Harry Potter and the Magical Wands
Chapter 9: Animagus and Ani-owls
A sudden ray of scarlet light hit Hermione in her left arm and she fell to the floor unconscious.
A woman in her mid-thirties, with reddish brown hair, and a figure most girls would die for was walking closer to the unmoving form of Harry's ex-friend.
'You OK?'
'Yeah, it just knocked me of my feet'
'The stunner just threw you to the floor?,' she asked, disbelieving, 'it hit you perfectly in your back, how are you conscious?'
'Well I was practicing shield spells with my friend here, and I think there is still some residual shield or something. I'm not sure' lied Harry rapidly.
The woman seemed to think it for some time, and suddenly she smiled and held out her hand.
'Cynthia Freeman'
Harry shook her hand.
'Harry Potter'
The woman's reaction wasn't what Harry was used to. She suddenly returned to the bussines-like façade he had seen earlier.
'What are you doing here in France?'
This time it was Fleur who answered.
'He won the Triwizard Tournament last time, and it has been an old tradition that the former Champion is there at the Tournament helping the new champion. Last year it was impossible for obvious reasons'
'I'm not happy to be the one who ends telling you, but,' she suddenly looked uneasy, 'the British Ministry has begun a campaign to discredit you and Dumbledore. It was supposed to start before, probably in the summer last year, but some troubles appeared and had to be placed for a few months. There are really nasty pieces'
'Like what?' Harry was growing increasingly worried during her speech. He had been expecting something like this to happen, but ignored it as it took too long to take place.
'For example, if anyone comes with a far-fetched story they would call it a "tale worthy of Harry Potter" or "We're lucky he got no scar or we would have to worship him" and a lot of stuff like that'
'I'll kill Cornelius Fudge as soon as I return to England' said Harry, narrowing his eyes.
'I figured out that you would as you found out. I almost did when I overheard some officials planning it' Cynthia said.
'So what are you dong here in France?'
'Well, I was transferred as soon as they found out I knew. They had enough brains not to fire someone who hides their secrets, much less an Auror'
'You're an Auror?'
'Yeah, pleased to meet you. I saw you entered you first year back at Hogwarts. I was a Gryffindor seventh year at the time'
'Well, it was a pleasure meeting you miss Freeman. Will you owl sometime?'
'I'll keep you up to date with the coming and goings in the Government. God, I swear I'd quit if there aren't a lot of jobs for retired Aurors like I'd be'
Leaving Hermione where she was, Harry repaired his normal clothes and returned walking slowly to Beauxbatons, Catalina and Nadine forgotten, chatting in English about irrelevant things, like what robes were they would see people wear on the next Halloween Ball, laughing all the time about it.
That night, the moment they had been waiting for, finally arrived. They were becoming animagi, and they were near to set a record. One month from their decision to become such they were already receiving fruits, and all on they own, without having to ask anyone for help.
They had read that the clothes would be kept after the transformation, but it often tended to miss parts if the creature had some kind of magical power. Sirius' Grim, for example left him without his shirt, but considering he had another shirt, a sweater and his winter cloak on at the time it wasn't all that surprising.
That was a lot of magical power, since the animagus form had a weak form of the Sight, a rare gift among the conscious beings, living, or undead. James had decided to use for their transformation a long series of fairly difficult spells, which had the exact effect as the potion.
The Marauders had been able to neutralize the magical talent of the Grim, so Sirius had just ended with the appearance of said creature, not without the nasty side-effect of it. (A/N Considering to take a visible shape only in front of humans who are going to die within the next 24 hours. It was never proven that the Grim sighting was the direct cause of the death)
Moving silently and expertly around the castle, dressed in their worst clothes (To keep anything important, as their Stealth Suits), and covered with Harry's old Invisibility Cloak, they reached the edge of the forest surrounding the Haunted Lake.
They poured the contents of the vials in a goblet, pouring more than what the eye would call normal for such a small vial. Of course there was magic involved, but the effect remained there.
They raised the goblet and drank. First Harry, then Fleur. Everything followed the described symptoms. Nothing was out of the ordinary.
That's it, until Hedwig landed on one of the goblets with a letter tied to her talon. Then Harry saw with the last of his consciousness as Hedwig bent and also drank from the potion…
The creature woke up. Becoming a ghost out of instinct, it checked it's foreign surroundings looking foreign scents. He almost jumped when he picked a smell almost the same as his own. Almost. That's why he didn't picked it from the beginning, but it took him about a second, so there was nothing to worry about, except for the foreign location.
He could not hear anything else than the soft breeze brushing against the trees. It was a familiar sound in forest spaces, and for the smell of here, there was a big indoors structure somewhere nearby.
He heard a soft respiration in his left, and he turned around, re-becoming solid and visible instantly. He never expected to see the Pegasus standing near a goblet, and much less without it's herd behind it.
'Who are you?' he asked in Infadoo, the common language between magical creatures, hearing a voice perfectly matching his, overhearing the female ring it had.
'My name is…' it hesitated a second, and a thoughtful expression took her Unicorn-white face, 'Hedwig. I'm not sure, but it comes to me for some reason'
'Where's your herd?' asked the same female voice he had heard a second ago.
'I...don't know. Where are we anyway?' said the creature.
'A herd-less Pegasus?, that's new. I don't know, I was going to ask you, anyway' One of the principal characteristics of the Pegasi is that they were social creatures, with a lot of talking, and game playing. Luckily, no wizard had ever seen their herds. A Pegasus would go crazy if it had nobody to talk to in half the time a human would. The knowledge that humans were among the weakest creatures in the world was common among the magical creatures, but only if they are untrained. But, once properly trained they could out-perform most magical creatures, and as dangerous as they already were, with magic or without it, the creatures were almost fanatic in the secrecy of this little fact.
