0700 hours, The Great Hall.


It is an unusually bright morning at Hogwarts and warm, golden light floods the Great Hall as students stream in for their breakfasts. Several faculty members sit at the front.

“Maaail!” a third year announces from the Hufflepuff table just as the first of the owls begin to glide through the windows with an array of letters and packages.

Heads lifts from bowls of porridge or platters of pastries and for a brief moment, it seems like the daily ritual of simply-another-morning being set into motion without a hitch. Just then, breaking this illusion, a loud SCREECH cuts through the drowsy murmurings and almost every eye in the Hall is turned skywards in time to spot a rather baffling sight.

Near to twenty dark-winged owls, soaring together in a wide fleet as they swoop down across the tables. Each bird precariously bears a tiny glass bottle which, with another screech, is dropped in successive timing on to the unsuspecting victims…

POOF!

The delicate sound of shattered glass is muffled by the dispersal of a large and colorful cloud of powder, enshrouding the entire Hall in its beguiling mist.

It is not until the cloud settles that they will realize what has become of their minds…

---

_{Interested? Check out the plotting thread.}

It’s Friday. 7am, waking up in the morning. Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal.

Check check check. Although Mace had woken up at 6:45 and Hogwarts only had the one brand of cereal.

Looking forward to the weekend.

Double check.

Gotta get this ready for Halloween. Next year.

Hmm, some of the rhythm was lost. Give it a few years and those words might mean something, like they would look back on the Tetra Wizard Tournament and see all the accomplishments the Champions had accomplished. Like Mace's scarecrow.

The previous Halloween had been a success with this model but Mace wasn't interested with the same tricks he had pulled in years past. Animated holiday decorations were old hat by now when they only lasted a day or so. Now to try for longer. The problem was that most animating spells did not last for long on such insubstantial mediums such as straw and clothing scraps.

None of this bothered Mace, who had somehow gotten space on the table to stretch out the figure of straw and cloth while he made repairs. It was only when the clouds of mist obscured his vision did he notice that something far more interesting was happening in the Great Hall...

Dilly was right in the middle of drizzling treacle over a hot buttered crumpet, when a mad flock of owls arrived out of nowhere. It was like Mail Call...only it seemed that nobody was getting any mail. Owls were flying around everywhere, but none were dropping any envelopes or packages.

Suddenly an Owl swooped past Dilly's head, so close she felt the soft breeze of its wings. Then she heard a tinkle of breaking glass, on the table right next to her plate. "Humph..." she thought, pushing it away. "Better not eat that now..."

And then a billowing cloud of purplish blue powder rose in the air around her, enveloping her. It didn't smell bad, nor did it make her breathing difficult, or make her woozy. Aside from its color the only thing she noticed was that it made her nose tickle.

And then she began to sneeze uncontrollably. The more she sneezed, the more of the powder she took in. And...the more of the powder she took in, the more she sneezed. It seemed to go on like this for a very long time, though in reality it was probably just a few minutes.

Finally...just as she thought the sneezing might be coming under control...she had a vision of sneezing her own head off, with it rolling on the floor and then out the door, like in the Poor Meatball song.

She burst out giggling, and that set her off to sneezing all over again.

Erin was, in general, a great lover of adventure. He liked excitement, adrenaline, the sharp swoop of his stomach when he just didn't know how things were gonna turn out. He loved pranks, and had been confidant and muscle power in earlier year's schemes. But a bloke's breakfast.... that was sacred. When the shadow of a fleet of owls fell over him without it even being a holiday, he knew.

Vials hit the table all around him. The tinkle of breaking glass provided an appropriately ominous soundtrack as bright powder billowed from the bombs. It all happened too quickly for Erin to do much about, so he had a forkful of rashers half-way to his mouth when the powder swept over him and the rest of the Great Hall.

It swirled up in a blinding dance, and for a long moment Erin couldn't see anything. But he heard around him cries of alarm and surprise, people coughing and laughing, and someone right down the table from him was having a great sneezing fit.

When the powder cleared, the first thing that Erin noticed was that his fork now speared a mouthful of powdery manky eggs. The second thing he noticed was that he was suddenly on the wrong side of the hall. He craned his head around until he caught sight of the gold-and-red banners above, looked up at the staff table, looked back over to Slytherin, and had the nasty shock of an out-of-body experience when he spotted a familiar blonde head. Slowly he looked down. Nice tan hands, clearly a bloke's, but not his. Gryffindor robes. Erin plucked at them, bemused.

