Disclaimer: Anything familiar to JKR's books probably comes from there and is hers not mine. Also, Harry Potter, Hogwarts, the Wizarding World, and anything else that has to do with it belongs to the lovely JK Rowling, not me. I'm just playing in her sandbox and building my own Hogwarts in it.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Two things you all must know about what we are going to do here," Mr. Davis told the teens in front of him as he stood in front of the long table of cooling cauldrons.

"The first is that it is highly illegal because you are not going to register, so no one can find out that you are all doing this."

"I still don't understand why we aren't going to register," Hermione muttered darkly. She had been the hardest to convince because she didn't want to break the law, but they had eventually gotten her to agree because the idea of being an Animagus had gotten her attention.

"We aren't doing this for fun, Hermione," Harry stated, stopping Mr. Davis from continuing as he hadn't heard Hermione. "This isn't even because of Sirius Black in the long run; he was just the final push so that we would do this."

"Then why are we doing this?" Hermione demanded, spinning around to face Harry.

"So that we'll have something no one knows about when Voldemort comes back!" he told her, barely holding in his anger. Hermione had been taking out all of her annoyance and anger about the idea of doing something this illegal on him and not anyone else, and now it was finally time for his hold on his temper to crack, and everyone but Hermione seemed to have realized it.

"Ha! Give us a real reason, Harry!" she demanded, obviously not realizing that the reason he had told her was the true reason.

"That is the real reason!" he snarled out between his clenched teeth. "Voldemort is going to come back one of these days, and we need some way to be able to protect ourselves and escape! So if you want every Death Eater still out of Azkaban to know that you can turn into an animal and put up protections for it, fine, be my guest!"

Tracey had grabbed onto Harry's shoulder tightly, but Harry wasn't even fighting her yet. The hand on his shoulder did serve to remind him that there were others in the room, though, so he knew he couldn't go too far before they would interfere. It was only the fact that everyone knew this was coming soon that stopped anyone from interfering already.

"You-Know-Who is dead!" Hermione yelled. "You killed him when you were a baby! It's what gave you that scar!"

"And left me without parents, I know, Hermione, I know!" Harry yelled back while obviously fighting tears as the memory was forced back up. "The problem is that I did not kill him! He's still alive out there somewhere and he's going to come back! If we aren't ready for him, we'll be killed instantly!"

"Harry, calm down," Tracey whispered to him, trying to calm him down.

"I will not calm down!" he yelled as tears fell from his eyes and he fought Tracey's hold on him. "My parents' bloody murderer is going to come back and Hermione is worried about breaking the bloody law! It's as if she thinks their deaths mean nothing, absolutely nothing!"

"Someone, go get Ankh," Tracey called over her shoulder as she held onto both of Harry's arms with all of her strength, trying to stop him from charging at Hermione.

"I don't think that your parents' deaths mean nothing," Hermione told Harry a lot more calmly, tears falling down her own cheeks as she realized what Harry was thinking. "They were amazing people who shouldn't have died when they did."

"Then why do you think that learning to be Animagi so that we can protect ourselves from their murderer is such a bad thing?" Harry yelled at her.

Hermione flinched, and it made Harry both guilty and proud that he could make her flinch right now. Unfortunately, the pride was stronger than the guilt because of his anger.

"So what if it's illegal?" he asked her angrily. "If we have stuff they aren't expecting up our sleeves like the hand-to-hand combat, the knives, the swords, and being Animagi, we might actually have a chance of surviving when Voldemort comes back! It's as if you want to die!"

Just then Harry felt something smooth and cool on his cheek, and he looked down to see Ankh on his shoulder.

"Calm down, Harry," Ankh told him. "Your friend is scared and upset, as are most of your other friends. You've done enough for now."

Harry looked around the room, and saw that his friends were indeed upset by what he had said. When he saw that, he stopped fighting Tracey and sank down to his knees, Tracey following him with her hands now on his back.

