2 – The Infirmary
Harry was startled awake by Ron's voice yowling loudly about the 'men with dead faces made of bone'. Terror and protective rage swirled through him in ever-increasing amounts at such a rate of speed as to leave him dizzy.
The next thing he knew, he was crouched down low and growling like an animal with his claws bared. Remus Lupin was behind him, holding him from attacking whatever had frightened Ron and Neville was in front of him with his hands pressed tightly to his chest and babbling in his face. Slowly, he calmed enough to make sense of what his friend was saying.
"…down Harry! It's okay! Well, sort of…I mean, it's just a nightmare, yeah? Ron's fine. Just calm down. Really, Harry. Ron will be fine. Honest. No Death Eaters here. We're fine, or will be soon enough. Just, take a deep breath and calm down, yeah?"
And Harry did take a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart as he backed away from the edge of battle. That's when he realized that the reason he knew it was Lupin behind him was that he could smell him. Oh, it wasn't a bad smell, but it was a wild one. An oddly dark mix of wolf and man, pain and loyalty, with just a hint of exhaustion.
Slowly, he let the tension bleed out of his body and started to stand up straight, only that didn't seem to work too well. He felt slightly hunched over and his legs felt very strange. There wasn't any pain, which was good, but he was very tired and hungry enough to eat a horse.
Confused and still coming down off of the adrenaline that had flooded his system, he looked down and found himself staring at his paws.
Paws!?!
His hands weren't really hands anymore! The palm was much larger and had a thick pad of dark calluses and the backs were covered in thick golden fur. His fingers, while still technically fingers, had been blunted very short and had thickened greatly. While his thumb and pointer finger could still bend enough to touch tips, they were the only ones. And he certainly couldn't bend this mishmash between a hand and a cat's paw into a proper fist.
"Wha…?!"
A flash of sympathy washed over Neville's face and he patted Harry's shoulder in a way that had undertones of petting Crookshanks in it. Behind him, Lupin gave vent to a loud sigh of sorrow and frustration.
"Climb back up onto the bed Harry and I'll tell you what happened after you collapsed at the Ministry."
For the first time, Harry took notice of his surroundings enough to realize that he was in the infirmary at Hogwarts. He was standing next to an empty bed that was obviously his. Ten feet to his right, Madam Pomfrey and Mrs Weasley were fussing over a quickly calming Ron while Ginny stood by them with tears in her eyes. Directly across the room from his bed Hermione was asleep, the blankets around her chest propped up in the air so that they didn't touch her. Ten feet to the side of Hermione's bed and across from Ron's was a bed holding a sleeping Luna. Tears ran down her face as she tossed and turned in her sleep.
On the other side of Harry's bed was a new wall that he'd never seen in the infirmary before. It only held a single door and Mad-Eye Moody stood in front of it like a guard. Moody nodded at him sharply and gestured to the bed.
"Go on lad, climb on in and listen to Lupin. Afterwards, once all the facts have sunk in, you and I are going to have a little talk too. Don't think that I didn't notice that it was you that came to mine and Kingsley's defense against Rookwood, Crabbe and Carrow. You most likely saved both of our lives, you know."
Harry didn't really know although he had a blurry memory of seeing Moody standing over Kingsley's crumpled body while dueling against three Death Eaters at once. He was glad that the tall black Auror had survived though, so he just nodded and climbed onto the bed.
It was awkward since his oddly shaped and fur covered limbs didn't want to move the way they used to. He was trying not to panic about it and just concentrated on getting as comfortable as possible before turning to face Neville and Lupin. He held up one golden paw in front of him and waved it at them.
"First thing. Why haven't I been changed back into a human?"
Harry swallowed hard with apprehension. Even his voice was different, deeper and growling.
Neville looked down at the floor and Lupin gave him a pained half smile that was clearly forced.
"Well, from what we were told it was Malfoy that cast this transformation on you. Correct?"
Harry nodded, growling with displeasure unconsciously at the thought of the snobbish blonde Death Eater.
Lupin nodded and continued, "Madam Pomfrey suspected and Professor McGonagall confirmed that it's the same spell that Crouch Jr cast on Draco Malfoy when he was pretending to be Moody."
