On Wednesday the tenth, a few days after the full moon (which had been tiring for Remus but not apparently as bad as they had been in previous years), Percy asked for Harry, Neville and Ron to come with him for a talk.

They picked up Dean, Hermione and Ginny in the common room, and headed out to one of the many disused classrooms that filled Hogwarts. This one looked like it might have been an old Astronomy classroom, with a sheet-covered orrery in the corner of the room and star charts plastered all over the walls and the ceilings.

Harry wasn't certain it was an Astronomy classroom, though. It could have been a Divination one.

"So I imagine you're wondering why I called you all here today," Percy said, clasping his hands behind his back.

"Kind of," Ginny admitted. "I'm also wondering why Fred and George aren't here."

"What?" Percy asked, a little distracted, then sighed. "I know you're in here."

"No you don't!" Fred shouted from behind the orrery.

"Well, now he does," George grumbled.

Percy waited for several seconds.

"Are either of you actually going to come out from behind there?" he tried.

"Nope," George said. "It's quite comfy here."

"We're quite happy where we are," Fred agreed. "I can see all the outer planets, like Jupiter and Neptune and Saturn and-"

"Anyway," Percy interrupted them, sighing. "As I was saying. I called you all here today to give you advance notice of something that might get into the papers."

"Why us?" Ron asked. "I get that about half of us are your family, but..."

"Oh, that's simple," Percy told him. "Harry's..."

The words trailed off.

"Not so simple after all?" Fred asked, trying not to laugh.

"It all made sense when I got them," Percy replied. "Besides, it would spoil the sense of drama."

"Drama?" Neville repeated. "Why drama?"

"And can there not be too much dramatic tension? We were in the middle of doing homework," Hermione added.

"Hang on, you were in the middle of doing homework," Dean corrected. "Some of the homework from third year so you could decide what subject you wanted to do. And Ginny was in the middle of doing homework. I was just sitting there because I had to pick an armchair somewhere while Nev and Ron were getting too into chess."

"As if," Hermione sniffed. "I'm not trying to decide which subject to do in Third Year. I already know, and it's all of them."

"Isn't that impossible?" Ron asked. "I mean, just in terms of workload."

"Percy got twelve OWLs in fifth year," Fred said. "Because he's a massive nerd."

"Thirteen if you count Hermes," George added.

"Ooh, good one," Fred complimented him.

Percy visibly decided to cut to the chase, and he did so in what Harry thought was a very effective way that was still almost as dramatic as he'd said he wanted to be.

He turned into a heron.

"...blimey," Ron said, after several seconds of silence. "Is that why you've been quiet?"

The heron nodded, and Harry noticed that there was a splash of flaming-red forming the crest along the top of his head instead of the black that a normal heron had. Then there was another blur of transformation, and Percy was standing there again.

"That idea about going to somewhere where there are thunderstorms every day was very helpful," he told Hermione. "Professor McGonagall helped out, of course, and I had my first transformation two days ago."

"That's amazing, mate," Dean said. "We only talked about this at Christmas. You've done all that in that short of a time?"

"Well, yes, but it wasn't that hard, really," Percy told him, going a little pink. "Professor McGonagall says she thinks it might revolutionize the Animagus transformation, it's so much quicker to do it this way without having to wait for a lightning storm."

"Well, now I really want to do it," Ginny said. "How old do you have to be to become an Animagus?"

Harry was frowning to himself, trying to remember something he'd read, then snapped his claws together as it came to him.

"Issola," he pronounced.

Everybody else looked at him. Even the Twins stuck their heads out from under the dust sheet covering the orrery.

"What's one of those when it's at home?" Fred asked.

"More to the point, what's one of those when it's at Hogwarts?" George added. "And is it a thing at all?"

"It's from a book," Harry explained. "There's this book series where there are seventeen kind of noble houses, only one of them is actually more like a gang, and they each have an animal as their symbol. Like the Hawk, or the Phoenix, or the Teckla."

