Emily had not had any more moments like these since the Quidditch trials. In fact, she thought that it would be safe to say that what had happened at the Quidditch trials had been a completely in the moment one time thought. It would never happen again.
The month in which the girls were supposed to be holding the mandrake leaves in their mouths had come to a sudden end, and the full moon was only hours away. Nobody was more excited than Spencer Hastings by this, as she had spent the whole month preparing the rest of the ingredients that they would need for the next step of their Animagus transfiguration.
"So tell me again, what exactly is it that we're doing next?" Hanna asked her, as the 5 girls quietly crept out of the Hogwarts castle and onto the grounds. The full moon could almost be seen in the sky, and they wanted to get an early start out before any teachers could catch them and tell them to come back inside. It was starting to get quite cold this time of year, so all of the girls were wrapped up warm in their hoodies. With the exception of Hanna, who was wearing Sean's hoodie.
"I've told you a hundred times" Spencer scoffed "It's quite simple really. We spit the mandrake leaves into an individual phial in the range of the moon's rays, add one of our own hairs to the phial and THEN a teaspoon of dew that has not been touched by human feet or seen sunlight for seven days-"
"Who the bloody hell thought of this spell" Alison muttered under her breath, quiet enough so that Spencer wouldn't hear it but the others would.
"And THEN" Spencer continued "We add the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawk Moth"
"Sorry, a what?" Emily interrupted "You can't tell me that you just had a couple of those lying around, surely-" Spencer laughed a little.
"I know a guy" was her simple reply, and she said nothing else "Anyway, that's it. Simple, isn't it really? And then all we have to do after that is put the phial into a dark and quiet place and chant 'Amato Animo Animato Animagus' once at sunrise and once at sundown with the tips of our wands places over our hearts until the next electrical storm" Hanna nodded her head.
"Is that it?" she said sarcastically"And there's me thinking we would have to do something complicated. I wonder why not everyone's doing this!" Aria, Emily and Alison laughed.
"Oh woud you just shut up" Spencer spat "I wish you were more into this, you know. You'll be thanking me when you can hop in and out of animal form whenever you like. I'll remember moments like these, you know"
"You do that"
"Guys, shut up, the full moon's almost up!" Emily nudged Hanna and Spencer in the ribs and pointed up at the sky. Surely enough, the moon was slowly beginning to ascend from behind the hills, its pearly white glow blinding the five 3rd year girls.
"This is it!" Spencer said excitedly, digging into her bag and pulling out 5 medium sized phials. She handed one to each of the girls.
"Where'd you get these from?" Hanna asked, examining the phial.
"There's no time!" Spencer shouted over the wind "If we don't do it now, we'll miss our slot. Do you really want to wait a whole nother month!?" Hanna shook her head fiercly, and within seconds she had spat the soggy mandrake leaf into the glass phial.
"Aaaaah tastes like freedom" Alison said dreamily, after spitting her own mandrake leaf into a phial.
"I forgot what the bottom of my mouth tasted like!" Aria said, wiping saliva from her mouth.
"There's no time for this" Spencer said eagerly, reaching back into her miniature sized bag. She eventually pulled out a pair of miniature scissors, and chopped off a small hair from the end of her head.
"Quick!" she said to the others, handing Aria the scissors. She too put a hair in the phial of mandrake leaf and saliva, and handed it around the rest of the group.
"It's the dew next-" Hanna started saying, handing Spencer back the scissors.
"Yes I know that!" Spencer spat at her, pulling a bottle of strange looking liquid and a teaspoon out from her bag. She poured a spoonful into her phial, and then 4 more into the other girls phials.
...
The Death-head Hawk Moth chrysalises had been put in the phials, and Spencer had immediatey snatched them out of the other 4 girls hands, protectively shielding them under her robes.
"What are you gonna do with them now?" Aria asked, munching on a liquorice wand and enjoying the taste of eating something without a leaf swimming around under her tongue.
"They need to go in a dark and quiet place" Spencer explained "So I'm gonna put them in one of those abandoned bathrooms in the south corridors. No, Hanna, not the one with Moaning Myrtle in-"
"I didn't say anything!" Hanna interjected.
