[Insert Harry Potter theme tune and disclaimer here]
Fog's telepathy training with the other Animagi in the Shrieking Shack was not going well. Burst had gotten the hang of it in less than an hour, while Clip had followed soon after. Teads and Hails apparently had some innate skill to link to each other, but it took them just over two hours to contact anybody else. Stria and Hexit got the idea at two and a half hours. Mr Daddy and Luna (Burst refused to call her Norbert, so they were thinking of a new name) came second to last, tying in at two hours and forty minutes.
The problem was that Fog simply couldn't focus on his mind, despite the natural Occlumency skill he apparently possessed from being a Boggart. He was always distracted by this smell, or that sound. Even the stray black dog in the corner of the room, who had been attempting to make himself unseen, managed to derail his thoughts!
That was when Fog realised that he couldn't study any more. He simply didn't have the mindset now that he had become a draconemus. Oh, no teachers would realise that for a while; he'd already finished studying all the third year material. The problem was that Fog couldn't learn anything new very quickly. He could hammer it into his mind, but it would take years just to master one spell by Clip's rough estimates, and he didn't have that sort of time.
At that point, his life changed forever. Again. The mousey Boggart dove into the subject of spell creation, one that he had already studied extensively out of curiosity, but that he had had no reason to pursue before. Now, however, he could do something with it. Because if he couldn't learn anything, what could he do?
He could create anything.
After three more hours, a lot longer than it would have taken to learn the skill before the Fog settled in, the brown rodent had created his own version of telepathy. It was fairly crude and would need much developing, but he could send both sounds and simple images across, rather than just verbal speech. So the others naturally learned it, taking less time now that they had all gotten the required Occlumency down.
So now Fog was building his magic from the ground up, in a way that would suit him, but take a lot longer to develop. He was okay with with, and excited at the prospect of accidentally creating something groundbreaking to the wizarding world.
The nine friends transformed back to human (except Fog, who draped himself protectively around Hermione's neck), and headed back to the castle after a profitable day. Luna waved a quick good-bye before heading back to the Ravenclaw common room, and the other eight continued onto the Gryffindor tower.
The Fat Lady's portrait had been fixed soon after the game, the damage having somehow escaped the Professors' notice until the day after the game. Naturally, Shift was discreetly called out to help search the school by Flitwick, who simply asked Ron and Hermione if they had seen him. Fog soon got the message, and slunk out of the portrait, then Shifted to his much-neglected spider form and raced for the staff room.
Hours later, Harry Potter stumbled into the common room and up the stairs, hoping to avoid the stares that both Fog and Shift seemed to get. Unfortunately he had forgotten his own fame, and the fact that Harry hadn't been to the common room for weeks, rather opting to be Fog, did nothing to help the matter. As soon as he was alone at the top of the stairs, he Shifted into his natural form, and his mind went off on a tangent.
What should he call Shifting into Fog, anyway? He needed a name for this stuff, damnit! Transforming was too general, Shifting was for Shift only... He could say he was Fogging up... That sounded okay, so he decided to keep it.
He fogged up and pulled the door handle down, but his weight couldn't turn the handle, and he realised that this form much weigh about as much as a small apple. He grumbled and released some vapour from the top of his head, pushing the handle down, and he wedged his long tail into the gap between door and doorframe, pushing it open by wiggling the tip a little.
Anybody watching would have thought it was adorable, and opened the door for him. If they knew it was Harry, they would have reminded him that he could just Shift back into a human. To Fog, however, this was a challenge to his creativity and mousiness, and if he wanted to stay in this form forever (which he did), he would need to learn how to do these things eventually. Might as well start early, rather than finding a locked door while being chased by death eaters.
Of course, he would just have to Shift at that point, to ward off said death eaters, but it was the thought that counted.
Admonishing his nonsensical train of thought once more, Fog flew into the room and landed on his bed, where Hermione already lay asleep, and curled up around her exposed neck once more.
Nobody in the dorm seemed bothered that Hermione had decided to sleep there; indeed most simply chalked it up to the product of their kind-of-going-out-sort-of status. Most speculated that it was only a matter of time before Luna did the same to Ron, and bets were even going around as to when this would come true.
Fog's last thought as he fell asleep was that bugger, he had double Potions in the morning.
The next day, Fog got up quickly, and packed his things for the day. He staggered to breakfast, too tired to even fly, and Hermione transported him onto the tabletop, where there was a huge bowl of popcorn (toffee, this time) waiting as usual. He dug in, barely registering what he ate, before Hermione cast a Tempus, shouted her surprise, and raced back to the dorms, the bowl of popcorn in her arms, and Fog in the bowl of popcorn, covered in hundreds of bits of the stuff.
