The Greatest Weapon, Chapter 11

"I've got it!"

"Got what, Hermione?" Harry asked, looking up from the stack of notes and partially completed articles.

"I found a glamour potion that will do what you need. It's got a polyjuice base, but then it's adapted so that you don't look like any one person; basically you just have a body type similar to the people whose hair you used."

One of Harry's eyebrows shot up. "...and where did you find that again?"

Hermione muttered something that sounded like "in the Restricted Section," but before Harry could tease her, (or ask for more details) she had already moved on to explaining: "I'm pretty sure I can brew it, but you'll need to figure out what you want your body type to be, and I do have to warn you that the ingredients are rather expensive."

"That's fine; I'll just get a Gringotts draft," Harry replied, finding himself nervous once again. Visions of the polyjuice mishap in Second Year drifted through his mind; what if he were to get a hair from something worse than a cat? Would it be reversible with a potion that was more advanced than polyjuice? Then something else occurred to him. "How long does it last?"

"An hour, at least that's what I think this says," replied Hermione, who was studying the potion-stained page.

"You can't read it?" he asked nervously.

"I can read most of it. It's just that the page got splattered with potion," Hermione said, staring at it again as if a firm look would make it give up all its secrets.

Harry was definitely not sure of this, for the record. All the same, he (and a very reluctant Ron) helped owl order and chop ingredients for the potion while Hermione actually prepared it, and at the close of the required two weeks (the potion took less time than polyjuice, due to the use of kitsune whisker instead of fluxweed and stewed cicada instead of lacewing) they had a bubbling, murky potion that did not look substantially different than polyjuice except that the color (despite the fact that the last ingredient had not yet been added) was a violent blue, which, according to Hermione's notes, was at least correct.

Harry blinked at the mixture. "How long will this keep?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, do we have to brew a unique mixture every time?"

"No, it should keep for a week when decanted, a month if put in a cold box, and nearly indefinitely if put under a Apprentice's Stasis, which supposedly won't hurt it; it's not finicky like Felix Felicis or something."

"Felix felicis?" asked Harry, who had not heard of the potion.

"Liquid luck," Ron filled him in. "It makes you lucky as long as it lasts, but it can't be used in competitions or elections or anything, and it's super expensive and hard to brew."

"It would be amazing to escape from Potter luck though," said Harry almost wistfully. Then he looked back at the cauldron bubbling in the center of the Chamber of Secrets. (They had forgone brewing in Myrtle's bathroom proper because it wasn't exactly sanitary and Myrtle might have bothered or told on them, and the only other place that they knew of that was secret was the Chamber itself. Both Ron and Harry had been quite creeped out in the spooky old hideout, especially considering the conditions that had brought them to the Chamber last, but Hermione said she actually quite liked the quiet, once she had gotten over the enormous snake corpse in the middle of the floor.) "So how is this going to work?"

"You need two strands of hair- or, well, anything, but hair is probably ideal- from two different people whose features you want to combine. Think about it sort of like you'll end up looking like the kid of the two people you've chosen, and you'll be the same age as you are now, so we'll probably have to use some aging spells." Hermione was busy decanting the potion. "Oh, by the way, both of the people have to be witches if you're going to be a witch."

"Harry's going to be a witch?!" asked Ron, mildly horrified. He had been told of their basic need for disguise, but not their plans, because Harry was of the opinion that the fewer who knew, the better.

"Yeah, I am," Harry told him reluctantly. "I needed a disguise that no one would see through, so I'm going for as different from my regular body as possible."

Ron blanched. "Right. Better you than me, mate."

"There's nothing wrong with being a witch!" Hermione snapped at once, still trying to scrape out the last drops of the altered polyjuice into another jar.

"There is when you're originally a wizard," Ron replied, still looking a little pale. "I don't particularly want to be in the position of potentially fancying my best mate pretending to be a witch."

Hermione thumped him, but she was grinning a little.

"So how much do we have and how much is a working dose?" asked Harry, who was trying to get them back on track. "Will we need to rebrew this anytime soon?"

"There's enough for fifty doses before we have to rebrew, so that's not going to be a problem. That said, any new batch will probably come up with a new combination of the features that you want, so you're going to have to do the last step all at once."

