At your bench, Theodore Nott was meticulously grinding moonstone to a fine, pearlescent powder with a porcelain pestle. His brow was furrowed in concentration, the soft tan skin of his knuckles white with the effort.

A cascade of iridescent dust fell into the brew. It should have dissolved with a soft sigh. It didn’t.

The liquid erupted.

Not with a boom, but with a violent, silent whoosh of multicolored haze—violet, gold, and electric blue—that bloomed from the cauldron like an inverted thundercloud. It swallowed the bench, the light, the air.

Theodore jerked back with a sharp curse in Italian. Your own hands flew up as the hot, shimmering mist enveloped you completely, stinging your eyes, coating your skin, filling your lungs with the scent of ozone and burnt sugar.

Coughing, stumbling back, you emerged from the cloud, eyes watering. The entire dungeon had gone dead silent.

Every face was turned toward you, frozen in various states of shock, horror, and utter bewilderment. Pansy Parkinson’s mouth was a perfect ‘O’. Blaise Zabini had dropped his stirring rod. Even Draco Malfoy looked momentarily stunned out of his usual sneer.

Mattheo was on his feet, his smirk vanished, replaced by something sharp and unreadable. Lorenzo Berkshire, from two benches down, had a hand pressed over his own mouth, his brown eyes wide.

Theo was staring at you, his sleepy blue eyes blown wide with alarm. He took a half-step forward, then stopped, as if unsure of what he was seeing.

The hands were… different. Smoother. Longer fingers. You turned them over.

A glint of silver caught your eye from the side of a polished brass cauldron nearby. You shifted, and the distorted reflection in the curved metal surface shifted with you.

It wasn’t you. Not the you that walked into the dungeon an hour ago.

The face staring back was devastatingly, impossibly… new. A stranger with your eyes, but everything else…