"I didn't mean to," Harry hissed in Parseltongue, not even realizing he was doing it. "I didn't mean to scare them. What have I done? My friends are scared, Hermione actually has tears falling down her face, and I've just done something I shouldn't have."

"Your friends all know that, Harry," Ankh told him, surprising Harry until he realized he must have been speaking in Parseltongue instead of English. "They'll forgive you. Just talk to them."

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly before he looked up at Hermione and repeated it even louder so that she could hear him.

"I am too, Harry," she told him as she held out a hand for him to take so that she could help him stand up. "I shouldn't have been going after you about how becoming an unregistered Animagus is illegal when you're doing this so that we have extra protection for the future."

"Are we good, then?" Harry asked, looking straight into Hermione's brown eyes.

"We're definitely good," she told him with sincerity in her eyes before hugging him for a moment.

"As I was saying," Mr. Davis began once everyone was back where they had originally been. "Not only in this quite illegal, but it will also be a lot of work. Do not be surprised if some of you get it by the end of the school year while some of you get it next summer and some of you don't get it until the end of your fourth year, for most of you at least.

"This is something that can take years to learn, so you will all get it at different speeds. I personally believe that you'll all be quicker than most because you can help each other as you go along."

Harry looked around at his friends and knew from the looks on Padma, Terry, and Hermione's faces that he would have to give them his books on becoming an Animagus right before they went home. It was a lucky thing that Harry and Tracey had already read them during those three weeks they were the only ones to know about what was coming.

"Now, I will cover for all of you using this one spell, but this will be the only time. The spell is Revelaro Animalis, and you use it on the potion in the cauldron marked with your name because it will only show itself to the person who put the blood into it." Mr. Davis clapped his hands together in excitement. "Who wants to go first?"

When none of his friends stepped forward, Harry realized that they all wanted him to go first, so he sighed internally and stepped up to where he knew his potion was. Pulling out his wand from its holster, he pointed it at the potion.

"Revelaro Animalis," he said carefully.

Suddenly, animals began flowing across the surface of the silver potion. They were moving so fast that he could only glimpse flashes of color, nothing more. Then the animals began to slow down and he could see a lion with dark fur followed by a black snake and then a raven, all of them with emerald green eyes.

When the animals finally stopped running across the potion, there was a single animal staring back at him. A wolf with a lot of black in its fur looked back at him with emerald green eyes and a very small white line of fur above the right eye. Harry knew that it was a bit smaller than a fully grown wolf, but that was because it would grow with him. This was definitely his form.

Smiling slightly, Harry looked away and grabbed the vial beside his cauldron. He poured the potion into the vial carefully before sealing it and putting it down in front of his cauldron. Then, and only then, did he turn around to face his friends, who were all waiting impatiently.

"Well?" Daphne demanded, asking the question everyone was thinking.

"I'm an animal," Harry informed them happily with a straight face.

"Harry," almost everyone in the room groaned, cracking his façade and allowing him to break out in laughter.

"You should have seen your faces!" he gasped out between laughs. "Priceless and definitely worth it."

"Now that you've had your laugh, what is our leader going to be able to turn into?" Theo asked sarcastically.

"An animal that actually fits, now that I think about it," Harry said thoughtfully once he had calmed down. His friends all groaned until Tracey finally walked over to Harry to whisper into his ear, making a sound for the first time since he had done the spell.

"If you don't tell us now, Harry, I think our friends here would love to know about our first day of training, don't you?"

Harry blushed before going pale as he realized what she was talking about. He glared at Tracey lightly as she stepped back while smiling innocently.

"You are so evil, Trace," he told her before sighing and giving in. "Well, I saw a lion, then a snake, and finally a raven before it finally stopped and showed me my animal."

Harry paused there, waiting to see if anyone wanted to guess what his animal was.

"Damn!" Blaise muttered. "I could have sworn he'd be a snake."

"Hand it over, Blaise," Draco informed him, holding out his hand for the Galleon Blaise passed him.

"I was hoping for a lion, but I kind of figured it wouldn't happen," Hermione informed Harry as she watched Susan and Hannah give Neville a few Sickles each because he had told them Harry would never be a lion.