They all glanced over at the paranoid retired Auror and watched him scowl and finger his wand before looking away and back at each other.
"That spell isn't a normal human-to-animal transfiguration, but instead is one that you cast on somebody to help them find their animagus form."
Neville nodded and spoke up, a bit of vicious vindictiveness in his voice. "That's part of why it was so humiliating for the little ponce. Here he is walking around all puffed up with his Death Eater pride about how superior he was and it turns out that he's nothing but a ferret. Crouch didn't choose the form, Malfoy's personality did."
Lupin nodded and gestured at Harry. "Malfoy senior was, we think, trying to return the favor. I believe that he assumed you would turn into some helpless and defenseless animal and that he could then carry you off to his Master easier. Ginny stopped him halfway through by setting him on fire and breaking his concentration."
"She set him on fire?" Harry interrupted with glee. Neville and Lupin nodded while Harry huffed out a sound that was half growl and half purr instead of human laughter. "I didn't even notice at the time."
Lupin shrugged. "Understandable. You were probably in too much pain and very confused from your change, even if you stopped half-way through."
Harry nodded and looked over himself as best he could. He sort of looked like a cross between human and lion. "So, why am I still like this?"
Once more Neville looked away and Lupin appeared to be pained. Harry knew that he wasn't going to like the answer and braced himself.
"Both Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore tried to fix this. They tried to complete the change as well as reverse it. You managed to shake off the magic from all of their attempts." Lupin paused and Harry noticed that both of their scents changed. Lupin's took on an edge of sadness and Neville's just a touch of fear mixed with anger. "Professor McGonagall has offered to work with you to teach you animagus magic in the hopes that you could transform yourself, but Professor Dumbledore thinks that You-Know-Who did something to you…"
Harry growled. Neville tensed and his fear scent increased. Harry clenched his paws and tried to calm down from the spike of anger that even the very mention of Voldemort created in him. He was suddenly distracted by an odd sensation in his half-human paws. Looking down, he watched in fascination as his thick claw-like fingernails extended and retracted from the tips of his fingers the same way that Crookshanks' claws did.
"Harry?..."
Neville's hand shook his shoulder lightly and he looked up.
"He possessed me. Or tried to." He tilted his head back and tried to remember. "I was so angry. Sirius had been hurt, my friends were all hurt and in danger. Curses were flying left and right. I had thought Kingsley was dead and Moody was fighting for his life. Luna and I had both just killed someone. My emotions were raging out of control and Dumbledore just stood there lecturing Voldemort like he was some student caught out of bounds after curfew. I lost it then…"
Harry looked up into Lupin's eyes. "That's when it happened. I wondered why Voldemort would just stand there and let himself be scolded like a boy, but he wasn't really. He was using Legilimency on me. He got into my head, but it wasn't like before."
"What do you mean?"
Harry shrugged as best he could, which wasn't very since his spine and shoulders seemed to be hooked up differently now.
"Well…he could get into my head and cause me lots of pain through my scar. It's like my skull is splitting open and I can't even think right. The pain rides right on the surface where our connection is. Other times he can get in and I see images or hear sounds, but there is no real feeling of pain. It's just sort of fuzzy around the edges, like a dream."
He shook his head and sighed out a rumbling growl. "This time it was as if we were both in pain. Lots of it, and it went down much further than my curse-scar flaring up. He screamed and withdrew. He was shocked and angry, though. I don't think he expected that to happen."
Lupin nodded and grimaced. "That sort of makes sense after hearing Professor Dumbledore's theory. He said that he thought You-Know-Who did something to you at the Ministry. He didn't say what, but only that something unexpected happened and it locked you into this half-human half-lion form."
Lupin scratched his chin and looked thoughtful, "He muttered something about it making sense because when You-Know-Who used that ritual to build himself a new body it turned out to be half-snake."
"What? Why would that have anything to do with Harry being stuck as a lion?"
Neville was a surprising mix of confusion and indignation. Harry was curious about that as well, but Lupin just shook his head. "I don't know."
Neville looked like he was going to argue about it and Harry appreciated that his friend would stick up for him, but it wasn't Lupin's fault. Instead, he lifted up his large golden paw again and asked, "So…what exactly…do I look like?"