All around the hall people were rising from their seats or twisting to face each other, some babbling, some looking shocked. Some bloke in Hufflepuff was wailing, the bloody weirdo, while others grinned. Erin turned to the person next to him and clapped them gamely on the shoulder. "Here, who am I?"

"Looks like the mail is in. I heard there's going to be a storm later today..."

One of the Gryffindor quidditch followers was launching into a complaint about practicing under adverse weather conditions but Raine's attention had trailed of from their breakfast table discussion, concentrating more effectively on the real matter at hand. Food. Godric's socks, she was ravenous.  The redhead was partly through a bowl honey porridge when several housemates all at once cried out; she glanced up immediately and dropped her spoon in surprise.

An instinctive arm went up protectively but there was no time to act further as tiny glass bottles barreled down from above and battered against the floor in large billows of brilliant powder. Someone down the table was sneezing uncontrollably, somebody else was yelling and she was sure a student had fallen over in the distance.

What was this...Raine breathed in reluctantly as she tried to get up- only the fine cloud was disorienting and  she felt almost nauseas, although not at all ill, so she remained seated. Calmly. The powder was settling and as soon as visibility improved in the least (all four tables ahead of her?), she knew something was wrong. Not something but perhaps everything.

The slow, sleepy mood of morning had evaporated in an instant and confused exclamations came from all the around. All the stude-- all the students? Why was she at the front of the Great Hall? Raine felt a cold, unpleasant sensation creep up as she realized she was seated in a proper chair rather than a bench but... but... the witch stood with a jerk.

And then gasped loudly as a jolt of pain suddenly pulled at her joints. "Ah, shit. Who...?" she scowled, gaze shifting to her sides. Professors. It sunk in, like a weight, and she quickly began to examine herself. Female, tan, similar height. Raine ran a hand through her hair (dark curls!)- she supposed it could have been worst than their school counsellor.

"Curious," even her voice carried a very different tune and she turned to the closest staff member with a forced, controlled expression that probably did not suit Miss Biladeau-Yukawa. "Who are you?"

Lexi was sitting at the Gryffindor table, enjoying a lively conversation with a few of her friends. They talked about nonsense, who would win the upcoming Quidditch matches, who hadn't finished homework yet... the works. Someone pointed out to Lexi that she was missing one of her contacts, leaving one eye yellow and one green. She reached into her bag and was pulling out the contact case when somebody announced that the mail was here.

Popping in the other contact with a steady hand, Lexi looked aroud at the oddly colored owls who dropped small glass vials onto the crowd of students. One landed right in front of her, filling her lungs with the cloud that poofed out of it after the glass shattered. She coughed a bit and felt as if she was going to pass out. The dizzy spell went away and she reached up to feel her forehead, maybe it was a fever induced vision.

Then she saw the green.

Where she had had on red and gold, was now replaced by green and silver. Lexi's heart dropped in her chest as she panicked, pulling at the unfamiliar cloak. Lexi caught her reflection in the glass in front of her.

This was definitly a nightmare. Not only was she a Slytherin.

She was a he.

Breakfast may have just started but Obderedria already had food in her stomach and some on her plate. As her mother as always said, Breakfast was the most important meal of the day so you had fuel for the day. The most important next to lunch to maintain the day. And dinner, because you had to sleep a night away until breakfast. Anyhoo, with a year and some months under her belt Obderedria knew where each kind of breakfast dish was going to appear on the table so she could get her nutrition.

That was when mail arrived. She wondered if she would get anything, that scant hope of post that wasn't replies from her mother to her letters home. Although sometimes she got very odd mail and she never knew where it was from...

A piece of bacon was in her lips when she noticed the colorful dust. It blocked out Heliotrope's form (eating porridge with her hands, she still didn't get the concept of all the silverware and that they were't weapons to fend of school brawls with...) and then the world went pink and orange. Obderedria sneezed--

--a split second dream, it must have been, where she was floating above the Great Hall with all the breakfast laden tables bellow her, obscured by the filter of colored dust that made everyone look like a magnet used on an old telly set -- mum had told her to stop doing that with toy magnets when she was seven to not break the old telly they used--

--the dust cleared and Obderedria felt seasick although the Great Hall was not a ship. She blinked because for a moment she didn't know where she was although all the identifiable parts of the Great Hall were there. It was like, if you always took the same path in one room you got used to a certain perspective and now she was 'sideways' from where she should be. And standing.

And taller! The plates on table were further away than what she associated with her normal eye level. It might have been the same foods around the breakfast table but the people weren't. Was that Philo? Did that student next to him have blue trimmed robes?

