Potions Experiment

Fandom: H*rry P*tt*r

Prologue

When Harry first heard about the Polyjuice potion, she couldn’t get it out of her head. Maybe this could finally give her the body she wanted? But no, it could apparently only give her someone else’s body, and only temporarily. With that, her dreams of a beautiful feminine body were once again crushed.

And then Hermione accidentally used cat hair.

This didn’t make much sense to Harry. So it could only turn you into another person temporarily, but use something from an animal (like a cat), and suddenly, it’s permanent. Plus, it didn’t even work all the way, it only turned you into some sort of hybrid.

Perhaps the potion could be modified to be permanent? Harry was determined to find out.

The exact mechanics behind the potion were, quite simply, baffling. Harry had spent much of the last few months studying every ingredient and their properties, and she could see no reason for the potion to even be temporary in the first place.

Harry had a theory about that. Perhaps a witch’s magic would eventually revert unwanted changes? That didn’t explain why animal transformations were permanent.

Except of course, they weren’t permanent? Sure, Hermione had to have help reverting the feline changes, but they were reverted anyway. If they were truly permanent, they should not be able to be reverted.

Early in the next school year, Harry had a breakthrough. Not in making the Polyjuice Potion’s effects permanent, but in another area. She had determined that including a sample of unicorn urine in the potion, somehow, caused the potion to only ever shift a person to a feminine body. She had tried with hairs from several classmates to be sure. Ron was actually rather cute as a girl.

But when Harry saw herself for the first time… it was wonderful. Sure, the potion’s effects were still only temporary, but what she saw in the mirror…

She had lost an inch in height. It was barely noticeable, but she had been sure to take exact measurements of anything she could think of. Her hair hadn’t gotten any longer, but then again, hair length wasn’t sexed or anything. Her face had changed ever so slightly in shape, that tiny bit of fuzz on her upper lip vanished entirely. She was still recognizable, but the difference was noticeable. She had ordered a girl’s uniform from Madam Malkin’s, and she put it on.

She really liked how the skirt flared out when she did a twirl.

It also was super painful emotionally to transform back.

She needed to find a way to make it permanent.

A week after the first time Harry used the Feminising Polyjuice, as she called it, she finally gave up trying to make the potion do a permanent human transformation. It wouldn’t be that bad being a hybrid, would it? Sure, it would give her yet another thing people would stare at, but who actually cared what people thought?

Ok, maybe being super furry wasn’t something Harry wanted, but she could handle having a tail. Actually, she figured having a tail would be pretty cool.

With that in mind, Harry needed to figure out what sort of animal she would rather have traits from. And also needed to figure out if polyjuice could have samples from two different sources at the same time. Nothing she had read had said anything about that, neither to confirm it was possible or impossible. She had a feeling it was entirely uncharted territory.

She figured a mammal would be best. While a bird would maybe give her wings, and she loved flying, she would rather not be stuck with a beak. Reptiles were out because she definitely didn’t want scales. And fish… the downsides of being part fish were numerous, not least of which was she would probably end up being entirely incapable of living on land. So that left mammals. There were a lot of mammals.

Her first thought was a cat. There were plenty of those around Hogwarts, getting cat hair would barely be a difficulty. But cats felt… too cliche. Dogs were instantly dismissed. It’s not like Harry hated dogs or anything, she’d just had too many bad experiences with Marge’s dogs, including over that summer. Perhaps in another world, where her parents lived, she’d be fine with a dog.

Fox.

Foxes were cool. They had red fur, and her mum had red hair. So if she used fox hairs for her potion, perhaps she’d end up looking like her mum? She would definitely enjoy that. Plus foxes were clever. And sneaky. And a bit mischievous too. Her dad was mischievous.

Her mind made up, Harry made her way out of the castle under her cloak. She was confident she could find a fox in the forest.

Hermione and Ron were both sound asleep. She would absolutely invite them to be with her when she finally took her potion, of course. They were her closest friends.

She had hidden her potions equipment in the Chamber of Secrets. It wasn’t exactly pleasant there, especially with the giant snake corpse, but it kept it away from teachers and other students.

