Written for Who dunnit why I dunnit's challenge. My prompts were "Why when you're asked to make a choice and you do, you are then made to feel like no matter what choice you made it would have been the wrong one," exercise, and hairbrush. I enjoyed this more than I thought I possibly could.

All belongs to JKR. I'm proud of how canon I've been—not a spell out of place.

XXX

Nymphadora Tonks was currently perched on a sink of the Prefect's bathroom. Turned sideways, Tonks was looking at her reflection in the large mirror over the row of sinks, changing and morphing it to her liking. When she got bored with this, she looked down at her hands, picking at her finger nails. "Please, Charlie. Help me out just a little," She pleaded her best friend.

Charlie Weasley was standing at the sink next to the one Tonks was using as a chair. Charlie was shaving his face, something that his colorful friend suggested often—she sometimes called him a ginger sheep, touching the long stubble on his cheek and calling it wool. "I don't know how to, Tonks; I know you'd like if I could just tell you, one or the other, but I can't do that, no matter who I said, it wouldn't be the right choice—" Tonks opened her mouth to argue and Charlie cut her off, "Because it has to be your decision. No one can make it for you."

Tonks looked helpless. "Please?" She said in a soft voice. Charlie gave her a look of exasperation and sighed.

"Alright, I'll give you all the help I can. But don't think I'm going to tell you anything definite! I'm just going to listen to what you have to say." Tonks bit the inside of her cheek, looked back down at her nails, and nodded.

"As long as you promise not to throw up," She said, giving him a cheeky grin. Charlie gave a hearty laugh that made Tonks smile: even though the two had decided long ago that they were just friends, only friends, Tonks thought at times that the Freckled One was the cutest person in the universe.

Charlie's brother, though… That was a different story. Bill Weasley, Tonks swoons at his name. She had been friends with both Gryffindors since she and Charlie were first years, and now, as a sixth year, she discovered she harbored feelings for her best friend's brother.

Bill was smart, Bill was well behaved, and Bill was very fun to be with. He knew how to break—pardon, go around rules without getting in trouble with Professor McGonagall, in Bill and Charlie's case and Professor Sprout in hers. And even if they did get confronted for various small infractions such as going down to Hagrid's hut and bringing Fang into the castle to chase (and hopefully one day, eat) Mrs. Norris, Bill talked their way out of it, which he described as his favorite part of being Head Boy: everyone listens to everything his says, including some professors. Bill was funny, easy going, and, if Tonks spoke her mind, gorgeous. His hair had grown out in the past year, and he was toying with the idea of piercing his ear. Charlie told Bill that if he ever decided to, asking Tonks to do it might lead to permanent scarring. Tonks had smacked Charlie at this comment.

The dilemma that Tonks was discussing with Charlie was about his brother—along with another person. A boy, to be specific. Gabriel Truman, Hufflepuff Prefect. He was in more than half of Tonks' classes and had been for all of her years at Hogwarts. As first years he had been the first to accept her regardless of her "funny hair," as all the other children had called it. The two had begun a small friendship that had grown over the years. He was nowhere near as close to Tonks as Bill was, and neither could hold a match to her friendship with Charlie, but her relationship with Gabriel was sweet. He was a gentlemen to her, and when they were alone in the common room or in the corridors, they would have soft-spoken, meaningful conversations. Gabriel didn't partake in as much mischief as Tonks did, but she supposed that might have been part of his appeal to her; he seemed more mature, more grown-up.

Tonks found herself highly infatuated with two boys this year, Bill and Gabriel. She had been gabbing on and on to Charlie for weeks now, asking him to tell her who was better for her, why she should or shouldn't like either, if she liked them for the right reasons.

One day after dinner, the two had been walking up to the library when Tonks started another speech full of questions and lacking room for answers. "Tonks?" Charlie said, but she continued talking at top-speed. "Tonks, don't make me," Tonks didn't seem to have heard him. "Nymphadora!" Charlie shouted. It echoed up the staircase. She promptly turned and smacked Charlie with the books in her hands.

"Don't call me Nymphadora, Charlie. You should know this by now," She said, glaring. "I hate that name." She pouted like a baby and didn't say a word until they had begun studying in the library.

Now, Tonks sat in the Prefect's bathroom with Charlie, talking about the boys she liked.

"I don't want to decide between Bill and Gabriel, but I can't try to make an attempt at a relationship with either until I know for sure who I truly like. But I'm afraid that if I make a choice I'll always wonder if I made the wrong one," Tonks said, frowning.

