Yep. This happened. This definitely happened. I have a chapter planned for everyone on the task force- make sure to review if you want to see them!
Tom was a deceptively exceptional wizard.
He was quiet and kind, charming and lovable, gentle and thoughtful. He spoke softly and was polite to everyone, though every once in a while displayed a quick wit that bellied a rapid and sharp intelligence that would sometimes appear as a perceptive gleam in his eyes from behind his spectacles. Tom, put simply, was perfect. With his love of teaching and his dedication to grading fifth grade papers that looked like they were written in cuneiform, he was the ultimate picture of domestic, of simple, of normal. And so, it seemed, was his magic.
It wasn't until he almost hit that deer on the freeway that Liz suspected, maybe, that Tom was capable of more than he let on. In the space of a second, he had cast such a powerful protection spell that not only were they uninjured in the crash- even after they slammed into the barricade, not a shard of glass could be found on Liz's clothing from the shattered windshield. There was bubble of perfect space around them amid the crumpled and shattered destruction of plastic and metal and wiring. They were safe.
In spite of her suspicions of his talents, he always struggled to cast a Patronus. But she did see him do it, once, to send a message to her father- it was a hawk, and Liz, being the psychologist that she was, immediately took stock of it. Patronuses were a reflection of people's souls- they were essential to understanding an individual's nature. There was an entire course on the subject required by the profiling school at Quantico.
Hawk. Quiet, intelligent, intense, fierce, and focused. Predatory. One of the more impressive Patronus forms, but far more common among Air Force Pilots, snipers, politicians, and assassins than domestic fifth-grade teachers. A Hawk bellied a disciplined focus and an incredibly keen mind; a person with lethal potential and quiet seriousness. She looked at him quietly for a moment, and wondered if his Patronus was a mimic-kind; the kind you adopt from another person who had a significant impression on you. His father, maybe, after he lost him in the accident?
A few months later, Liz found herself staring at a hippo in a trashcan in the middle of the night, wondering how she could be so blind.
P.S I can totally see Tom's patronus being a hawk, regardless of how you interpret the actual animal. Disagree? Leave your idea in a review!