Team: Chudley Cannons
Position: Chaser 1

Prompt: Potion

Optional prompts: (occasion) Sorting Ceremony, (word) frost, (word) shatter

Word count: 1,421

"Tonks!"

The shout made Tonks jump, dropping her spoon into the steaming cauldron and whipping her head around to see three red-headed boys burst into the empty classroom. "Merlin's arse, you lot, I thought you were Snape!"she grinned, clapping her hand to her chest in mock terror.

"What, you thought these two sounded like Snape?" Charlie asked, ruffling the twins' hair.

Tonks let out a snort of laughter. "When you've been paranoid for three months that the greasy-haired git is going to catch you at any moment, you start thinking everyone sounds like Snape."

Charlie shook his head. "Nah, your disguise was fault proof. What reason does Snape have to be suspicious of Madame Pomfrey asking for Potions ingredients?"

"Considering it was during the Sorting Ceremony, possibly a few?" Tonks suggested, quirking an eyebrow. "I mean, if she needed ingredients, why wouldn't she ask for them during the summer?"

In order to steal the ingredients they needed for the potion Tonks was brewing, she had used her Metamorphmagus skills to turn into Madame Pomfrey almost as soon as she arrived in the Castle on September 1st. There had been a slight hesitation from Snape when she asked him for the keys to his office, but he had handed them over without protest. Then it had just been a case of taking the ingredients she needed, leaving the keys on his office desk as instructed, before taking refuge in the unused classroom they had picked out before the summer.

"We were looking out for you while we were waiting to be Sorted," complained George.

Fred nodded. "Spent ages looking for your pink head!"

"Ah," Tonks said, shaking her head with a wry smile, "I always go yellow during the Sorting Ceremony and End of Term feast. House pride, y'know?" To demonstrate she turned her hair a shockingly bright yellow for a couple of seconds, before reverting to her usual magenta. "And you won't be complaining so much when this potion gets working,"

"You haven't even told us what it does yet," Fred said, looking with scrutiny into the cauldron.

Tonks and Charlie glanced at each other with identical roguish grins, before Charlie began explaining. "This is Polyjuice Potion. It allows the drinker to transform into another person."

"Wicked," said the twins in perfect unison, eyes wide with awe.

"I got the idea at Easter when Mum mentioned they were going to stay with Aunt Muriel over Christmas so we'd all have to stay at school," Charlie continued, "You two said that the castle wouldn't know what hit it when you two running around all day. So we thought: what if there were four of you!"

"I can turn into one of you easily," Tonks said, "but Charlie here doesn't have quite the luck that I do. But if he drinks this, then there will be four Weasley twins running around the school later today and causing as much havoc as we like."

Charlie nodded eagerly, the twins' own grins bringing a smile to his face. "You'd better be grateful we've got Tonks on our side, she's a much better Potioneer than I am. All she needs is this."

With a flourish of his hand, he plucked a hair from the head of the nearest twin. George yelped in surprise, rubbing his head with a look of betrayal. "What was that for?"

"So that I can turn into you!" Charlie stated simply.

Tonks ladled a dollop of the porridge-like liquid into a glass and handed it to Charlie, who delicately added George's hair. The potion turned from a murky green into a bright fiery orange colour, the exact same shade as Weasley hair.

"Appropriate colour!" Tonks laughed. She glanced over to the window; despite the early morning frost still covering the glass, she could still see the sun just beginning to rise over the Quidditch pitch. "It's probably about 9 am, so that glass will last you until 10. Then if I give you this-" she pulled a hip flask from an inside pocket of her trench coat "- and fill it up, you'll have enough to last all day. Make sure you drink at least some every hour and you won't revert back. Got all that?"

"Got all that." Charlie nodded, looking with apprehension at the contents of his glass. He then glanced at George with a look of mild horror. "Sorry, I'm just trying to get over the fact that this drink contains part of you."

Tonks and the twins both roared with laughter. "Rather you than me, mate," Tonks said, slapping his arm. "Right, who's going first?"

"You go first," said Fred as George nodded, "or we're wasting Charlie's Polyjuice time."

"Alrighty then." Tonks stood herself squarely in front of Fred, studying his facial features carefully in order to replicate them. After a minute or so she inhaled deeply and shifted, releasing her breath when she was finished. She was now a few inches shorter and distinctly flat-chested, meaning her clothes didn't fit very well.

Fred nodded slowly, before turning to his older brother. "Very impressive, but now it's your turn!"

Charlie grimaced as he looked again into the glass. "Come on, before you get cold feet!" Tonks teased.

"Face the other way," Charlie insisted, "in case this is as gross as the illustrations in that book make it out to be!"

Sighing dramatically, Tonks and the twins all turned to face the blank wall. She heard a loud gulp as Charlie downed the potion, followed by a disgusted groaning sound. Not being able to resist taking a peek, she turned around just in time to see the glass shatter as it hit the floorboard. Charlie made a desperate shooing motion with his hands so she turned away again, giggling hard.

Hogwarts castle was about to have the most exciting and ginger Christmas it had ever had.

9 hours later, Minerva McGonagall could honestly say that she'd experienced the most stress-inducing Christmas since the Marauder's seventh year. It had started when a nervous wreck that might have once been Percy Weasley approached her after lunch, claiming that Charlie Weasley was missing but four twins had appeared at the dinner table instead. She'd then spent far too long in the Hospital Wing with said Mr Weasley and Madame Pomfrey, trying to calm his anxiety and hoping against hope that he was experiencing double vision.

It quickly became apparent that he was not.

She then spent the rest of her afternoon trying to round up the four twins, with the assistance of a handful of other teachers and the hindrance of a certain poltergeist. It proved a great deal more difficult than expected since every time she came close to cornering one twin, another would race past and provide enough distraction to let the other escape.

After a painfully long day, she closed her office door and turned to look at the four Weasley twins who were lined up in front of her desk. Sybill had found one of them in the North Tower rolling crystal balls down the stairs. Pomona had discovered one in the greenhouse trying to smuggle out an armful of Snarfaluff pods. Severus had caught another in the Entrance Hall lobbing dungbombs at a group of Slytherins. And the fourth had been spotted by Irma trying to smuggle a book back into the Restricted Section of the library.

"We can either do this the simple way, or the long and difficult way," Minerva began, fixing each Weasley with a penetrating stare, "which of you four are the real Weasley twins, and who are the other two of you?"

Just as she finished speaking, one of the twins gasped and looked down at himself in horror. His features were changing before Minerva's very eyes, looking a few years older and gaining several inches in height. Now his jeans looked painfully tight, the front of his plimsolls had split to let his toes poke out, and his knitted jumper only reached his elbows and was showing his midriff. The mystery of the missing Charlie Weasley had been solved.

Her gaze now turned to the final twin, expecting him to turn back into his true self any moment. That was when she noticed that his hair wasn't quite the same colour as the other three Weasleys; it carried a slight hint of bright pink.

Minerva groaned inwardly, rubbing her temples. Of course, if anyone was going to be involved in a disguise-themed prank, it was going to be Miss Tonks.

Author's Note:

It's a few hours late, but I'm actually really proud of this. One thing I really love about the QLFC is you get to write about such different characters for each round, it really makes you practice characterisation.

My personal favourite sentence in this is 'Merlin's arse.' I typed up Merlin's beard out of habit, then changed it while grinning a lot. The Always You Three girls are so polite compared to Tonks, though with Ro that might not continue forever! xD