---

Lunchtime, Ground Floor corridor.


The lunch hour was drawing to a close now and students were gradually making their way back to lessons- the crowds were humming with rumours running their course as a result of this morning's unfortunate swap[1]. For once, Raine could not blame them for the incessant noise. There was nothing shallowly scandalous about the nature of the switch.


"Miss! Miss!" a firstie was calling after her as she paced one of the corridors off the entrance hall- the Hogwarts counsellor had advised a medication for the lupus condition suffered by the body she now occupied, although Raine had taken the potion sparingly. Seeing herself apart had been as troubling as seeing a hallucinatory equivalent of her late sister but the anxiety of the experience had not noticeably exacerbated any joint pain.

Irritating, bratty first years crying out miss or ma'am, however, was beginning to grow on her nerves.

Raine turned on her heel to glare down the Hufflepuff who'd been chasing her down.

"Pay attention, you insignificant little... little insect. I am not the counsellor. If you have a problem, produce a brain and deal with it on your own." Miss Biladeau-Yukawa's voice was reduced to a sharp, feminine growl and the younger student made a frightened yip before backing away.

Well... there was a possibility that the switch had aggravated her more than she realized. Raine pinched the bridge of her nose, frowning as she turned around, and continued down the corridor towards the real counsellor's office where she hoped to find the older woman to formally recap the day's events.
 
"Godric's bloody sword..." the Gryffindor murmured to herself and turned into another passageway, where she paused momentarily. A second year was standing just outside of the office; one that she recognized. The strange one. "Le Jean," Raine approached the blonde witch with a wry look. "You're looking for advice?" she smirked, stopping just outside the door and bracing her shoulder against it. "I think you may be beyond help."

1.	The Great Body Swap

Don't understand what is going on? link

---

A day of skipping class, failing to swim, pranking and all the other things Hexy was doing with the opportunity to literally be someone else was fun but the fun was serving only as a distraction the longer the day went on. On her way back to the castle the thought was eroding on her mind. A sense of...

Absence. There was a great deal of things she thought she knew that, with further scrutiny, she found out she actually didn't know. At all. Obvious things like what she did yesterday. Or all of her past years in school! Not even mundane monotony, she only remembered flashes of what she did at school. Standout moments, a highly summarized cliff notes version of life. That and a body of knowledge, names and spells and secrets and other things of school life that she objectively could not recall when she had learned such knowledge.

Was it amnesia? Had the switching of her body been enough to disrupt her mind and her memories? That was a possible answer and although horrifying it was better than the darker alternative. Nothing Hexy could put into words but a sense of feeling...

'Fake.'

"Le Jean. You're looking for advice? I think you may be beyond help."

This was probably the most Heliotrope-like Hexy had acted all day, her gaze vacant in the realization of being before the counselor's office. She didn't even remember consciously making the choice to come her. She had been about to knock although it turned out the office was empty as the counselor came from down the hall.

Why go to her though? Maybe because it was her job or how she was elegant and inviting. And Hexy knew her...sorta...

Of course, she thinks I'm actually Heliotrope LeJean. Although hearing she was 'beyond help' was eerily chilling. Guess that settles it.

"I don't know who I am."

Another victim of the morning's events in the Great Hall?

Raine raised an eyebrow, intrigued by the statement but mostly skeptical. It was perfectly logical for the younger years to be more confused by the switch than their older schoolmates- they were, after all, at a point in life where becoming accustomed to their own bodies was a sufficiently distressing dilemma. Nonetheless...

"Have you attempted to look in the mirror yet?" she asked dryly. "Although I honestly doubt that anyone in LeJean's body would need to. She has a rather unmistakable presence." At any rate, Raine rather hoped that she would have the sense to distinguish the general change of species.

There was, however, something odd in the second year's manner that she could not quite place her finger on. A glazed look- lacking the reactive energy seen in most of the switched targets. It was almost unnatural. The prefect, forgetting for a moment that she was in the counsellor's form, frowned and placed the back of her hand against Heliotrope's forehead.

"No fever, so I suppose you really must be confused. Did you hit your head in the Hall?" Merlin knew what was in those bottles and whether or not there were other similarly stunned students. Raine had left before she could have been of any use as a prefect; no doubt a failing on her part.

"Hilarious," Hexy droned, sardonic. "I know I'm in the body of the fish freak. It's just...before..."

Once again the vague feeling of having no specific memories. No real sense of self. There were only blurs in her recollections. Lights, dance music, the cottage where her mother lived. How alien was that, knowing you had a mother but not knowing who you were. Everyone had to have been born so a mother was a necessity.

And something about the forest and the giant spiders.

When the hand came to feel the temperature of her forehead, Hexy didn't know what to do. After a moment she backed away from the touch. Even if the counselor was concerned that was a bit closer than she liked.

Her tone fluctuated from defensive, "I should have remembered hitting my head today!" to worry as the borrowed webbed hand did her own examination of the noggin. "But do you think that would cause...?"