"I've got an idea, actually," Charlie's eye brows raised and his eyes widened, the signs of a light bulb clicking on in his head. Tonks nodded. There was a pause.

"Come on; tell me, we don't have all day! If someone sees me in here I'm dead, you know." Tonks was not a Prefect; she lacked, in Professor Sprout's words, the ability to behave herself enough to set an example and to discipline. Tonks didn't mind not being a Prefect, but Charlie had almost all the same privileges (well, not anywhere near as many privileges, but he was more liked and he got to use the Prefect's bathroom) as Gryffindor Quidditch captain. Any Prefect that came into the bathroom now would take ten points from Hufflepuff for her being somewhere she did not have permission to be in after curfew.

"Right. Have you ever heard of Hate Potion?" Tonks shook her head fast, her bright pink twin braids swinging back and forth. "It's pretty much the opposite of a Love Potion—instead of seeing everything wonderful about a person, you only notice their bad traits. What if we made a Hate Potion and you took it, and told me everything you hate about both Bill and Gabriel, and when it wears off I'll remind you of those traits; you'll be able to decide if you can live with the characteristics you can't notice now or not."

Tonks' eyes were wider than Charlie's had been. "That's brilliant, Char! Not that I'm surprised," She added, sticking her tongue out at him.

XXX

The next morning found Charlie and Tonks in the library, looking through a potions book in search for directions on how to make a Hate potion. Finding it in a standard-issue O.W.L potions text book, Tonks carefully copied the ingredients and directions onto a piece of parchment which she closed into her schoolbag quickly after. Being Sunday, the two had the whole day without lessons or Quidditch practice to disrupt them.

"Slow down, Tonks, you're going to hurt yourself," Charlie said in half a voice, trying his best to be quiet in spite of the fact that Tonks had tripped over herself numerous times since they had left the Great Hall after lunch.

She slowed to an almost-regular pace. "Tell me where you plan to do this, Charlie. Where in Hogwarts can we brew a potion illegally without getting caught?" To be honest, Tonks wasn't actually sure if they were partaking in illegal activity, but she figured better safe than sorry. Charlie shook his head.

"It's easy, Tonks. Think of how many abandoned classrooms there are in the castle." She thought.

"A lot. And anyone could look into one of those classrooms and find us," Tonks countered.

"But there's an office inside every classroom," Charlie said, raising his eyebrows, a characteristic he displayed when being mischievous. He led Tonks to the seventh floor, down to the farthest corridor and into the last classroom on the left. "Here," he said, shutting the door tight behind them.

"If that office door is locked, I might cry," Tonks said, tired from walking so far with a school bag full of potion supplies, including a cauldron. Just because her bag was undetectably expanded didn't mean it wasn't heavy.

Charlie walked over to the small staircase leading to the office door, turned the knob, and pushed the door open with ease. "Have I ever led you wrong, Tonksy?" He said with a smirk. She rolled her eyes at his arrogance, climbed the stairs without dropping anything and walked past Charlie into the office. Setting up the cauldron, placing the various vials and containers on the desk, and lighting a small flame under the big pot, Tonks turned to Charlie.

"Ready when you are," She said, and they began to make the potion.

XXX

"Oh no," Charlie said under his breath, two hours later. After the potion was finished, Tonks filled a small goblet and raised it to school crushes. She drank down the dark purple liquid and stood, looking at the glass with a curious face. Then, Tonks' features began to change: she became rapidly shorter and a little fuller than she had been; she began to become a pre-pubescent, then a child, then a toddler, and she stopped changing at an older infant.

Charlie's best friend was sitting in front of him, on the floor, as a pink-pigtailed chubby little baby, playing with the goblet that had fallen down in front of her. The lights reflecting off of it fascinated her. The cream-and-green stripped sweater Tonks had been wearing shrunk into what appeared to be footie pajamas, and to Charlie's relief, the bulge of a diaper was visible under the baby's clothes.

"What the hell?" Charlie said out loud, very confused and distraught. Tonks looked up at him, appearing to just notice he was in the room. She gurgled and continued to play with the goblet.