Once Harry was out of view of the castle, she took off her cloak, folding it up and stuffing it into her purse alongside the Marauder’s Map and some other trinkets, including various vials, some empty, some filled with various concoctions. It was one of those vials Harry took out next - a night vision potion. She uncorked the vial and drank the potion. Immediately, Harry was able to see loads better. Where before the forest had been shadowy, now Harry could see all the little details as if it were midday.

Night vision potions were dangerous. If you used them in bright light, you would be immediately blinded until the potion wore off. Fortunately, it was a little after midnight, and unless Harry ran into the Weasley’s old car again, she doubted she’d find many bright lights tonight.

Harry ventured into the forest in search of a fox. Foxes were nocturnal, so she stood a better chance of finding one at this time. She was careful not to head deep into the forest, sticking close to the edges.

She was near Hagrid’s hut when she spotted it. A beautiful red fox, lying in a patch of grass munching on some berries. Harry stopped moving, watching the fox intently. The fox looked up at Harry, examining her.

Harry was rooted to where she stood, transfixed by the beautiful creature in front of her. She and the fox watched each other, neither moving.

It was silly, but to Harry, it felt as though this fox was judging her. Harry took a step towards the fox. The fox stood up, but didn’t move away. Harry took another step.

Then the fox moved. Not to run away, as Harry would have expected, but it came closer to Harry. Harry froze, watching as the fox came closer and closer.

Soon enough, the fox was close enough Harry could reach out and touch the small creature. Harry crouched down, the fox following her movements with its head.

Suddenly, the fox leapt over Harry. Harry whirled around to try and track the animal, but the fox bounded away through the woods, much faster than Harry could possibly match in the dense foliage.

Harry sighed. She stood up. She brushed the dirt off her clothes, smoothing them out a bit.

And then she saw it. In the palm of her hand, there was a single red hair. A fox hair.

Chapter 1: Little Purple Vial

I stared at the small vial in front of me. It was filled to the brim with an ominous dark purple sludgy liquid. How is it that something so small had the potential to change my body in such major ways?

The answer, of course, was magic.

It was a simple potion - Polyjuice. Well, simple for me. Perhaps two years ago, I would have seen it as more complicated, but now brewing it was a simple process. I had even managed to shave a few days off the brewing time with a new technique I devised for shredding the boomslang skin.

What was really fascinating about this potion, was what I had added to it. One of my own hairs, to start. This would normally do nothing to me, since I was, well, me. But this particular hair had a very special property to it - I had soaked it in a sample of unicorn urine. This had the effect of creating what I called the Feminising Polyjuice - it would turn the drinker into a female version of whoever’s hair was used in the potion.

The second addition was a fox’s hair I had gotten from the Forbidden Forest about a week ago. Normally, an animal hair would result in transforming the drinker into a sort of hybrid and prevent the effects from properly wearing off. I hoped that by combining both my own hair and the fox’s hair, I could avoid the more unpleasant aspects of a hybrid form while also making the transformation permanent.

All this, to get a feminised version of my own body.

You see, while I had been born with a body typically associated with that of a boy, I wasn’t one. I’m a girl, and despite my aunt and uncle’s attempts to convince me otherwise, I could never make myself let go of that simple fact.

Magic was real, I could use it. I am a girl. My parents cared about me. All things they had tried to convince me weren’t true for the decade I had lived with them. All things that had been or would shortly be proven to be wrong.

I wanted so badly to take the potion then and there, but I had promised my two closest friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, that I would let them be here when I did. Well, I hadn’t exactly promised them to their faces, I had promised them that with thoughts. Which they were unable to hear. So it was more like I promised myself.

With a sigh, I put the vial back in its stand, waving my wand and whispering a spell to re-cork it so it didn’t spill. It was the weekend, so there were no classes today. I had taken some time to finish off my potion today. It was getting close to dinner-time, and my friends were no doubt wondering where I had been all day.

Side note: I did not skip lunch, I had asked another of my friends - an excitable little elf named Dobby - to grab me a sandwich while I took a short break… about three hours after lunch was normally served.

While Dobby and I had met under less than ideal circumstances, we had become good friends over the first few months of this school year. He had come to Hogwarts to find work after I had freed him from slavery (long story), and when I got completely antisocial like I was today, he always made sure to show up so I didn’t become a total recluse.

