November 6th, at dinner

On the other end of the daylight hours from when a bunch of suspicious powder caused other a third of the school population to randomly swap bodies...

Alvis Norling, currently in the body of Casey O'Doherty, takes the Slytherin's usual seat at the house table with the emerald and silver banners, the only spot where the food sent up does not match Casey's known allergens, although Alvis is cross referencing Casey's dietary limitations on a wide scroll before he dares eat anything.

A tall shambling scarecrow, a pet project of visiting Salem student 'Mace' Steinbeck, is contorting itself in further knots than the ultra flexible Hufflepuff half-mer usually can. Mace, sitting at the Hufflepuff table, is making notes and boasts.

The body of the partial merperson is currently trying to sneak into the Kitchens without the house elves noticing.

And the gangly Ravenclaw form called Alvis Norling, currently occupied by Casey O'Doherty, is sitting at the Ravenclaw table. Only because Casey is exhausted by these events and doesn't want to sit by Norling, even if Norling is possessing his original body. He glumly pokes at dinner with a fork. Even if this is food he normally can't eat, Norling not having the same allergies doesn't improve the mood of the misplaced Slytherin...

And as without warning as the event that started it all, the transition back to normal happens just as suddenly as the magic looses its hold. Heliotrope LeJean finds herself crouched in a panty and sits on a giant sack of beans for an hour until she's noticed and escorted out. Mace's scarecrow flops lifeless and the Salem student curses the animation being spent. Alvis Norling experiences a painful headache but after it clears his mind feels clearer than it has all day. After feeling relieved to be back in his own skin, he glances to where he has 'just been' to see how Casey has recovered...

For Casey...

Has bit his tongue, no longer chewing authentic steak and kidney pie. But his eyes dart back and forth frantically. Where were the panty shelves, where were the sounds of scurrying house elves? The full force of feeling all his daily aches and pains and ills makes him nauseated.

A hand is raised into line of sight. There should be ink-stains on the fingertips. No, there should be the webbing of extra skin between the knuckles. There should be, from the body possessed most of the day, should be

WHY AM I IN A BOY'S BODY?!

One hand to the chest. One hand past the waist, both feeling about. One hand goes higher, tracing the outline of a chain underneath the clothing. A lump. Necklace? The amulet. That was

Casey looks up from the plate and it's as if the eyes want to look in opposing directions. The Great Hall viewed from the left eye wavers opposite the view from the right eye, vision splitting. Legs come up, trying to match the frog-like squat that had been coming familiar throughout the day, the knees strike the underside of the table, Casey winces, that's going to bruise easy.

The pain shoots up to the head, like a cleaver in the brain. Casey falls from the bench but halts from hitting the ground with an arm. Not a fish freak arm, not a long Alvis Norling arm, an arm that's

There's a feeling of vertigo. All Casey knows is that it's time to flee. Something inside Casey wants to flee, both sides mapping out the number of hallway turns it takes to disappear away from the Great Hall. People might be looking. Who cares at this point? Casey can't think here.

Casey collapses against a wall, a sunken section between pillars, heart beating like a rabbit's, listening. No sounds, just distant din from the Great Hall, the internal sounds of heavy breathing and rushing blood in the ears. Of thoughts flying at high speeds.

Casey has been two different people today.[1] One mind divided that doesn't want to come back together.

This doesn't make sense. Wasn't I a girl?
How can a be a girl? Is that what was missing, the reason for the amulet? Because I can't be one.
I was in Hufflepuff but I don't know who I am.
Not Hufflepuff, it's only a cover story. Alias.
But when I was wondering who I was I didn't want to be that, not a boy! There wasn't even a sign I should be a boy!
It's all a sham, don't you get it? IT'S ALL A SHAM! You don't exist at all, there's no alternate personalty, it's just a foolish game of pretend!
Who really exists? What is real?

What was real? Casey's knees had given out. He, he, was collapsed on the floor. As everything returned to place Casey's reality was a simple answer.

Casey was not a boy. Or a girl. Or he was both, whatever other people wanted to call it. But after being a girl for some brief years of childhood Casey's family couldn't let him be a girl. He had to be a man. Everyone at school knew him as a boy. They couldn't know otherwise.

A pretense. And when Casey got tired of that pretense he would pretend to be someone else. Someone else called Hexy.

Casey had to pretend all the time because none of it was fully real. Nothing was complete.

Casey gritted his teeth, bit his lip in the struggle to his feet. Casey's daily reality: he wasn't really a boy or a girl, his body was always weak. He had to prove he was better than that. Magic was might. People hated him for it, nobody liked him, because it wasn't like that was required. It kept than distant. From not knowing. He'd prove it to them, prove how he was better, powerful, clever.

Prove that he was who he was. Whoever Casey currently was.

---

sometime in January

The nightmare had returned last night. The same style of nightmares. Of Casey waking up, frequently, re-experiencing the same feelings of not know who he fully was, that something was missing that he couldn't fathom. The same feelings from the day in November where everyone had swapped bodies.

It was before breakfast and Casey had ducked into the bathroom on the ground floor. He stood at the row of sinks looking into the mirror. His tie wasn't on straight, the collar ruffled. Shabby. The nightmare had left him tired and he hand't dressed to his usual standards with the uniform.

He was sick of those kinds of nightmares. Dreams, however, were not the same things as memories, as Casey had found out. A memory could be copied or temporarily removed, it could be swirled around in a pensieve and relived from a different perspective, often creating a new or linked memory. But dreams were not memories. Even if Casey remembered all the parts that unnerved him in his dreams, they couldn't be extracted out with a wand like his routines before Occlumency lessons with Professor Storm, removing childhood memories. The ones he wanted to block with Occlumency. Pretect.

Casey straightened the tie. His cuffs needed to be straightened as well.

And just like how dreams couldn't be removed, they couldn't be recalled either. There were different dreams he liked. Based on memories from 'being' Hexy, of the thrill of taking risks and doing whatever he wanted in secret. Of hours spent in the Room of Requirement in the special space that created.

It was strange. Casey had felt disgusted for a few days after the infamous Body Swap day. He had almost burned all the things that helped him 'become' Hexy. But even 'she' had become routine because of an inherent dichotomy. As Hexy, Casey could stop 'being' himself, all the effort it took to be the ideal Slytherin, the mix of pureblooded tradition and calculated aloofness. But Casey wasn't even a girl as Hexy. What gender to act like, male or female, wasn't really thought about most of the times he pretended to Hexy. He was just being someone else.

Someone else.

After Casey got his uniform shipshape he washed his hands. He would eat light and continue his classes and studies. Because that was the point of school. It should be the only point, but it was always mucked up be people trying to assert who they were.

Himself included.

Casey didn't know if he would go to the Room tonight, be Hexy, have Dingy borrow the family wand from the manor for a few hours. Maybe the wand wouldn't be needed. Maybe Casey could just be.

Be something that wasn't built by any expectation. Epectation from his family or from the school.

1.	Body Swamp tag