Tonks sat in the back of the Herbology greenhouse and twisted her long, green hair between two fingers. Professor Sprout held up a potted Devil's Snare and droned on, lecturing about its properties. Tonks slouched in her chair and looked up at the clock above the chalkboard. Thirty minutes left in the period still. She ran her hand up through her hair and sighed. The hair shortened, receding into her scalp and shifting from forest green to a candy-egg blue.
It was too late, though. She'd kept the long hair for several days and the greasy hair brushing against the side of her face only exacerbated her acne. Tonks rubbed her fingers against a bump on her chin and concentrated, willing the swelling to reside and the color to change from angry red back to a smooth milky-brown to match the rest of her skin.
A few rows ahead of her, Abdalla turned to look at her over her shoulder. Tonks smiled, hoping that she had remembered to change her teeth back to their usual neat, even look. The roast beef at lunch had been especially tough today, so Tonks had given herself sharp, fierce canines to tear into her meal. One of the Hufflepuff first-years laughed and said she looked like a vampire, so Tonks decided to keep them for a while.
Abdalla laughed and Tonks blushed. Apparently she hadn't changed her teeth. She shifted, picturing in her mind a row of perfect, even, white teeth like the ones in the smiling faces on the cover of her mom's Witch Weekly.
"Girls." Tonks head snapped up to see Professor Sprout staring directly at her. The whole class turned to look and Tonks shrunk down farther in her chair.
"Sorry, professor," she muttered.
Abdalla waited for her outside the greenhouse after class. Tonks fell in next to her without a word and they followed the rest of their classmates back up the hill toward the classroom.
"I like the blue," Abdalla said shyly. Her eyes darted up to Tonk's spiky hair.
Tonks blushed.
"The long hair looked good on you, though."
"Really?" Tonks looked at the ground, absently kicking a pinecone in her path. "You liked it?"
Abdalla nodded. Tonks stopped and thought for a moment. Her hair lengthened, pouring out of her head and twisting into long, thin locs. She reached into the pocket of her robes for a hair ribbon and tied her pale-blue dreads up into a neat bun at the back of her head.
Abdalla gave her a peck on the check. "You're beautiful," she said. "But you don't need to do that, you know?"
"Do what?"
"Change what you look like 'cause I say something. I like how you look all the time."
"Even like this?" Tonks sharpened her nose to a long beak and her skin changed to a sallow, unwashed grey. Her eyelids drooped and her ears shot up like an elf's on either side of her head.
Abdalla laughed and shoved her gently. Tonks stumbled to the side and then popped pack, hip-checking Abdalla before they fell into step together again. She morphed back into the form she'd had moments before.
"I'm serious, Tonks," Abdalla insisted. "You keep changing how you look whenever I say something. Don't you want to just look like you?"
"I do look like me," Tonks said. "It's… It's not like transfiguration, like I'm constantly using magic to maintain a disguise. Sure, I have to think to change something, but then once I have a form, that form is me, just as much as any other form. So when my girlfriend says she likes me with long hair, why shouldn't I have long hair?"
"But don't you ever get tired of changing for other people? Don't you want to look how you want to look?"
Tonks shrugged. "Maybe. Someday I might find one look that I want to stick with. But for now it's fun, changing around, y'know? I get to be however I want to be. Sometimes that means making you happy, or making the first-years laugh, or scaring the pants off of Fezilbaum Bamburg when they think I'm a gargoyle stalking them in the corridor."
Abdalla took Tonks hand in hers as they climbed up the final steps to the castle. "Alright, then," she conceded. "I just don't want you thinking you need to change yourself for me."
"Nope," Tonks answered happily, turning them toward the Hufflepuff common room as soon as they entered the school. "Now can we stop by the kitchens before studying? Growing hair makes me hungry."