Lupin looked at him for a moment, then sighed and seemed to deflate. Pulling out his wand he pointed it to the space next to his bed and silently conjured a large free-floating mirror that hung in the air from nothing. Swallowing hard and with an encouraging smile from Neville, Harry slid off the bed.
Stepping in front of the mirror, the first thing that Harry stared at was his head and face. Half-lion indeed! He was covered in gold and tawny fur and his skull and face had been reshaped into that of a lion. His nose, mouth and cheeks were pushed out into a muzzle and his ears poked up out of his hair which was longer and just as shaggy and messy as ever. Only now it extended down his thick neck to his shoulders and up along his throat in a ruff just as a real lion's mane would lay.
Huffing in a growling version of panting from the panic rising in him, Harry threw off the dressing gown he was wrapped in to find he only had a pair of boxer-shorts on under it. This unobstructed view let him see that his entire body was now covered in golden fur except for the black ruff of mane framing his leonine face. Spinning around and looking over his shoulder, Harry saw that the mane extended down about three-quarters of his back the way a lion's did.
Spinning back around, he noted the other changes to his body. His shoulders, back and ribs were large and barrel shaped the way a lions' was. He was mostly standing upright, but he tended to lend forward a bit. This was because his hips and legs were shaped differently. They now had the shape and odd twists that a cat's did, with the elongated foot bone up in the air and they ended in overly large paws.
Harry wasn't even sure how he was managing to balance on those twisted limbs until he realized that he had a long tail hanging down behind him that helped by acting as a counterweight to his leaning forward. The tail ended in a black furred tip that began to sway back and forth as his agitation grew.
This image of a giant lion that stood upright and learned to speak was only made more surreal due to the fact that he was wearing boxer-shorts and that someone had transfigured his glasses to fit his much more widely shaped head. They were currently resting on his muzzle just behind his shiny black nose.
Harry pointed at his image in the mirror, horrified. "I'm stuck like this?!"
"I'm afraid so, laddie." It was Mad-Eye who answered. "At least, for now. Perhaps McGonagall can help you get it reversed, but perhaps not."
Harry just gaped at him and barely reacted when Neville came over, picked up his dressing gown and helped him drape it back around his shoulders. Lupin released his spell and the mirror dissolved away in a puff of smoke. Slowly and trying hard to still the tremors that had come over him in shock, Harry climbed back onto his bed.
"That's actually a large part of what we need to talk about. You can't go back to those muggles looking like that, despite Albus' suggestion of a glamour charm. That's a good thing though as I don't trust your Uncle, hideous man that he is."
Harry nodded, "Vernon would see this as the perfect excuse to kill me in my sleep."
Lupin looked pained at that admission, but Moody just nodded.
"I offered to take you in. You have great potential for battle magic, Potter. And being half-way transfigured into your animagus form didn't effect that. You're a prime target and you should by trained to reach that potential, plus you need to learn how that new body works. How to walk, run, dodge and fall."
While most parts of Harry just wanted to curl into a little ball and cry, scream and rage against fate he knew that if he started he might not stop. Instead, he pushed all that down and tried to focus on what Moody was saying.
"I…I appreciate that but,…why don't I just stay with Sirius? And what about my friends? Are they going to be okay? Can they be trained to defend themselves too?"
"Harry, Harry…" Lupin held up his hands in a calming gesture. "Slow down, one question at a time. As for your friends, well…"
Lupin gestured to Neville, "As you can see, Madam Pomfrey fixed Neville's nose up fine and Ginny's ankle didn't take much longer than that to heal." He sighed and looked over at Luna briefly. "There isn't really anything physically wrong with Luna. She's been suffering extreme nightmares and acts kinda odd when she's awake. Madam Pomfrey thinks it's from killing Malfoy. She wants her to visit a Mind Healer. Tonks is trying to arrange for her to talk to the Mind Healer that works with the Aurors after a bad assignment."
Harry nodded, "Luna's always been a bit odd, but she's never really suffered from nightmares. I'm glad she's gonna get help though."
