Disclaimer: None of this is true. I own nothing.
"I can't believe it! I didn't even know that they existed!" Hermione exclaimed as she stared down at her friend in fascination. "I thought it was just fiction!"
Harry's eyes blinked open sleepily as he looked up to see his friends looming over him, who, strangely looked quite a bit larger than normal...
"W'a's goin' on?" He asked as he yawned loudly.
"Oh... Umm… Well, Harry…" Hermione stuttered, sending a desperate look at Ron. Ron glanced in her direction and shrugged, before turning his gaze back to Harry.
"Uh, well mate, when I woke up this morning, you were like this. I didn't know what to do so I got 'Mione and..." He trailed off helplessly.
Harry's eyes snapped all the way open and he gave his friends his full attention. "I was like what?" It was more of a demand than a question.
"You are... Well, you look like- You've turned into…" Hermione struggled desperately, unable to think of the best way to reply.
"Well?" Harry asked impatiently.
"A cat! You've turned into a cat mate!" Ron blurted out suddenly.
"A cat? I've turned into a bloody CAT?" Harry yelled.
Hermione sighed. "Not just any cat Harry, you've turned into a Cheshire Cat."
"I've turned into a WHAT Cat?"
"A Cheshire Cat, like the one in that Disney film, Alice in Wonderland."
"The pink one?" A horrified look crossed his face. "I better not be bloody PINK!"
Ron and Hermione both just stared at him with wide eyes. Luckily, they were interrupted before they could answer.
"Don't worry," Dean mumbled from his bed across the room, "If you're pink, then you can just turn invisible and hide from everyone. Don't forget to grin and stand on your head though. Everyone's mad in Wonderland…" He continued talking rubbish, as the trio just stared at him in a shocked silence. Suddenly a loud snore cut off Dean's babble, causing them all to jump. Dean had fallen back to sleep.
They looked at each other uneasily. "Hopefully he'll just think it was a dream." Ron said with a weak chuckle as he tried to break the tension.
"It's not funny Ronald!" Hermione snapped. "We need to tell somebody. Maybe we should take him to see Madame Pomfrey."
Harry cried out in alarm, before diving under the covers and huddling into a ball. "No, not her! Not the evil Dragon lady! Please don't let her get me! She'll keep me locked up forever! I'll never see daylight again!"
Hermione sighed in annoyance, pulled on her 'lecture face' and started laying into Harry for being 'disrespectful' and such, while Ron muttered under his breath about being 'surrounded by crazy people.'
"He's right," he muttered a little too loudly, "everyone's mad!" He winced as Hermione hit the back of his head, not once stopping her lecture. He shot her a glare that luckily, she didn't notice, and went back to his muttering, making sure that it was too quiet to be heard by Hermione.
They continued on in this vein for awhile, before Harry let out a startled squeak.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked immediately as she grabbed the covers and pulled them off of Harry. As he was revealed, they saw him twitching his face peculiarly. "Harry?"
"I can't stop grinning!" He cried desperately, pulling an unwilling laugh from Hermione's lips.
"You're a Cheshire Cat Harry. All they do is grin!"
"I'm going to grin for the rest of my life? No!" He sounded, and looked extremely horrified at the idea, making Hermione giggle again at his predicament. As he bemoaned the loss of frowning, he wished that he could get rid of the smile. As he continued to wish, he felt a strange tingling sensation around his mouth. Thinking it was nothing, he ignored it.
"You're going to hav-" Hermione cut herself off with a gasp.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, not even noticing that his mouth wasn't moving as he spoke. He looked up into her eyes that were widened in shock.
"Your mouth! It- Harry, it's gone!"
"What do you mean 'it's gone'? It's right… here…" He trailed off as he tried to move his mouth, but there was nothing to move. He let out a panic filled cry as he desperately tried to 'find' his mouth.
He pawed at his face hysterically; trying to feel for the mouth that he knew had to be somewhere, if only he could just find it.
He could barely make out Hermione's shouts of 'will it back Harry, you have to will it back!' behind the rush of blood in his ears and the panic consuming his senses. It took her desperate cry of his name and Ron giving him a shove for him to snap back to the present and be able to listen enough to take in Hermione's instructions.
He took her advice and was rewarded by the tingling feeling again and the return of his mouth. His sigh of relief was copied by his friends. They all fell silent as the recovered from the shock and panic Harry's accidental experimentation had caused.
Ron was the first to break the silence as his excitement caught up with him. "So Dean was right. You can turn invisible!" he said, gesticulating wildly with his enthusiasm. "Why don't you try and experiment?"
"No!" Hermione cried, "he will not experiment until he has been checked over by Madame Pomfrey and been to see Professor Dumbledore." She glared sternly at them both and held up her hand to stall them as they went to protest. "We don't know how many abilities he has gained or what he can or cannot do of the things we think we know a Cheshire Cat can do. It is a fictional creature after all. We don't want to risk him hurting himself without someone present who can help if something goes wrong, okay?"
"Yes Hermione," they both muttered as Hermione clasped her hands together and nodded decisively.
"Right then," she said briskly, "to the Hospital Wing!"