I left my potion’s lab, which was located in the legendary Chamber of Secrets - which wasn’t all that great since most of it smelled like sewage and the main room had a giant snake corpse taking up most of it. Fortunately, I had found a few sealed off rooms that were more or less presentable, including a small library and a dusty potions lab, which I had since claimed as my own. The potions lab was super useful to me, the library less so. While it had been exciting to find all these ancient books of magical knowledge, the reality was I couldn’t understand a lick of them. Perhaps if I brought them to a translator, they could be more useful.

I left the Chamber through a back entrance that led to a hallway not far from the location of the Slytherin dorms. I slipped my cloak over my head in case I encountered one of the students in that house who happened to despise me for no good reason - Diana Malfoy and her two goons, for example. Yes, I had turned down her friendship, but she had insulted someone who was already my friend right before, so I felt I was perfectly justified.

As I made my way to the Great Hall, I thought about the potential reactions my imminent transformation might receive. Likely very little. In my prior experiments, my body had barely changed. Softer facial features, small breasts - barely noticeable. I also planned on using a charm to grow out my hair. That was probably going to be noticed a lot more. On the other hand, I was likely to end up with hair looking more similar to my mum, which would definitely be noticed. I figured I could just say I charmed it that colour intentionally and something about my mum, and people would probably accept it.

On the off-chance that I had messed up the arithmantic calculations and ended up with more vulpine features than I intended, I had some fast-acting botched Polyjuice cure - something I had devised back in September - on hand to revert the changes, and would try again with another fox’s hair and hopefully better calculations. The only problem was, I wasn’t sure how quickly I could get lucky enough to find another fox. Those calculations better be right.

I found my two friends eating together at one end of the Gryffindor table. They were deep in discussion about something. I idly considered that they were likely talking about the fact that they hadn’t seen me all day. I sat down across from them, greeting them politely. I was planning to bring them into the Chamber later, but I was hungry, so I loaded some food onto my plate and began eating. My friends stared at me with confused expressions on their faces.

“Harry?” Hermione said. “Where on earth were you all day?”

I swallowed a bite of mashed potatoes. “Chamber of Secrets,” I said quietly, so no other students could overhear. “There’s a pretty decent potions lab down there.”

“Potions lab?” Ron said through a mouthful of food. “What, are you doing extra potions work?”

I nodded. “Extra-curricular, yeah. I’ve been experimenting with Polyjuice potion.”

Hermione had been chewing on a bite of pork when I said that, and my statement caused her to gasp and choke on her food. She started coughing, and Ron pounded her on the back to help dislodge it. A couple students glanced over to see what the commotion was, but they quickly looked away once the excitement was done.

Hermione took a sip of her drink. “Harry, that’s super dangerous. If things went wrong, you’d be in the hospital wing for weeks.”

I shrugged. “Well, no, actually. I managed to get a decently fast acting potion to counteract the effects. It’s not perfect, I actually don’t need glasses anymore because I actually got perfect vision off… I think it was when I used the feminised Polyjuice for Flitwick? Anyway, point is, these are just prop glasses now.” I took another bite of mashed potato.

“Faminising Polyjuice Potion?” Hermione said.

I nodded. “Yup. If you soak the hair or whatever you’re using in some unicorn urine, for whatever reason, the potion has a feminising effect. It acts no different if the person you’re turning into is a girl, of course. But if they’re a boy, then you turn into I guess the girl version of them. This also works on yourself, funnily enough. Normally, were I to take a Polyjuice with my hair in it, nothing would happen, right? Because I already look like myself. But, if I take the potion with my hair in it after the hair is soaked in unicorn pee, I turn into a girl version of myself.”

Ron looked at me with wide-eyes. “You can turn yourself into a girl?”

I nodded. “I could probably make a masculinizing Polyjuice, but I have no idea what to soak the hair in for that, and no clue where to start looking. I’m also not exactly interested in that.”

“Why not?” Hermione said, frowning at me.

“Well, I don’t want to be a boy, obviously,” I said plainly.

“You don’t?” Ron said incredulously. “But, you are one?”

I cringed internally. “I don’t think so,” I said. “And it’s not like this is some crazy thing that’s only happened to me. It happens to lots of people, enough that there’s a word for it. Transgender or something like that. Anyway, I’ve known since I was very little that I should be a girl.”

Hermione was still frowning. “So, is your plan to just take your modified Polyjuice Potion for the rest of your life?”

