A Catastrophe of Gothic Proportions

"Ron! Where have you been? I was wondering if we could--" Hermione stopped dead in her tracks.

"Don't--say--a--word."

Slamming the front door behind him, Ron stalked past his fiancée and straight into the bathroom. Soon, Hermione could hear loud cursing and several botched industrial-strength cleaning charms echoing around the small tiled room.

She gingerly put down her light reading (A Thinking Witch's Guide to Feminist Theory, Past and Present: Do Wands Truly Rule? by Penthisilea de Beauvoir) and went to lean her forehead against the door. "Ron, may - may I come in?"

A despairing sigh.

"All right."

Ron was standing dejectedly before the mirror, looking ... well, not at all himself. For one thing, all of his freckles were gone, and it seemed as though the rosy-gold undertones of his skin had been leeched out as well; his complexion was nearly translucent. His work robes, boots, and jumper were scattered about the bathroom floor, but his jeans were nowhere to be seen. Rather ... were those leather trousers? And his face...

Ron's face, like his back and shoulders, was chalk-white, completely devoid of freckles. His mouth had been lipsticked within an inch of its life, and the glossy colour wasn't a normal shade like pink or coral. (Although, thought Hermione a bit hysterically, 'normal' is rather a relative term at this point.) Rather, Ron's lips were a stunning black that glinted purple in the light. His eyes, too, were rimmed with black; the sweep of eyeliner and shadow was precise enough to impress Lavender Brown. Hermione could see that his long, usually copper-coloured lashes were also liberally mascaraed. In fact, the only thing reassuring her that this person was, in fact, her fiancé was the shock of red hair standing wildly on end. Also, few wizards were so remarkably creative in their epithets.

"Half-masted hag-lovers," Ron was muttering under his breath. "Clabbert-faced, wand-sucking idiots ..."

"Ron!" Hermione finally managed to choke out. "You look like - like one of those people on the underground!" she squealed. "Why on earth--"

"I stopped by the twins' shop," Ron said shortly.

"And they turned you into a - a Goth just for saying hello?"

"Well...no," he admitted, then turned his wand back on his face with a household cleaning charm that made the bathroom smell strongly of lemons but did very little to his face. He winced, but tried again.

"Ron! Stop, you'll scrub your whole head off with that!" Hermione lunged and grabbed his arm. "Did you eat something they gave you?"

He looked at her with an expression of disgust that was much more dramatic with his new colouring. "No! I'm not that stupid. They slipped it into my chocolate pocket without me knowing it." Since he was in school, Ron had had a habit of carrying a stash of Honeyduke's finest in his magically insulated left pocket. "Next thing I know, I've got on leather trousers and a funny shirt."

Hermione refrained from pointing out that, technically, he had been stupid enough to eat something the twins had given him; at least, he had made the foolish mistake of consuming anything at all in their presence. She looked at the floor where Ron's dark blue jumper lay, looking exactly the same as it had when he left for work that morning. Picking it up, she examined both sides carefully. "What do you mean, a funny shirt? There's nothing wrong with this."

Ron turned from the mirror, looking confused. "I--it--that's so weird. It was all--" he made a few vague gestures "--before." Suddenly his face brightened. "Maybe it's wearing off! Yeah, look, my robes and my boots are back to normal, too." He looked at her, but Hermione was staring at his chest with her mouth open slightly. "What is it?"

"You've got a tattoo..."

Ron looked down, having been so preoccupied with the fact that he was wearing makeup to have noticed before. Indeed, around and below his left nipple was a large black symbol that had been all over the tombs when he'd visited Bill in Egypt. "If that's permanent," he snorted, reaching for his jumper and pulling it on to cover the awful thing, "I'll make those two--"

What exactly he would do was never made clear, because as soon as he got his jumper over his head, it changed from rather knobby, hand-knitted blue wool to tight-fitting black mesh.

"Those shite-brained, troll-buggering gits!" Ron roared. "I'll kill them!"

"Ronald!"

"WHAT?"

"Don't swear, I told--have you got a tongue piercing as well?"

Ron looked as though he were about to explode, and Hermione was certain that if he wasn't magically altered, he'd be tomato red in the face just then.

"Who the bloody hell cares if I swear?" he yelled. "I'm wearing leather trousers, I've got a horrible tattoo I don't want, I've got on bloody makeup, and--" he stuck out his tongue at the mirror, where something glinted ominously "--yes, it appears I've got a HOLE in my TONGUE. SO IF YOU DON'T MIND, I THINK I'LL JUST SCREAM MY HEAD OFF UNTIL I PASS OUT, AND WHEN I WAKE UP, I'LL KILL THE TWINS, AND THEN SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE CURSING THE WORLD THAT PRODUCED SUCH--"

He was interrupted by Hermione reaching up and grabbing either side of his face before pulling him down for a very wet, very thorough kiss.

Stunned, he stood there for a brief moment, but as soon as he reached for her, Hermione broke away.

"What was that for?" Ron asked dazedly.

"Multi-purposeful, really," she said coolly. "It got you to be quiet, for one thing. And now I know how to get rid of the charms."

"What?"

"You haven't got a tongue piercing. It's just a glamour. The whole thing's a series of glamours, actually. Rather complicated ones, too, if they apply to any article of clothing you put on and don't respond to the victim's wandwork. I'm really very impressed with your brothers." She brandished her wand at him. "Now hold still."

Some thirty minutes later, it seemed that Hermione had underestimated just how complicated the charms were. With the exception of another mild fit of hysteria as Ron discovered his tongue wasn't the only place he appeared to be pierced (Hermione wisely decided not to inform him of the other tattoos she uncovered), she had worked steadily to strip away the layers of magic. At long last, his eye makeup was the final evidence of the twins' prank.

"It's a good thing they didn't do your hair," she murmured, concentrating fiercely so as not to singe his eyebrows.

"Actually, I think it was supposed to," Ron said through half-closed lips; Hermione was gripping his jaw to guarantee he didn't flinch. "But magic doesn't work very well on Weasley hair--Ginny tried to colour hers loads of times when we were teenagers, and it never worked."

Hermione laughed, and leaned back to look at him. "All that's left is the eyeliner, but I'm not sure I can get rid of it without the risk of doing something to your eyes."

Ron looked in the mirror again, and grimaced. "I suppose I shouldn't take the risk. Even so...what? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Hermione smiled at him. "You sort of look like...I mean, some men...Muggle men...actually do wear eyeliner on occasion."

"Yeah? Who?"

"Well, rock stars, actually."

Ron frowned, trying to remember. "Are they those musicians who blow things up onstage?"

"Often, yes."

"Interesting. And are they all nauseatingly rich?"

"Usually."

He smirked down at her, and snaked an arm around her waist.

"And do they always have cute birds hanging all over them?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Possibly."

"All right. I think I can live with that. Besides, I suppose I should feel lucky."

"Why is that?"

"Neville got turned into a ballerina."