Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction created sorely to satisfy my imagination. Harry Potter and anything/everything related to the novels belongs to J.K. Rowling. I own nothing in this fanfic that might be recognizable as belonging to the canon of HP.
Chapter 11: Research
As I imagined, Slughorn's book only served to confuse me more. I read it as soon as I got out of his office, before I concentrated on all my other work. Technically, I only skimmed through it. I didn't need much. The potions, solutions and what not, were clear in my mind, but I wouldn't know if the extra reading worked until I had Potions again.
That wasn't until Friday; therefore I figured I might as well concentrate on other matters. All my free periods were normally time put to good use. I would read, take notes, study, revise and write out assignments. Sure, I was tired of it, and every day the one thing I wanted to do was induce myself into a coma, or something; however the desperation in me was enough to keep me working. The first time I ever talked to Professor McGonagall, she said that I had a lot of work ahead of me, and that I wouldn't be able to rest until I graduated school.
I hated how right she was.
I'm sure I was overreacting, that should I want free time, I only needed to put my books down, yet I couldn't. As much as my work load was becoming easier to bear, I could not bring down my pace. For five months I had done nothing but read and study. There was nothing else for me to do. I hadn't had friends, I couldn't sleep more than six hours, and that was in a good day, and I didn't have any other interest. Ever since summer, all I've done is study, study and study, hoping to catch up to a curriculum I should never be expected to catch up to.
Oh but I was going to. No way in Wizard Hell was I going to fail. I was going to obsesses over school work until I dropped. I would get Exceeds Expectations and Outstandings in my classes and I would pass all the NEWTs the same way. I had no clue what I was going to do after that, but that doesn't matter.
Lily had tried to get me to take my studying down a notch. And though I realized I was messed up for making Gryffindor Prefect Lily Evans reach that point, I didn't listen. Most of the time we spent together was used for studying, anyway. Sure, there were occasions were she insisted we used our free periods for resting. She would pull me out the library to sit by the lake. It was wonderful time, sitting there talking girl stuff, but I always carried parchment with copies of class notes. Once she lay down to look at the horizon in her warm clothes, I would just pull the paper out of my robes. Then with a smile, she would call me incorrigible and help me revise by quizzing me.
It was wonderful.
One day, I guess, I will take things easier, but not this day. Maybe during the summer, I'll let my hair down –I mean this figuratively and literally– and be truer to my full moon side. I'll glide around, spending time with my only friend, without smelling of ink and old books.
I was waiting for Lily in the library. While she had Ancient Runes, I had a free period, and we had agreed to meet there to compare Transfiguration essays. And since I was all done theorizing the transfigurating of a bird to a chandelier, and I read the Potions book, and my hand hurt because of all the Charms wand practice, and I could do the three spells needed to successfully defend myself against inferis, and I was able to identify the type of compose needed to grow an extraordinary snargaluffs, and I knew all the wonderful properties of unicorn fur; I decided it was high time for me to clear up some personal confusions.
From the moment I had come into lucidity after the first full moon with the pack of strange animals, I felt like I was repressing something. Normally, I didn't like to think of what happened under the moon rays. Merlin wouldn't stop pestering me about it, and in all honesty I didn't care much about it. But regardless of my detachment toward the topic, I harbored a slight curiosity. I couldn't shake the feeling since the night I babysat Sirius Black during his detention. Maybe it was the knowledge of it. Maybe I had the answers already in my head and I was repressing them.
Why would I do that? No idea.
The library was as silent as ever, hardly anyone visited at that hour. Though that wasn't something I could tell. I sat on one of the more reclusive tables of the place, way back, so to not capture wandering eyes.
I decided to start with werewolves. At least I wasn't dazed enough during the full moon to not be able to recognize that creature. Leaving my things sprawled on the table so to save it; I went to the section with the books for Defense against the Dark Arts. Not that I needed protection from it, but mostly because I remember reading about the beasts in the third year text book. I figured it was the best place to start.
Who knows, maybe it'll help me understand things about me that Merlin insisted I researched.
Between two rows of book shelves, hiding from wondering eyes just as I was, one of the Marauders sat in front of a desk. He was scribbling anxiously onto a roll of parchment, as he tapped his foot impatiently against the ground.
Peter Pettigrew looked up when I neared, and did almost as to hide what he was doing. To be polite, I pointed at the bookshelf behind him, as I went to it. When he looked away I ignored him completely. With the continuation of the scribbling, I concentrated on the titles stacked in front of me. When I found the book I was looking for, I took it out and returned to my table.
Going head into it, I began to read. There were a couple paragraph of generic werewolf information that I already knew. I kept reading the next section in the page.
'How to tell apart a werewolf from an Animagus.'
It clicked then. I didn't even need the blood knowledge headaches to kick in to know. I remembered the term from the Transfiguration text book and it amazed me. The beasts in the pack were Animagi! They had to be, minus the werewolf of course. My new enlightenment answered many questions, but it also created more. The rat, dog and stag were people that morphed into animals; that was clear. However, who were they, and what kind of people were they that they kept the company of a werewolf?
With that new information, I got up again. This time I headed for the Transfiguration section for I was fairly certain Animagi was a topic from that class.
Sure enough, I found a book that dealt with the matter substantially. Returning to my table, I began to read through the book.
Lily was running late, I supposed. Looking up from by book, I saw another one of the Marauders, Remus Lupin pass by me. I knew he took Ancient Runes with her. He eyed me for a second, and it gave me a strange sense of déjà-vu. As I watched him head for the table where his friend was, I got the feeling that there was something in him I should definitely get. But I didn't. It kept bugging me and bugging me, until I force myself to keep reading.