That was the question, wasn't it? If you really were an amnesiac how would you even know of the possibility right off the bat?

Even for a confused Heliotrope, Raine had to admit that there was rather disturbing quality to the reaction. The defensiveness was unexpected but she shrugged as the younger witch backed away. Not everyone took well to the affinity of touch; a simple gesture could sometimes be a menacing one.

"That would cause..." Raine trailed off and then raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. "Memory loss?" Of course, she had said from before. How distressing for her. Not to mention, whoever this was, she or he could hardly know who was running about in their original form.

Something akin to pity tapped at the prefect's generally quiescent sympathies.

"It's possible I suppose," her gaze tensed to see if there were any bruises on LeJean's head. By now she had completely forgotten to correct the notion of her real identity; something that Counsellor Biladeau-Yukawa might not appreciate later.

Raine tucked a stray curl of dark hair behind her ear and leaned back against the closed office door, still frowning.

"You don't appear to be injured. I suppose that the practical thing to do would be to ask a professor about posting an announcement but..." she considered the half-mer girl pensively. "Not knowing who you are isn't entirely a bad thing."

In fact, she could think of several people who would rather experience a good case of amnesia than occupy their actual lives.

"You can be... whoever you want to be."

That would make a wonderful bulletin on the message boards: 'Current occupant of Heliotrope LeJean cannot remember who she is. Would the displaced Heliotrope or anyone with information please come forward to help?' Sandusky, the stuffy old fool, could even parade about as Todd while making it.

Although, Sandusky her...Head of House?...was not as dim as everyone liked to think on the first impression. He was fussy on the details and having any outside help or official notice for trying to figure out who she was would be...dangerous.

There was a certain value to being not easy to place and the last thing Hexy wanted was attention drawn towards herself. So the consoler's words came as a surprise.

Hexy stood there with another dead-on Heliotrope impersonation. "Bull!" she said after empty moments, deciding to not be more colorful or derogative of a Founder's name. "It can't be that simple of an answer. If a solution where that easy..."

Didn't she have evidence to the contrary? What was that nameless Hufflepuff face who got herself pierced and dyed to try to reinvent herself? Admittedly Hexy liked the hair, having hair that red would be cool, but still who paid attention to what's-her-face?

Even as she tried to form a rebuttal the solution looked promising. After all if she couldn't even remember everything about her mother there was literally no one, parents or otherwise, to tell her who she should be. That was the most freeing aspect of the proposed 'answer to everything.'

But who did she want to be after so long of being 'not her' she didn't even know what the 'original' her was?

"I'm not going to have a tea party if that's what you're suggesting." Odd as the counselor hadn't suggested that at all but the notion came from what she could recall of her earliest childhood memories.

Miss Biladeu's dark eyebrows, usually gentle, went up in wry amusement at the girl's bewilderment. Bull indeed. Raine rather supposed that most people expected to hear comforting and wonderfully complex little answers to their serious life questions but she had neither the inclination nor energy to come up with one of those.

Perhaps all for the better. This Non-LeJean appeared confused enough with her simple solution. "I'm not going to have a tea party if that's what you're suggesting," she said after a few moments.

Raine smirked and shook her head; only barely aware that the curls tickling her ears were not a deep red but the very unfamiliar shade of brunette. If she'd taken a moment to consider how quickly she'd adapted to the other witch's body, it might have surprised her.

"Tea parties..." the Gryffindor thought of the Halloween Ball and its many incarnations of the Lewis Carroll tale. "No. That would be boring, don't you think? If you can be whoever you want to be, then choose something adventurous."

With a languid wave of her arm, Raine gestured at the rest of the corridor.

"Make trouble. Fly off the Astronomy tower," she shrugged. "Swim with the squid or blow up the dungeon. Once this whole switch is sorted, who would know besides LeJean?" It sounded like a golden opportunity to her. Even she was tempted to wander into the staff office, or bother the unaffected professors with her useful form.

The biggest surprise was that the counselor was talking about the very things Hexy was thinking about. Not exact specifics of swimming with the squid (she still didn't know how to swim, even as an amphibious student) but the counselor's words rang with that intangible aspect of freedom, a freedom to do as one pleased, anything at all, that few ever got to feel. She really should be taking advantage of that while she had the time as another person. Let the mirror into the past remain blank.

Her approval of Maiko Biladeau-Yukawa shot up in an instant, ebullient features sneaking back onto her face as she further contemplated the suggestions. Was that...an open invitation?

"Right, leave it to the chaos of the day." She'd seen other people swapped, enough of the castle had been affected. She paused with a look, almost a question of whether or not the counselor would tell if Hexy did do anything that noticeable whilst parading about as LeJean, but it was very likely that she wouldn't say anything.

"Well then, something adventurous." Whether or not it became something as Gryffindor as the suggestions offered. Hexy started with hesitant backwards steps, smirk radiant with newfound (re-found?) inner knowledge, before going off to be...

...whatever she wanted, right? Her choice.