"It's a good thing I knew you all were betting on my form, eh?" Harry asked his friends with a slight smirk, surprising most of them.

"How did you –?" Justin couldn't even finish his question.

"Trade secret," Harry informed them as he tapped the side of his nose. "Anyway, my potion ending on a wolf; a dark, green-eyed, wolf."

"I knew it!" Tracey said happily, collecting her winnings from the entire group as no one had thought that Harry could be a wolf for some odd reason.

Harry had actually found out about the bet when Tracey told him that she and the entire group had made a huge betting pool with a Galleon per person where each person said a single guess on his form, and she had chosen a wolf. Just paying attention had told Harry that there were small bets going on between a few others.

Once the betting was finally done, Harry watched as his friends did the spell one-by-one, each of them bottling up the potion before turning around and telling the rest their form.

Hermione ended up as a cougar while that cat Harry had pictured a month before when first told about the potion was Tracey's form. Both Theo and Draco were foxes, though different colors, while Blaise was a bear. Much to the entire group's amusement, Daphne was a lioness, while Astoria had ended up as a golden eagle.

Terry was the dog of the group and Luna was the owl. Susan was a tiger, Hannah was a horse, and Justin was a cheetah. Neville was a falcon and Padma joined him in the air as a hawk.

Overall, they had animals for many different situations in their group, and they still had three more potions being worked on for Ginny and the twins.

"Now that you all know you forms, it's time for you to begin the transformation," Mr. Davis said as the group all found places to sit in the living room. "Does anyone other than Harry and Tracey know how to transform?"

"You have to concentrate on a certain part of your body like your hand and imagine it turning into whatever part of the body it is on your animal," Hermione said, not surprising anyone that she was the only other person to know. "So I would imagine my hand being a paw in the exact same shade I had seen it on the potion, and then try to sort of push my magic into that part of my body so that it can transform."

"Very good, Hermione," Mr. Davis complimented. "Does everyone understand what you have to do to transform? Good. Then, all of you should begin with one of your hands. I'll just leave you all to it."

Tracey's father left them all alone, and most of the group immediately started trying to change their hands into hooves, paws, or wings. Those that didn't were asking Hermione or Harry to explain how to do it again, much to their amusement.

Eventually everyone was trying to change. Harry was picturing the paw he had seen on his wolf while imagining something traveling from his chest, down his arm, and to his hand. When he felt something on his left hand, he opened his eyes and blinked in shock.

"No way!" he exclaimed happily as he saw that he had a small patch of fur on the back of his hand, though it was a very small amount.

"How'd you do it?" "Nice, Harry!" "Teach us, please!" were what his friends were saying after they, too, had gotten over the shock of seeing something different on him.

After that, every single day for the two weeks before school, anyone who possibly could went over to the Davis house. Mornings were spent working on Animagus transformations and afternoons on combat training while a few asked to be taught Occlumency by Harry and Tracey.

When Ginny and the twins got back the last week of summer, all three finished their potions and found out their forms. It surprised almost everyone that the twins were two different animals, but Luna had pointed out, in one of her moments that everyone could figure out what she was saying, that although the twins looked identical, they were not the same person in two bodies.

Fred ended up as a monkey, which fit as he was the more playful of the twins, and George was a raven. Ginny, on the other hand, went along with the others in the feline group and was a lynx.

The only day no one went to the Davis house was the day that the four of them were going to Diagon Alley to shop for supplies, and most of their friends joined them on that day so that they wouldn't miss a training session.

It was to Harry's amusement that he figured out Hagrid's birthday gift of a biting book was actually the book for Care of Magical Creatures. He had helped out the bookstore's owner by showing him that stroking the binding calmed down the books. When Tracey had asked him about it, he had only replied, "I found that out by being very bored and running my hand down the book; I'm not saying anything else."

Harry was taking Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes as his new classes while Tracey was joining him, though he had had to stop her from also taking Muggle Studies by pointing out that she knew more about Muggles than most did except the Muggle-borns.

