The Subtle Wand
AN: For those who are unfamiliar with the His Dark Materials universe, this is basically all you need to know (taken from the wiki)
"A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders."
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In so many things, Neville had thought himself a failure. Estelle reflected this.
When he needed to be brave, she was a mouse, small and timid.
When he needed to be clever, she was a toad, slick and slow.
When he needed to be heroic, to be a Griffindor, she was a raven, a snake, a badger. She was everything but what he needed; letting him down just like he let down everyone who relied on him.
They were failures and failures they remained until suddenly they weren't. Except it wasn't suddenly at all; this moment that had been a long time coming, this moment that had begun the day that he faced his friends in the common room and told them he wouldn't let them pass. It had begun when the Sorting Hat had put him in Griffindor. Maybe it had begun even before that, when he was newly born and Estelle was only the idea of a daemon; when his parents' daemons had given her her name.
Estelle. Infinite potential.
Under the suffocating shelter of the burning Sorting Hat, he was a frozen boy with a frozen mouse in his hand, until suddenly he wasn't.
The Body-Bind curse lifted. Estelle leapt from his hand, a mouse for the last time, and shifted with a roar.
"Time to be a Griffindor, Neville," said the Hat quietly.
So he did.
And later, so much later, when their losses were mourned but never forgotten and the grounds of Hogwarts themselves had begun to heal, Neville returned to his school. Not a boy anymore, not a boy for a long time, and with a lioness at his side.
In so many things, Neville had succeeded beyond all expectations. Estelle reflected this.
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"Scoliopus has settled," he said one morning. His father looked up from his paper. Severus swallowed and averted his gaze.
"A deer?" Tobias asked snidely, raising an eyebrow. His dhole bared white teeth at the trembling half-grown doe standing at Severus' side. "What good is a deer? Timid, anxious creatures. Useless."
"Prey," added the dhole, and her tail flicked.
Severus said nothing until hours later when they'd escaped from the house and its stink of damp and rot that clung to his clothes like a sign screaming I don't belong.
Scoliopus crept after him, her delicate hooves making no noise on the thick layer of fallen leaves under their feet. "Sev, I'm sorry," she called, but he walked faster. Leaving her behind along with his stupid muggle father and his equally as stupid mother and their stupid house and his stupid…
"She's pretty," said a cheerful voice, and he turned to find two wide green eyes staring at him. A moment later, he noticed the rest of the girl attached to the green eyes. Lily. "Why a deer, Scolly?"
Her own daemon changed into a knock-kneed fawn and gambolled around Scoliopus as though celebrating. There was no reason to be celebrating, this was a disaster. Severus felt his face flush as his daemon almost fell over herself in a desperate attempt to join in the light-hearted fun. They weren't good at fun. Not as good as Lily was.
"I don't know," Scoliopus said finally, closing her eyes and flattening her wide ears against her skull. "It just… happened."
"For no good reason at all," Severus said bitterly. "She's useless now."
"I'm sure there's a reason. Sometimes it just takes a long time to know," Lilly reassured them.
Later, he'd find out she was right. But so was he.
His daemon would always be a reminder of just how useless he'd been when she'd needed him most.
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James was first, because of course he was. Sirius' whole goddamn life was a race against James bloody Potter, and Potter was winning.
He didn't actually mind much. He enjoyed the competition a lot more than he enjoyed the winning.
"You've got sticks on your head."
The stag glared at him. Sirius ran his hand through his hair, shot him his customary 'who me?' grin, and wondered if the itching on his back was fur or sweat. Because surely now James had finally figured this animagi malarkey out, he, Sirius Black, wasn't far behind?
Because, Merlin's beard, if Peter of all people managed to figure it out before he did…
And then he noticed what was missing. It was Remus who spoke up though, his voice gone shrill with fright. "Alaire is gone."
"No shit," Sirius said, but a thrill of something frightened raced through his spine anyway and he felt Tristram lean heavily against his leg, shivering. It was eerie, seeing James without his soul by his side. "We knew this would happen, idiot."
Except that was cruel, and Remus turned to look at him with a hurt expression, his thin arms wrapped tight around his scrawny wolf daemon like he could hold him there by sheer force of will. It was cruel and even crueller because it was Remus, and Sirius was sorry. Not sorry enough to lose face by apologising, but Tristram huffed and beat her thick tail against the floor a few times in a consoling motion.
If anyone here feared the loss of their daemon, it was the werewolf who had his torn away from him every full moon, along with his humanity.
When James changed back, he was bright-eyed and excited, and Alaire reappeared as a stag to stay.
"Does this mean when we change I'll be settled the same as you?" Tristram asked him curiously. "The books didn't say that would happen."
"What do books know?" Peter scoffed, but he looked pants-pissingly terrified at the prospect. So he should with a daemon already settled as a rat. If he turned out to be a rat animagus, Sirius was never going to let him forget it.