Harry rolled his eyes in annoyance, but soon looked suitable cowed after Hermione sent her glare in his direction. "Yes Hermione," he repeated and Ron copied him quickly.
"Let's go then." She said as she motioned towards the door with her left hand, while her right waved them forward impatiently.
Harry jumped off the bed and started across the room as his friends followed behind him. Half way across he stopped suddenly in front of the floor length mirror that Seamus had insisted they have in their room.
He let out a startled shriek as he stared at his reflection. He was pink!
He turned accusing eyes on his friends "Why didn't you tell me!" He cried as his eyes narrowed. Neither of his friends answered. "You were going to let me go out like this? Well?" His back arched and he started to hiss threateningly. Still no answer.
He took a step forward. His friends quickly stepped back. Hermione chuckled nervously as she tried to think of a way to placate him, while Ron's eyes searched for a place to hide.
He started to spit and his features tightened. The only thing that ruined Harry's image was his big grin, but to Ron and Hermione, it made him look even scarier.
They both knew from experience that an angry cat was bad. An angry cat that could turn invisible on the other hand…
They were screwed.
"Sorry…" Hermione tried, before gulping audibly as Harry's glare intensified.
He fell into a crouch and his body tensed.
"Run!"
Harry leapt and both of them dashed for the door. Ron yanked it open, and they both sprinted out of the dorm room and down the stairs. They could hear Harry hissing and spitting behind them as he decided whether or not to brave venturing outside of the room.
The last thing they heard as they entered the common room was Harry's deceptively calm voice calling out to them.
"I'll get you both. Just you wait."
They could both imagine the evil grin etched on his face. Shivers ran down their spines.
They were so screwed.
...
Back in the dorm room Harry was debating whether or not he should follow his friends when a thought occurred to him. He could turn invisible. The evil grin that his friends had imagined made his grin stretch even further across his face. Oh, what fun he could have.
He thought hard and felt his body tingle as he hopefully turned invisible. He walked over towards the mirror and could not see his reflection as he stood in front of it. Perfect.
He walked out of the room through the door his friends conveniently left open for him. He padded silently down the stairs and paused at the bottom. As he looked out into the common room, his gaze sought out his friends. He found them sitting in their normal seats by the fire. Both of them kept shooting worried looks towards the stairs to the boys' dormitories as they waited for the pink cat to creep down to enact his revenge.
As the common room was mostly empty, and therefore pretty quiet, Harry made sure that he walked as silently as possible as he made his way to his friends. He paused a few feet away from them as he considered what he should actually do to them. He leapt up onto a nearby chair and watched them as he contemplated how badly they should be punished.
As he sat there, he started to wonder how he became a cat in the first place. Was it something he ate? A prank? Most likely. But who? Fred and George? They seeming to be the most likely candidates, but they weren't in the school any more, so it would be near impossible for them to pull it off. Unless... Unless they had an accomplice. His eyes narrowed as a niggling suspicion settled in his mind. As he was debating whether or not his hunch could in fact be reality, he heard his name. Looking up, he saw that Ron and Hermione were whispering to each other rather suspiciously as they looked around warily.
He jumped from his chair to the sofa that was right next to the chairs Ron and Hermione were occupying. He settled on the arm nearest to them and shamelessly eavesdropped on their conversation.
"You don't think it's permanent do you?" Ron was saying.
"I don't know. What did Fred and George tell you?" Hermione replied worriedly.
"All they said was that it was a new product and they wanted me to try it out for them. They wanted me to make notes of the effects. They need to know if it was successful, what it did - because apparently it works differently for different people. If there was anything else that I noticed about it, I should let them know so they can make the needed changes before they start to sell it." Ron replied with a helpless shrug.
"So they don't even now how long it lasts?"
"No, and apparently it makes Harry turn into a pink cat that is incapable of frowning." Ron chuckled while Hermione frowned at him disapprovingly.
"It's not funny Ronald! Your brothers, Fred and George gave you this potion and you just gave it to your best friend with no idea what it would do or how long it would last!" Hermione whispered harshly, putting particular emphasis on the twin's names as she gave Ron a hard glare.
"Yeah, I know and I'm sorry Hermione, but Fred and George said it was safe. They said they had tried it on each other and while it worked completely differently for both of them, it was perfectly harmless fun." Ron said with an apologetic smile.
Hermione sighed resignedly. "You know that you can never trust Fred and George, especially when they don't give you hardly any information. Now, do you have any of the potion left? And how did you give it to Harry anyway?"
"Yes, there are still one and a half bottles left, enough for three people. They're in the top drawer of my bedside table."
"Yes, and?" Hermione urged as Ron adopted a sheepish expression.
"Well... I kind of asked Dobby to slip it into his pumpkin juice last night at dinner-"
"Ron!" Hermione screeched. Ron cringed away from her as he apologised hurriedly to try and prevent Hermione's wave of anger.
At this point Harry had decided that he'd heard enough. If Ron and Hermione had still been paying attention instead of arguing, they would have seen a sinister grin appear in mid air for a split second, before it vanished once again. Harry crept out of the common room and back up to the dorm. He had a potion to steal.
...
The next morning the whole of Gryffindor tower echoed with the screams of two outraged students, who had fallen prey to the same potion that had created the cat that constantly grinned.