Luke planted his feet in a wide stance, shifting his balance slightly forward, poised to move, one arm out for balance. The other, his left, held his wand at the ready. Twenty paces away, Tobias Munroe (another Sky Kitsune) was similarly prepared, but he was right-handed, so their pairing seemed slightly off-balance. "Good," Abernathy had told Luke early in the semester. "Southpaws prosper in the dueling realm."

Focus. Luke concentrated on Tobias's face, not his wand. "The wand," Abernathy had told them, "is a distraction. Yes, it's the source of the hex, but if you pay too much attention to the motion of the wand, you'll miss the key signals of when and how your opponent will attack. Watch his face. The eyes, in particular. Watch how he holds himself, shifts his weight. He'll tell you, without words, what he's going to do and when he'll do it. You can read him like a book. With practice, of course."

Luke tried to keep his own face blank, imagining that it was only a mask, serene and unmoved. "A good poker face is as necessary a weapon as your wand," Abernathy always said. He swayed very slightly, keeping his feet planted, moving only from the waist up, hoping to confuse Tobias. The class was silent, watching, Abernathy looming over the group like a dour gargoyle (albeit one with an improbable red wig).

Expelliarmus. Luke rolled the word around his mind, keeping his lips still. The goal was to disarm his opponent, but if his aim was bad or he flubbed the delivery, he would leave himself open to a counter-attack. Would Tobias strike first, or would he wait, hoping to dodge Luke's curse and send his own as a rebound? Should Luke attack, or wait?

As always, he decided to wait. Abernathy had noted that Luke was predictable, always choosing the more cautious route, taking more time than was necessary to size up his opponent. "The time will come," the professor said, "when your enemy won't make a mistake, and you won't be able to dodge. Dueling is not a game of patience. You have to strike when the moment is right—don't wait for him."

But Luke knew Tobias, and he did not think the other boy would be able to wait for long. It all happened very quickly—Luke saw the corner of Tobias's mouth twitch, and his weight went to his back foot, and the wand swung forward. "Expelliarmus!" he shouted, but the motion of the wand was not quite right, and instead of a streak of red light there was a fizzle and a bubble-like red globe that arced out from the wand, well over Luke's head. But Luke was already dodging, to the left and low, landing on one knee and snapping the wand with the motion he had practiced a thousand times.

"Expelliarmus." It was more of a forceful statement than a yell, but it worked. Luke had never taken his eyes off of Tobias's face, and there it was, his first perfect Disarming Hex, flying like a bullet of light. It wasn't perfectly centered, hitting Tobias on the right side of his abdomen, but the boy fell onto his rear with a loud oof, his wand flying forward and clattering to the floor a few feet from Luke.

The class applauded and Luke grinned, very proud. But Abernathy pushed past Tobias (as the boy rose with a sheepish smile), and took up a dueling stance facing Luke. "Come on," he said when Luke hesitated, and Luke got into position, watching the professor warily. "Again," said Abernathy. "But remember—I won't miss."

Luke tried to wait, but it was harder to concentrate with Abernathy's fierce gaze upon him. He knew that Abernathy wanted him to move first, to show initiative, but he hesitated, and never had a chance—Abernathy's hex hit him square in the chest and he flew backward, helpless to stop his wand from slipping out of his grip.

Abernathy helped him up. "Good hex," he said. "You're quick when you want to be, Baxter." He leaned in close, glaring at Luke from a distance of a few inches. "So want it more. Next! You—Fender and Castleman. Go."

Luke flopped onto the mat beside Andromeda. "You were great," she said.

But David shoved him from behind. "Better speed it up, slowpoke." Luke reached behind him to punch at David's knee, but the boy dodged.

The entire class was rapidly improving at the Disarming hex, but the star of their sessions was always Dancella Rondell. Abernathy praised her instincts and reflexes, and she never failed to take down whomever he put against her. She performed her hexes with calm precision, but whenever she stood over a defeated opponent, there was a strange light in her eyes that made Luke shiver.

