//------------------------------// // Chapter 26: Silversong // Story: The Accidental Invasion // by computerneek //------------------------------// Draco took the time to double-check that the door was locked before he turned around to verify that he was alone in the bathroom. He was. He breathed a sigh of relief, before stepping over to the counter to lay his bag on it. He looked up at the mirror.  Draco looked back. He sighed again, then smiled, deciding.  Sorelia would take a shower, and cast the spell that she had crafted so carefully.  She would just do so in Draco’s body, before Draco would have to take back over again so they could leave the room. Sorelia’s smile vanished when she undressed and looked in the mirror again.  “Blegh.”  She turned resolutely away from Draco’s reflection, picked up the page of notes she’d brought in and her wand, and stepped into the shower.  She hadn’t turned the water on yet. It only took a quick sticking charm to get the parchment to hold on the wall, and a similarly quick waterproofing charm ensured that the shower wouldn’t ruin it before she could read her notes off of it.  She’d spent all week crafting this spell- and had been unable to find a way to remove the requirement that she be under a steady stream of water- and have been under it for fifteen minutes- in order for it to work.  It was also too complicated for her to remember, necessitating the notes. Just in case, though, she’d left a copy of this page in her trunk. She carefully laid her wand on a shelf in the shower- good thing it was waterproof- and set about taking her shower. It didn’t take long for her to finish.  Her bright, poisonous green hair- a family curse, which only affected the boys of the family- had to be shaved completely off, so she didn’t have any hair to clean at all; it was a wig.  She reached to the side, and laid her fingertip on her wand.  “Tempus.” The time-detection spell took the usual fraction of a moment to do its work, indicating to her that she had been in the shower for twenty minutes. She lifted the wand off of its shelf, gripped both ends of it, and turned to her page of notes.  There were any number of ways this spell could go wrong- and none of them would be comfortable. She started slowly, muttering the incantations and directing the magic.  The first part was to check that her situation actually was what the spell required, allowing her to avoid a particularly nasty side effect of permanent mental retardation. She wasn’t using any of the magic principles Hermione had discovered.  Unfortuntely, she didn’t know them, either, and had been limited entirely to regular wizarding knowledge in her research. Fortunately, it was up to the task. Preliminary setup or check spells completed and passed, one after another, without any sign of problems. She stopped, after the second-to-last incantation, to give her final check spell time to complete its examination of everything she’d constructed. It came back green- all was good.  Which surprised her; she’d expected to mess at least something up. “Executus.” Her spell instantly got to work. Green light arced all over the bathroom- and, though she wasn’t looking, she felt something change about herself.  She seemed to shrink a few inches- and something sprang out of her scalp.  The water started to feel very strange on her body- then there was a brilliant, blinding flash of green light…  and everything seemed to stop. She opened her eyes, put her wand back on the shelf, then raised her hands to try to rub the stars out of her eyes.  It didn’t work, but they continued to fade on their own…  just like the water continued to feel strange on her skin.  Even though- she squinted at her hands- her skin didn’t seem to be any different. She stood, still in the shower, still blinking stars out of her eyes, until her vision fully recovered. Finally, she looked down at herself. She didn’t move for several seconds, unable to believe her eyes. She raised one hand, to her chest…  and touched it.  It felt real- and sent another spike of strange sensations into her brain. She looked up and, her eyes gleaming with excitement, turned off the shower. It only took a quick tap of her wand and a few seconds of patience to dry her off entirely, completely without any towels, before she stepped out of the shower. She plucked a towel from the rack anyways, and wrapped it around herself before stepping in front of the mirror, determinedly not looking in it.  She took a deep breath and, expecting to see something recognizably related to Draco, looked up, into the mirror. She had to clap her hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming. As expected, she didn’t see Draco looking back out of it at her.  However, she also didn’t see a female version of him- or even Sorelia. Silversong stared back at her in disbelief, hands clasped over her mouth and a towel wrapped around her middle.  Her gleaming silver hair, split as it was into thirds by deep, royal blue stripes, flowed almost flawlessly down her back, fanning out just enough she could see it on either side of her body, almost long enough for her to sit on it.  And, she noted, the Mirror of Erised didn’t do her justice.  Even wearing only a towel, Silversong was a very cute girl- especially with the way her muscles rippled whenever she moved.  It didn’t look like there was an ounce of excess fat on her frame, either. She moved her arms experimentally- and Silversong matched her every move in the mirror. Finally, she reached back to look at her own hair…  and found that, not only did Silver mirror her motion perfectly, but her hair looked like Silver’s as well. She took an excited breath…  and let it out in a hiss, glancing towards the door.  Four Slytherin boys were ‘sleeping’ behind it, and it would never do for them to realize there was a girl in their midst. She quickly retrieved her wand, and started whispering incantations once again.  Finally, once she’d finished taking her own measurements, she looked up at the mirror, and concentrated on becoming Draco- the trigger for her form spell. The form spell didn’t trigger.  Instead, far easier than it ever did, and long before it would have reacted, she seamlessly shifted to become Draco once more- and grew about six inches in the process.  She scowled at her reflection, then unwrapped her towel and started putting her clothes back on. As she worked, she wondered.  She’d chosen the name Sorelia for when she managed to turn herself into a girl- but then she’d done so, and found herself as the girl she’d already named Silversong.  So which name should she use? She paused in the middle of her work, looking up sharply.  It was obvious, really. She had that form spell.  