In Which Dumbledore Knows Something
"Ready, girls?" Lily asked, preparing herself for the inevitable. She, Alice, Mary and Delilah stood surrounding Sasha's bed in the Gryffindor Sixth Year Girl's Dormitory. All four of them had already gotten dressed, and were ready to go down to breakfast; now, they were just left with the most difficult task of all: waking Sasha up.
Sasha was known amongst her friends as a notoriously heavy sleeper; she could sleep through almost anything; an earthquake, a hurricane, screaming… all of this had been tested. The one thing that woke her up was four- at least- buckets of ice cold water dumped on her head each morning. Surprisingly enough, Sasha rather enjoyed this morning ritual; according to her, it "woke her up in an unusual, refreshing way". Besides, the fact that she could dry herself off with magic afterwards made everything all the simpler.
As you can imagine, Lily, Alice, Mary and Delilah were surrounding Sasha's bed with buckets of water in their hands. Though this grew tiresome sometimes, it did ensure that all of the girls were unusually strong for girls, and for their age, because water, in large amounts, is not light. "On three," Alice said.
"One…" Mary counted, "Two…"
"THREE!" Delilah yelled, dumping her bucket first. She liked this routine just as much as Sasha did. Alice, Mary and Lily followed their friend's example, and Sasha finally woke up.
"Good morning!" Sasha exclaimed brightly, hopping out of bed. "Thanks for that. What day is it today?" she asked randomly.
"Thursday," Mary, Lily, Alice and Delilah answered in unison.
"Oh, then: great morning!" Sasha bounced around the room, dressing into her clothes as she found them. Thursdays were her favorite days of the week, because of her lessons with Dumbledore; not that her friends knew about those, of course. They just assumed that Sasha had randomly picked Thursday to be her favorite day of the week.
"C'mon, Sasha, hurry up; we're hungry here!" Delilah moaned, rubbing her stomach in a rather mournful way.
"You guys go on without me; I'll be down in a minute," Sasha waved her friends away. They didn't protest, all four scampering out the door.
A few minutes later, Sasha was dressed and ready for the day. She perkily skipped down the stairs, smiling to herself…
…Only to have that smile wiped clean off her face at the sight of her three least favorite people.
Aw, damn, they've got me unarmed! Sasha swore in her head. I could try to sneak around them… Maybe if I crawled behind the couch… She planned in her head, but it was already too late: she had been spotted.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't Berg!" Sirius exclaimed. "I'm surprised, Berg; where are your little friends? I've never seen you without them before, and I was under the impression that you were rather… dependant on them." Clearly, this was meant to rile Sasha up, but her objective was to rile up Sirius, and she knew the best way to do this was to remain calm.
"In a way, Black, I do depend on them. I don't know what I'd do without my friends; life would be quite lonesome without them, don't you think?" Sasha answered coolly. "And for your information, I told them to go down to breakfast without me. I couldn't find my socks, and they were hungry. I would've thought you'd have seen them; they didn't come down that long ago. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to join them." She tried to maneuver her way around the boys, but Potter and Pettigrew blocked her path. Frustrated, but determined not to let it show, Sasha turned around and raised an eyebrow at Sirius. "Any particular reason why you're not letting me go, Black?"
"Just because I know it annoys you," Sirius replied, smirking.
"Well, could you let me go? I'm hungry."
"Not yet, Berg. You see, something fell out of your bag on the train, and I've forgotten to give it back to you until now…" Black trailed off before procuring something from behind his back. Sasha held in a gasp as she saw what it was: Boo-Boo, her stuffed lioness. It had been in her mother's family for generations, passed down through the women. Each woman had been allowed to name the lion what they wished, and Sasha, being a newborn when it had been passed down to her, had named it "Boo-Boo".
"Give that back," she ordered.
"Why should I? I'd rather know why you have a stuffed animal, Berg. Do you need it to sleep with at night? Oh, poor wittle baby Berg," Sirius mocked, waving Boo-Boo in the air.
"The lioness," Sasha said through gritted teeth, "was a gift when I was a baby, from my mum. Now, if you'd please give it back, I'll go, and not bother to speak to you until Potions."
"But I rather like this toy of yours, Berg," said Sirius, tossing the stuffed animal in the air and catching it as it came back down again. "No, I don't think I'll be giving it back to you any time soon."