Then Obderedria looked down at herself and nearly shrieked with fright. She looked -- could magic sometimes cause sudden growth spurts? She didn't feel different, no wait she did, no, it was very difficult to figure out -- with widespread hands doing her best 'Helio's webbing' she touched along her torso. She was still soft in places but the proportions were different. Her hips felt wider. She felt older. Mum said when she grew up out of her baby fat she might look different. Then her hands moved up. And just the things she and Dahlia were worried about --

She reached down for a spoon for the ol' spoon mirror trick -- were those ink-stains on her hands? -- and looked at her reflection. Warped, obviously, so she couldn't place who she looked like but it wasn't her.

Because the hair was black with no sign of a green splotch of hair.

It was no secret that the counselor hated mornings; she wasn’t usually hungry enough to eat breakfast, though she grudgingly showed up in the great hall, drank tea and munched on a small portion of whatever-it-was-the-house-elves-made. She didn’t even pay attention as the mail started coming in, only it wasn’t mail. Instead of letters, the owls were dropping little glass bottles at people. Mai rubbed her eyes to be sure that what she was seeing was real, and not some sort of strange hallucination brought on by the poor quality of sleep she had received the night before.

Nope, it wasn’t a hallucination.

The next thing she knew, there was powder everywhere-- although she could have sworn she inhaled some, the coughing was minimal. She looked down at her plate and groaned at the sight of powder all over her food. The moment she looked up, everything was different. She wasn’t up front, but rather she was surrounded by students—judging by the colors, she was surrounded by Gryffindors. Maiko couldn’t help but notice that her back was no longer being supported by a chair, and she nearly tumbled backwards.  “What—“ She looked down at her hands (the right one had a small cut that was healing well), then glanced down at the rest of her body. Gryffindor attire and—a prefect badge. Female, slender, and pale.

Mai touched her face (or not her face?) and ran her fingers through her hair, grabbing strand and pulling it straight so she could see it. Apparently, she was a redheaded, pale, Gryffindor with a cut on her hand. Mai picked up a glass of water and switched it from one hand to the other. It felt slightly heavier in her right hand. Mai set the glass down and squeezed the hands into fists. The left hand was stronger- this student was a left hand like Maiko was, so that was a bonus.

There weren’t exactly many redheads in Gryffindor, and only one of them was a prefect, so it didn’t take much for her to figure out that she was none other than Raine Almasy. “Is everybody alright?” Mai was relieved to know that she still had some bit of her accent left. It made her wonder if Raine spoke French.

She looked around for her body—and spotted Raine up front with the other staff members. Maiko started jumping up and down and waving. “Raine, ‘ey! I’m over ‘ere!” Mai was pleased to discover that she could make sudden movements without her joints being, quite literally, a pain. She started making her way up to the staff table, judging by the pandemonium, it seemed that many students and staff had been switched.

It had been a breakfast like any other until the flock of owls arrived.  No, that's wrong.  Owls come in parliaments, for some strange reason.   He cut another slice off his waffle, ladling a generous helping of strawberry preserves onto it.  Before he could raise the  fork to his mouth, however, tiny vials began raining down from above.

His vision blurred, clouded by the powder thrown up as the vials exploded on contact with the ground.  When it cleared, the whole room had suddenly shifted.  It was even more than just the room that had shifted, Blossom realized.  He was sitting at the wrong table.  He was wearing the wrong robes.

"What happened?" he asked and at that point panic began to set in because the voice he spoke with wasn't his.  "WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?"

Demitria wondered if there was ever going to be a normal day at Hogwarts. If there was, she sincerely wished that it would happen soon. Her days had not been nearly as long and painful as they had been before she and Xavier began speaking with each other, but that didn't mean the recovery time was any easier. She still tired easily and her eating habits were still as light as a bird's. And breakfast? Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered coming down to the Great Hall in the early morning. Of course she knew why, but it was purely aesthetic. She was Kitty's right hand, so must make her first appearance of the day at the lair of the Monarchists.
 
Was her perfect smile on? Check. Heels? Check. Flawless appearance? Check.

Strellie was idly sipping on tea and indulging in various bits of gossip when the mail birds swooped in. Clicking her heels, she began to scan the air to see if there were any owls from her family. What she saw made the clicking stop. Vials? Why in the name of Merlin were the Owls holding via-

She didn't even have time to complete the thought when the Great Hall descended into Chaos. The vials were dropped and colorful powder covered the majority of the Hall. With a snap, a vial exploded near her, sending a good amount of the powder into her lungs. She began to cough heavily, her face covered by her robe.

