Cycles

This – this was ridiculous. Remus gaped into the mirror – as he had done for the past ten minutes, at least – staring at his plump mouth, his delicate, slightly up-turned nose, his round gray eyes and dark hair. This couldn’t be possible, but his reflection wasn’t actually his reflection. It was Tonks’. Oh, he was still wearing his own pajama pants and old shirt, but now the waistband stretched tight over his hips, and the shirt hung even more loosely, except across the chest.

He stared downward again, amazed that the image in the mirror wasn’t just a trick, and he reached up to cup his own breasts, just to be certain they were really there, that this wasn’t just a glamour cast on him. They were there, warm and round, each a little less than a handful.

This had to be some kind of sick joke. He reached up with one hand and felt at the hair – it was nearly black, and he was almost more shocked to discover Tonks’ true hair color than anything else. Then someone stormed into the room.

“Are you touching my breast?” asked an oddly familiar voice, and Remus turned to see… himself. His true self. Then he jerked his hands down to his sides, balling them into fists to keep from further exploration of this new body, and he was startled to feel nails dig into his palms – his own were bitten past the tip of his finger, so this was as new as the weight of his chest or the pretty face.

“Well, I believe it’s my bre—Tonks?”

“Yes,” he – Tonks – she said, and Remus wondered if anyone else found his flushed face as utterly silly as he did.

“Well. This is awkward. Any clues?” Remus asked her, and he thought, perhaps, that his grasp of the English language was going to wither and die with all these poor, gender-confused pronouns.

Tonks sighed, and Remus watched his own lips twitch the way Tonks’ did when she was frustrated. “No. I woke up looking like you, but in my room wearing my clothes and with this massive… Well, never mind that part.” Tonks blushed, but instead of charming as it tended to be on her, it looked rather splotchy on Remus’ face. He frowned at that. “Your morning issues aside, I thought if I looked like you, then I should check with you first.” Remus shrugged, because he couldn’t find the words to articulate how strange it felt to be staring at oneself, talking to oneself, while wearing a body that was certainly not his own. “You’ve got no idea, either, then?”

“No,” Remus said, wondering vaguely if his face always contorted like that, or if it was just too awkward a mix of Tonks’ expressions under Remus’ skin. “Trying to decide how we should break this news to everyone.”

“Remus, we can’t tell! I’m too embarrassed as it is about being seen like this.” Remus must have made a face, because Tonks stumbled to recover. “Not like—Remus, really, I’ve got… I’ve got bits now that weren’t there before, and bits missing that were there, and… walking feels really strange.” She was blushing again, harder this time, and the splotches started to fill in a bit more.

“If we don’t tell, we won’t find out who’s responsible, and the two of us will have to figure out how to reverse it all alone.”

“We can do it, really!” Tonks promised, reaching a pitch higher than Remus thought he would ever manage as himself. “It can’t be that difficult. We’ll just… we’ll just keep to ourselves as much as we can, so nobody catches on, and we’ll find a way to get out of this.”

Remus sighed and felt a sort of discomfort at the pit of his belly. “Fine, we’ll keep it secret as long as we can.”