Blaise and Theo were taking Arithmancy instead of Ancient Runes while Draco followed Harry, as did Daphne. All of the third years were in Care of Magical Creatures and a good portion of them took Arithmancy or Ancient Runes, a few being brave enough to take both. Hermione was taking every single class, and not even Harry could snap her out of it and stop her from doing it.

Before anyone knew it, the summer was over and it was time go back to Hogwarts.

"When do you want to go see Sebae?" Harry asked Ginny in Parseltongue as they found an empty compartment on the train and claimed it as their own before heading back to say their goodbyes.

"Friday after dinner?" she replied, figuring that would be a good chance to get away from their friends.

"Meet you in the bathroom then," he told her with a quick smile before rushing off to tell the Davises goodbye.

By the time he got back to his compartment, Theo, Astoria, Daphne, Blaise, Susan, Maya, Neville, and Hermione had already claimed seats in it, though they left the ones Harry and Ginny had claimed open. When the train left, the twins, Ginny, Tracey, Hannah, Justin, Padma, and Terry had joined them. Draco came a while later.

Hannah, Susan, Justin, Maya, and Terry all left to go find other friends, but the others all stayed in the compartment.

"So, what sort of song do you think the Hat will use this year?" Hermione asked curiously about halfway through the train ride. "I mean, we never did find out what last year's song meant, did we?"

"Not that I ever noticed," Padma replied, the rest of the compartment agreeing except for Harry, though he did nod so that no one would question him.

He knew that he was the only person in the entire school who understood that song from last year, but he didn't know how to explain it to his friends, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

"Why are you upset?" Ankh asked Harry from his place around Harry's neck.

"It's nothing, Ankh," Harry hissed back, knowing that Ginny was now looking at him after hearing the quick exchange of hisses.

"What are you talking about Ankh?" she asked the corn snake, who had gotten as fond of Ginny as he was of Harry.

"Harry stiffened when someone spoke," Ankh informed the redhead, making her look at Harry more closely.

Harry was internally cursing Ankh, knowing that just that much information would tell Ginny that something was going on, and she would be able to see it easier than anyone else except for Tracey, who was on the other side of the compartment with Astoria and Daphne.

"What do you know about the song, Harry?" Ginny demanded quietly, their conversation still going unnoticed as it wasn't easy to hear their hissing when they were purposely making it as quiet as possible.

"It's nothing, Gin; just leave it alone," he begged, really not wanting to have to tell anyone about how he was Slytherin's Chosen Heir, though he had a feeling Ginny wouldn't let him get away with that.

"No, Harry, you're telling me what you know about last year's song!" Ginny's hissing had been louder that time and everyone in the compartment heard it, drawing attention to the fact that Ginny was upset and Harry didn't want to tell her something.

"Not in here!" he told her sharply. "It involves showing you something, and I'm not doing it where the others can all see it."

"Fine, then, come on," she stated as she stood up and pulled on his arm. "We're going somewhere else so that Harry here will actually tell me something," Ginny informed the others in English, obviously in a bad mood.

Harry groaned as she dragged him from the compartment, so he willingly went along with her so that he wouldn't embarrass himself. They eventually ended up in an almost-empty compartment that only had a sleeping man in guessed the man was the new DADA teacher, which was confirmed by the Professor R. J. Lupin on his briefcase.

"Talk," Ginny ordered as she flung herself into one of the seats.

"I said no one, Gin!" Harry told her angrily, gesturing towards the new professor.

"Silencio," she muttered as she waved her wand in a square between the two of them and their professor. "Now talk!" she demanded, and Harry knew he had no choice as the professor couldn't hear them even if he woke up.

"Fine," he sighed as he sat down across from her. "You remember how I told you I was in the Chamber over Christmas Break last year? Well, I met Sebae then, but I also had a lovely visit from the Bloody Baron after something flew out of where Sebae was being kept.