It was mortifying. She knew that the others were coughing as well, but she was expected to remain calm and collected through everything. Finally, she began to be able to breathe again and she lifted her head.

To find herself surrounded by blue. Beautiful baby blue and a language that she did not understand. "What's going on?" Her voice had a heavy accent, but not her usual one. She attempted to spring her wand from her wrist holster, but found it was not there and panicked. Feeling the shape of it in her robe, her blue robe, she nearly had a heart-attack when she drew it. It was positive. Whoever she was, she was not Demitria Strelnikov because the wand that she cast the reflection charm with was not blood red. It was black.

The charm hit her plate and she held it up. Baby doll face, light eyes, light skin, dark hair. Fontaine. Cécile Fontaine. She recognized the face from classes and the Choosing of the Second Task Champions.

"Bozhe moi!"[1] She exclaimed, her native Russian sounding more out of place in the French girl's voice than she physically felt.

No, never a normal day at Hogwarts. 

1.

Oh God!

Juni was never particularly hungry in the mornings, but she always made sure that she ate enough to last her until lunch. Her plate only healthier foods; eggs, fruit, and a small serving of porridge. For breakfast, Juni stayed away from the greasier foods like sausage and bacon. She had learned from a young age that greasy food early in the morning had a tendency to make her feel queasy for the rest of the day. She needed to first eat some other, more nutritious food to start. She had just taken a bite out of her porridge when owls started flooding in. She didn’t think that people usually got this much mail.

The owls then proceeded to bomb everybody with strange powder. She started to sneeze and cough, and she covered her mouth and closed her eyes, standing up as if it would help her keep from breathing in the powder. Why was this happening? Who in the world would orchestrate such a thing? Now her breakfast was going to be covered in magical powdery stuff, and it would practically be inedible! Some of the pieces of fruit could probably be wiped off, but there was in way in the world that she was going to eat multicoloured porridge.


When the Ravenclaw had finally opened her eyes, the dust was mostly cleared—but something wasn’t right. She didn’t feel right. It was almost as if her body wasn’t her own. Juni looked around at her table and saw that—what? What was Heliotrope doing at this table? And why was everybody in Hufflepuff attire? She looked at her hands, not a freckle in sight. She glanced at her feet, only to see that her body did not look like her body. Not at all. It wasn’t even close.

And—oh god, did she shrink?! It was only a few inches, but it was noticeable. She ran her fingers through her hair—it was easy and effortless. Her hair was straight? Why was it straight? Juni pulled it around to look at the hair and it was unmistakably polka dotted.

Juni was now in the body of a second year Hufflepuff, Obderedria Pienas.

“Shite. Oh god.” She whimpered, beginning to mutter under her breath. Juni had liked her old body—she didn’t want to swap it with anyone else! Especially not Drea! Juni didn’t have a problem with how Drea looked, but she had a problem with not being in her own body.  “What is happening?” She looked at the powdered surface of the table and felt her heart pounding in her chest. It was the powder; it had to have been the powder. But who did this? Juni grabbed a handful of it and shook her fist at nobody in particular.

“Who is responsible for this?!” she exclaimed shrilly,  throwing the handful on the ground angrily. The powder clouded up and rose to Juni’s face, causing her to choke and cough at the same time. This only made her angrier.

Chaos was beginning to reign, in the wake of the sudden bombardment.  Leopold held his breath as the powder enveloped him.  He didn't like breathing in things he didn't recognize.  It didn't prevent the sudden wave of dizziness, the sensation of flying that lasted for several seconds.

Then he began to understand the reason behind the uproar.  When he stood.  He wasn't at the head table any more and his right knee didn't pain him when he forced himself to his feet.  In fact, nothing hurt.  Then again, nothing felt the way it was supposed to.  Eighty years had given Leopold an intimate understanding of his own body.  He understood every nuance, every ache and the body he was in lacked each and everyone one of them.

He pushed away from the table and spent a few seconds trying to locate a wand.  It would likely resist him when he tried to use it.  He hoped he was the only one of the professors that had been pushed into another body but he seriously doubted it.  Hopefully whoever had been pushed into his creaky frame wasn't taking it too badly. 

"Clear a path, please," he said, trying to work his way back to the head table.  "Stay in your seats please!"

