October 23rd, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
12:37 A.M.
The weeks following that initial failure were some of the most stressed and harried weeks of the Golden Trio's young lives. Whether it was their apparent inability to reliably speak to anyone other than each other – a fact which was doing more to shorten Snape's lifespan than anything the three of them had ever done before – or their severely diminished appetites, the only thing that kept all of them from ripping the Mandrake leaves out of their mouth in disgust was the hopeful promise of the Animagus transformation. It fascinated and delighted them. Most of their conversations centered almost entirely around what the three of them thought their forms might be and how vexed they all were that they had no choice in the matter.
"You'll be a raccoon, Harry," Ron laughed. "Great big bloody glasses even when you're an animal."
"A monkey maybe, Ron," Hermione declared. "To match the mess you make as a human."
"I don't know, Hermione. How about a shrew?"
Harry had been walloped hard for that last suggestion.
That said, the joy of what might be could only do so much to overcome the misery of what is. Hermione's inability to properly respond to teachers' questions – even most of the questions posed directly to her – was going to cause her to lose hair soon. Ron had lost four pounds from his lacking appetite, a fact which he seemed completely irreverent too. He just stared longingly at any bowl of chocolate pudding, cursing the earthy taste that all of his food had acquired. Even Harry – the happiest by far of the three of them in this situation – was suffering. The announcement regarding the Tri-Wizard Tournament and the subsequent cancellation of the Quidditch League for the year had given him hope that he may be able to escape most of the complications there, but he was once more out luck. In spite of the lack of actual play being done and in spit of her own desires to enter the Tournament, the newly christened Captain Johnson insisted the team still keep a regular schedule throughout the year to ensure they kept themselves fresh and ready for the following year. For Harry, the unofficial Quidditch practices had turned out practically hellish for him. He refused to open his mouth for any reason if he was even slightly moving his broom, too afraid that the high-speed winds would sheer his leaf off of the top of his mouth. As such, his teammates had taken to forcing undue drills on him in a desperate attempt to get him to call his plays or just bloody talk to another teammate! They were thus far unsuccessful, and Harry got the feeling they were growing tired of his trying new persona.
Luckily, tonight would mark the end of this section of the Golden Trio's lives. When the previous Sunday had dawned on them, gray and dreary, the three of them had traded uneasy glances. Then Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday and then Thursday! On and on the gray clouds stretched, letting not a ray of sunshine nor a speck of moonlight through their grasp. Hermione had looked close to tears Friday night, gripping at her hair and muttering what sounded quite like obscenities under her breath. Not that Harry or Ron would suggest that, that was what they were. The last time they'd called her on her cussing, she'd hexed them in an extremely tender area. Then, Saturday had arrived. The clouds were not gone. But they could see blue sky in between them, and they were fluffy white now – not miasmic gray. The sun dared to peek through the curtain, and even the chilly cold couldn't stop the flower of hope that blossomed in the Trio's chests. Finally, Sunday morning had dawned clear and resplendently blue. There was not a cloud in sight. The sun beamed down brightly upon a courtyard that had only yesterday been dreary and drab.
Hermione had been woken by the warm sun on her face, and Ron and Harry had been woken by a warm Hermione hopping onto their beds, proclaiming the joy of a sunny Sunday morning. Dean had ended up throwing a pillow at the celebrating trio, but that had only served to make them move their party to the Common Room where they would further annoy a group of enterprising seventh years who were up early trying to study in quiet.
"Bloody nuisances, those three," Dean muttered into his pillow.
From his position dangling half off his bed, Neville nodded his sleepy agreement.
Harry, Ron and Hermione spent the day practically vibrating with excitement. All the weather had to do was hold until the moon was high enough in the sky to shine on the Astronomy Tower. Then their trials and tribulations would be over. The potion, Hermione assured them, was very particular – whatever that meant – but it would only require patience and happenstance to work after tonight. There would be no more leaves in mouths. They were all as happy as a new couple after their first snog.