Sasha sighed, sounding bored. Whipping out her wand, she pointed at Boo-Boo and said, "Accio Boo-Boo," under her breath, so the boys wouldn't know her toy's embarrassing name. The stuffed lioness flew to her open hand, and Sasha grinned smugly. Turning to face James and Peter, she demanded coolly, "Let me through now, or else I'll show you why I finished my Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. in under twenty minutes and still got an O." Looking distinctly frightened, Peter stepped aside immediately, making a large enough space for Sasha to push her way through. "Tell Remus 'Hi,' for me, if you will, boys," she called out behind herself as she strutted through the portrait hole, feeling quite proud of herself.
"Damn," she heard Sirius growl behind her. She smirked, making her way down to breakfast, Boo-Boo in hand.
Besides her much-too-early encounter with Black, Sasha had a perfectly fine day. Even Potions was bearable, as Slughorn wanted the partners to try their hand at making potions by themselves for the day. There was, however, one incident that could not be overlooked:
Sasha was bustling around the supply closet in the cold dungeon classroom when she felt someone tap her on the shoulder. Turning around, she grinned; it was Remus.
"What's up, Bro?" She asked.
"Did you have a row with Sirius this morning?" He asked, ignoring her greeting. "He's been glaring at you all morning, ever since breakfast."
"Yes, I did in fact," Sasha admitted. "He stole Boo-Boo, and wouldn't give her back." Remus was one of the few people who knew of her toy, and of how important it was to her.
"Well, I guess you're justified," Remus grumbled. "I just don't understand how you two can fight so early in the day!"
"Four buckets of ice water," Sasha replied matter-of-factly. Remus chuckled.
"But, Sasha… could you at least try not to fight with him so much? He's one of my best friends, you know," Remus pleaded.
Sasha sighed. Her almost-brother was way too good at the puppy eyes. "I do try. Have you noticed that I don't always insult him back? That I very rarely truly fight with him?"
"Don't make me laugh, Sasha; you know I'm not stupid enough to believe that. You and I both know that you only do that because you know it's what annoys him most."
"I prefer to call it… going along with things," Sasha contradicted.
Remus sighed; he was getting nowhere with this girl. "You two… you're hopeless."
"Thanks!" Sasha smiled brightly, taking Remus' words as a compliment.
"Berg! Lupin! Stop conversing over there and get back to your cauldrons!" Slughorn ordered from his desk at the front of the room.
"Yes, Professor!" Sasha and Remus chorused in response. "See you," they said simultaneously, going back to their respective work stations.
"Well, well, well, flirting with Moony, were we, Berg?" Sirius teased as Sasha added ingredients to her potion. Sasha rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, right. The whole school knows that Remmy and I have a strictly platonic relationship, and we think of each other as brother and sister. If you're going to tease me, Black, at least say something worth saying!"
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Sirius asked loudly, sounding a bit outraged.
"It means, Black, that if you're going to tease me, then at least come up with sensible insults," Sasha explained as if she was speaking to a toddler.
"Like you do any better, Berg!"
"I do, actually. Have you noticed that, whenever I insult you, they tend to have an element of truth to them? And when I don't insult you, I tend to be speaking the truth, or pointing things out that your ignorant little brain doesn't notice or comprehend, such as what I'm doing right now?"
"Why- you- Merlin, I hate you, Berg."
"Glad to know we feel the same way, Black," Sasha said brightly before turning back to her cauldron.
Besides that rather eventful conversation, as mentioned before, nothing else interesting happened. That was alright with Sasha, however, because she was heading to Dumbledore's office for her first lesson of the year, and she knew that it would make up for the dullness of the day.
"Cauldron Cakes," she spoke confidently to the eagle statue. It revealed the staircase to the Headmaster's office, and Sasha ran up excitedly.
"Come in," Professor Dumbledore said and Sasha knocked on the door. Sasha obediently opened the door and walked inside the familiar office, sitting down in a chair opposite Dumbledore at his desk.
"Good evening, Professor," she greeted politely.
"Good evening, Sasha. I trust your summer was well?" Dumbledore asked kindly, blue eyes twinkling.
"It was, Sir. How was yours, might I ask?"
"Very good, thank you. Now, shall we proceed with the lesson?" Sasha nodded enthusiastically, and Dumbledore chuckled. "My, aren't we eager?"
"Yes, we are," Sasha confirmed seriously. Dumbledore chuckled again.
"I was thinking that for tonight, we would review some of what I taught you in your First and Second Years; it recently occurred me that even though we've reviewed what you learned during your Third, Fourth and Fifth Years consistently, we very rarely review anything else. Shall we start with your nonverbal spells?" Dumbledore inquired.
"Sure," Sasha said. "Should I do them without movement or wandwork as well?"
