I don't own Harry Potter
It wasn't uncommon for Victoria to disappear at odd hours of the night. The first time Theo noticed it happen was last April, when he woke up in cold sweat at three in the morning, remembering that he never got to finish his Potions essay. Bleary-eyed, he started looking for it, and when that didn't work, he fished out a clean piece of parchment and a quill from his bag, and went to the Common Room. When he got there, he remembered that he didn't grab his textbook, so he went back to the boys' dormitory, and then again to the Common Room, where he scared himself half to death when he saw a dark, silent figure move through the room with surreal smoothness. It reminded him of a picture of a dementor he saw in one of his father's books when he was a child. The image stuck with him then, and he never touched the book since.
Theo stood in his pajamas, clutching One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi like a lifeline, frozen in fear. That is, until the measeley light cast by the fire illuminated the figure's face.
It was Victoria. She was dressed in her school robes and cloak, hood up, and without saying anything to him, or even so much as looking at him, she made her way to the girls' dorm.
Next morning, Theo wondered if it was just a weird dream his not-quite-awake mind conjured up. He tried to catch her eye several times over breakfast, and when he did, the look she gave him was clear of anything sketchy.
But then it happened again, a month later, when Theo was up late, reading, at saw her return from wherever she was at two in the morning. Once again, Victoria ignored him.
He didn't confront her.
This pattern continued well into this year, and so, when Theo saw her leave that Thursday night, he wasn't surprised, but rather tempted to break the pretend game and wish her luck, just to get some kind of reaction from her.
The realization that Victoria Savorgnan, Slytherin extraordinaire, was a muggleborn was a gradual one. Perhaps it started because after his mother's death, his father Theodore Nott Sr. became a total wack job, and forgot to teach his son the importance of blood status. Thus Theo wasn't quite the fanatic that Malfoy or Parkinson were, and his eyes were open to possibilities.
He noticed how she never threw away her parents' letters, but stashed them in her bag. He noticed how she chose to spend Christmas and summer with them. And he noticed that whenever the topic of blood came up (which, considering their company was a very common occurrence), her fingers would twitch ever-so-slightly, and her eyes would flare an intense, poisonous green before she composed herself.
The decision to throw his knowledge in her face was impulsive. Even knowing her, the viciousness with which she hissed threats at him was a shock. But what did he expect? She was used to living in a world where everyone was against her. He couldn't hold it against her; he wouldn't.
…
"Bombarda Maxima!"
A jet of red light left her wand and blasted the poor log it was trained on into smithers.
"Reparo!" Victoria said, jabbing her wand at the pieces as they assembled back together.
"Expulso!"
The log shuddered and flew ten feet away from where it lay with a loud thud, that went unheard by anyone thanks to a generous number of silencing charms. Unbelievable. It was absolutely unbelievable!
"Alarte Ascendare!"
Snape, that bloody git was frolicking inside her brain, plucking her memories, her thoughts - the log was roughly thrown in the air, so high that it touched the upper branches of a nearby yew - like they were his for the taking!
The log fell, raising a cloud of dust.
Legilimency. It was called legilimency. She looked into mind arts when she was at the library earlier that day, confirming her half-formed suspicions. It was how she got animals to do what she wanted them to do without training. It was what Snape, and what Dumbledore both did to her, the former on a regular basis, the latter only once.
The sky seemed to roar with fury. A storm was brewing.
Victoria sighed deeply, removing a small, nondescript vial from a dark box she brought with her. Inside was a murky, grayish potion, made with a mandrake leaf, soaked in her mouth for a month and brought directly under the light of a full moon on the last day of the process, a strand of her hair, a teaspoon of dew that haven't seen sunlight in seven days, and a Death-head Hawk Moth chrysalis.
All she needed was lightning.
As if in answer, the first rumble of thunder shook the air. Victoria lifted the vial into the air. Another rumble came, and in the distance, clouds lit up. After that, for a few short seconds, it was quiet.