"You just decanted it," Harry pointed out.

Hermione blushed. "I can just pour it right back. Whose hair are you going to add?"

"Lavender and Parvati," Harry replied reluctantly, drawing out a vial with two hairs.

"Are you sure those are the right hairs, mate?"

"Yeah. I did the detection spell we learned from Fake-Moody last year," Harry responded. "They're the right ones."

"And they're ok with that?"

"What do you think, Ron?" that was Hermione. "They can't know."

"Oh, right. Um, you do know that if we were making actual polyjuice instead of an adaptation without their consent it would be against the law?"

"Good to know." Harry looked back at the cauldron, once again filled with slimy blue fluid of a mud-like consistency. "Is just the two hairs ok, or do I need more because there's more potion?"

"It might help a little, but in the end it's just the fact that you're putting it in, not how much you're putting in. Make sure to stir it well."

Harry hesitated and then dropped the hair into the cauldron. For a long, tense moment, nothing happened, and Harry wondered if she had brewed the mixture correctly. There were, after all, ample things that could go wrong, and it was a Master Level potion. Then the potion foamed and turned violet shot with streaks of gold, bubbling for a long while before at last settling down. They had the potion now.

"So, what now? Do we just wait for my query goes through the Daily Prophet?" Harry asked.

"What query?"

"Harry is planning on replacing Rita Skeeter in the Daily Prophet," Hermione told Ron as Harry cringed. "Not in a bad way, but just so that we can have a mouthpiece that isn't being controlled by the Ministry and is a little more respected than the Quibbler."

Ron whistled. "Good idea, Harry."

Harry blushed.

"Oh, and you've got to get some practice before you go in for an interview," Hermione said before things could get too far off topic. "If you walk in there looking and acting like Harry Potter, that'll be a dead giveaway, especially with the fact that Harry Potter would be missing right about the same time. Wizards obviously know that there are things capable of making one wizard appear to be another entirely."

"Practice?" Harry didn't like the sound of that.

"You'll need to learn to walk like a witch and talk like a witch and you'll also have to learn how to wear dresses and...other things." Hermione blushed. "And you'll probably need to know how to do makeup."

Harry wondered just how much she would yell at him later if he bolted. Next to him, Ron had once again turned a rather interesting color.

"C'mon now, it's not as bad as all that. I know it's weird, Harry, but you were the one to come up with the idea."

Harry muttered something that sounded rather suspiciously like "it was just an idea," but at a volume low enough that Hermione couldn't thump him for it. It had never really occurred to him that he would have to wear bras and things. Really, he should have chosen Lee Jordan and Viktor Krum's hair; at least he would still be male...

"We'll have to come up with a name for you," Hermione went on, far too enthusiastically from Harry's point of view. One would think that she wanted to see him dolled up in witches' clothes! "And then we're going shopping in Hogsmeade, once I give you a little acting lesson. I'm sorry Harry, but I kind of draw the line at dressing you in my underclothes."

"The feeling is mutual, 'Mione," Harry responded, going a few shades paler. "Anyway, why can't I just wear what I normally wear under a dress or whatever?"

"Wizards will probably be looking and judging," Hermione responded matter-of-factly. Ron had started edging towards the door as if Hermione was some kind of feral animal that he wanted to run from while still not angering, which Harry concurred with. Unfortunately, he did not have the option of edging away slowly, and had to listen, blushing furiously, to Hermione explain exactly why he needed witches' underclothes. Not that she was crude about it, but seriously, this was not a topic he wanted to discuss with his female friend.

"If you're going to look like a witch, you're going to have to know how to act like one, and that includes stuff like this that normally a girl gets from her mom, so sorry," Hermione continued gently. "Besides, all of the girls in my dorm always assume I'm a little bookworm who doesn't do anything fun...it would be nice to go shopping with another girl for once..." her tone trailed off, momentarily wistful, before she at last straightened and glanced back at the mess of ingredients and spilled potion and utensils on the newly-scourgified floor of the Chamber of Secrets. "Anyway, let's get all this cleaned up and then I can start giving you your lessons. Did Ron run off?"

"Yeah, I think so," said Harry shakily, still thinking of what he was going to undertake. He really should have just bought the Prophet out to begin with instead of coming up with this rigamarole!