The Cupboard Series 4: The Fourth School

Chapter 14

Harry walked into the classroom to find his teacher in her usual position: seated cross-legged on top of one of the desks.

"Wotcher, Harry," Tonks greeted.

"Hey, Tonks," Harry replied with a smile as he perched on the desk directly opposite her.

"Right, I haven't got a lot of time tonight – old Scrimgeor's given me an extra shift starting in about two hours," Tonks informed him.

"You sure you want to do this tonight, then?" Harry asked. "We can always skip."

"Yeah, not a problem," Tonks smiled. "I've got a couple of hours to kill. Might as well be here with you than sittin' around at home twiddling my thumbs."

Harry gave her a nod of gratitude.

"Right, then, you been keeping up with your practices?" Tonks asked.

In reply, Harry began morphing his head through the various contortions that Tonks had assigned him.

Starting with his hair, he changed it from its usual black to red to white to green and then blue, followed by an attempt at changing just the tips of his hair into a bright silver while the rest of his hair reverted to its natural black. For the most part, he was successful. At least, it was the closest that he'd ever come to getting it exactly how he imagined it. There was just that one patch in the middle of the top of his head that never seemed to do as it was told. This time, its tips changed, but to a light blue instead of silver.

Leaving his hair with its changed tips, Harry focussed on his nose. Peering down at it with his crossed eyes, he watched it elongate, then turn bulbous before spreading out into something that looked as though he'd just been punched and finished with shrinking it and turning it up and making it slightly more pointy.

Morphing his ears was next. This was the feature that he'd been practicing the shortest length of time, so changing his ears into large flappy things, followed by returning them to normal except with points didn't take long.

He demonstrated his final morph by poking his now forked tongue out at his metamorph teacher.

"That's excellent work, Harry!" Tonks praised. "I can really see a huge improvement since last week."

"Thanks, Tonks," Harry beamed.

"Since you're doing so well, how about we move on to the next phase," she suggested. "Changing the colour of your skin."

To emphasise this idea, Tonks slowly morphed her skin from a pale white through to a tanned golden colour and then continued through to a deep mocha and finished with turning her skin a deep mottled green before she allowed it to fade back to its natural colour.

"Wow, Tonks, I didn't know that you could do that," Harry stated, staring hard.

"Yeah, well, it's not something that I need to do very often, unless I'm undercover or have been sitting at a desk too long and need a good all over tan," she smiled impishly.

"You really think that I can do that, too?" Harry asked.

"Of course you will, Harry," Tonks told him. "By the time I'm finished with you, you'll be able to change every single part of your body. At least on the outside."

"So what's left after I master this?" Harry asked.

"Height, weight, eye colour," Tonks replied, ticking them off on her fingers, "then changing just a single part of you, like a finger or other appendage."

"So, still a lot to go then," Harry commented.

"Yeah, but you knew that when we started," Tonks replied. "Give it another six months and it'll almost be as natural to you as it is to me. Now, you ready?"