Thus, the night found them in the same place they had been the previous month – atop the Astronomy Tower, cross legged on the floor. They had formed a three-pointed little circle, arrayed around the three phials Hermione had liberated from Snape's office almost two months ago. Hermione had discarded her robes and rolled up her sleeves to give her better, unfettered access to the ingredients. She made a show of checking her watch and then checking her notebook and then checking the moon.
"Right," she swallowed nervously and held out her hand in Ron's direction. "Dew."
Ron jumped to, reaching into his bag and withdrawing three individually bagged phials of dew, the very same that he and Harry had trekked into the Forbidden Forest to get so long ago. Hermione unwrapped them carefully, holding them up into the light to get a better view of how much she was working with. Seemingly satisfied, Hermione set them down in front of her knees, unstoppered them and likewise unstoppered the crystal phials the three of them had in front of them.
With a lightly trembling hand, Hermione raised up one of the dew phials, preparing to tip it into its new crystal container. She paused. "You're absolutely certain that you got it right?"
"It was miles into the forest," Harry said. "No way anyone had touched it."
"The sun?" Hermione pressed.
"Couldn't have been," Harry maintained.
Hermione breathed out a shaky breath. "Alright," she conceded. She tipped the dew into the first of its new containers, following quickly thereafter with the other two. When all was said and done, there were still two and a half full vials of dew left over that went unused. Ron had wanted to pour the lot of it out, out of spite, but Hermione had maintained that they should keep it until the entire process was complete. "You never know what might happen."
With the potion's base now in place, Hermione withdrew a thin knife, grasped a single hair in between her fingers and cut it off, sliding it easily into the crystal phial. The distortion of the water and the crystal made it look much larger than it was. Hermione silently passed the knife to Ron who did likewise before handing it off to Harry. Hermione, meanwhile, had taken up a bowl and was crushing up the chrysalises of the moths she had acquired into a fine dust, which she herself poured into the crystal phials.
"That's it," she said, stoppering her phial. Harry and Ron jumped to do the same, stoppering them tightly.
Ron, gripping his own phial by its long neck, looked up at her in surprise. "What, we're done?" he asked incredulously, as if he considered the entire two-month ordeal of Mandrake leaves, thievery and hiking to be too easy. "No more annoying tasks we have to complete?"
Hermione tugged idly at a lock of curled hair, pointedly not looking him in the eyes. "Well, I didn't say that."
Harry and Ron traded narrowed glances with each other, but Hermione was already continuing, quick to change the subject. Her fingers were flying nervously across the pages of her notebook, flipping between pages faster than Ron or Harry could comprehend the words printed on them. It seemed to make perfect sense to Hermione, however as she settled on a page near the middle of the book. Harry wondered if that was indicative of their progress. Had Hermione used this notebook exclusively for information on the Animagus process, or was the back half of the notebook taken up by other projects? He knew her mind ran at a million miles a second. It wasn't hard for him to imagine her filling every other page with a different idea, nor was it hard for him to see her being perfectly capable of keeping track of it all.
"The potion has to stay out of the sunlight," Hermione was saying, still refusing to meet the gaze of either of her friends. Her finger was running along the lines of her page as she read, a very un-Hermione like thing to do. "If it's touched by sunlight, we have to start the entire process over again." Harry and Ron both groaned loudly at even the thought of that.
"How long do we have to wait?" Harry asked excitedly. His limited knowledge of potions notwithstanding, even he knew that some potions had a very long maturation process. He hoped the Animagus potion wasn't one of the ones that required years to properly mature to full use.
Hermione, exhibiting yet another decidedly un-Hermione like tendency, shrugged, finally looking up from her book. "To be determined," she replied. Seeing both of the boys' furrowed brows, she sighed and continued, "The potions require a natural event to finish setting. Whenever that happens, they'll turn blood red, and we can drink them."
"A natural event?" Ron echoed confusedly. "What's that mean?"