When Lupin didn't respond, Harry looked up at him. "And Ron and Hermione?"
Lupin sighed softly. "Hermione was hit by a very dark hex cast by Dolohov. The fact that he did it silently is the only thing that saved her life because he couldn't cast it at full power. Unfortunately, it still did a lot of damage and then she laid there for a long while with no medical treatment."
Harry gasped and Neville reached out and put one hand on his shoulder in support.
"When she was found, they rushed her to St. Mungo's. She was in surgery for a few hours to repair the damage and she'll be up and about in a few days. The only thing is, despite the fact that she'll live some of the damage was not reversible, much like your transfiguration."
A whimper caught in his throat. "Wha…what couldn't be fixed?"
"All her organs are working, Harry. She's not really damaged anymore. However, she had a huge strain on her system. Particularly her heart and lungs since the curse hit her chest. The healers won't know for sure until she's more active, but they suspect that she'll suffer from a lingering weakness in both organs. She'll most likely be susceptible to sickness in them and she'll probably have what muggles call asthma."
Harry closed his eyes and tilted his head back even as a tear escaped and ran down his fur covered cheeks.
"Merlin…it's all my fault. If I hadn't…"
He didn't get any further than that before Neville hit him in the back of his head and snarled at him. "Stop that!"
Harry gaped at his normally reticent friend in shock.
"It's not your fault! How arrogant are you?"
"What?"
"It's V-V-Voldemort's fault! He tricked you into believing you had to go to the Ministry and no adult was around to help!"
"But…"
"It's Hermione's fault! You wanted her, all of us actually, to stay here at Hogwarts and we refused. She refused to stay behind. She followed you there against your express wishes."
"But…"
"It's Dolohov's fault! He cast the curse. Not you! He could have cast a stunner. He could have cast a body-bind. He could have disarmed her. But did he? NO! He chose to cast a foul and dark curse at a school girl!"
And really, Neville did have a good point even if he was shouting a bit. Still…
"Neville, you don't understand. If I hadn't gone to the Ministry, none of you would have gotten hurt."
"Maybe," Lupin cut in. "But as it turns out, Snape really was working against us like Sirius and Moody have been saying. Those occlumency lessons of his weren't real ones like he promised the Headmaster. He was actually working to open your connection to You-Know-Who even wider. You were set up. It's very possible that your decision to believe the visions were true was forced on you by him or his Master."
"Besides…" Hermione's voice was a weak croak and Harry leapt off of his bed and dashed over to her. "I'm not one of your fangirls, Potter. I don't do what you say just because you're the bloody Boy-Who-Lived."
His absolute joy at Hermione being awake was completely derailed by the fact that she had said a swear word. "Hermione! Language!"
She chuckled weakly and then opened her eyes and looked at him for the first time.
With a gasp, Hermione's eyes got very very wide and her hand in Harry's paw began to tremble. Her chest started to make an awful wheezing noise as she gasped for breath by taking in big gulps of air. Fear scent tainted the air.
Harry cringed back away from her, horrified that his best friend was frightened of him. Then Neville was there, wrapping one arm around Harry's wide shoulders and reaching out with the other to pat Hermione's arm gently.
"It's okay, Hermione. It's just Harry under all that fur. Malfoy senior hexed him something fierce and they haven't quite figured out how to undo it yet."
Hermione's eyes snapped to Neville's even as her wheezing started to turn into a cough. Harry could hear Lupin call for Madam Pomfrey in the background, but he was too caught up in the fact that he was a monster now.
"Harry wouldn't hurt you Hermione, no matter what he looks like. He's still Harry in there. Right, Harry?"
Hermione's eyes turned to him, but he couldn't speak until Neville let go of his shoulder and lightly hit the back of his head.
"Uh…yeah. It's…it's me, Harry." He looked down at his misshapen paw-like feet. "I'm sorry I scared you. I sorta forgot I look like a monster. I…I was just so happy that you woke up."
"Oh, Harry!" She started to say more, but broke off in another coughing fit. Then Madam Pomfrey was there, bustling about and feeding a potion to Hermione. It must have tasted awful since she made a face at it, but once it was down the medi-witch gave her a glass of water to wash her mouth out.
