Harry nodded in response. "I probably would have confronted Hermione about it, but there was just so much other stuff going on last year that it didn't seem to be a good time to do it. The last thing I needed last year was to be in a big fight with Hermione."
"I'll grant you that," Ginny said. "But if she starts up again, we are going to confront her about it."
"Sounds fair to me," Harry readily agreed.
"Good," Ginny replied, then shook her head. "We've gotten way off topic now, haven't we?" Not waiting for a reply, she continued. "I meant to ask you this last night, but I got distracted. How did you change your hair?"
"My hair?" he questioned. When she nodded in response, he shrugged as he said, "It's just a simple glamour charm to change the color. I can teach it to you if you'd like."
"No," Ginny interrupted, "not your hair color. How did you change the length of it? You went from long to short to long again in one night. How did you manage that?"
Harry sat back in his chair to think about it. He didn't really know how he controlled his hair length, to be honest. For most of his life he had kept it at the same length without ever really thinking about it. It was only that past summer that Harry realized that he was doing it and tried to actually change it. "I don't know exactly," Harry said. "When I was younger, my aunt always used to try to cut my hair, but it always ended up looking the same no matter what she did. One time she got frustrated and buzzed it all except for a small fringe in the front to cover my scar. I was so nervous about going to school the next day and getting teased for it, but when I woke up the next morning, my hair was back to normal."
Harry took a breath before continuing. "Over the summer I thought about it and realized that I've never had to get my haircut. It always just stayed the same. I figured that I must be doing something with my magic subconsciously to keep it that way. And sure enough, when I concentrated enough on it, I found that I could change its length."
When he looked up at her after finishing his story, he found her mouth open, gaping at him. Harry was confused. What was she staring at? Why was she reacting that way? He didn't really see the big deal about his being able to control the length of his hair. Sure it helped in disguising himself slightly, but it didn't have many uses beyond that. "Er, Gin? You alright?" he finally asked her, when she made no move to respond.
She abruptly shut her mouth and adopted a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Yes, I'm fine, but Harry, do you realize what this means?" she asked with a hint of wonderment in her voice.
"Er, no…" he responded uncertainly.
"There is no spell to change hair length," Ginny explained. "There are potions that can speed up growth, but there is no actual spell to make it grow or shrink or anything. The fact that you can do that can only mean one thing." She had a very eager expression on her face, as if she couldn't wait for him to ask his question.
And he was not one to deny her. "And what would that be?"
"You're a metamorphmagus," she told him straightforwardly.
It was Harry's turn to gape. "What?" he blurted out. "How can…? How do you…? Are you sure?"
Ginny nodded slowly. "It's the only thing that makes sense. Have you ever tried changing your appearance in any other way?"
"Not beyond simple glamour charms," Harry admitted, already beginning to think over the possibilities. It would sure make disguising himself easier in the future.
"Well you should work on that sometime. It doesn't hurt to at least give it a shot," Ginny suggested brightly.
"Yeah," he said distractedly. He thought over it for a moment. "I'll have to see if I can find anything about metamorphmagi in the library. It would probably help if I knew more about the ability."
"Probably," she agreed. Her face turned serious once again as she timidly said, "I have another question for you."
"What is it?" he asked carefully.
"Well yesterday I got to see you train for the first time…" she trailed off a bit.
"Yes…" he encouraged her to go on.
"Well I was just wondering where you learned to do that. I mean, you looked like you were some professional who had been training all his life, the way you were dodging spells and everything," she said uncertainly, not sure if she was pushing him for too much information.
He mulled over what she had told him for a few minutes. "I started training in the beginning of the summer, around the time I wrote you that first letter. I've been doing it every day since then."
"But there's no way you could've become that good in so short a time," she insisted.
He blushed slightly under her implied praise. "I don't know," he replied, searching for the answer. "I guess I've always been good at stuff like that. I've always had good reflexes, like when I'm playing Quidditch. I think growing up with the Dursleys helped with that, actually."
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