"What's a Teckla?" Neville asked.

"It's a mouse," Harry explained. "A lot of them are kind of odd, they don't always use the same word for things we do. So they call something a Dzur but we'd call it a panther."

"So what is an Issola, then?" Ron said.

"It's a heron, isn't it?" Ginny realized. "That's why you said it now."

Harry nodded. "There's this poem about what each kind of person tends to do, and for them it's, um… Issola strikes from courtly bow. So they're all about being proper and correct and still, showing respect and so on, and then you're reminded that they still have a sharp beak."

He shrugged his wings. "Anyway, I thought that it might be a good Marauder Name. Like how Sirius Black is Padfoot, and my father was Prongs."

Percy seemed to be considering it.

"Do you mind if I borrow those books?" he asked. "They sound interesting."


Over the next few days, Harry occasionally overheard George and Fred talking about whether they could trade off the speaking role so that only one of them had to speak much during the month that the other one was charging their mandrake leaf.

Apparently the problem with that was just that it would mean their first Animagus transformations weren't synchronized, or that the one who went first would have to use the Animagus sensitization spell for a solid month which sort of took away the point of doing it quickly.

The Twins being the Twins, they were busily talking about whether they could solve the whole problem by inventing a new kind of mouth, or maybe using a spell to produce sounds without needing to speak. It sounded like a lot of effort to go to, to Harry, and he was still wondering if there was a simpler way to get around the problem when the fourteenth of February arrived.


The Great Hall that Sunday morning was full of big pink flowers, of a kind of pink Harry wasn't really sure was actually natural, and it was raining heart-shaped confetti.

It took Harry a moment to remember that it was Valentine's Day – he certainly couldn't remember them doing this last time – and he shrugged before opening one of the books he had on the go.

He'd barely got more than a couple of pages further into Martin the Warrior (and only tried one slice of fried egg garnished with heart-shaped confetti) when Professor Lockhart stood to speak.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" he shouted, and Harry saw that he was wearing robes the same sort of couldn't-be-natural pink. "And thank you to the forty-three people who have so far sent me cards! I hope you all enjoy the little surprise I've arranged for you all!"

"Doesn't look like the teachers do," Dean muttered, and Harry did notice that Professor Snape looked like he was trying to squeeze something invisible very hard.

Maybe he was trying to do what Darth Vader did in Star Wars – Harry didn't think there was a spell for that, but Professor Snape might not let that stop him if he got annoyed enough.

"And it doesn't end here!" Lockhart went on, clapping his hands, and a dozen dwarves wearing golden wings and carrying harps trooped in through the doors with expressions of disdain.

The Defence teacher explained how the 'cupids' would be going all around the school delivering valentines, and some other things, but Harry was sort of distracted by the dwarves.

He'd already discovered that some of the most unlikely things from the Lord of the Rings books had turned out to be real – dragons were obvious, though Mr. Tolkien hadn't quite got some of the details right, but Horcruxes were certainly real even if that wasn't the word the author used for the One Ring. And now there were dwarves as well?

Maybe they were like the Dwarves in the Hobbit, scattered away from their original home and having to take jobs they didn't like. That was sort of a sad thing to think about, because they didn't really look like they were enjoying their current jobs.


It was probably quite a good thing that it was a Sunday, and there weren't any lessons, because enough Dwarves came barging into the common room to deliver their messages that Harry couldn't really imagine how any of the lessons could have gone without at least one visit. It seemed terribly embarrassing for the people involved, as well, though Harry did have an idea of how to find out the answers to some of his questions.

After one of the Dwarves had delivered an anonymous valentine to the Seventh-Year female Prefect, shouting it up the stairs at her from the bottom of the spiral staircase, Harry had accosted him as he began to stomp back to the portrait hole.

"What is it?" the Dwarf asked. "You've got one too?"

He looked Harry up and down. "You're an odd one. You'd be that 'Arry Potter bloke."