Concluding that they had gone wrong somewhere when making the potion, Charlie checked the sheet of parchment Tonks had written everything on. He realized, mere minutes too late, that measurements and order of directions had been mixed up. He supposed it was bound to happen when reading color-changing ink, but he was terrified. How was he supposed to fix this? He couldn't leave the room at all—he would no sooner leave baby-Tonks alone than he would leave teenaged-Tonks alone in an professor's office, and he certainly couldn't bring her anywhere with him, unneeded questions would definitely be asked, and the two would get into trouble that even Bill couldn't charm his way out of.

Charlie sat on the plush chair in front of the desk with his head in his hands and exhaled deeply. "Alright, Charlie," he said to himself. "You're going to use what you've got with you to fix this. You can do it. You're a Weasley, fixing things we've screwed up is one of our best attributes."

Picking up Tonks' school bag, he rummaged through for the book he was looking for, and found her copy of Advanced Potion-Making. Tonks started clinking the goblet on the ground at regular intervals, stopping between to marvel at the noise it created.

Flipping through the book, Charlie became so flustered he nearly tore pages out of the binding. Taking a deep breath, he calmed and flipped to the contents page at the front of the book and went to page nine-hundred and forty-six: Aging Potion. Reading through the ingredients, he saw that he already had more than he needed from brewing the Hate Potion. Everything except for a tear from the person to be aged. Charlie figured getting baby-Tonks to cry wouldn't be too hard, but getting her to calm down might be the problem.

Charlie began brewing again, keeping a careful eye on Tonks. After quarter of an hour, she tilted forward and for a frightening second Charlie thought she was going to hit her face on the ground. She held her hands out, however, and started slapping her pudgy little digits on the tile. Charlie wiped imaginary sweat of his brow and continued to work.

While he followed the directions with utmost care, baby-Tonks laid down on her back, and Charlie absently thought that it may not be good for an infant to be on such a dirty floor. He sifted through Tonks' bag again and found the extra-large sweatshirt she always kept in her bag because, as Tonks said, you never know when you'll want a little comfort. He set the sweatshirt out flat on the ground and picked up the infant with expert ease—with five younger siblings, Charlie might as well have been an expert with children—and held her over the sweatshirt.

Charlie wondered for a moment how old Tonks was supposed to be. Deciding that she may be near crawling age and because she was capable of sitting up by herself, he laid her on her stomach and watched as she lifted herself up by her arms and started to try to crawl: first moving backward a smidge, then forwards a little. Tonks seemed highly amused by her forward-reverse movement and giggled.

Continuing to work on the potion, Charlie began cooing to the baby out of habit, remembering every once in a while that the baby was Tonks, not Ronald or Ginny. When he stopped his cooing her smile would turn into a determined scowl: he realized that she was trying to crawl to her fallen goblet. Giving a small laugh, Charlie picked up the goblet, wiped the dust off onto his shirt and handed it gently to the baby. "There you go, Tonks," he said quietly, noticing that she gave no sign or recognition to her name.

Thinking this odd, Charlie turned to go back to the cauldron when he heard the tap of an owl at the window. He opened it and a mid-aged owl flew in—Errol, probably in his prime by now—and took the note off his leg.

Charlie, it read:

Where have you been all day? You ran off ten minutes into breakfast and I haven't seen you since lunch, and that was hours ago. I know you aren't a baby, but I'm a little concerned. Is Tonks with you?

Bill

Charlie laughed at the slight irony of Bill saying he wasn't a baby. He took a quill and a few slips of parchment off the desk and scribbled a reply:

Bill,

Up on the seventh floor, farthest corridor north. Last classroom on the left. In the office. Don't ask why, if you decide to see me here you'll know quickly. Yes, I'm with Tonks. See you soon.

Charlie.

He tied the scrap of paper to Errol's leg and sent him back out the window. As he snapped the window back shut, Tonks began to cry.

"Hush," Charlie said, walking over to the infant and picking her up. "Don't cry Tonks," he said, and once again Tonks made no reaction at her name. "Err—Nymphadora." She looked up at him, tears running down her full, rosy little cheeks. Her clear blue eyes were shining with the salt water and Charlie remembered quickly to catch one in the small phial he had set aside earlier. He then began to bounce her, and though that calmed her a bit, she continued to cry.

"You need some activity, a little bit of exercise," Charlie said, mostly to himself. He put the crying baby down on her sweatshirt where she sat, slapping her hands down and moaning worse than Myrtle. Charlie quickly retrieved Tonks' Muggle Frisbee from the bag and took his wand off the desk. Trying his hardest to remember the spell he had heard his mum use a few times, he transfigured the disc into a bouncer for the baby. Tonks became interested in the colorful thing and soon resumed crying until Charlie picked her up again and set her into the seat. She "stood" on her own and looked at the colorful toys surrounding her.