"A dagger flew out of the opening when I let Sebae out, and it only stopped when it was floating in front of me. Baron told me that it was Slytherin's Dagger and I was its new master." Harry paused then as Ginny gasped and tried to take it in; he knew it would take a bit.

"So you now have Slytherin's Dagger?" she asked to make sure she had heard him properly, or that was what Harry guessed she was doing.

"Oh yeah," he told her as he unsheathed it and held it up for her to see.

Ginny looked at it in confusion, blinked a few times, and looked even closer at it. That was when Harry remembered the Baron telling him that only people he wanted to see the true Dagger could see it, meaning that Ginny was just now getting to see the true form of the Dagger. It would definitely explain her odd actions.

"But… that looked like your emerald knife!" she exclaimed.

"There's a protection on it so that it looks like some other sort of knife or dagger unless I want the person to know what it really looks like. I've still got my other dagger and I use it for most of the training sessions, but otherwise, I hold onto Slytherin's Dagger and keep it on my belt, even while I use Draco's gift to sheath my original dagger on."

"Okay," Ginny started slowly as she stared at the Dagger. "So you have Slytherin's Dagger. Is there anything else that goes along with it?"

"Well… Being the master of Slytherin's Dagger makes me his Chosen Heir," Harry admitted quietly as he sheathed the Dagger, not looking at Ginny. "That's what the Hat meant by the Chosen Heir, and the story it mentioned is the true story of Salazar Slytherin that the Baron told me."

"So you're telling me that the Sorting Hat was talking all about you last year when he sung that song?" Ginny asked, sounding a bit amused.

"Yup," Harry told her with a nod as he continued to look at the ground. He only looked up when Ginny started laughing. "What? What's so funny?"

"I'm sorry, but the entire song was written about you, Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, leader of leaders for everyone with a Journal, and no one has figured it out, not even Tracey!" Ginny broke down laughing, and Harry realized what was so funny and joined her.

"How is it that the best-known person in the entire school can do so much without anyone knowing until you want us all to?" Ginny asked as she finally got her breath back.

"What are you talking about?" Harry demanded, confused by what she was saying.

"You figured out that the so-called monster was a basilisk months before even Hermione did, and no one else figured it out until you told them! Even more, you knew where the Chamber was for months, and no one else could find it until you told them after going back into it to save me. Now no one has figured out that you're the Chosen Heir, and I'm the only one who knows it that's alive and human, and only because I made you tell me!

"How in the world do you learn and do so much without anyone knowing while being so bloody famous?" Ginny was staring at Harry in amazement even as she laughed about the idea of it all.

"I've never thought about it like that," Harry told her was indeed amazed as he realized how much he had done without anyone else knowing until he had wanted them to. "I guess it's a lot of luck, putting together small details, and just keeping it all to myself until I need to use it."

"This explains why you're in Slytherin and not in Gryffindor…" Ginny muttered quietly. "You use your head more and know how to keep things close until you need to use it to get what you need or want."

"Oh, be quiet," Harry laughed.

Suddenly, the train began to slow down and the lights soon flickered out. The compartment got colder and colder.

Harry heard Ginny stand up and felt her sit down next to him quickly, one of her arms going around him, the only thing showing him her fear.

"Finite," Harry muttered as he slipped his wand into his hand, pointing it in the direction of the Silencing Charm Ginny had used earlier. "Lumos," he then said, a light suddenly flaring from his wand as he pointed it in the direction of the door.

The door began to open and a skeletal hand covered in gray, almost dead-looking skin that was pulled tight over the bones showed plainly in the wandlight. A hooded creature followed the hand into the compartment before the hand disappeared and the hood turned in the direction of Harry and Ginny. Not even the light from his wand could show Harry what was below the hood, and Harry was relieved by it.

Suddenly, Harry began hearing voices in his head.

"Ginny… Please be okay Ginny…" It was Harry's own voice, and he knew that they were his thoughts when he had found Ginny in the Chamber.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…" The Prophecy, which had been weighing on his mind all summer as he trained, thinking that he would need those skills to defeat Voldemort in the end, flowed through his mind in the same voice that had spoken it in the Davis's home from the smashed orb.