"A thunderstorm, most likely. The book says any sufficiently powerful natural occurrence would work – volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis and the like." Idly, she scratched at her head, briefly turning over a single page to run her eyes across some dashed note on the back. "Professor Villanueva from Beauxbatons – he's a minx Animagus – claimed that his potion set when his wife gave birth, and Professor Parker from the Salem Witch Academy stated that hers set when a colleague died in the same room she was keeping the potion. But…neither of those is likely to happen so…"
Harry snorted. "The way our school years usually go? I wouldn't be surprised if Moody keeled over before the end of the year."
"Wouldn't be the first time," Ron agreed darkly.
Hermione grimaced to herself, her nose wrinkled. "Let's plan for thunderstorms." Scooping up the three potions, she handed them off to Ron, her tone all business again. "Double bag them like you had the dew vials and put them in your trunk. It's less likely we'll be found out if they're in one place."
Who exactly Hermione thought was going to be snooping through their trunks in search of contraband – something that had not happened in the entirety of their Hogwarts career – Harry and Ron did not know, but they did know better than to argue with her. Ron pulled the velvet bags back out of his bag, carefully bundling the vials and then bundling the bundles. Harry wondered if they'd be able to tell them apart when the time came to drink them, but he didn't suspect there would be many issues. Hermione's hair was much longer and curlier than his, and there would be no mistaking Ron's bright orange locks.
"So that's it?" Harry turned his attention onto Hermione as Ron continued to carefully bag up the potions as if they might shatter from the barest touch. He was taking no chances that he may have to again fill his mouth with leaf. "We just have to wait for a thunderstorm?" A grin quirked the corner of his lips. "Or a volcano? Or a birth?"
Hermione, though, did not meet his smile. Instead, she tugged again at the errant lock of hair hanging by her chin. "Well, there is another step…"
Harry did not like her tone, but he forced a chuckle from his lips. "Can't be worse than Mandrake leaves right?" If his voice sounded somewhat strained, his friends were polite enough to not address it.
"No, we just have to say a spell," Hermione replied with her own forced smile. "Everyday. Twice a day."
Harry, growing more and more worried by her avoidance of the subject, said slowly, "That's not terrible…"
Hermione nodded, still tugging on a strand of hair. "At," she hesitated, "sunrise and sunset."
A high-pitched noise emitted from Ron's throat, such that Harry momentarily believed he'd already managed his Animagus transformation into some kind of bird. "Sunrise!?" he cried loud enough to wake the neighboring Ravenclaw Tower. "As in like…when the sun…comes up!?"
"That would be the logical definition of the combined words 'sun' and 'rise', yes!" Hermione snapped waspishly.
Harry ran a hand down his face in a long, single motion, accompanied by an equally long, single groan. When he had finished and his hand had slid off the end of his chin, he petulantly released one more higher pitched groan. "What's the spell?" he asked defeatedly. He contented himself with the knowledge that it wasn't as bad as the Mandrake leaves. It would be just like the Dursleys again – up before the crack of dawn to ensure Dudders had an enormous helping of breakfast.
Harry grimaced and silently resolved to never compare any aspect of this process to life with the Dursleys again.
Hermione flipped exactly three pages. There were only four words on the page she landed on, and though Harry could not read them upside down in her flowing script, he could see that she had viciously circled the incantation several times in looping, overlapping spheres. Hermione winced lightly. "It's quite long, actually," she muttered, more to herself. Ron and Harry both heard her and exchanged harassed glances. "And you can't just say it and go back to sleep. It's more of a meditation, really, to get you in touch with your inner animal."
Harry sat up straighter. "You mean this will tell us what our animal form is?" He was suddenly much more excited about this spell.