"Quick as a cat," Abernathy said by way of compliment after Dancy had disarmed another Royal Dragon student. "You're no dragon, you're a panther."

"That'd be her Animagus form," said someone behind Luke, as Abernathy arranged another duel. Luke turned; it was Wynne Ackerman, one of the Royal Dragons. He had fine brown hair and an earnest face that was yet too small for its very large hooked nose.

Luke glanced at Abernathy to be sure the professor wasn't paying attention—Abernathy abhorred interruptions—and then whispered, "What's an Animagus?" Andromeda turned her head slightly, listening even though she kept her eyes on the duel.

"Wizard who can transfigure himself into an animal," murmured Wynne. "Skrzydlinski told us about it in class last week. I wanna do it someday."

"You?" whispered another Dragon. "You'd be a gopher, Winbles."

"Shut up!" said Wynne, a little too loudly; Abernathy swung his wild gaze over them with a long finger held out in warning.

They didn't dare talk again in class, but Luke caught up with Wynne as they left the Bastion. "Some wizards can turn into animals?"

"Well, sort of." Wynne hefted his textbooks. "It's transfiguration, that's all, just transfiguration of yourself. Not everyone can do it. Real advanced stuff."

"So if you were an animal," said Dave, "could you talk to other animals?"

Andromeda had hurried to keep up with them. "I bet so! That's amazing."

"But you have to register and everything," said Wynne, "so you can't just do it by yourself. The Admin keeps close tabs on people like that, because they could be spies or something and no one would know."

Luke felt an immediate attraction to the idea. He wasn't convinced that taking on an animal form would enable him to have conversations with real animals, but the idea of any kind of communication with them was exciting. He daydreamed about becoming a hawk, something large with wings, and flying wherever he wanted without worrying about discovery. This shifted into wishing to be a cat, so he could follow Grimalkin on whatever daily adventures she had on campus.

As it turned out, he discovered the site of his cat's expeditions that very evening. He invited Jackson to come with him to the library, but Jackson was meeting Driscoll Peters and the J.V. Sphinx Seeker, Omar Anderson, to practice on his broom. They were clearly grooming him to become a Seeker next year, and while Luke was excited for him, he had no interest in watching them drill. He was on his way to the library when Theia found him. She was walking with her three brothers, but broke away from them upon seeing him, dashing across a little lawn.

"Luke!" she said, immediately linking her arm through his. "Where are you off to?"

"Uh, just the library."

"Fun! Can I come along?"

Now, the library was interesting, and helpful, and maybe even enjoyable in a quiet, intellectual way, but Luke couldn't imagine someone like Theia thinking the library was fun. But he couldn't think of any reason to refuse her, and besides, it might be nice to have some company, even if the company was a little loud and a little pushy. "Sure," he said.

Theia squeezed his arm. "Great. What are we going to do?"

"Well, um, I heard something today that I wanted to learn more about."

"Wow," she said, "that's what I love about you, Luke. You're so smart."

He blushed, but thankfully they had entered the shadowy lobby of the library and he didn't think anyone noticed. Two of the charmed glow-globes whizzed to them, pulsing faintly in what passed for excitement. Luke tapped one with his finger and spoke clearly: "Animagus." The globe's gentle light faded rapidly through red, blue, and green, and then words wrote themselves across the curved surface in what looked like black ink. Animagus, it read. Advanced Transfiguration, Level 2, Sections 5, 6, and 7. Titles of interest: The Animal in You (B. Bottlesworth 1937), Path to the True Self Vol. 4 (G. Veermyer 1898), Experimentation in Advanced Self-Transfiguration Vol.1-7 (H. Underwood, et al 1922-1927), Great Animagi throughout History (T. Zane 1965), Animal Cryptology: the Dangers of Anthropomorphization (E. Catrell 1855), "Animagus vs. Patronus: a Theory of Harmonization" (published in Scientific American Magician, Spring 1949), "Give Me Wings: A Study of the Potential Advantages and Opportunities of the Animagi and Suggestions for Further Research" (published in Scientific American Magician, Autumn 1955).

