Transmutocorpus

Transmutocorpus

Chapter One

Hermione Granger awoke to the sight of the red velvet drapes around her four-poster bed. It was a Saturday, so she would be able to get in a lot of elf-hat knitting and revision for exams. She yawned, stood up and made her way around Crookshanks so that she could change out of her pyjamas. Afterwards, she went down the spiral steps and was surprised to see that the common room was deserted. She shrugged; Harry and Ron as well as everyone else were probably too lazy to be awake. Hermione had always been a morning person herself.

She sat down in a squashy red armchair and promptly began to read Hogwarts, a History for the thirty-seventh time. However, she seemed to be stuck reading the second line over and over, and her eyelids were drooping. She eventually fell into a deep slumber.

Hours later Hermione awoke with a start. How had she managed to fall asleep while reading such a fascinating book? This puzzled her. Now fully coming to her senses, Hermione realized that she was lying in bed once more and that the velvet drapes around her were indigo, not crimson. She stared around wildly, and as she did so, a strand of blonde hair fell in front of her face.

I’m not a blonde, Hermione thought, bewildered. She got out of bed and looked in the mirror on the wall. She screamed. She was looking in the mirror - but she was seeing Luna Lovegood.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some distance away, in the Gryffindor common room, Luna Lovegood awoke.

“Hmm, that’s very odd,” she muttered to herself when she saw the red armchairs and the absence of bookshelves. “Somebody must have played another prank on me.” She got up out of the armchair and walked over to the large mirror on the wall. With a slight shock, she Hermione Granger looking back at her.

Luna however, did not scream as Hermione had. Maybe it was because she was so used to unusual things, and so used to believing them, that this was simply another plain, old day for her, especially when compared to her recent adventure in The Department of Mysteries.

Luna wandered around the Common Room for a bit before deciding what to do. She had to find herself - or Hermione rather - before more people woke up.

Luna walked out of the portrait hole and proceeded down to the third floor, where the Ravenclaws were located, behind a statue of Confundus the Confused. She murmured, “Velvet skies,” and the statue jumped aside, letting her in. Once she was in the Common Room, Luna was not at all surprised to see that Hermione was in an armchair, reading a book, Curses for Dummies, which she had taken from one of the many large bookshelves that lined the walls.

“Hermione?” Luna called, hoping that it was actually Hermione who was in her body. It must have been because she raised her head and answered.

“Luna?”

“Yes?”

“Come here, I need to tell you something.” Luna walked up to the armchair and waited for Hermione to go on. “Well,” she started, “I’ve been doing some reading, and according to this book, someone’s put a Transmutocorpus curse on us, and so far, I can’t find the counter curse. The other problem is that I have absolutely no idea who did it.” Hermione said this all rather fast and knowledgeably, which was odd, because she had Luna’s voice, so she also sounded rather airy.

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind staying like this for a while, it’s actually quite interesting.” Luna looked inquiringly at Hermione, who promptly burst out in rage.

“Stay like this? Stay like this? ARE YOU MAD? ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY OUT OF YOUR MIND? Exams are coming up! I could easily take the O.W.L.s again, but you don’t know anything on the sixth years’ exams! I’ll fail and you will pass with flying colours and be free, without a care in the world! NO WAY!

“And after term ends I’ve got a meeting with the new Minister of Magic about S.P.E.W.! I’m hoping he’ll be a little more open minded than Fudge was, but I guess I’ll never know, because with you talking to him, it’ll probably get all messed up!

“And I’d still like to figure out who the culprit is, so there’s no time for it to be interesting! I don’t even know if it’s just us!”

Luna was still rather taken aback by Hermione-Volcano’s earth shattering eruption, but was glad that she had at least cooled down enough for Luna to talk.

“Well, I think that for now we ought to blend in and pretend that we are who we look like we are while we try to figure this thing out. I know that this didn’t just happen to us though.”

“How on earth do you know that?” Hermione was building up steam again.

“Because,” Luna explained, “why would it just be us? What’s so special about us two? There’s definitely more people involved in this, but until we find out who, we should just lay low.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At nine-thirty Luna and Hermione went down to the Great Hall together. Once they reached its grand double doors, they split up. Luna joined the Gryffindors and Hermione the Ravenclaws.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After a hard morning of playing secret agent, the girls met each other at a small table in the library. They took one look at each other and said in unison, “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Everyone was just happy, studying, and a little tired,” Hermione reported sadly.

“Neville wasn’t there, but besides that, everything was normal,” Luna sighed. Hermione couldn’t be sure if Luna Lovegood’s definition of normal was all that realistic, but at the moment, neither was their situation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~