Then with a mighty roar, the sky seemed to crack open as a bolt of lightning shot through the clouds, painting the world white as it sped toward her — no, the vial in her hand. Everything seemed to slow as the forceful jet approached.
Amato Animo Animato Animagus
Next thing she knew, she was lying on the ground, a stone digging painfully into her back. Her hand was still closed around the fragile glass. Shifting a little, Victoria brought it in front of her face.
The potion inside was blood-red.
And she laughed. Laughed like it was the funniest thing ever, because she was only twelve, and this was believed to be one of the hardest pieces of Transfiguration. Laughed, because there are only a dozen or so animagi in the world. Laughed, because the punishment for illegal transformations is a life sentence in Azkaban. Laughed, because she was a muggleborn, and she was never more proud of it. Laughed until her pale cheeks were pink — she never blushed — until her eyes were glassy with tears — she never cried either — and she was so happy she was drunk on it.
Finally pulling herself together some five minutes later, Victoria got up and uncorked the vial, and drowned it in one gulp.
It was the vilest thing that ever touched her tongue. She clammed one hand over her mouth, trying not to gag, and ran the other down her neck, pressing slightly to force the potion down her throat.
In hindsight, she should've brought some water.
The slightest nudge made her magic, poised as it was already, to transform. It wasn't strictly painful, but it wasn't pleasurable either. It was something in between: unique, sharp, and overwhelming.
Her animagus form was a snake. A snake that in a parody of a cobra's hood, had flaps of skin that, although completely unnoticeable when closed, opened to reveal large membranous wings.
And she flew, serpentine body writhing elegantly over the turrets of the castle she called home, over the towers and the spires, and when she landed, sleek and graceful like a true naja, she slithered through the halls, a silent shadow, freer than she ever thought was possible.
Even in her animagi form, Victoria Savorgnan worn her magic like a secret badge of honor.
…
"What did you do?!"
Pansy huffed, probably thinking that it made her sound regal, though it sounded more like she had a cold. "I made your hair curly. It looks so adorable! You have to give it a try - literally I mean. The spell doesn't wear off for a few weeks."
Victoria made a vague chocking noise that was somewhere between a cough and a sob. She actually had curly hair when she was born, but when she was about four she got sick of tangles and her locks had mysteriously turned into sleek, barely-there beach waves overnight
"It does look cute on you," Pansy insisted. "Doesn't she look cute, Daphne?"
Daphne, who was trying to write two essays at the same time, nodded her approval without looking up.
Pansy beamed. "See?"
Oh, she did. She saw a headful of pain that she would have to make presentable every morning, which required time, and… well, she really wasn't a morning person. Though to be fair, it really did look nice.
"Right. We're ten minutes late to the feast already. That's twenty by the time we make it up there," she said, hopping off the pouffe she occupied during Pansy's… experiment. "Snape will have our heads."
"Oh, stop fussing! It's fine - I don't know why he's so weird about you after that potions thing - by the way, when are you going to tell us what happened? - but all the other teachers love you. We'll be fine," Pansy said, smoothing her own hair in the mirror. "There. Now we can go."
"Great," Victoria said, pulling the girl away from the said object by the collar of her robes. "Now we are going."
They left the dorm talking about hair, nails, and a dozen other mundane things in an ironic prelude to what was about to unfold just minutes after. It came unexpectedly in a form of a somewhat familiar voice that Victoria personally felt she could go without hearing again.
Kill.
With a sharp intake of breath the witch came to a sudden halt.
"Did you hear that?" she asked, in a voice that sounded far too calm even to her own ears, looking at the walls in attempts to pin down the exact location of the sound. Where there hollows in the stone, or more likely, did it come from the pipes?
"Heard what?" Daphne asked, looking at her questioningly.
Kill. Kill. Kill, kill, kill…
"Strange," Victoria murmured as her heartbeat sped up to match the rhythm of the whispers. "I just thought I heard someone speak."
Daphne rolled her eyes "We're in a castle full of students. Of course someone's speaking. Someone's always speaking!"