They took the elevator to the second floor. Theia was enthusiastic and helpful, gathering the books listed on Luke's globe and sitting across from him at one of many massive oak tables. She even began flipping through a few of the volumes herself, reading aloud snippets she thought he would find interesting. They gasped over diagrams (and, in a few memorable cases, photographs) of self-transfiguration gone wrong, and skimmed over sentences, paragraphs, and chapters upon chapters of technical jargon they couldn't begin to understand.

Luke learned that it was not possible for a witch or wizard to consciously choose their Animagus form, that it was an expression of their personality and the outcome was very difficult to influence. "What do you think I'd be?" asked Theia, but for once she wasn't acting coquettish; the light from the globes reflected in her eyes as she looked at him seriously.

"A swan," said Luke. It was the first thing that occurred to him.

A beautiful smile spread over her face. "Really?"

"Or a crocodile. What do I know?"

She laughed and slapped him lightly on the arm. "Well, you'd be something quiet and noble. A stag, maybe."

No one had ever suggested that Luke was noble, and though it embarrassed him, it also made him smile. He bent studiously over the book.

"Why did the globe list this one?" asked Theia, brushing dust from the cover of the Animal Cryptology text. "It's not about Animagi, it's just about animals."

"Well, check the index. Maybe it mentions something about Animagi."

They were both quiet for a few minutes, turning pages. Luke realized that he was actually having quite a pleasant time with Theia, who had always confused and overwhelmed him in the past.

"Wow," said Theia then, and Luke looked up. "Animagi are wizards that can turn into animals, but did you know that some animals can turn into humans?"

"What?"

"Yeah! That's what this one is all about."

"What animals?"

"Well, magical ones, of course. The author includes werewolves, which I think is mean. Werewolves are human."

"Right." Luke had never thought about it before.

"Anyway..." She ran a finger down the chapter headings at the front of the book. "There are chapters about unicorns, and sphinxes, and kitsunes. And werewolves and vampires, hmph."

"Kitsunes? Really?" Luke pushed aside the book he'd been reading and leaned over the table on his elbows.

"Mm-hm." Theia turned to the indicated chapter with quick flicks of her fingers. "Kitsunes," she read aloud in a rather prim voice, "are historically not only the most talented magical creatures at retaining human form, but traditionally have been the most willing to do so and the most interested in becoming acquainted with our culture. I had no idea. That's so neat!"

"Are they still around? Does it say?"

"Hold on, I'm looking." Theia turned pages rapidly, her lips pursed in concentration. "Wait, here's something. The most well-known of these instances is that of the creature Singüe—a name which means, in their language, the one who smiles. Aww, what a nice name. Anyway, she was a frequent visitor of the Isak Petrov family in Yekaterinburg, Russia, appearing to them in human form a total of seventeen times over the course of three years, 1834-1837. On what was to be her final visit, she was persuaded to travel to Moscow and submitted herself very willingly to the questioning of the Wizard Premier, and while she never answered questions about her own culture or history, she was very polite and friendly. At the end of three days, however, she claimed that she had been called home, and without further explanation she dropped the mantle of her human form and appeared before them as a true Kitsune, lingering less than a minute before departing into the Aether. No sightings of her have been reported since that time. Look, there's a picture of her."

She turned the book so that Luke had a better view. There was a stout, bearded man whom Luke took to be the Wizard Premier of Russia, solemnly shaking the hand of a willowy woman with long hair, whose smile was cool and faintly amused.

Luke checked the front of the book to confirm what he thought he remembered—the book was very old, published before the turn of the century. He looked at the photo again, frowning. Something about it nagged at him.