"Yes, that would be best, I believe. We should review all we can."
"Fine by me. Which spells should I use?"
"Hmm… how about, a Stunning Spell, a Summoning Charm, and a Levitation Charm? You can practice on these toffees here," Dumbledore instructed, gesturing to a bowl of candy on the desk. Sasha nodded her agreement, and wordlessly levitated the bowl. She did this without moving the slightest bit; without even the twitch of a finger, wearing the mask of a poker face. "Good, good; now summon it," Dumbledore directed. Sasha did so, again, without a word or a wave of her wand. "Now, I want you to set the bowl down again, and Stun it," Dumbledore instructed again. Silently, the bowl was set down on the table once more- Sasha's mind, rather than a spell, directing where and how it moved. A mere second later, an invisible force pushed the bowl backwards forcefully, and it exploded, the smell of burnt toffees in the air; after all, that is what happens to an inanimate object when it is Stunned.
"How'd I do, Sir?" Sasha asked nervously.
"Perfectly, Miss Berg; though I will miss my toffees," Dumbledore complimented, blue eyes twinkling humorously. Sasha beamed. "Why don't you try doing the same thing, only this time, while talking with me? You can practice on the other bowl of toffees."
"Okay, Sir," Sasha spoke, glancing at the bowl Dumbledore had mentioned. "Well, over the summer, me and my dad played Quidditch a lot, and I improved my Seeker skills," as Sasha talked, the bowl rose into the air. "I still prefer to play Beater, though. My dad thinks that it's because he took me to a Boston Red Sox baseball game in America when I was four, and I saw all the players hitting the balls with those long bats of theirs." The bowl flew swiftly in the air until it was between Sasha and Dumbledore. "Then again, the Red Sox really aren't that good- my dad reckons they're cursed, or something- so I didn't see them hit the ball all that often. But, when some player did hit the ball, it was awesome to hear the crack of the bat hitting the ball, and watch the ball fly!" Sasha stepped to the side the slightest bit as the bowl rested on the table, before the bowl was propelled through the spot where Sasha had previously stood and exploded just before hitting the wall.
"Very good, Sasha; and quite an interesting story as well. I too have a fondness for American baseball," Dumbledore's eyes twinkled and Sasha grinned. "Now, how about you try your hand at Legilimency?"
Sasha took a deep breath; though she knew how useful Legilimency, the art of basically reading a person's mind, was, it had always been hard for her, and though she had finally mastered it at the end of Second Year- after starting it at the beginning of First- it was still rather difficult for her to do. Clearing her mind completely as if it was a blackboard, Sasha closed her eyes tightly, and taking a deep breath, delved into the depths of her Headmaster's mind.
At first, all she saw was darkness- that was her Professor blocking her entrance; then, after at least ten minutes of silent concentration and persistence, the darkness dissolved, and a scene formed. It looked to be a funeral; she saw a much, much, much younger version of Dumbledore dressed all in black, a few stray tears littering his face, having a heated argument with a shorter boy who looked nothing like him, save for the eyes that betrayed the fact that the two were brothers. The shorter boy had many more tears on his face, falling freely, and his face was red with anger. Before Sasha's eyes, the smaller boy punched the younger version of Albus Dumbledore's nose, effectively breaking it…
Sasha left her Headmaster's head. She had seen enough.
"Very good, Miss Berg," Dumbledore said quietly. "You are now officially quite a gifted Legilimens. However, I think that we should practice it more anyhow, as well as your skills in Occlumency."
"Thank you, Sir. What should we work on now?" Sasha asked, wanting desperately to change the topic and relieve the air of the newfound tension.
"I assume that you remember how to turn into your Animagus form, Sasha?" Dumbledore inquired.
"Of course, Sir," Sasha replied. "Turning into an animal never gets old! Can I do it? It's been ages since I've been able to, what with not wanting to get arrested to Underage Magic outside of Hogwarts and not having any time alone here."
"I was just about to request that very thing, Sasha," Dumbledore chortled, blue eyes twinkling, all signs of earlier tension gone. "I think that I'll have you turn into your Animagus form for me, and then let you go to bed. How does that sound?"
"Great, Professor. Should I transform now?" Sasha asked. She was met with a nod. Grinning madly, she squeezed her eyes shut and began her transformation.