Not in death threats, and not from within the sewer.
Whatever, or whoever this was - it was not a student, and it wasn't just some silly prank. Victoria's mind filled up with vivid images of three-headed dogs, Devil's Snare, flaming phoenixes, potions, flying keys, and giant chess sets.
"ARGH!"
Victoria's eyes zoned in sharply on Pansy, who was spread flat on the ground, her hair disheveled, glaring at the retreating form of a small redhead.
It was Ginny Weasley.
"I swear to Merlin, this is the second time the little rat crashed into me!" Pansy sputtered shrilly as she got up and rubbed her back. "I'm done with her. If she can't walk down an empty hallway, she shouldn't be here in the first place!"
While Pansy was layering it on a bit thick, there was a grain of truth to it. Ginny was oddly fidgety and clumsy, constantly walking into people, falling, tripping down the stairs. And it wasn't normal clumsiness either. For some reason, she made Victoria think of a scared rabbit running for its life.
When the three witches finally got to the Great Hall, twenty-five minutes after the Halloween Feast had started, thus earning a few glares from the professors, they hurried to take their seats.
"What happened to your hair?" Blaise asked first thing.
Victoria narrowed her eyes at him. "Pansy happened," she said, stabbing her fork into a piece of roasted chicken.
Blaize burst out laughing, and the black-haired girl smacked him on the arm. "Stop it! Her hair looks great!"
"Sure, sure - it's just Victoria and curls…" the rest of the sentence drowned out in a fit of poorly concealed laughter, and Pansy went on reprimanding him, clearly having taken his reaction personally. These two couldn't be in the same room for an hour without fighting ever since Pansy developed an obvious crush on him, and Blaise began to exploit it mercilessly. Their row got louder, and five minutes in they forgot what it was they were bickering over, and reduced to screaming insults at each other.
Eventually one of the prefects had to intervene, threatening to take points and assign them detentions.
The conversation turned to more sensible topics, and by the time the feast ended and the group left the Great Hall, everything was normal, though Blaise and Pansy still refused to look at each other. But the thing in the walls that seemed to have a sinister goal, the strange actions of Ginny Weaseley and Professor Snape, even the man she saw running toward Knockturn Alley clouded Victoria's thoughts even as she smiled and chattered on. Something was brewing.
When they left the feast and pushed their way through the crowded halls, it quickly became apparent that the floor was flooded.
"Peeves?" Draco asked offhandedly, toeing the edge of the water with his shoe.
"Or Moaning Myrtle," Victoria offered, and took out her wand, murmuring a quick spell. The water disappeared immediately.
"Magic in the corridors. You know, you just broke a rule."
"I can make it come back. You know, I'd love to see you walk through a swamp," Victoria said as the crowd moved forward, "but I suppose a puddle of toilet contents would do."
Draco looked like he was going to be sick. "Please don't."
Someone ahead of them gasped. The Slytherins heads immediately turned toward the sound, and they began to slowly inch through the frozen student body as the front lines began to whisper in panicked, high-pitched tones.
A few seconds later, they saw why.
"Is that - is it dead?" Blaize said breathily, staring at the body of Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, hanging by its tail from a torch holder. But Victoria's eyes were aimed higher.
"Look. Up." she said, intoning each world separately in a calm way that seemed so out of place in that moment, because there, written in something red, were the words:
The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir… beware
And beneath that, right in the middle of the scene, surrounded by a circle of students, stood Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
…
Please Review!
I tried so hard to explain what Victoria's animagi form looks like, and I still feel like it's not a good enough description. So if you're wondering, look up king cobra pictures. The wings acts a lot like the hood - when closed they are basically invisible, but when open they form a hood and slowly begin to detach from her body until you can tell they're wings.
Or just look up pictures of winged snakes on pinterest.
In the AU of this fic, winged serpents are an existing magical species.
Thank you to everyone who had read this story so far, and to everyone who left reviews.
Salazara
