I was told, quite recently, after completing chapter 8 that JKR has indeed confirmed that Tonks was in Hufflepuff, and not Gryffindor. So, to satisfy my inner perfectionist, I've changed a few things, nothing drastic, the story is still the same.

Incursus (to attack the mind)

August 1986.

Her mother was banging at the bathroom door, but Nymphadora ignored her, staring at her body in the full-length mirror. Something was very, very different, and she wasn't quite sure how it had happened - and so quickly without her knowing.

She had fallen asleep the night before and simply woken up this morning, jumped into the shower and when she got out…

"Nymphadora! Would you open this door! Your father and I need to get to work!"

She stared at herself one last time in the mirror, at a loss of what to do, and wrapped herself in her dressing gown.

Clicking open the door, she turned to face her open mouthed mother.

She was dragged by the wrist down the stairs and into the kitchen to be displayed in front of her father, who gaped at her over his cereal. "Nymph…" he started, "how did you…?"

"Did you dye it!?" her mother screeched, tugging at a strand of long, pink hair as if hoping it would merely fall off, like a wig.

"What? No…I don't know how…I just….woke up and it…"

"Did you use magic?" her father asked, calmly she thought as he attended his cereal again. "Because you know Nymphadora, it can be very dangerous and threatening to your school li-"

"I didn't!" she yelled, backing away from her mother and running her hands through her hair. Thoughts of expulsion, arrest and even her mother shaving her head flew through her mind and she was desperate to keep her new, unexpected bubblegum pink hair.

"what will we tell the school?" her mother demanded, like this was any of her fault. "we'll have to re-dye it! You can't possibly go back to school looking like that!"

Nymphadora sighed, wrapped her dressing gown a little tighter and stormed up stairs.

One look in the mirror showed her hair to have changed into vivid turquoise.

"MUUUUUUUUMMMMM!!!"

1987, Nymphadora's 4th year of Hogwarts.

She had been told her "talent" was not to be flaunted in front of the other students, and that she had no objection to. It was the random bursts of emotion that came with being a fourteen-year-old girl that affected her control over her ability most.

She was, from lack of a better word, a teenager. She was moody, she was introspective, she had strong and justified opinions on how the world worked and she hated how she was alone in her thinking.

And she was very, very alone.

She lay silent, staring up at the scarlet canopy above her bed listening to other girls gentle breathing. Today had been one of her worst at Hogwarts, having left her humiliated and angry. She had fled the scene, just managing to contain her changing hair colour until she had reached her dormitory, yanked her curtains shut and let her short spikes turn a bright, raspberry pink. She had stayed there since, unsleeping, silent and waiting, pleading, for someone who cared enough to come and see if she was all right.

At Three thirty in the morning, the girls she shared a room with had come in, prepared for bed and fallen asleep without mentioning the events that had happened that day, or even corresponded with her in the smallest way. No mention of a sorry at all.

Nymphadora couldn't quite figure out why she cared that they didn't, she supposed it was because a girl of her age was expected to be friends with the other girls her age, simply because of their familiarity. When she returned to her family home in the holidays, her mother always asked how the other girls were doing, what they had been up to during the school term. It was always a plural, never addressing Nymphadora as the singular person she was.

Five hours later, when her alarm bell rang, Nymphadora rolled from her bed into the shower and slipped down into the common room before her roommates even woke. It was a morning ritual; she would pack her bag for the days lessons and eat her breakfast in silence before the rest of the school had barely contemplated crawling out of the warm covers. She would finish her breakfast and take her school books up to the library until half nine when classes started to get in a bit of extra revision, and then wait for her first class to start.

When her classes finished, she would head to the library for a few hours work, finish her homework and then head down for dinner. She would spend her evening in the Hufflepuff common room or in her dormitory, reading, revising, and researching the next day's lessons.

She loved to learn. It was her life, to absorb all the knowledge she could. Not to say she didn't find it a challenge, and at some points frustrating when she couldn't grasp a theory or a spell ahead of all the other students. But she had a good rapport with her teachers and often visited them after or between classes to gain a little extra knowledge on the subject at hand, or indeed any subject that interested her.

Letters from home were frequent but not encouraging. Her father was neutral, supportive at times but expected a repeat in history from his daughter in grades, despite the subjects becoming more intense and challenging. Her mother was a constant source of enthusiasm for her daughters self esteem. This being fabulous, except that she became angry when Nymphadora claimed she couldn't make friends easily or didn't want to agree with the other students because of conflicting views.

Her first lesson on a Wednesday morning was transfiguration. Before the bell had even rung, she had set herself up in the classroom, he books all laid out across her desk in the order she was expecting to use them. The quill, sharpened with ink at the ready was placed next to the parchment on the desk. She waited; chin in hand, experimenting with her nails, changing the colour, then the pattern. If she concentrated, she could just about manage a union flag on her thumbnails. The only problem was, she couldn't quite distinguish between her nail and her skin, and the tips of her fingers usually fit the same pattern.

The first students filed in and she was forced to cease her random shifting. Keeping a lid on her changes became harder every day, as she learnt subconsciously to match her appearance to her moods. But she was becoming more skilled in her transformations and although harder to keep and control, she had learnt how to keep them for longer, hours if she tried.

A snigger caught her attention, as a group of Gryffindor girls took the last row of the classroom. She ignored them, turning her back and inconspicuously changing her fingernails longer and a sunny, Hufflepuff yellow. Without even noticing, she scraped her fingers across the parchment in front of her, scowling into her textbooks.

"…And did you hear? Completely soaked through, and admitting everything…"

Another stream of giggling. Frustrated, she turned to glare at them, and just for a moment she felt her eyes flash before she was gone from the classroom, her books under one arm and her quills gripped in her left hand. She was sure the girls would give a painfully accurate description of her leaving to Professor McGonagall and she could visit her in her office at break and give her apologies. But right now, Nymphadora needed to be anywhere but there.

As she reached the library doors, she wrenched them open and tore off between the shelves. Just as she reached the sections on muggle studies, a hand caught her arm and held her back.

"Why aren't you in lessons?" Bill Weasley asked, glaring down at her, sternness in his voice but his eyes softened when she turned to glare back at him.

"ask your brother!" she snapped and wrenched her arm clean of him, before dashing off between the shelves.