"Last time I checked," Harry agreed, who thought it was a sort of Dumbledoreish way to reply. "I was wondering how Dwarves live. I've never read much about you."

"Mostly we live somewhere else," the Dwarf replied with a shrug. "And not doing stuff like… this."

He shook his head. "Still. It's work."

"What's the somewhere else like?" Harry asked, still interested. "Do you live underneath mountains?"

"My mum does," the Dwarf agreed. "It's bloody cold up in Norway, I'll tell you..."

"So you're not trying to gain enough support to go and reclaim the ancestral halls of the King Under the Mountain?" Harry said, obscurely disappointed.

"No," the Dwarf told him. "Where do you get all these ideas?"

"Muggle books," Harry admitted. "I was hoping there were some interesting answers to what Dwarves are like."

They reached the portrait hole, and the Dwarf clambered out. "Ancestral halls… tch."


By the middle of the afternoon it seemed like the Dwarfs had sort of lost what little enthusiasm they'd had for the whole thing.

It turned out they were Dwarfs with an f, not Dwarves with a ve, which was something else Harry had been uncertain about. One of the others was a bit more willing to talk, and he explained that there had been a time when Dwarfs lived in underground mines and had their own societies, but that had sort of gone away about a hundred years ago when Muggles got better at mining. These days they mostly got work in the construction business, as they had magical ways to dig better than most people and you couldn't exactly bring a big Muggle digger onto the grounds of somewhere like Longbottom House for a month, but there wasn't much need for it in the winter which was why they were doing this sort of thing.

He said it had sounded a lot more fun when they'd agreed to do it than when they'd actually started to do it.

The last valentine Harry heard being delivered was by a Dwarf who was clearly thinking about being able to take the wings off, and who marched up to Kenneth Towler – who was in the same year as Fred and George, and took on a distinctly hunted look – before clearing his throat.

"Here is your valentine," he declared, in a voice remarkably devoid of inflection. "you are the most amazing person i have always admired you from afar and i wish i could tell you this to your face but i just wanted you to know that um are you writing this down or will you just remember the whole thing okay i that is i wanted you to know that i am always thinking of you."

The moment that was said, he took the wings off and put the harp down before marching smartly out the door.

The harp was tasty, at least.


"Are you sure this is safe?" Neville asked, a little worried.

"Don't worry," Harry assured his friend. "I don't think Ron's ever got this spell wrong, and I'm going to keep you safe from it anyway."

"I… guess that's okay, then," Neville said.

"Hey, don't worry," Dean told him. "We don't know who Ron's going to be aiming for. It might be me."

"Ready?" Hermione asked, looking down for a moment at a neat set of boxes she'd drawn on a piece of parchment with a ruler.

"Yep!" Ron agreed, raising his wand, and Harry nodded as well – his own wand back in the holder strapped to his tail.

"Whenever you're ready, then," Hermione said.

Ron stayed still for a moment longer, then pointed his wand. "Rictusempra!"

Harry's left wing flicked up, blocking Neville and Ron from seeing one another, and the tickling charm bounced off the black leather of his wings in a shower of sparks.

Ron's wand moved across in the other direction, pointing at Dean this time, and Harry tensed his wings ready to block.

Then Ron switched back to Neville, throwing a second Tickling Charm at him, and Neville jumped as Harry only just got his wing up in time.

Dean wasn't so lucky, getting hit and knocked backwards a little by the force of the spell, and started giggling until Ron cancelled the spell again.

"That's two out of three, so far," Hermione noted. "Okay, Harry, let's see how you do."

Ron gulped theatrically, and Harry tried to concentrate.

He'd done a lot of casting at things with his tail, but it was still tricky…

"Tarantallegra," he cast, and a jet of light flashed out to hit next to Ron's feet.

The second casting hit him, sending his legs dancing around until Hermione dispelled it, and Harry's third spell went a little bit high.