"Something wrong?" asked Theia. "Goose walk over your grave?"

She touched his arm, where goosebumps had risen. He rubbed his arms briskly and pulled down the rolled-up sleeves of his sweater. "Nothing," he said. "Hey, it's time for dinner. We'd better get going."

They were walking toward the elevator when a dark shape stirred on the top of one of the tall bookshelves; Luke saw it in the very corner of his eye, and he barely had time to turn his head before the shape was hurtling toward him. He had a vivid flashback of Toodle-oo divebombing him on the Quidditch field and threw up his arms to shield his face, but nothing hit him. There was a gentle thump near his feet and something pressed against his legs. He looked down.

"Grimalkin!"

"Oh, is this your kitty?" Theia knelt and Grimalkin arched her back against the girl's knees, purring audibly as Theia petted her. "She's lovely."

"Yeah, and a pain in the butt." But Luke was smiling as he scooped the cat into his arms. "So this is where you go, huh, girl? You like the library? So do I."

"Adorable," said Theia, leaving it unclear as to whether she meant the boy or the cat.

Doctor Yancey lifted the pencil from Luke's desk, examining it from every angle as she held it between the very tips of her finger and thumb. The tip was sharpened, and she flipped the pencil deftly into a writing grip to scratch a few lines on a scrap of parchment sticking out of his textbook. She passed a thumb over the lines, which smeared. She turned the pencil and rubbed the eraser over the marks, looking closely at the dust left behind. She even bit the pencil to see the indentations left by her teeth, and flicked a nail against the little metal cap that held the eraser. She tapped the pencil a few times on the desk—the letters, stamped in green foil and spelling out Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2, flashed in the light—then placed it in front of Luke once more.

"Change it back," she said.

Luke stared at the pencil, sitting very still but mentally scrambling. It had taken him months to perfect this transformation from pen to pencil, but not once had he considered the problem of changing the pencil back to a pen. He took a breath and let it out slowly, not allowing himself to feel rushed despite the pressure of having the professor watching. He considered the pencil and everything he had learned about it, and the steps required to make it a ballpoint pen—wood to plastic, lead to ink, the little spring inside. He could picture clearly what he wanted to do. Transfiguration was easier in one way than something like Charms: at a basic level, it required no incantations, no memorization. It was very much a mental process.

Luke raised his wand, passing it over the pencil a few times as he concentrated, and then he gave it three taps—at the eraser, at the center of the shaft, and at the tip. And before his eyes, the pencil shifted. He had often wondered what an object would feel like in the middle of a transfiguration, but he had never actually tried to touch it; one, it happened very quickly, and two, he couldn't risk breaking his concentration.

Where there had been a pencil, there was now a pen once more. Yancey scrutinized it in much the way she had done with the pencil, but to Luke's surprise, when she drew a few little loops on the scrap of parchment, the ink—which had been blue in the original pen—was green.

"Nice touch," she said.

Luke didn't dare tell her that the change had been unintentional, because although he hadn't meant to do it, he knew why it had happened. He couldn't look at Doctor Yancey, now, without remembering her green eyes.

"Doctor Yancey?" This from Andromeda, sitting beside Luke as always. "Can you tell us about Animagi?"

Luke looked at her, astonished and pleased, and then immediately focused on Yancey. The professor smiled. "What would you like to know?"

"Everything," said David, who had heard.

"Well," said Yancey, moving back toward her own desk, "since you've clearly heard of such a thing, why don't you tell me what you know?"

Several students answered. "It's when a wizard transfigures himself into an animal." "The Admin has a list of all the Animagi in America." "It's really hard to do."

Luke said, "You can't choose what animal you become."

Yancey tipped a finger at him. "That's a very important point. You've all mastered the art of turning a pen into a pencil. That's pretty simple. Transfiguration that involves living creatures is very difficult. But with sufficient practice, you could eventually transfigure anything into anything, pretty much. There are a few restrictions, and some transfigurations are even illegal, but the greatest restriction is your own talent and ambition. So you might think that, given enough time, you could apply these lessons to your own body and make yourself into whatever you wanted. But you would be wrong.