Soon after everything was in place and he’d left the others to their own devices, Connor had quickly reclaimed his usual spot at his own table, smack between one housemate and some other poor sod who were effing blessed to hear him speak. And chatter away he would, to cover up those nerves this time—which were practically buzzing with excitement like live wires. Yes’m, he was that excited; it was all he could do to stay seated in his seat-

Which, of course, was why it sucked dirty mountain troll balls that after the great, feathery noise that heralded the owls’ flight… and after there was a massive tinkling of shattering glass… and after soddin’ great, purple mushroom clouds ballooned all over the Great Hall… It all cleared up, only to reveeeeal-

Liver spots.

Wrinkles.

Wrinkled, liver-spotted, thick-fingered hands, which—with a quickly mounting sense of panic—now patted against clothes that must’ve been a hundred YEARS outta fashion coverin’ a gut tha’ blocked his view of his own damn feet-

A vaguely familiar voice, one that he’d often avoided ‘cos everyone knew shrinks were Bad News: “Curious. Who are you?”

-And then another, one that sounded a smidge differently with his current set of ears, but was still horribly, horribly familiar, and it was now ringing with a robustness he’d so often mocked behind the owner’s back: “Clear a path, please. Stay in your seats please!”

Oh. Fuck. No-

When Connor opened his mouth to reply, it was only to release a tiny but growing scream.


…Or, what would’ve sounded like one, if he’d been in his own body. Instead—thanks to that most recent acquisition of girth and a new (old?) voicebox that’d prolly left puberty eons ago—it sounded more like the thunderous, anguished bellow of a walrus than anything else.

Without him stopping for breath—and his face looking more and more like a very soft tomato—it curiously rose in volume and pitch as Connor blindly stared at his real body in horror. And there was no sign of him stopping.

   

Through the eyes of Maiko Biladeau-Yukawa, she stared in confusion at the Head of Hufflepuff who had been seated next to her at the staff table. The old wizard's expression was contorted into one she had never seen except for in the work of Edvard Munch.

Not to mention that sound, Merlin, whoever was in the teacher'ss body was certainly not taking it well. Understandable if it was a student, at any rate, but Raine was so taken aback by his demeanor that she acted without thinking.

Slap!

Her hand moved on its own accord and struck suddenly across the side of his face, abruptly bringing a halt to the bellowing.

"Get a grip on yourself!" she exclaimed with a reproachful expression- her cheeks flushed red as soon as she'd realized what had happened. Perhaps this wasn't really Professor Sandusky but the notion of slapping an elder was upsettingly jarring. Raine wanted to apologize, impulsively.

The only thing that stopped her was somebody calling out her name from the crowd beyond and she turned to see, for the first time in two years, a likeness of herself waving at her jubilantly. It was like seeing a ghost. "Sanya?" she said before she could think twice. No. Not her sister. The counsellor.

Katy nibbled on a biscuit and continued reading as the mail owls flew in above.  She was hungry but she didn't really feel like eating.  She was forcing herself through the biscuit, without butter or jam, because she knew she ought to eat something.  The owls held no interest to her today either because there was no one to send her mail, not that her stupid owl would have brought the mail directly to her anyway.  She hunched in on herself and read through her Charms book, resolutely not looking around her, although there was an empty seat to either side. 

The sound of breaking glass caught her attention.  She frowned and looked up.  The dishes and goblets in the Great Hall weren't glass so what could it be?  It happened again and again until the room was noisy with the pops of breaking bottles.  Purple smoke billowed off the tables, sending people into coughing and sneezing fits. Her gaze darted to her book when one of the bottles shattered on its open page.  She was immediately engulfed by the same purple cloud.

Her eyes were wide with shock, they burned and teared up.  The world around her seem to pull and stretch.  Shadows of people beyond the magical cloud jumped about, appearing and disappearing.  With one particularly vicious lurch of the world, her stomach turned.  She curled forward and dug her knuckles into her eyes, willing herself not to throw up. 

When she finally felt as though she could sit up without wanting to be sick, she pulled her hands away, only... they weren't her hands.  She stared at them, larger than her own and not as delicate.  She flexed her fingers and when the strange ones before her moved in response her breath quickened.  Her wrist glittered with a charm bracelet, a heart and a rainbow.  Her lower jaw began to tremble as she became fully aware of what was happening to her but not quite capable of accepting it. 

"Clear a path, please.  Stay in your seats, please."

The din of confusion finally registered with her.  She looked around, immediately caught off guard by the frames of glasses in front of her eyes.  Despite the student talking with an authoritative voice, she shot to her feet and scanned the Great Hall, her breathing getting faster and faster with rising panic.  Why was she at the Ravenclaw table?  What on EARTH was happening!?