She rushed to the bathroom and left the bowl on a windowsill, twisting taps and casting her own Aguamenti to speed things up. Then she lifted a complaining Fog out of the bowl and dunked him into the water, using Scourgify every so often to pull out unpopped kernels and bits of toffee.
After around five minutes, she declared the job a success and pulled the mouse out of the water, dropping him onto a towel, then wrapping it around him and rubbing hard. After three more minutes, she let him go, and he zipped out of the room, hiding under his covers and shivering violently. After a few minutes, the form grew and Harry stuck his head out from under the quilt.
"Need some robes," he muttered, and Hermione's blush could rival a lighthouse.
"You aren't wearing anything?" She asked incredulously, blinking rapidly.
"Nope, too cagey-inney to wear all the time," he said bluntly, uncaring about the made up words. "Don't wear 'em 'less I'm gonna be human."
Hermione thought back to what she'd just done and blushed even harder, and Harry would later complain of blindness, despite his healing factor. "Well, hurry up," she attempted to admonish him, but the blush didn't help with that, "We've got Potions in twenty minutes."
Harry pulled on the robes, still under the covers, and leapt out, grabbing his Potion books and making a beeline for the door.
"I believe, as Potter doesn't seem to care enough to attend this class every lesson, that we should... quiz him." Snape paused to look menacingly around the room, then turned back to where Harry was now attempting to start a conversation with a pale Ron. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for talking," he stated easily, then started on the questions as he now had the eternal bed-head's full attention. He would admit that the boy had become somewhat of an enigma lately, and set out to solve that. "Tell me, Potter, what is the fourth step to creating a Wolfsbane potion?"
Harry turned his head towards the Professor; he had been following a fly with his hands and attempting to grab it from where he sat, nearly overbalancing several times. "Sorry, Sir, I must have been distracted." What infuriated Snape the most was that the boy was being entirely honest and open; he had been distracted in the three seconds it had taken, and not even on purpose!
"Ten more points from Gryffindor," he told them, then repeated the question.
"Oh, that's easy. Just add the flobberworm fangs, then stir three clockwise and once counter and repeat that for twenty minutes, then stir in a Wolfsbane leaf and wait for the potion to turn blue. Pour it-"
"I asked for the fourth step, Potter. Five points from Gryffindor for wasting time. I would have said ten, but you are, impossibly, correct. Prove that this was not a fluke. What potions are the bezoar used in?"
"Generally, antidotes for poisons that wouldn't be affected by a raw bezoar, such as the surface potion, which is named after its ability to- wait, I'm getting off track. It can also be crushed and mixed with Phoenix tears to create a far more potent general antidote known as the 'Pheonix mix' for some odd reason, the creator must have been Slytherin, he had a bad time with names, I mean seriously, the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Twenty more points for time wasting," Snape interrupted him, despite being secretly interested in the boy's ramblings, which reminded him of... he couldn't place it. "Now, Potter, create a drought of living death, without using the instructions, and we shall test it on yourself."
Harry began sweating slightly. Potions was the one subject, apart from History of Magic, that he had neglected studying beforehand. Therefore, he hadn't read about this potion yet, and certainly didn't know the method to brew it. He remembered Snape's words words from first year about the potion, and noticed that the Professor had used the same subjects for the quiz; wolfsbane, bezoars, and the drought of living death.
"Asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful, it is known as the Drought of Living Death." That was all he had to go by, the words that he heard over three years ago.
Snape sneered at Potter, but there was something under that expression that Snape hadn't felt for years: curiosity. He had deliberately asked the Potter boy something not in the syllabus, and from the look on the Gryffindor's face he hadn't learned the answer from anywhere else. That potion would take a week to brew, and Snape's eyes gleamed slightly at the thought of catching the boy out, even if only once. It was a great surprise, then, when Harry whipped out a cauldron and stood up to collect some ingredients.
The boy's eyes passed right over the Asphodel, and Snape was elated, although he did sweat a little when Potter picked up a clump of wormwood leaves. However, he also picked out a few ingredients that had nothing to do with the potion, and Snape's previously faltering sneer picked up to maximum power.
Then the boy began to work. He chucked random items into the cauldron, poked the wormwood with his wand, setting it on fire, and placed that inside. After ten seconds of stirring, Potter threw in some Bubotuber pus and pufferfish poison, then put the cauldron over a blue flame. After twenty seconds, the flaming pile of ingredients had become something akin to flaming black sludge, and Harry poured it onto the table and began kneading it, extinguishing the fire and converting the entire thing to what seemed to be regular dough. He flattened it out and spread some red sauce on it, then added some cheese that had been sitting in the cupboard and all sorts of toppings.