"Why aren't we doing Disarming Charms for this?" Ron asked. "We did that months ago."

"Because if we used Disarming Charms then whoever was casting would have to give the wand back to whoever wasn't casting after every successful hit," Hermione told him primly. "You're lucky I read about this way of training how to shoot things. Most people just sort of have to learn by luck."

"Isn't that what we're doing now?" Dean asked, as Ron fired another Tickling Charm at him and Harry blocked it with his wing.

"Of course not!" Hermione replied. "We're taking notes. Keeping score."

She frowned. "Ron, I think that last one wouldn't have hit even if Harry hadn't blocked it."

"Yeah, probably not," Ron admitted. "Okay, let's try this again..."

It was the sort of thing Harry thought they should probably be doing in Defence Against the Dark Arts, but because they weren't it seemed like a good idea to do it in their own time instead.

Maybe it would catch on.


It was several days after that – almost at the end of February – when Hermione told Harry that she'd managed to get permission for him to visit the Scottish dragon reserve.

Oliver Wood wasn't all that happy about the idea that Harry would be going off the next Sunday, missing out on some practice time, but Fred quickly pointed out that Harry's record in catching the Snitch was really good and so he shouldn't really complain. George weighed in by saying that that was one out of one, which was a hundred percent, and then they got sort of sidetracked for a while about whether you could really do statistics on a number like that.

The practical upshot of it all, though, was that Harry set off early that Sunday morning to fly to the Hebridean island of North Uist.

It was quite cold, but there wasn't any mist – which was good – and Harry flew steadily over the sea to Skye. He checked his map sitting on top of one of the Cuilin mountains, comparing it to what he could see around him, then decided he was looking in the right direction and took off again.

Harry did know that he would have been quite a lot faster if he'd brought his broom along, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun. He flew low over Portree, turning almost due west there and flying diagonally across the island, then raced down the hillside to the sea and struck out with his wings alternately beating the air for speed and hanging out stiff to glide.

It felt great to really stretch his wings for a long-distance flight, and he was almost sorry when the Outer Hebrides hove up out of the sea about twenty-odd miles later. Harry picked a high spot to land, bleeding off his accumulated speed to gain height instead, and touched down on a high rocky hill overlooking a great miles-wide expanse of little islands and black water.

Checking the map again, Harry decided there was only really one possible candidate for where he had to go. The Scottish Reserve was Unplottable, but that didn't make it hard to find if you were smart – the map was just a careful depiction of all the places in the area of the reserve that the reserve wasn't, and since it was a fairly hefty island hidden from Muggle view it didn't take Harry much time to realize that it had to be the half-mile-high cliff face where his map showed open water.

There wasn't really another way to hide enough land for a dragon population in the Hebrides.


After a quick misunderstanding where Harry had to explain that, yes, he was the one who was coming to visit the Clan MacFusty, and no, he wasn't an escaped juvenile, he was then introduced to the Clan as a whole.

Every one of them was a witch or a wizard, on a kind of smooth continuum from tough-looking twentysomethings not long out of Hogwarts with a patchwork of minor creases and scars all the way to the clan heads (who looked like they'd heard that you were supposed to get weaker as you aged and decided to sidestep the whole process by turning directly into teak).

A lot of them reminded him of Charlie, or perhaps Hagrid, in how they thought about the dragons they took care of.

After he'd met everyone, except Mathias MacFusty who was off in Canada doing something or other, he was led down a stone-floored path into the interior of the island by a middle-aged witch called Astrid MacFusty.

"This way," she told him, pointing out one of the crofts. "That's where my grandfather used to live. And down here is where we keep Niall, he's a little older than most now and a little easier with strangers."

She chuckled. "It's a full time job keeping so many Hebridean Blacks happy in a small space, I'll tell you now…"

"The book I read said that Hebridean Blacks needed as much as a hundred square miles of territory per dragon," Harry agreed. "I did wonder how you could fit many into the Hebrides, they're not that big."