"Well, you're not supposed to become an animagus until your daemon has settled," Remus said, re-opening the book they'd filched from the restricted section and burying his nose in the musty pages. "You guys could be forcing them to settle – it might not be good for them. You should stop, I'm not worth that."
"Bit late for that, Moony," James said breezily, running his hands over Alaire's antlers and measuring with his hands the doorway leading back to Hogwarts. "Oi, we're gonna have to charm this door to get Alaire out. His head's too big now."
"Don't let Evans hear you say that," Sirius said absently, trying one last time to reach for the 'inner animal' the book said he had to find to transform. He was pretty sure the book was bullshit. There was no –
Oh.
Except there was. There was and it was him but it was also Tristram, and his daemon gave a yelp of terror as the spell kicked in and dragged them together into the one singular being.
Four legs that scattered around under his body and he was falling, tripping; James loomed overheard with his mouth wide open in a barking laugh that was loud, so loud, falling again, Alaire bounding out the way and almost knocking Remus down.
"Let me," said a voice that was wonderfully familiar and loving and everything, and Sirius gladly stepped aside and let his daemon take control. "We're a dog. Oh good, I like dogs. Dogs are loyal and we've got that in spades."
And Sirius looked up at his friends that were either laughing or worried, and he opened his mouth in a wide canine grin and agreed. He'd been lonely for so long until James - and Remus and Peter too - and now he wasn't. He owed them the world.
It really didn't get much better than this.
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Ginny awoke on the floor on the Chamber of Secrets, sick with the knowledge of what she'd done, and Harry was there too.
It wasn't until later, when the tears had dried and her parents had finished shouting and her brothers had finished being angry to hide how scared they were, that she noticed.
She wiped muck from fur that was red and soft and he watched her with dark eyes, leathery wings folded about his form. He hadn't spoken a word since leaving the chamber tucked within her shirt; hadn't spoken a word since she'd first picked up that book and allowed it into her mind. "I'm sorry," she whispered to him, because he was her and she'd betrayed him.
"I know," Deviyn said finally, after a long pause and licked her finger. "I'm settled now, you know. It was dark and you were lost, so I settled to help you."
He was a flying fox with delicate limbs and a steadily beating heart against her palm. Still true. Still the same, despite being different.
And she was different now too, but she could be okay again. He'd help her, no matter how dark it got.
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Their daemons didn't settle the same, nor at the same time, and neither were surprised because they weren't the same, not really. Not where it counted. Fred's settled first, and George mocked both him and Castor for weeks about the mottled coat and grinning jaws of the hyena form. Castor just laughed and snapped playfully at Pollux as she flitted around her head as a glimmering blue kingfisher.
Pollux settled three months later, and George loved it the moment he laid eyes on her slender coyote form. He couldn't think of anything better.
Really, she shit all over Fred's ugly hyena. Who could love a hyena?
Except George did. She was a part of Fred, and Fred was a part of George, and he didn't think that would ever change.
Except it did.
Fred fell, still laughing, and the air around him glittered with gold. Fred died, and it proved that they weren't the same because Fred died and George just kept on fucking living, even though he knew something of him had died this day.
The next day he woke up despite his best efforts; Fred was still dead and Pollux watched him with deep-set eyes over a blocky muzzle that was two shades darker than Castor's was. Had been. Would never be again.
Pollux was a coyote no longer. But beautiful still. A reminder of loss, like he needed one.
And George held his hyena daemon close and knew they'd always be alone from now on.
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She had expected a little more fanfare. After all, she'd spent her first five weeks at Hogwarts reading every book the library had on daemons and settling. And they all assured her that it was a miraculous occasion, a true coming of age. She expected a thrill of some kind, a feeling that something had changed.
She'd expected, at the very least, to know it had happened.
What she hadn't expected was to be helping her mum bake a cake and for Crookshanks to bound up onto the table in the form of a bandy-legged ginger cat, announcing cheerfully that, "Looks like this is it then."
And it was. She was, from that moment on, Hermione Granger with the cat daemon.
She couldn't be happier.
"You know," Ron said later while sitting in the Leaky Cauldron waiting for Harry to come down from his room. Out the corner of her eye, a moving poster of Sirius Black sneered at her. Crookshanks hissed at the poster, amber eyes glittering. "I don't actually think your ridiculous cat is all cat. It's gotta be part kneazle or something."
"Don't be stupid, Ron," she snapped, turning her back on the poster. Another thing to worry about. "And don't call him ridiculous. I don't tell Pig she's ridiculous."
"But she is ridiculous," Ron replied dolefully, poking his daemon with his shoe. Pig squeaked in protest, flickering from a toad to a badger and finally turning into a fluttering owl that clipped Ron's ear with her wing as she sought shelter in the rafters above their heads. "But at least she's not a mad cat. Does this mean you're mad too? I always suspected."