"A Horcrux is a terrible thing. To make one you must commit a murder, then rip a piece of your soul off of the rest of it, and put it into an object. It will anchor you to life even if you die, but you will never be the same again." The things that Harry knew he had to find and destroy, or Voldemort would never be able to die.

Then came something he hadn't expected: A woman screaming in pain. When he heard that, everything went black.

"Harry? Are you okay, Harry?"

Harry woke up to the sound of Ginny calling his name, and he opened his eyes to see her looking down at him as he was lying down on the ground.

"Who screamed? Are you okay?" he asked as he slowly sat up.

"No one screamed, and I'm fine, just really shaken up," Ginny told him quietly, and he saw that she was very pale.

"Are you okay, Harry?" the professor who had been in the compartment with Harry and Ginny the whole time asked; he had obviously woken up.

"Fine," he told the man as he stood up steadily, feeling fine except for the cold in his body. "What was that thing?"

"A Dementor; they guard Azkaban and were checking for Sirius Black," the man informed him. "Are you sure you're fine?"

"Yeah, I'm just a little cold," Harry told him.

"Have some chocolate, both of you," the professor – Professor Lupin, Harry guessed – said as he held out a couple large bars of chocolate. "Give some of that to your friends."

"Uh… we'll need more than this if we're supposed to give it to all of our friends," Ginny told their professor with a small giggle, imagining only two bars with all of the friends back in their compartment.

"Ah, yes, I've heard about your group of friends," Professor Lupin said with a smile as he held out another four bars of chocolate. "Make sure you all have some of that, you two having the most, and I'll go see how long until we get there. I'll come and inform you when I know."

"Thank Professor," Harry told him as he and Ginny left to head back to their friends.

"There you are!" Hermione exclaimed when they entered the compartment, both munching on some of the chocolate from Professor Lupin and feeling much warmer. "Where have you both been?"

"We were talking," Ginny told Hermione indignantly.

"Professor Lupin, the new DADA professor, told use to give some of you a piece of this chocolate," Harry added as he began breaking off pieces of chocolate and passing it around, giving all of his friends good-sized pieces before splitting the rest of a final bar with Ginny.

"Ah, good, you're all eating the chocolate," the voice of Professor Lupin said happily from the doorway.

"Of course, Professor," Harry told the man. "We always listen to the competent teachers."

The others in the compartment laughed as they realized he was talking about Professors Quirrell and Lockhart.

"That's wonderful to know," Professor Lupin replied with a smile still on his face. "Now, we're almost to the school, so any of you not changed should do so."

"Thanks, Professor," most of the compartment said, the few not saying anything being the ones with chocolate in their mouths still.

Once the professor left, the few not in uniforms quickly changed while the others turned their backs. The conversation that followed was about the new professor and how kind and knowledgeable he was, and no one commented on his old robes or how tired he looked.


Okay, be truthful; how many of you actually guessed his Animagus form? I know it took two different people whom I asked for their guesses multiple tries before they figured out it was a wolf. Also, yes, the title Becoming Alpha does have some part from the wolf form, but I also chose it because Harry is becoming a leader. FYI, Alpha will be the word connecting my different stories in my own little word, hence the "Rise of an Alpha" for the series name.

Anyway, the spell used for the Animagus Potion does not belong to me. I stole the words from the lovely Dangerverse by Whydoyouneedtoknow on (It's used in a different situation there). So credit for that goes to her.

Keep in mind what the Dementor made Harry think of because my lovely Plot Beta (Not Arnel - a real life friend) got annoying about something and wrote this as a way to placate her while also just writing it.

Okay, Monday I went and put all I have of the sequel into a Word Document and came up with 453 pages, which added up to 191k words for the 42 chapters I've written thus far. Becoming Alpha ended up almost exactly a hundred pages shorter and only 158k words. Did I mention the sequel is still unfinished? Hopefully the length will make up for my posting only once a week again pretty soon...

Posted: 3/16/11