She began to swat at the toys, liking the sounds they would make, and Charlie continued to work on the potion: almost done. Being more careful than ever not to rush and especially not to make a mistake, he stirred the potion thrice.

Baby-Tonks had stopped swatting the toys and sat gazing at Charlie with her little thumb secure in her mouth. She would occasionally bounce once then settle again. She watched intently as he dropped little things into the big shiny pot and mix it with his big shiny spoon. At one point, Charlie took his big spoon out of the cauldron to step back and look at the book with the directions and, turning too quickly, dropped it to the ground.

"Bullocks!" he yelled, frustrated. His shout upset Tonks, who began to cry once again. Charlie took another deep breath and walked over to her, hearing a crunch as he stepped on something. He picked up the infant and cooed to her, bouncing her up and down as he had done so many times to Ronald and Ginny and though less often also to Fred and George. Her cries continued, her little face scrunched up. "Its okay, Nymphadora," she looked at him at the sound of her name, "There's no reason to cry." He continued to bounce her and she continued to cry until she reached a pudgy little fist out to grab a handful of Charlie's hair.

Charlie stifled a groan as Tonks yanked on his short, fine hair. "Alright, you want something colorful. I'll get you something colorful Nymphadora, just sit here quiet for a minute, please?" He placed her back in the bouncer and reached for the bag once again. He found what he was looking for right away: Tonks' lime-green hairbrush. While returning to the baby, Charlie thought to himself that he's spent too much time with Tonks in the past years if he could count on finding specific things in her bag at all times. He squatted in front of the infant and held the small brush in front of her. Eyes widening at the bright color, she cooed.

"This is a hair brush, Nymphadora," He said, brushing her hair once through the pigtail. He handed her the brush and she copied what he had done, running the brush along her pink pigtails. She occasionally held the brush backwards so it smoothed over her hair instead of brushing, and it would confuse the baby.

Sighing, Charlie realized that he had finished the potion. He went to grab the small goblet Tonks had been playing with, only to see that it had been what he stepped on and broke.

He shuffled through the drawers of the desk, hoping to find some small cup. In the bottom drawer he found an ink-well still in its package, never used. It was one that you had to fill with your own ink. Grateful that he had something clean to use, he tore the packaging open and carried the small well to the cauldron. Carefully, Charlie lifted the ladle to the well and filled it.

"Here we go, Nymphadora," he said, approaching her with the ink-well. "We just have to take a little sip of this, okay?" Tonks blinked, seemingly entranced by the well in Charlie's hand. He picked her up with one arm and set her back down on the sweatshirt, not wanting Tonks to get stuck in the bouncer when she returned to her normal size. Tonks reached out for the well, and willingly drank when Charlie held it to her small lips.

In a matter of moments, Tonks was sitting in front of Charlie, normal-sized once again, her footie pajamas switched out to again be her sweater and jeans. She gave him a blank stare and for one horrible moment Charlie thought he had messed up another potion and she had returned to her right size but not her right mind. Then she laughed, and Charlie let go of the breath he had been holding.

Tonks leaned forward quick and grasped Charlie in a tight hug. "Thank you so much Char. You've done more for me than you could imagine," She said, sounding a little choked. He gave a chuckle.

"What do you mean, Tonks?" she released him from the hug, holding him by the shoulders and staring him straight in the eye.

"I guess I wasn't actually myself before, but I was thinking as if I was myself at the same time. I saw everything more clearly than I'd ever seen things before," She said, sounding amazed by her own story. "I know who it is, Charlie, I know!" she said, practically bouncing with joy.

"That's great!" Charlie said, sounding almost equally enthusiastic but not quite sure if he actually was happy. "Which one?"

Tonks' face sobered, and then she grinned. "You," she said, pulling him into a hug again.

Charlie hugged her back tighter than he had ever held anyone.

"I love you, Charlie," She said, sounding more at peace, and happier, than he had heard in quite a long time.

At that moment the door opened and Bill walked in to see his brother and their best friend hugging, accidentally happening upon an intimate moment.

"I love you too, Nymphadora," He said, smirking.

Bill raised an eyebrow in confusion—Charlie told Tonks he loves her? Even more puzzling, he called her Nymphadora, and she didn't hit him? Bill back out of the office and shut the door quietly behind him.