"Well, we have our ways," Astrid told him. "Trade secrets, you ken?"

They were just reaching a wooden gate, and she opened it before holding it open for him.

"It's to keep the sheep and the deer in," she explained. "It all goes more smoothly if they each have their own animals, rather than trying to steal them from one another."

Harry nodded, then looked up as a pair of big black batlike wings spread atop a nearby hill.

Niall jumped, hammering the air for a single mighty downbeat, then came gliding down to alight with a thump in front of Harry and Astrid – sending the nearby sheep bleating and running in all directions. His mouth opened in a snarl as brilliant purple eyes regarded Harry, and a coil of smoke came rising gently out of the maw.

"Calm, now, Niall," Astrid said, one hand out to the side, and the bigger dragon huffed at Harry. He got sniffed, and then Niall snorted before accepting a sheep Astrid pulled towards her with magic.

"It's nice to meet you," Harry said.

"Now that's nae a thing I've ever heard before," Astrid admitted, which at least let Harry know he was speaking Dragonish rather than English.

Niall didn't seem to even notice, blasting the sheep with a jet of flame and then starting to eat a little messily.

"Can you understand me?" Harry asked, trying again. "Hello?"

Niall finished his sheep, and walked away to lie down for a nap.

"Did you get anything?" Astrid asked. "I don't know I'd have noticed the hissing if he'd done it, and all."

"No, nothing," Harry replied.

"Well, maybe Niall's a quiet sort," Astrid mused. "We'll try Flora."


It was a troubled Harry that set off to fly east that afternoon, away from the setting sun.

He'd been shown around most of the reserve, and met almost every single one of the dragons the Clan MacFusty took care of, but not one of them had either spoken Dragonish where he could hear them or even noticed him when he was speaking in Dragonish – except maybe as a noise.

Why would an entire reserve full of dragons not speak Dragonish?


Hermione seemed quite confused by the report, which at least made Harry feel a little bit better… or perhaps that should be a little bit more justified in feeling odd about it all, because Hermione was really very smart and she was just as lost as he was.

They wrote up what had happened and sent it off in a letter to Charlie, in the hopes that Ron's second-oldest brother would have some idea what to think about it, but apart from that there really wasn't anything else that came to mind.

Harry did go and have a long session teaching Hagrid Dragonish, this time as a conversation with Nora about colours and shapes, just to make sure that he hadn't been imagining things for the last several months, but while that did work it also led to the discovery that Nora liked incinerating coloured wooden blocks.


On the first Sunday of March, Harry decided to help Percy out by taking him for a flight over the castle.

In spite of having had his new form for over a month now, Percy had been a bit reluctant to take to the air, and Harry was all too glad to quietly talk him through how flying with wings worked – from where you could find the occasional dangerous downdraft to what the best angle was to glide with.

It was quite nice just to be able to teach Percy something he hadn't been confident about from the start, making gentle circuits around Hogwarts and the surrounds and explaining how to shed speed and height at the same time, or how to flare so your touchdown was slower and more gentle and it didn't strain your legs as much.

Percy definitely seemed nervous at first, but as they landed and took off and circled without any disastrous crashes it seemed as though he was starting to relax into it.

As they were coming down for a water landing, though, Harry noticed that Professor Dumbledore was sitting in a boat right by the lake shore. He was having some sort of conversation with what Harry supposed must be a merperson, with grey skin and dark green hair, and as they flew past the Professor broke off his conversation to wave merrily at them before continuing to talk as though nothing had happened.

Harry decided to be polite and ignore it.

"Okay, Percy," he said. "So the good thing about landing on water is that you can use the water to slow you down..."


That evening, Harry went up to Professor Dumbledore's office, and then through the Floo to Grimmauld Place.

"Harry!" Sirius announced, drawing him in for a hug. It took a lot of doing, given Harry's unusual body shape, but Sirius had clearly been thinking about it a lot and it actually sort of worked. "How have you been? How's Quidditch?"