Hermione shook her hand in a 'so-so' gesture. "Not in so many words. Certainly, it should help to narrow down what type of animal we are. The reports vary. Some people say they don't feel much of anything – the baseline is a dual heartbeat that can't really tell you much aside from how fast your animal form's heart beats. Others say they can hear their animal or experience sensations their animal might in its natural habitat. Transfiguration masters aren't sure exactly what the difference is between people. Professor McGonagall actually once wrote a fascinating paper on it. She said she knew exactly what her Animagus form was the very first time she performed the spell because she could feel what it was like to kill a mouse as a cat, and she speculated that it was because some people are more in touch with nature than others. For instance, Edgar Allen Poe was an infamous raven Animagus, but he lived in a city his entire life and said he didn't feel anything while using the spell. It's possible that–"
"Hermione!" both boys cried at once.
She blinked up at them, immediately chagrined. A deep red flush spread across her neck. "Sorry," she muttered.
Harry and Ron shared a fond grin. Harry no longer doubted that the entirety of her notebook was filled solely with information about the Animagus process. He wouldn't have been surprised to learn if she had personally transcribed many of the essays she was quoting from.
"Anyway, the spell," she continued, desperate to put her rambling behind her. "We'll have to start tomorrow morning since the sun has already set. Don't worry, the magic accounts for that, but you can't fail to do the spell every morning and every night after this, or the magic will unravel, and you'll have to start over again!"
The teens stayed up well into the night, listening as Hermione explained the finer details of the spell.
October 30th, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
3:47 P.M.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
The days passed in a blur thereafter. However harassed Harry and – particularly – Ron were by the concept of waking up before the sun of their own free will, the delight and euphoria of no longer carrying around a leaf in their mouths overrode most of their complaints. For Harry, it meant a return to his normally chipper self on the Quidditch Pitch, if nowhere else. His team – Angelina in particular – were gleeful to have their Seeker back in top form, and Angelina had drug him off on a variety of occasions to hash out ultimately superfluous plays, as if she thought that Harry would mute himself again in the coming days and she needed to get all that she could out of her time with the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry tried hard not to think about the fact that if the next steps in the process were handled incorrectly, she wasn't entirely wrong. Ron reclaimed his appetite as well as the weight he lost in addition to a few extra pounds that he hadn't. He took to the unsightly habit of consuming food enough to feed three people at every meal to the point that Hermione had temporarily refused to sit by him when eating for a few days until he had calmed his habits down. As for Hermione, she was back to her "horrendously annoying know-it-all self" as Snape put it. Fully capable of speaking again, her hand was always the first to rise when a Professor asked a question as she tried desperately to reclaim her position as the student that would always answer when called upon. She had, unfortunately, burned a few bridges with her classmates as she developed the habit of screaming out the answer to a question even when she was not the one called upon. She was trying to make up for lost time and only stopped when Professors began to deduct points for her interruptions.
All the while, the three of them woke up at exactly the same time, waited patiently by the windows of the Common Room – even the most stalwart of O.W.L and N.E.W.T studiers were not up at that hour, and they had the room to themselves – and intoned the spell that Hermione had drilled into their vocabulary. The stuttering stumbles Harry and Ron had both experienced over the alliterative spell the first few times they'd said it that night on the Astronomy Tower were gone, replaced by surety and proper accentuation. Technically speaking, the spell only had to be intoned once as the sun rose and once as the sun set, but as it was meant to be a meditative experience, Hermione encouraged them both to take their time with the morning ritual. After the first session they'd experienced, Harry and Ron found that they agreed, and the three of them often spent as much as half an hour with their wands pointed into their chests as they incanted. They spent even longer doing so at sunset when they could find a quiet classroom just to themselves and didn't have to worry about nosy upper years coming to see what three fourth years were being so studious about. In all, Harry and Ron had mostly gotten over their reservations about the early rise. When the initial few minutes of exhaustion had passed and they'd cleaned themselves up and prepared for their meditations, they found there was a peace in being up before everyone else. There was also no small amount of amusement in watching Neville, Dean and Seamus stumble groggily into their classes. Harry had taken a great amount of personal pleasure watching Snape curl his lip in distaste at someone other than him the one time Dean had passed out at his potion's stand and spilled a sickly yellow gunk all across his head and neck. It had caused no small amount of hair growth, and Dean was still sporting a glorious mullet days later.