"Don't worry, I think you're wonderful," Hermione reassured her daemon as he stared hungrily at the quivering lump in Ron's jacket pocket that was his geriatric pet rat.
He purred.
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The day than Quacey settled was a day like any other, which was to say, for Luna it was extraordinary. Luna herself was a firm believer that every day was extraordinary, at least in some small manner, and even if Quacey hadn't picked today to settle, it was still a pretty wonderful day overall.
"I think it's up there," she said cheerfully, craning her head backwards to peer up at the clasped hands of the statue they'd found themselves under. The corridor was cold, and she would remember that later because her feet were bare. They'd taken her shoes as well.
She really didn't know why. It was rather fun to track everything down again, even if sometimes she wished they wouldn't.
Quacey itched at his long ears, wiggling his nose thoughtfully. "Guess I could fly up there and get it," he said finally, reluctantly. He rather liked being a hare. She rather liked it too. There was a gleam about his eyes that spoke of dancing and madness and moonlight, and he did look ever so wonderful bounding after her with his long legs and glossy fur. "Course, it's probably infested with Nargles. They like hands, you know. All kinds of hands. Ask your father."
"Well, I haven't got my wand. They took that too," she said, quieter this time, and shoved back a rush of some emotion that wasn't extraordinary at all. It was sad and painful and made her think of her mum.
Sometimes she thought it might be loneliness. Six months in the castle, and the only time people spoke to her was to call her Loony.
It was okay though. Things would get better. They usually did.
"Please?" she asked again, and her daemon yawned.
"Alright, if you let me have some of your pumpkin soup at dinner," he said finally, and changed.
"Oh," they both said at once, because it was different this time. Quacey blinked and settled back onto his clawed feet, flicking his wings out experimentally and blowing a puff of acrid smoke that made her nose itch. Luna stared at him. "I thought you'd be fluffier," she said finally, crouching and running her finger down his scaled back. His skin was soft, despite the scales, and pleasantly warm.
"So did I," said the little dragon, small enough to be cupped in her hands. "I thought I'd be a hare. I don't think I can carry your book like this." He sounded so woefully sad that she instantly felt sorry. She hadn't meant to be disappointed. He was wonderful, really he was.
"Never mind," she said firmly, rolling the sleeves of her robe back. "We'll climb up together. At least this way you can scare off the Nargles. They hate fire."
Quacey cheered up immediately. "They really do," he said with a smirk, curling around her neck like a particularly lively scarf.
Actually, he was much better than a hare.
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Vala was a snake and Harry knew that after his second year and after his fourth year and especially after his fifth year, people looked at her and wondered about his heart.
She was a snake and yet she wasn't, but no one really seemed to believe him when he said that.
"Unusually early to settle," he vaguely remembered someone saying to him when he was small and forgotten, following at his uncle's heels into a tiled room that smelled of bleach. But she wasn't settled, she'd just never changed. He couldn't remember her ever changing.
"A snake?" murmured the Sorting Hat when he was eleven and terrified, sitting under the wide-brim and wishing desperately for anything but. "Slytherin for sure."
She's not a snake, Harry had thought, and the Hat had chuckled.
"She'd be great as a snake, you know, I can see it. Strong and resilient and cunning. Why fight what you are?"
And Harry hadn't answered, and eventually the Hat had relented.
It was, Harry decided, one more shred of proof that he didn't have to be what everyone seemed determined to make him.
And then he'd died. There was a flash of green light, a burst of gold at his feet, and he'd woken up face-down in the silence of King's Cross. Alone.
When he woke again the ground under his face was cold and the dirt glimmered, and he was still alone. Hagrid carried him back to the castle surrounded by the mocking voices of the Death Eaters. Alone, still, and a small part of him was sick to realize this would be how he remained.
He couldn't feel her. A part of him was gone, an important, impossibly important part, and he didn't know how to get her back. He suspected he couldn't.
But he couldn't dwell on his loss. Not for a long time. He survived that day, but for the longest time he walked the earth as though he was dead, and he knew how it was to have your soul taken from you.
And then it was spring, he'd been alone for so long, Voldemort was a fading memory, and Harry turned a corner on the street one day and felt whole.
He turned slowly, looking at first at his feet as though her coiled sinuous body would be there, waiting to be lifted around his neck, but that was wrong. He was lighter, freer, and nothing tethered them but their hearts. He looked up.
The sea-bird landed on a fence beside him and clacked its beak in welcome, white and brown and brilliant and free. "Hullo, Harry," his daemon said quietly. "I've been looking for you."
Harry swallowed hard. Later he would look her up with Hermione's help; a cahow. The Lazarus bird.
And the Boy Who Lived lived again.