And with Silversong as a female base- the form spell had been on standby when she’d been Silver, as it still was as Draco, meaning Silver was probably her new form from the Papa Tango- she’d be able to save female forms to it as well. She could save Sorelia to it…  and become her whenever it was necessary.  She wouldn’t be able to be Sorelia all of the time, but she liked Silversong as well.  Plus, Silver was about as un-Malfoy as anyone could get- she even looked like one of the Foreigners! She paused, after getting dressed and slinging her bag back over her shoulder, to look in the mirror one last time.  She smiled, allowing herself to shift back into Silversong for a second- for some reason, she didn’t seem to be constrained by the time limit on the form spell. She nearly let out a scream of shock as she shifted quickly back.  Her form spell only ever touched her body- but Silversong had been completely naked, her clothes reappearing when she switched back to Draco!  She grinned at Draco’s ugly face.  That’d make it a lot easier to maintain the guise; her form spell might’ve done a few tweaks to clothing, but it couldn’t hide the difference between male and female robes.  If the clothes went with the Draco-Silversong shift, that would be simple to maintain. Finally, Draco turned resolutely away from the mirror, unlocked the door, and returned to the second year British boys’ dormitory, where Crabbe, Goyle, and the other two British boys in her-his year were stretching and yawning, still in their pajamas. “You’re up early,” Theodore commented, looking over at him. He nodded.  Now that he knew that he could actually, physically become a girl basically at will, he found it very hard to think of himself as a boy anymore.  Even so, he- ah, heck with it, she- was usually the last to awaken, not the first.  “I am,” she noted simply.  If they asked why, she would pull a Malfoy and refuse to answer- and what’s more, they knew she would, and so wouldn’t ask.  She dropped her bag on the foot of her bed and turned to leave the room, the parchment with Silver’s measurements in her pocket with her wand.  She’d need that bag again come evening; it now held her pajamas, alongside her toiletries…  and spare wigs. Finally, she left the dormitory, and headed down the stairs to the Slytherin common room- which, after checking to be sure that it really was empty and that Crabbe and Goyle were not following her, she crossed it quickly and left, headed for the Owlry.  She had a letter to send. Lucius looked up as an eagle owl he recognized as Draco’s swooped in the open kitchen window as he finished his breakfast.  Funny, they usually showed up at the beginning of the meal, as the two from the Daily Prophet and one from the Ministry had just that day.  Compounding that, while a rush owl could show up at any time, the Manor was too far from Hogwarts for a rush owl sent after Draco normally awoke to arrive now, rather than another hour from now. The owl landed importantly on the table, and waited patiently for him to finish his bite and put down his fork.  Finally, he accepted the letter…  and raised his eyebrow at the Malfoy Family Seal embossed across the lip of the magically sealed envelope.  Only a Malfoy could break that seal- which, though it looked like it was only applied to one face of the envelope, he knew it actually enclosed the whole thing in a protective field- without using so much power they would incinerate the envelope and its contents in the attempt. In other words, only a Malfoy could read what was inside. He drew his wand, and tapped the seal gently with it.  “To the House of Malfoy,” he muttered. The seal disappeared entirely, without requiring any power from him- just his magical signature and the verbal command. He tapped the envelope again, defusing the flap from the base.  It seemed a bit overkill to do that in addition to the House seal, since any decent witch or wizard could open that one- but he knew why.  Had he not been present, Narcissa would have seen that fusing underneath the seal and saved it, still completely sealed, for until he got home. Speaking of Narcissa, the letter had also gotten her attention, from where she was seated, just to his right.  She was watching him silently, expectantly. Finally, he opened the envelope, slid out the parchment inside, dispelled the Flattening Charm on it, and unfolded it to read it. Draco had written…  a series of numbers, vertically arranged.  One was three digits, all the rest two. It only took him three numbers before he understood what they meant. He looked up at Narcissa.  “He’s done it.” She blinked.  “He-  She?”  She paused for a second, tilting her head curiously, before abandoning the inquiry.  “They have?” He wordlessly handed her the parchment. She took it, scanned down it.  “Ahh.  And…”  She scowled.  “Aww, now I’m jealous.” Lucius raised his eyebrow.  “Oh?” She nodded.  “She’s bigger than I was at that age.”  She scowled.  “Maybe she’s just an early bloomer, but it probably means she’ll be bigger than me when she grows up.” He stared at her.  “What?”  He didn’t know what any of the numbers meant, or what order they were in, only that they were measurements.  Narcissa was the one Draco had worked with to figure out what to measure and what order to put the measurements in.  She started to open her mouth to explain, but he shook his head- it was probably a girl thing, so he wasn’t all that worried about it.  “Nevermind.  But I wonder how long it’ll be before he wants to turn back…?” She looked at him.  “I wouldn’t be so sure that she ever will,” she stated calmly, stressing the pronoun ever so slightly.  “Anyways, shall we get these to Madam Malkin today?  I’m sure Sorelia won’t mind them as a Christmas present tomorrow.” He looked up at her, and tilted his head.  “True.  What do we tell Malkin, though?” “I think…”  She paused.  “I think it’s time to break out that form spell Sorelia likes so much.  As…  what, Henry and Jacqueline?” Lucius tilted his head, recalling the forms she was referring to- Henry was one of his, Jacqueline one of hers.  Neither of them used the form spell very much, but they both knew it and could perform it- it was Malfoy Family magic, after all.  Henry and Jacqueline were, ostensibly at least, a muggleborn couple.  He nodded.  “Yes, that should do.  But what about Madam Malkin?  People usually bring their daughters, don’t they?” She shrugged.  “We just took in a new daughter when her house burned down, and all we have for her to wear is the bathrobe she fled the house in.” He scowled.  “And that daughter…?” “Hmm, good point.  How about…  Maria?” “Alright,” he nodded, standing.  “We’ll have to get some more gold from the Vault, but where shall we change?” She shrugged.  “We can just do that here.  The goblins never ask too many questions.”