Chapter Three: The Disastrous Experiment
Business at the joke shop was fairly busy. They opened at nine in the morning and closed at six in the evening nearly every day of the week. The only exception to that were Sundays: Because of the little free time every other day of the week, the three young men decided to close shop once a week.
Each Sunday they spent sleeping in, working on how to find Jugson, and experimenting with both joke products and new spells. They would practice spells they hadn't yet mastered, but occasionally one of the spells would go awry and one of the boys would, in turn, discover a new spell.
During one of these instances, Harish, Fred, and George were in their flat above the shop in a spare room, experimenting with different spells. As the three were practicing wand movements, Fred gave his own wand an over-zealous flick. Harish felt something whoosh over him, and then shuddered as his skin felt it was melting.
Once it was gone, Harish opened his eyes to see the blurry forms of the twins staring at him.
"What?" he asked in annoyance.
Instead of answering, the red-heads simply gaped.
"Why is everything blurry?" he questioned again. "What did you do?"
Fred stuck his hands in the air as a gesture of surrender and said, "I honestly have no idea—"
"But you might want to take a look at this," George interrupted.
He placed his hands on Harish's shoulders and steered him to their mirror. Harish squinted at it before yelping in surprise and jumping back.
The boy's precious brown hair was gone, replaced by the most horrendous mop of unruly black hair. His skin was no longer pale, but more of a shade of pink. He had lost around a foot of height and at least three pounds of muscle.
Harish then stepped closer—so close, in fact, that his nose almost touched it and streaks of condensation spread out on the mirror's glassy surface from his warm breath. It was then that the wizard discovered that even his face had changed.
His nose was straighter and longer, his face was smaller and thinner, and his eyes were a brilliant emerald green—the exact same color as the Killing Curse. The eyes, of course, had been the first thing the twins had noticed, for they had seen them on several occasions before.
As Harish inspected his new appearance, he was so stunned that he could only barely hear the twins' snickering behind him.
"I expect you'll have a hard time intimidating people now," George said, trying to stifle his laughter.
"Yeah," Fred added. "Now that you'll be a good three feet shorter than them."
"Not to mention the fact that he's a skinny squirt," George added, quieter.
"Fred," Harish said in hardly a whisper, staring into a face he didn't recognize as his own. "I think you just accidently invented a really powerful glamor-removing spell."
For Harish knew that he was looking at the reflection of Harry Potter.
"What are we going to do?" Fred asked.
"It's not like you can go to the next Death Eater meeting looking like that," George added.
"Yes, you are right," Harish replied. "And there's only one person who can help me."
The three got dressed and went into the study they shared and used the fireplace to floo to Slytherin Manor. There was silence in the manor for just a second, and then Voldemort appeared seconds later. The second he spotted Harish, he jumped, took a step backwards, and asked, "What did you do to yourself?"
Harish was slow to answer. He had never seen his father this shaken before. It was very unusual for the man to show surprise, but in that instant the Dark Lord was not trying to mask his surprise at all—most likely he was so shocked he was unable to.
Without saying anything, Harish quickly pointed at Fred.
"I-I-I might have, uh, accidently…" then he slumped in surrender. "I don't know."
"Tell me exactly what happened," Voldemort demanded.
So Harish quickly regaled the whole story as his father circled him, tilting the boy's head and inspecting his new appearance closely by lifting arms and staring at the boy's face.
"So you created a new glamor-removing spell," Voldemort stated once his son had finished.
"How do we undo it?" Harish asked.
"Make a counter-spell," Voldemort replied simply.
"Could you help us?" Harish asked.
Voldemort sighed.
"I can't exactly let you parade around looking like that can I?" he retorted. "No. I will help you as long as you stay here until you are back to normal."
"However long that takes," Harish grumbled.
"It shouldn't take that long," Voldemort replied sternly. "Know what spell were you trying?"
"I was teaching the twins rescindo."
"The knee-reversing charm," Voldemort specified out loud.
"And instead of reversing knees he reversed everything," George said with a snicker.
Voldemort shot him a look and he quickly sobered, snapping to attention.
"We hadn't even started saying the incantation," Harish continued. "We were just practicing wand movements."
"So it's a nonverbal spell," Voldemort concluded. He paused his pacing and thought for a second. Then he said, "What we really need is to watch what happened."
"But we haven't got a pensieve," Harish said.
"I know," Voldemort replied. "We will just have to borrow one."
The Dark Lord explained that Snape possessed a pensieve. So Voldemort sent Harish to his room and the twins back to their flat. Then, he summoned his Death Eater.
"Yes, my lord?" Snape asked.
"I require your pensieve," Voldemort said, wasting no time in getting to the point of their conversation.
Snape nodded without questions and Disapparated.
By the next morning they had the pensieve. Voldemort set it on the table and got Harish to give him the memory of the incident. He then poured the memory into the bowl and the two watched it swirl. Then, they both put their faces in it to see.
There was a lurch and Harish's feet left the ground. The next moment, he found himself standing in the spare room above the shop again. Sunlight flooded through the large window on the exterior wall. Standing in the center of the room were the twins and a Harish that still resembled Voldemort, who was standing at the other Harish's side.
The two wizards watched as the three young men each waved their wands repeatedly. Harish and George moved their wand tips in a half circle, flicking their wrists to the left. Fred, on the other hand, bounced on his toes as he waved his wand in a full, clockwise spiral, ending with a downward flick of the wrist.
The memory ended and Harish said with a shake of his head, "I don't understand how he could've gotten the wand movement so wrong."
"Now, you would do well to remember the importance of wand movements," Voldemort said.
Harish nodded. "And I'm sure Fred understands the importance even more than I do."
"Now did you see exactly what he did?"
"Yes," Harish replied. "He flicked his wrist down in a full, clockwise circle."
"So what sort of wand movement would you use for a counter-charm?" his father asked him.
"Wouldn't we use the exact opposite of the original spell?" Harish queried, receiving a nod. "So that would be a full counter clockwise circle followed by an upward flick of the wrist. Would we use an incantation?"
"I think it would be best," Voldemort replied. "I would probably start with a basic incantation. Rectum facio is a good one for this situation."
Harish nodded.
"We'll try that," he said. "Can I go now?"
"Yes, but before you do, I think you should get glasses for this appearance."
"Why?"
"You said yourself that you could not see."
"But I'll have my sight back when I take on my glamor again," Harish disagreed.
"True," the Dark Lord replied. "But sometimes it can be rather handy to have a disguise readily available for use."
So, Harish found himself sitting in a chair in front of a man sworn to secrecy a few hours later, being put through multiple tests. Most of the tests comprised of the man scribbling on a clipboard while Harish told him what letters on the chart he couldn't read. Next, Harish picked out a pair of plain round frames and the man tapped his wand on each lens. Then, he put them on to discover he could see again.
Finally, he flooed directly to their flat. It was past six, so the twins were sitting in the study, talking about how well the shop was doing. Harish walked in and told them everything he had learned and Fred tried out the spell. He rotated his wand in a full, counter clockwise circle and then Harish found he couldn't see anything through his new glasses. He took them off to discover that his sight had been restored.
Then, he dashed to their spare room and examined his reflection in the mirror—everything was completely back to normal.
The young man laughed joyously and cried, "We could do so much with this spell!"