'Wait a second… are those goblins what I smell? They just don't seem to have the same scent I remember…' ranted the black furred creature. (A/N These creatures have an excellent sense of smell, but the scent they have just gotten is not always as potent. Detecting groups of things from really far away in an apparent short time usually was with aided by a strong magical empathy, and even then, the creature should be specifically looking for it, or be with a clear mind. Just a theoretical fact. I seem to be always describing something in the fic K)
'They're not goblins. But they seem to come for trouble, all I see is noise, a lot'
Should have remembered. The Pegasi are natural Seers.
'Noise is never a good sign. We should go to check it out'
It was quite the sight. Two Panthers and a Pegasus. A black Panther in the lead, with a silver Panther and a Pegasus behind it. Unnoticed by most living creatures, they slithered around Beauxbatons, until they got out of the high walls, feeling a buzz as they left the human-magically warded zone.
'We'll never make it if we go by feet' growled the black Panther. Immediately it jumped into the air, and a feeling of joy clouded the creatures mind for a second. In a second all the three creatures were high in the air with almost identical white feathered wings.
Now in the air, they could see a fire in the nearby wizards city, or village to be exacts. The Panthers thirst for justice mixed with their hunger for meat took over them. The creatures seemed to be now simple hunters, and those unlucky creatures attacking the nearby muggle town were their prey. If he couldn't smell the blood of innocents claiming for revenge he would have felt pity for the creatures. But they smelled, and an angry Pegasus along with a couple of Winged Panthers.
Informing Interlude!
The Feline roughly described a few paragraphs before will be , duh, described.
Of a similar anatomy to that of a Panthera Pardus, this creatures, under the name of Zatrihem (sa – tri - hem) are usually bigger, with enhanced senses and the obvious differences: the wings and the size.
The wings are of a glowing white, and they can be easily imagined by thinking in a human angel, and placing the wings in the back of a single colored leopard. Black Panthers were though to be a different species by the scientists, but it was demonstrated that the black coloring is a simple melanic form of the Panthera Pardus and with the right light you are supposed to be able to see the whitish dots in their skins. Said dots are don't exist in the creature hunting above.
The leopards usually measure 110-190 cm in the head and thorax, while a small specimen of the Panther described above could easily measure 210 cm in the smallest specimens. The tail usually be 85-110 cm, making them quite big and impressive creatures, especially if they expand their wings.
The few meetings between wizards and Zatrihems were enough to determine the fact that they had a big magical resistance, and they could turn into ghosts. Due to this fact, it's an open discussion between the investigators their immortality.
This debate had been resurrected since a muggle of only 7 years of age had seen one in the surroundings of Bogotá, a city in the Northern South America. It had been really difficult to erase the memories of the boy by simple spells, so the forced the little boy with a powerful mind potion. It was oriented to muggles, and the magical capabilities of the boy would be repressed until his first physical contact with the wand that would choose him, pointed some, but others put in doubt the fact that the boy was even a wizard. This fact was countered by reminding the government that the boy wouldn't have been able to even see the Zatrihem if it didn't had magical abilities.
The government insisted then that the muggle was probably a squib born from muggles, but the opposition remained firm that the boy had to make contact with his wand before the magical energy inside him was too big and created an explosion.
Taken from the Daily Prophet, International section.
If you want to use the Zatrihem for your own fic, mail me to know the usual behavior, diet and social structures of this species.
The hunt began so fast that the Uruk-Hay never new what was killing their mates until they felt the laser sharp fangs in their throats.
The Zatrihem ate until they were full, and a lot of corpses of Uruk-Hay were scattered around the floor when they left.
In the highest tower of the Beauxbatons castle, the two Panthers had been resting from the hunt.
The silver one was in the edge of the floor, and there was a deep fall, the kind that leave you enough time to write your will and yell your last goodbyes before hitting floor. Well, maybe not that long…but you get the idea, right?
The other one was standing a couple of meters before it, both of them staring at the moon, when, with the faintest of the pop!'s a human could hear, the black Zatrihem transformed into a fifteen years old boy with jet-black hair, and the usual scar on his forehead. Naked. Completely.
Out of surprise, the other Zatrihem jumped around, facing the edge with her back, and then with the same noise, a eighteen years old Veela appeared in front of Harry, just as naked as Harry was.
With an exclamation of surprise she took a step backwards while she covered herself with her arms. A big mistake. She fell to the abyss.
Harry jumped to her and was able to grab Fleur by the hand in the last possible moment.
He looked at her eyes. 'Hold on, Fleur'
Harry wanted to waste no time so he pulled up with all his might, helping himself with his free hand and his knees. He was somehow stronger because Fleur immediately crashed in his thorax.
Harry stared at Fleur in her eyes as she did the same thing. He had no control over himself when he closed his eyes and raised his face from his awry position beneath Fleur to meet her lips.
With the same feeling of sweetness Harry had felt with the creature that night so long ago, just that much stronger, and in both of their bodies, a naked Harry and a naked Fleur kissed passionately under the cloudless starry night, with only the moon and an amused Hedwig in her owl form as witnesses of their first romantic exchange in over a year.
Luckily they never did anything. (This is no Lemon! And somebody would have found them if they had surpassed themselves! You know Harry's luck!)
Yeah! Finally, the H/F begun! Bow to me, readers! (A bow thrown by a random reader hits the author in the head) Ouch!
Extra thanks again to TimGold for reviewing, and so fast! Less than an hour after I posted the fic! That's speed! And don't worry anyone who's reading the fic without reviewing, there will be more about the rest of the Weasly's.
I wrote no A/N at the beginning because I didn't wanted to trash the surprise. Hope you enjoyed. Review!
Pegeuk signing out.