I shook my head. “I would if I had no other options, but there are ways to make it so the effects don’t wear off.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose, “don’t remind me.”

“But then you’d end up looking like a cat or something,” Ron said.

“Ok, well, this is where it gets a bit silly and complicated. And I don’t fully know why half of what I figured out works the way it does. So, the Polyjuice potion wears off, yeah? But only when you turn into another human. Try to turn into a cat or a dog or even a part-human like Professor Flitwick, and it won’t work properly. You end up in a weird in-between state and it won’t wear off. As far as I know, there is no good explanation for the difference in behaviour. As for the hybrid, uh, bits - I can counteract them by just taking a sort of combined Polyjuice Potion. I think. I did some arithmancy to try and figure out how best to do that. I was thinking of testing that tonight, actually, and uh… I was hoping you two could be present?” I took a breath after that long explanation.

Hermione looked thoughtful, while Ron was looking more and more bewildered.

Ron frowned. “So… you’re turning yourself into a chick?”

I nodded. “Basically, yes. I won’t look super different, the main thing might be my hair colour. I got a fox’s hair to try this with a few days ago, so I’ll probably end up with red hair. I’m fine with that, I’ll probably just look like my mum.”

“Fox hair?” Hermione said. “Why fox?”

“I am… not the biggest fan of dogs. I don’t hate them, but my cousin’s aunt has some vicious dogs, so I’m not comfortable using dog hair if things go wrong. Using a cat’s hair would feel kind of weird, especially after you accidentally did that to yourself last year. Foxes… Well, they’re clever and mischievous. That has to count for something, right?

Ron shrugged and took a big bite of his food. Hermione nodded. “I guess I can’t exactly argue with that since it is entirely your choice. I still don’t exactly feel on board with this, my parents… well, if this is what will make you happy, go ahead.”

I frowned, but didn’t question her about what she had been about to say about her parents. We finished our meals in silence. Despite my late arrival, I still finished before Ron, who had a much larger appetite. Once Ron finished off the food on his plate, I gestured for my two best friends to follow me.

“Why are we in the dungeons? I thought we were going to the Chamber,” Ron said.

We were under my cloak, heading towards the Chamber entrance I had used earlier.

“There’s another entrance to the Chamber down here. There’s actually quite a few scattered in and around the school, but the one in Myrtle’s bathroom is the only one in the school big enough for the basilisk to go through. Anyway, this was the closest one that didn’t involve sliding down a massive sewage pipe.”

We continued walking in silence for a bit longer. We quickly arrived at the entrance, and I hissed the password to open it. I led Ron and Hermione inside, and closed the door behind us. I pulled the cloak off our heads before stuffing it in my purse. I led them further into the Chamber, towards the potions lab.

There were a few cauldrons in here, most were still covered in dust and cobwebs, but I had a few different potions in stasis. There was a cauldron filled with my Polyjuice cure sitting in a corner. Another cauldron held some night vision potion, and others held more of the different utility potions I had brewed or was in the process of brewing. I stepped right past all of them and up to a slightly larger cauldron sitting on my worktable. I picked up the vial sitting on the rack next to it - the one containing my special potion.

“This is it,” I said. “This little vial should turn me into girl-me permanently.”

“What are all these potions?” Hermione said.

I looked up at her. “Mostly utility stuff. Night vision, strength, some simple healing potions. That one in the corner there is my Polyjuice cure. It takes around fifteen minutes or so to work. This cauldron right here is more Polyjuice. Anyway… um, I guess I should just drink this.”

I was suddenly quite nervous. My stomach was twisting itself into a knot. My hands shook as I uncorked the vial and raised it to my lips. I grit my teeth, stealing by nerves, before tilting the vial backwards, pouring the purple sludge inside into my mouth and swallowing.

It tasted disgusting. Polyjuice potion always does, no matter what you do. And the unpleasantness doesn’t end there. Depending on how drastic the transformation was, the transformation typically ranged from a particularly intense stomach cramps to ‘oh-merlin-end-my-suffering-before-I-die-from-pain’ all over my body. This should normally have been the former. After all, I was just turning into me, just more feminine.

This wasn’t the former.

Thankfully, this wasn’t also the latter. But it hurt enough that my instincts told me that something had gone wrong. Very wrong.

Fortunately, I had some Polyjuice cure.