"There has only been one witch, in the entire history of magic, who has ever had more than one Animagus form. She had three, because hey, if you're going to break a record, you might as well make it so that no one will ever be able to top you. Selena Montpelier, born 1238. Bring her up in your History class and you'll really impress your teacher. Her first, and most natural, Animagus form was that of a greenfinch, which she achieved at the age of fifteen. Don't get any ideas—hers was a once-a-millennium kind of talent. She dedicated her life to the study of Animagus transformation, and at the age of seventy-one, she was also able to take the form of a raven. But the jump from a greenfinch to a raven isn't that big, is it? So she decided to go even further. In her extreme old age, she finally made the transformation into a housecat. A cat with feathers, mind you, but still an actual cat.

"As I said, she is unique among wizardry. It takes a huge amount of natural talent for Transfiguration to become an Animagus, not to mention a huge amount of dedication. One in a thousand witches or wizards possess that combination of ingredients, and maybe one in a thousand of them actually achieves full transformation. The Administration requires that Animagus training be completely supervised and documented, because it can go terribly wrong."

"But why can't you choose what you turn into?" asked a girl—a Sky Kitsune, one of Andromeda's roommates, whose name Luke didn't know.

"Because even if you take on a different shape, you're still you. Your Animagus form would be a physical expression of something deep within you, something essential to your very spirit. It's like your personality made visible. Get it?"

The bell rang in the hall, and the students began packing their things. Yancey sat at her desk. "Luke," she called, and he approached her, stuffing his textbook into his shoulder bag. "I didn't want to embarrass you in front of the class, but that was very impressive, turning the pencil back into the pen. I don't know a single other freshman who could do that without any preparation."

Luke was flooded with pleasure; what's more, Andromeda was waiting for him by their desk and he couldn't help feeling happy that she had heard. "Thank you, ma'am," he said. "How did you know I could do it?"

"I didn't. I guessed." She folded her arms, smiling at him. "But it was a good guess, hm?"

Andromeda nudged him once they were out in the hall. "She's right. That was really good."

"Thanks," said Luke, trying not to smile.

"Any progress on your mystery mission?"

"Well, maybe, actually."

"Still top-secret?"

"Hey, I'm not keeping secrets." Somehow it seemed very important to him that she understood that. "I just…I don't know if I'm right yet. I don't even know what I'm right or wrong about yet."

"It's okay. I get it." She gave him a reassuring smile. "But when you find out, let me know, huh?"

"I will," he said, and he meant it. He went straight to the library, telling Andromeda he would meet her at dinner. He took the elevator to the second floor and grabbed a book, then went down two floors to the lowest level where the yearbooks were housed. He slid the one book from its place—the group was easy to find because they were the one small dust-free pocket in the yearbook section—and took his two books to the same reading nook he had used a few weeks ago. He quickly flipped to the photo of Alice and her two friends among the kitsune statues and watched it for a moment, chewing on his lip. Then he opened the Animal Cryptology book, taking a little longer to relocate the photo of the kitsune Singüe. That photo wasn't moving, but both were in black and white, and Luke spent long minutes looking back and forth between them.

Alice was a pretty young Asian girl; Singüe was older, tall and Caucasian, and her hair was some medium tone. They were very different people…and yet they looked so similar. It was this strange feeling that had struck Luke when he had first seen the photo of Singüe: that it was familiar. That she was familiar. He looked between the two photos until he felt dizzy, but he still couldn't decide what exactly made him feel that there was any resemblance between the two women. In fact, the more he looked at them, the less alike they seemed, until he closed the books in frustration. Instead of leaving them out for a library aide to reshelf, he went to the trouble of putting them in their places himself.

Just in case, he told himself.

In case of what?

He had no answer.