Before anything else, a brick red tail sprouted from between her buttocks. Black fur grew up speedily around all parts of her body except for a brick red streak running from her nose all the way along the spinal arch in her back and ending where her tail began. Her mouth and nose lengthened into a muzzle with a dark, wet nose, and her ears turned, facing front, the triangular tip pointed upwards. Long claws and sharp fangs broke through, adding a rather menacing factor to Sasha's animal form. Lastly, her body widened with muscle just a bit more as she dropped to her hands and knees onto the ground.
Sasha Berg was gone. In front of Professor Dumbledore crouched a shaggy, black-and-red wolf.
"Excellent," Professor Dumbledore beamed. "Quite an impressive animal form, I must say, Miss Berg; despite your ancestry, I think that a wolf form fits you quite well. A wolf is extremely cunning, as well as quite stealthy, and, on occasion, even sly. I daresay you inherited those things in heaping portions from your father; you're quite like him, you know."
Slowly, Sasha turned back into her human form so she could answer. "I know I'm like Daddy; the Sorting Hat even told me. It almost Sorted me into Slytherin like him because of it!" she said once she was human and standing again. After a thoughtful moment, she told Dumbledore, "You know, it's weird how everyone thinks that Slytherin is the worst House, and that all Slytherins are evil. I mean, my dad's about as nice as a person could get; he doesn't even care about a person's blood, or if they're magical or not! He was just Sorted into Slytherin because he's cunning, sneaky, and ambitious, and those are Slytherin qualities."
"Yes, I remember your father as a student. He was quite a bright lad, you know; not unlike yourself. However, he didn't seem to have many friends, if you don't mind me saying."
"I don't mind; he told me already. The other Slytherins thought he was a blood traitor, because he and his family were purebloods that didn't care about other people's blood. And not many people from other people liked him because he was a Slytherin, and they have their damn stereotypes," Sasha explained.
"Language, Sasha," Dumbledore chided, blue eyes twinkling merrily.
"Sorry, Professor," Sasha mumbled. "Sir," she continued, "I have a question, about Animagi. It's just out of curiosity."
"Ask away, my dear."
"Well, I was reading this book that my dad got me for Christmas last year, called Animagi Forms and What They Mean, and I started reading about the wolf form. The book said that a wolf is the rarest Animagus form, since it's so closely related to a werewolf- in fact, there are usually only one or two people with a wolf Animagus form alive at a time, and that includes people who aren't even Animagi! But in Third Year, in Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall taught us that a person's soul mate generally has the same Animagus form or Patronus as them. Does that mean that I don't have a… 'perfect match', so to speak?" Sasha asked hurriedly, her words laced with worry.
"Everyone has a perfect match, Miss Berg," Dumbledore assured her. "A wolf is, indeed, a rare Animagus form. Many people have wondered the same question you just asked me. After much research, people have discovered that if a person is a wolf in Animagus form, this generally just means that they would be a rather large dog- usually a reasonably shaggy mutt- if they weren't fiercer than one. A person's bravery, their opinion of violence, and various other factors such as this determine whether a person will be a dog or a wolf. You, Sasha, are extraordinarily brave- it's in your genes, after all, it's to be expected- much more so than most of your peers and fellow wizards, and don't have a problem with using violence when it's needed, and even when it's not. Therefore, you are a wolf."
"So, you're saying that my perfect match is someone whose Animagus or Partonus is a big, shaggy mutt?" Sasha clarified.
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."
"Okay, that makes sense," Sasha spoke thoughtfully, "considering what you just told me. I had no idea about any of that stuff; the book didn't say anything of the sort!"
"I tend to know a bit more than books, occasionally," Dumbledore said, his tone cheerful. Sasha laughed out loud; her Headmaster was many things, but modest was not one of them.
"But, really, there can't be many dogs that are specifically shaggy, large, and probably mutts, can there?" Sasha questioned, one eyebrow quirked.
"Believe it or not, Miss Berg, but they're more common- and closer- than you think," Dumbledore replied mysteriously, blue eyes twinkling in a way that screamed, "I-know-something-you-don't-but-you're-going-to-have-to-figure-it-out-by-yourself-so-don't-even-bother-asking-about-it".
"Okay. Thanks, Professor," Sasha said, resigned to the fact that there was something Dumbledore wasn't telling her.
"You're very welcome, Miss Berg. Now, go on back to your dorm."
"Yes, Professor. See you next Thursday!" Sasha waved goodbye, prancing out of the door.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed! Hope you liked this chapter; please review and tell me your opinion- remember, I won't update again until I have at least three of them!
-Joelle8
P.S. For the record, the Red Sox are AWESOME! :-D Just saying. Also, I have some other stories, if you want to check them out! Go to my profile page for more details! Thanks!