I went through the names of registered Animagi of the century, and the one name I recognized was McGonagall's. That served to confuse me, though I kept reading.
'How to become an animagus'
I realized my mistake too late.
I was in the middle of reading the second step when it began. It started like normal blood knowledge. A tingling sensation became pain. The headache racked my brain up and down, from side to side. It was to be only a passing feeling.
But this wasn't supposed to happen. I had no intention on being able to turn into an animal. There was a strange feeling in me. I felt myself stretching away, as if I was leaving my body behind. The headache, as I was so used to, began to dwindle in clear notice that I was soon to learn the knowledge intimately passed down from Merlin. Soon, I was to be an animagus, just like he apparently, had been. As the tingling sensation took over my body, giving green light for my body to change, the thought –my thought– of not wanting to change invaded me.
I didn't want to be an animagus. I didn't want to have less control over my body by submitting myself to the instincts of an animal. An animal that had been chosen to represent me, whatever it was, simply because it had once been the essence of Merlin. If I was to be an animagus, I would be my own, not my ancestor's. And there was no way my blood was going to allow me to do as my mind pleased. I had to put a stop to it. Somehow.
As I thought desperately more and more about stopping the knowledge to be relearned, it seemed to work. There was a reaction in me that I had never had before. My vision blurred. Inside of me something began to hurt, and it didn't stop. Every cell of my being stated to shake in pain the more hold I tried to put on my body. I had no idea how I was doing it, but it somehow felt right.
It made me lose hold of the book in my hands. With the bang it made on the table I slightly came back to my senses in time to notice the torrent of blood coming out of my nose. As I went to put my hand over it to stop it, I noticed that my hand didn't quite look like my hand. The skin of my fingers was twitching, moving and tensing as my hand had became smaller, bony and claw-like. I had been changing to the creature that represented Merlin, and as pain racked my body, my hands began to go back to normal.
Again, my eyes blurred. The blood was splattering around the table. It seemed as if I was losing all of it at the same time as I lost myself. I knew I wasn't changing anymore. Somehow I had stopped it. But the work put into doing that had unleashed something else.
Then I felt a pop in me that made me clutch at my head instantly. It was horrible, as if my head had slit open. I moaned in pain, unable to hold on to it. Once more, I felt myself leaving my body, only that this time it was more violent. I felt as if I was being pulled apart by unseen massive hands, paying a sick game of dolls with me.
I was dying, I was sure. The blood didn't stop. I began to cry. I couldn't hold it anymore.
It wasn't fair that this was happening to me. All I ever did was wake up to find myself stuck in a world filled with magic that I didn't understand. I didn't ask to be a descendant of a powerful wizard who cursed me with knowledge. I did not ask to be able to do the things I could do. The one thing I wanted was to survive. To survive school and lead a normal life. It was the whole reason I obsessed over school work, to be done with it. Serves me right for being curious. I sobbed, and it sent me into a state of desperation.
'No one can help me,' I thought.
But then with a sharp hit in my brain that made me groan, I saw the image of a tall wizard with a long beard. Yes, he could help me. I had to get to him. Dumbledore was the only one that could help me. I pressed my hands up to my nose, feeling how the crimson liquid tried to overflow them. Moving, I got up from the chair with one push, but the assault on my head made me fall to my knees.
I moaned in pain again between my ragged breaths.
There was a heavy hand on my shoulder, but who it belong to, I had no clue. At some point, I heard the voice of a woman, and in my delirium I hoped it was Madame Pince. I needed Dumbledore's help. Surely as the adult responsible for all inside the Library, she would have the same though. That or taking me to the Hospital Wing.
I couldn't understand what she was saying, nor could I hear her, but soon my body was surrounded with arms and I was lifted from the floor.
I screamed this time. Every touch on my skin felt like needles poking into me all over. The sensations gave me back my vision, and as I felt my arm being stretched over someone's shoulder, I came to see a scarred face. Remus Lupin, the Gryffindor prefect. Of course he would be there. He and his friends were the closest to me in the library, I was sure they would had been the first to hear my cries of pain.
He said something to me, I don't know what. I barely saw the moving of his lips before I felt my eyes reeling into the back of my head.
The next time I was able to see, I was being pushed away. A woman with a strange hat invaded all I could see as I was no longer held. I knew those hats well. The arched ceiling of the Hospital Wing came slightly into focus before Madam Pomfrey stepped in front of it. She hovered over me; her face set into frowns that I was sure matched the severity of my situation.
"I can't." I heard her say. "I can't help you until the Headmaster gets here."
'Dumbledore' echoed through my head. I wanted to say it, but the owned instinct to move my lips was an action I had for the moment, forgotten how to do. I wanted to curse him too, but my lack of immediate treatment wasn't his fault.
Eons seemed to pass when in the haze of my delirium I saw Dumbledore. Like Pomfrey had done, he invaded my line of vision, his normal pleasant complexion smeared by worry and concentration. The wizard immediately pressed his hand on my forehead. I wanted to ask for his help, but I couldn't hear myself speak if even I was managing it. In my mind I thought I was, and that seemed to be enough.
Through the hand on my head I hear Dumbledore's voice going over the others. "Finite Incantatem" I heard him say though I did not see his mouth move.
I wanted to say that his counter curse would not work, that it wasn't a spell that had made me this way. The words, though impossible for me to utter, got trapped in my throat. Whatever the Headmaster had intended with his curse seemed to do something in me. A chill went coursing through my veins, and for a wonderful moment the pain went away.
That is until my body began to shake violently.
I saw a flask being put in Dumbledore's hand by Madam Pomfrey, and he wasted no time in making me drink it. Before the potion completely went down my throat, everything turned black.
…