Everything Changes // Fred Weasley

chapter 15: say yes to the dress

December 17th, 1994

"What's Hogsmeade like?" I asked as Naomi was getting ready to head to the wizard town that afternoon to try on dresses for the Yule Ball that was only a week away. She had been trying to go for the past two months, but something always came up, so she was forced to wait until the very last minute to find her dress.

"Why don't you come and find out?" she said while throwing on her sweater.

I raised my brow at her and let out a slight laugh. There was no way that both of us could go to Hogsmeade to try on dresses, that would be far too risky, and we would be caught right away.

"I have a surprise for you." Naomi said, sharing a sly smile with Anna who was sitting at the foot of her bed. Naomi ran into the bathroom and came back out a few moments later with a vial of some thick, mud like liquid and then plucked a strand of hair off of Anna's head.

"What is that?" I asked, slightly disgusted by the liquid she had just placed Anna's hair into.

"George, Fred, and I have been brewing this batch of Polyjuice potion for the past month so that you can come to Hogsmeade with me!"

"I already have a dress, so I was planning on staying back anyways!" Anna said, expecting to see excitement on my face, but I was still confused.

"What's Polyjuice potion?"

"Oh, I forget you aren't a witch sometimes." Anna said.

"It's a potion that turns you into the likeness of the person whose hair is mixed in the potion. So basically, you're going to look exactly like Anna all day. You just have to take a drink of this every hour or so to continue to look like Anna."

I cautiously grabbed the vial from Naomi, noticing that the color had changed from a dirt brown to a light lavender after adding the strand of Anna's hair. It smelled like fresh lilacs, which made it easy for me to overlook the texture as I took a drink. Soon I felt a weird bubbling in my stomach as I shrunk a good half foot to be the same height as Anna. I ran to the bathroom to see that the reflection looking back at me wasn't me at all, but instead the curly haired girl sitting at the foot of her bed, gawking at my new appearance.

"Is this what life is like for you two all the time?" Anna asked in amazement, not taking her eyes off of me for even a second.

"You get used to it." Naomi responded, handing me a pile of Anna's clothes that she had just taken out of her trunk. "Go ahead and change out of my clothes and into Anna's and then we can head to the carriages, there is no way I'm missing this trip and not having a dress for the ball."

I did as I was told and Anna handed me her wand, which she made me swear on my life that I would take care of. I stuffed it in my boot, threw on her jacket, and then Naomi and I left the dorm, leaving Anna all alone.

We made our way down to the carriages. It was so cold outside, and the snow was lightly falling from the sky. I didn't think it could be much colder than the day Fred and I served detention in the broom shed, but I was wrong. I wrapped the jacket tighter around my body as I handed Professor McGonagall Anna's permission slip and boarded the carriage along with Naomi and some Ravenclaw's I had never seen before. Naomi seemed to have class with one of them and began talking to them about the exam coming up in Herbology, while I watched outside the window as Hogwarts faded further and further away.

Soon we came upon a small town with odd-shaped buildings. Naomi had told me about Hogsmeade before. She told me that it was a town populated by only witches and wizards, with lots of strange shops that you would never find in a muggle town. I had always imagined it to be similar to Diagon Alley, but I was very wrong. I enjoyed the atmosphere of Hogsmeade much more than the atmosphere of Diagon Alley. It was quaint and quiet, very different from the hustle and bustle that was Diagon Alley.