"You two," Madam Pomfrey pointed at Harry and Neville, "back over to Harry's bed. He needs to be checked out again and then he needs to eat. Miss Granger needs rest more than anything else. You can talk to her later."
Then, before they could do anything else, Madam Pomfrey was fitting an odd shaped mask over Hermione's mouth and nose. It had a cloth bag attached to it that filled itself with air and then squished flat again as it emptied. It made a soft hissing-whoosh noise and Harry assumed it was to help her breath through her asthma attack.
Once he was settled again, Harry looked back up at Lupin and asked, "What about Ron?"
Lupin glanced over to Ron's bed and Harry turned to look as well. The boy was lying on his bed unconscious. He was wrapped mummy style along his arms, chest and face. It even appeared that his signature red hair had been shaved clean off.
"Do you remember the creature that…attached itself to him?"
Harry nodded his head, even as he continued to watch his sleeping friend. "He called them brains."
"Yeah." Lupin sighed again and Harry could hear how tired he was in that soft sound. "In a strange way, that's what they were. Creatures with overly large brains and no real body to speak of."
Neville shuddered next to Harry, "They were just the most awful things ever."
Harry and Lupin both nodded in agreement. "They were, apparently, the creation of a mad-genius of a Dark Lord about twenty years before Professor Dumbledore was born. They were captured in a raid when one of that Dark Lord's strongholds was attacked by the Ministry. No one is really sure what they are called or how they were…bred, but they are intelligent sentient creatures."
"They can't survive out of the tank they are stored in, something about the liquid being what they breath or eat or something. I'm not sure which. Anyway, the reason that the Dark Lord at the time made them is so that they could help him tell the future, so he would know what to do and what not to do. They are sort of like the ultimate seers."
"Unfortunately, most of the people who have worked with them believe that they are all insane. I guess that knowing all possible possibilities and having no way to communicate with anyone, or to effect anything in any way drove them all insane. The theory is that when that one…brain-thing latched onto Ron, it knew it was dying and tried to shove everything that it knew into his head."
Harry's head whipped around and he turned tragic cat's eyes filled with pain and horror onto his one-time teacher.
"Ron hasn't woken up yet, so we don't know what kind of damage they did to his mind, although he's been suffering from nightmares periodically. The bandages he's wrapped in are covering swirling scars that look a lot like scroll-work. They'll heal, but never really fade away. It's unfortunate that he has them at all, but…well, in a way they are quite beautiful. Delicate and exotic looking, as if someone has carved designs in his skin."
Harry began shaking and he shook his head back and forth in a form of denial. Neville was trying to calm and sooth him, but the horror, pain and guilt was washing over him and threatening to drown him. He wanted to growl in anger, howl in pain, cry from sorrow and rage against fate.
"Harry! Snap out of it lad!"
Moody's voice ripped through the room and his grief. He turned to look to see the old beat-up Auror shaking at finger at him.
"You didn't do this to any of your friends. This whole mess was orchestrated by the Dark Lord with Snape and Malfoy's direct help. Dumbledore's lack of action and Fudge's idiocy merely facilitated everything to happen more smoothly."
He grunted in approval and stomped down on the tile floor with his wooden leg, "If you messed up anything, it was his plans! You and your friends fought his best soldiers to a standstill. You and they might have gotten hurt, but so did the Death Eaters. Several of them are dead, the rest are in custody and awaiting trial. Only the Dark Lord himself managed to escape, and he was badly injured by all reports."
Moody gestured to Luna, Hermione and the Ron. "Grieve for their pains, worry about their recovery, but don't lessen their contribution and sacrifices by taking on blame that isn't yours." His finger came up to point at Harry again. "Be proud of them, laddie. They're genuine heroes!"
Before Harry could answer or argue the point further, Madam Pomfrey was back with Professor McGonagall in tow. Neville and Lupin were shooed away and then the two witches poked and prodded him with their wands as they ran scan after test after diagnostic. They rattled off a bunch of theories that delved deeply into medical and advanced transfiguration magics. Harry couldn't really follow much of it. Instead, he was resigned to put up with them talking over his head until they felt like explaining it him.