"Yes, well, you were thinking it" Spencer argued "So anyway, we're going to have to have some sort of alarm system to wake us up early in the mornings up until-"
"Wait what!" Hanna interrupted, yet again "What are we getting up early for!" Spencer sighed and slapped her forehead in her hand.
"To chant the incantation!" she almost shouted of her "For gods sake Hanna, do you even listen? We have to chant the incantation every day at sunrise and sunset up until the next electrical storm!"
"And whens that?" Hanna asked.
"May 23rd" Spencer told her, a little quieter than she had said the previous things. Hanna spat out her juice, that none of them had remembered her having when they walked down to the Howarts grounds.
"MAY 23RD!" she shouted, so loud that the inhabitants of Hogsmeade village could have heard her "May 23rd! That's like, that's like-" Hanna tried to do the calculations on her fingers.
"7 months" Aria squeaked quietly.
"7 MONTHS!" Hanna repeated "You honestly expect me to get myself up at bloody dawns crack every day for the next 7 months!" She tossed her juice cup aside.
"You don't have to do it, Han" Alison told her "But it'd be cool, don't you think? I mean, I don't know, think of all the possibilites of animals you could turn into" Hanna stopped.
"Huh" she said "I've never thought of that"
"Actually" Spencer added "Nor have I. Not once did I think about what animal I might turn into, or what I'd want to turn into. What if I get something really awful, like a bluebottle fly or something?"
Without meaning to, the girls all sat down in a circle at the same time.
"I think I'd want to be a bird" Aria said quietly "I think it'd be cool to fly around the grounds and stuff like that. Plus I'd be able to sleep in trees, and I've always wanted to do that"
Nobody questioned this.
"I think I'd like to be a cat or something, like McGonagall" Alison said, tracing the outline of a cat in the dusty dirt underneath them.
"Cats are hot" Emily said, without meaning to. The other girls shot her a strange look.
"'Cats are hot?'" Spencer repeated with a laugh. Emily turned red.
"You know what I meant!" she insisted, folding her arms "You know, how they slink around and all that and...I don't know whatever" She decided to stop talking.
"Yeah, cats are hot" Hanna said mockingly "But have you seen dogs? Dogs are fricking smoking!"
"Oh, yeah" Alison teased "Absolutely. And don't get me started on hamsters, like holy fuck!" Aria and Spencer laughed.
"Although saying that, I have come across a gorgeous Guinea Pig a few times in my travels" Spencer added, Aria now bursting into fits of laughter on the floor.
"Shut uuuup!" Emily said, silently giggling and burying her head into her hoodie.
It was getting cold outside now, and the girls realized that they really ought to be going back up into the castle.
"I guess we'd better get back to our dorms before Filch has a stroke" Spencer said, hoisting herself up onto her feet and pulling Aria up by her hands.
"Can you imagine" Alison laughed "5 kids in the same night. It'll be like his birthday come early!"
"I wonder if he even celebrates his birthday" Hanna said absently "And for all the teachers, for that matter. Do you think they have little staff birthday parties or what?" Spencer rolled her eyes.
"They are people, Han" she told her "I'm sure they celebrate their birthdays however they want to" Hanna stuck out her bottom lip and nuzzled her face into the hem of the hoodie she was wearing.
"New hoodie?" Alison asked her, realising that she had never seen Hanna wear this before.
"No" Hanna said proudly with a slight blush "It's Seans"
This comment was followed by a simultaneous wave of 'OooOoOOoh's.
"Does it smell like him?" Aria asked dreamily, budging up next to Hanna in an attempt to get a whiff of Sean's hoodie. Hanna nodded her head.
"Yeah" she said "It's the coziest thing in the world" Spencer didn't seem to understand what was happening.
"Why would he give you his hoodie?" she asked her with a skeptical look.
"Oh come on Spence" Hanna said back "Everyone knows that wearing each other's hoodies are the international symbol of relationships".
Alison stopped dead in her tracks, and looked as though she had seen a ghost. The rest of the girls hadn't realised this, until they turned around and Alison was still 10 feet behind them staring strangely into the distance.
"Ali?" Emily called "You okay?" Alison glanced at her and swallowed.
"Y-yeah" she squeaked "I just – er – nevermind" She shook her head out of her gaze and hurridly caught back up to the rest of the girls.
"What was that about?" Emily asked her with a laugh "Seen a ghost?". Alison gulped.
"Something like that" she replied.