Then he cooked the whole thing over a regular orange fire for ten minutes, which he spent 'practicing his metamorphmagicks', according to the Granger girl.
Many muggleborns and even some purebloods laughed out loud as a purple-haired Harry Potter pulled out a pizza, and the boy bowed and shouted, "Bon Appetite!"
Snape's sneer had become a look of utter disgust as he inspected the various items on the dough, to the delight of all students watching. "Potter!" He barked, a smirk creeping back onto his face. "Drink it, or should I say eat?"
Snape fully expected the entire class to pale, and indeed, most students did at the prospect of eating what looked like a harmless pizza except filled with poisons. Potter, however, simply grinned and took a bite.
And he collapsed. Most everyone in the class screamed or yelled, Snape loudest of all. "SILENCE!" The panic stopped, and Snape knelt down to inspect him, incredulous that the boy had actually eaten a piece of the poisoned meal. His mind ran through what the potion could possibly have been. Judging by the ingredients, the order, and the way the boy cut and mixed them, Snape guessed... An incredibly powerful sleeping potion? Pizza? He blanched at the thought of this boy having actually completed the task, and by throwing random ingredients together, nonetheless!
He checked for the signs and sure enough, the heartbeat had almost stopped, the face had relaxed without draining of colour, and the breathing was slow but unlaboured.
Snape couldn't believe this was possible. Here the potion master couldn't even invent a regular potion on his first try, and Potter had made a potion disguised as regular food in under half an hour!
Snape's own heart almost stopped at the words that unwillingly left his mouth. "One hundred points to Gryffindor for unnatural luck."
With that, the Potions Master dismissed the worried but relieved class and waited until everyone bar Granger and Weasley had left, and made to pick up the boy.
And failed miserably. He tried again, noting this time that his hands simply slid through the boy's torso. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the boy's friends backing away slightly, and he turned towards them, practically spitting with rage. "What is the meaning of this?" Not waiting for an answer he turned back to the illusion and snarled, "Finite Incantatem!"
Whatever the man had been expecting, it wasn't this. A brown rat with a ridiculously long tail curled around itself had taken Potter's place. He turned once more to the rat's 'friends' and repeated, "WHAT is the MEANING of this?"
Hermione bit her lip, then hurried forward, picked up the ball of fluff that was Fog, and the two students and rat thing were out of the room before Snape could react. To say the Professor was angry would be saying that the sun was warm. It didn't even begin to cover the truth. He cursed under his breath and made for the hospital wing, reasoning that the pair of 'real' students would either be there or with that half-giant brute of a gamekeeper.
Thankfully, his first choice was correct, and Hermione stopped him at the door. "Stop stomping, this is a hospital, you know!"
Snape opened his mouth automatically to abduct points from Gryffindor, but stopped himself and simply forced himself through the door, making sure his steps were quieter to allow the Granger girl no other reason to slow him down.
"'Lo, Professor," came the sleepy voice of Harry Potter, and Snape recognised the slurred speech as a surefire sign of the perfect sleeping drought. "Sorry I fell 'sleep in class," he joked, and sat up in the bed he occupied.
Snape saw a completely human Potter, with no visible sign of that brown rat anywhere close. Now that the man thought about it, however, Potter had become a little more... animalistic since returning to Hogwarts this year. He seemed overly curious about every little thing, easily distractable... Even his diet had changed to one of fish, raw meat and popcorn. Snape couldn't understand the popcorn craving, but the others seemed like things that a werewolf would eat.
Maybe Lupin had gotten to the boy, although that still wouldn't explain the rat thing. Maybe the potion had caused the effect, but the potions master didn't see any ingredient that could have caused that.
Harry Potter was still an enigma, and Snape didn't like it. "Potter! What was that rat thing that took your place when you dran- ate that potion?"
Potter raised an infuriating eyebrow at the man, then said, "Rat thing, Professor? I must have fallen asleep for that... I'm really sorry..."
Snape saw that the boy was lying, but it really was well-done. He supposed that having all the world's evil come after you would force you to lie convincingly. But Snape saw something else, something that he would never have guessed could materialise on a Potter's face.
He saw sorrow. Why that was, he couldn't tell, as the boy seemed to have developed his Occlumency, but it was plain as daylight on his face. And it scared the Professor, who quickly turned on his heel, forgetting even to deduct points. He would figure this out, sooner or later.
Snape now deems Harry suspicious! Will he take it to the headmaster? Of course not, wizards hate logic with a passion, even if they did use it during first year!
This chapter is actually longer than the previous, as promised, but the short AN kinda offsets that. I don't care though, that was a nice place to end.
I like this chapter, it seems to flow more than the others and I hope I can keep up this standard, and *maybe* rewrite the other chapters. Don't hold me up on that, though.