"Wet," Harry replied, once Sirius finally let go and he could drop to the floor again. "Oliver Wood says that if we train in the rain, we'll go faster if we play in the sun and our robes are dry."

Sirius snorted.

"Everything okay with – with Professor Snape?" he asked. "Any more of your friends become Animagi?"

"I'm pretty sure we were talking last night," Harry said, confused. "Didn't we talk about most of this?"

"I've heard about how uncles are supposed to do this sort of thing," Sirius shrugged. "Admittedly I'm sort of guessing. Aunts are meant to do the kiss-you-on-the-cheek thing, but I'm not an aunt."

"But you aren't serious," Harry said, and was pleased when Sirius did a double-take before sniggering.

"That's a new one. Nice one, Harry."

That gave Harry a warm glow, and he followed Sirius through the house to a second-floor bedroom. Remus was there already, seated on a wooden chair with a big pile of somewhat-damaged pillows on the floor in front of it, and he nodded to Harry.

"I'm glad you could get off school for this," he said, self-consciously adjusting the long sheet he was wearing.

"I should be back by midnight," Harry replied, wanting to assure him it wasn't a big problem. "Professor Dumbledore says it's okay – and I want to help, if I can."

"I'm very grateful," Remus told him. "And Sirius, you'd better pay attention – next full moon night is Tuesday evening."

"Why is that?" Sirius asked. "Aren't they usually about four weeks apart?"

"This one's actually got the full moon tomorrow morning, about nine AM," Remus explained. "Next one has it Tuesday evening."

"Right, right," Sirius nodded. "When do you transform?"

"About ten minutes," Remus replied, glancing at the clock. "I've never done it on Wolfsbane before. It should be interesting..."


They made small talk for the next few minutes, mostly about little things none of them had thought to mention by mirror, and then Remus winced.

"Okay, I… think it's starting," he said, and got quickly off the chair.

Sirius transformed into Padfoot in an eyeblink, and pushed Harry back a bit – just in case the Wolfsbane didn't work.

Harry watched, fascinated, as Remus changed shape. It wasn't the blurring transition that an Animagus had, but it was quick – his face elongated into a muzzle, his hands became paws, and hair sprouted as his shoulders changed and he took on a four-legged form.

It seemed like his wrist changed position, lengthening out into a third arm bone, and as it did the sheet slid off and revealed the full extent of the transformation.

Incongruously, Harry noticed that – though he was otherwise a lot like a wolf – he had a tufted tail.

Remus panted for several long moments afterwards, then looked around – inspecting his own body, and reaching up a paw to feel his muzzle.

"Does that mean it's worked?" Harry asked. "Are you okay?"

A nod was his answer, and Remus was starting to sit down on his haunches when a yawn suddenly hit him – he raised his paw to cover his mouth, which was a very human gesture, and Padfoot nodded before changing back.

"Still all right?" Sirius asked, voice hushed, and Remus nodded again. "Then – let's try that spell. Does that sound all right?"

Remus – or Moony? Harry wasn't sure which name to use – nodded again, and Harry transferred his wand into one paw before approaching.

He waved it up and down, in the motion Professor Lockhart had said was right, and touched the tip gently to Moony's throat.

"Homorphus," he incanted, and there was a little flash of light.

Moony yelped suddenly, eyes widening, then the transformation began to reverse itself. It started at the paws, flowing in pulses as fur receded and fangs shrank, and the quickly-reverting werewolf snatched up the sheet again and dove under it.

For several seconds, Harry and Sirius stared at the sheet as it shifted and rippled before finally going still.

"Are you okay, Moony?" Sirius asked.

"Can someone please get me some underwear?" Remus replied, sounding dreadfully embarrassed.


AN:


Percy is hardly going to be an underachiever, is he?

The dwarfs are on a bit of a lark, but it turned out... a bit differently to how they were hoping.