
"Okay, two questions to follow up. One, was the target also wearing Voldemort's silk knickers, and two, were these also monogrammed?" Hermione began giggling at her own joke before Ginny even had a chance to respond.
Ginny narrowed her eyes and glared.
"Fine, don't believe me. And how would I know about his knickers? It's not like I peeked under his robes. But for all I know, he might have been!" With that, Ginny stormed off to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, the bathroom door creaked open, and Hermione hesitantly entered. Ginny was perched on the edge of the tub, her fingers drumming against the porcelain in agitation. She didn't bother looking up when Hermione came in.
"You're being serious, aren't you? You're not just pulling my leg?"
"I know what I saw," Ginny replied, still in a huffy tone. Hermione sank down onto the tub edge beside her.
"It doesn't make any sense. Why did Voldemort have a purse? He never seemed like the type - "
"Hermione, carrying a purse doesn't make you gay. Plenty of wizards carry man-bags. It might have just been convenient for him," Ginny said sagely. "You know, a handy place to keep his vials of poison and his torture implements and the tiny shrunken heads of his enemies."
Hermione raised an eyebrow at the redhead.
"Right," she replied. "And how many straight wizards do you know who carry around `man-bags'? I mean, seriously, even in the Muggle world `man-bag' is synonymous with `poofter.'"
Ginny shrugged her shoulders in defeat and nodded. "You're right. But Voldemort? I guess his rage and hostility might have come from some sort of repression."
Hermione looked thoughtful. "You know, it certainly casts his obsession with Harry in a whole new light."
Both women shuddered.
~*~*~*~
Draco stormed into his bedroom and threw himself onto his bed, tossing the wretched purse down beside him. A very un-Malfoyish feeling of panic welled up in him. Part of it stemmed from the whole rock star thing. He was beginning to have doubts about it. Was he really ready to degrade himself by performing for the amusement of Muggles - in makeup no less? If the Wanker, a.k.a. dear old dad, had been alive, he would have skipped the ball-hexing stage altogether and gone straight for the kill, under the assumption that his son must have lost his set long before he agreed to anything so demeaning and girly as makeup.
But no, Draco didn't have the loss of his manhood as a convenient excuse for his foray into feminine paraphernalia. Ugh.
And then there was the total fool he had made of himself in front of the Weasley girl. Gods, he had rambled on about his mother's former house-elf like some first year Hufflepuff. All thoughts of his smooth seduction of her had flown out the window when he was holding that damned purse. Damn Pansy. It was all her fault. And now he was supposed to ruin the rest of his evening actually putting the makeup on.
He wanted to just call the whole thing off, crawl into his bed, and drink a vat of hot chocolate to soothe his ruffled nerves.
A niggling voice at the back of his head began shouting at him. Snap out of it, it said. Malfoys aren't quitters! Sure they are run-awayers, particularly when confronted with anything even remotely dangerous or larger than a puffskein, but they are never quitters! Think of the spotlight on you, think of the glory! You were born to be a rock star! Seize your destiny! Take it!
"Okay, okay, I get it!" Draco exclaimed, and then realized he was talking to himself. He heaved a sigh and grabbed the purse, heading into the bathroom.
A badly shaken, very frazzled Draco emerged from the bathroom a half hour later. His hair, usually perfectly kempt, stuck out at all sorts of odd angles. On trembling legs, he sank down onto the edge of the bed.
"Eeep!" Mirabel exclaimed on first catching sight of him. "Er, darling, what's happened to you? Have you been hexed?" she asked, her voice laden with concern.
Draco looked up at his mirror and sighed. "No, I've done this to myself," he replied in a choked voice.
Mirabel wished, for the first time in her long career of serving the Malfoy family, that she had the ability to look away from the image reflected on her smooth surface. Her beloved master was a frightful mess. Whitish-purple shimmery eyeshadow was painted thickly on Draco's eyelids all the way up to his eyebrows, giving him an owlish, shocked expression. Dark smudges of charcoal liner rimmed his lower lashes, casting his pale skin tone into an even lighter shade - the pallor of death. His eyes had taken on a zombie-like stare.
Bright pink shimmery circles of blush stood out on either cheek, not in any way blended into the surrounding skin.
A pale pink shade of lipstick had been liberally applied to his lips - so liberally, in fact, that he had gone far wide of his lips and drawn a lip-shaped circle around his mouth about a half-inch out.
He looked like a demented clown.
"Why, darling? Why have you done this to yourself?" Mirabel exclaimed in panic.
Sighing again, Draco explained the whole situation.
"Oh, Draco. You poor darling," Mirabel cooed when he had finished. Draco got the sneaking suspicion she was trying not to giggle. "We can fix this darling. It's going to be just fine."
"Really?" Draco responded, a slight note of hope in his voice.
"Yes, but first thing's first. You need to get all that stuff off your face - we'll have to start over again. And you'd better brush your teeth - you have lipstick all over them."
This was going to take a while.
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