The effects of the spell were as Hermione described them, right down to how much they varied between each other. Hermione seemed the least in touch with her 'wild side' as Ron had dubbed it, feeling only the dull, scattered heartbeat of her animal form during their meditations. She had not yet experienced anything of note that could tell her exactly what her form was going to be. She could assume only that it was small based on how rapid the heartbeat was. Surprisingly – or perhaps unsurprisingly on second thought – it was actually Ron who excelled at the meditations the most. He could feel with absolute certainty a slow, powerful heartbeat, the strength of which he said blotted out his own during meditations. Additionally, he said he felt exceptionally warm, as if he'd been sunbathing at the Burrow for the better part of two days and at times he felt as if a great weight had been laid all around his head and neck. Harry and Hermione had no ideas as to what the second sensation could mean, but they both speculated that the heat was probably a factor of his animal form's environment – perhaps a desert. Ron had unpleasantly muttered that he hoped desperately he was not a camel. As for Harry, he was middle of the road. He felt the arrhythmic heartbeat of his animal form, but that was largely it. Occasionally, he would startle, feeling as if he had been blasted in the face with some type of cool wind or possibly an ocean wave. He hoped his form wasn't some type of fish. He didn't foresee how that was possible given how terrible of a swimmer he was. He had described the sensations to both Ron and Hermione, but they did not have enough details to render any kind of opinion on what it might mean. Still, he woke every morning excited to continue his meditations, hoping that today would be the day he'd feel what he needed to, to know what his form was.
Presently, the trio were arrayed on the outskirts of the grounds with the rest of the student body all around them. Today was the day that had been hotly anticipated by the school at large – the day the delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were both due to arrive. Many of the students were all atwitter about the event for a variety of reasons. He had heard girls giggling about how handsome French boys were supposed to be – a comment that miffed Harry in a way that was very British – and he had heard some of the Slytherins commenting that Durmstrang students were meant to know some right nasty curses on account of their Dark Arts classes. Dark Arts, Harry noted. Not Defense Against the Dark Arts. He wondered what type of students an academy like that would turn out – he hoped they were a pleasant sort but didn't hold his breath. And then there were others like Hermione who were simply fascinated by the idea of meeting students who studied under different curriculums. It would be, she assured both Ron and Harry at every chance she got, a fascinatingly educational experience to talk to them. Ron and Harry took her word for it.
Just now, though, Hermione was not eagerly awaiting the arrival of Beauxbatons or Durmstrang but staring up warily at the sky above them. Harry tracked her gaze, wondering – with a brief spurt of excitement – if she was seeing the beginnings of a storm brew. He was disappointed to see that the skies were clear and light blue, reflecting the palpable excitement of the Hogwarts students.
"You don't think they'll be late, do you?" Hermione asked distractedly. She was idly chewing on the pinky nail of her left hand, a nervous tick she'd developed over the course of the last two months. Neither Harry nor Ron thought she was entirely aware of what she was doing. No doubt she'd be horrified to discover the damaging habit. And it seemed that she had subconsciously relegated the chewing to a single nail. "We'd get in so much trouble if we ditched the arrival to do our spell."
Ron was unconcerned, reaching down to fish an orange from the picnic basket they'd brought with them. The three of them had been among the first to make their way out to the lawn in preparation for their guests' arrival. Harry and Ron had moaned a bit, but they were lapping up the benefits now, being one of the few to have good seats at the very edge of the lake on a comfortable blanket that Hermione had enchanted with warming charms to help ward off the October chill. The snows hadn't quite set in yet, but it wouldn't be long before the broke. Harry wondered if a blizzard would count as a natural event to the potions sitting comfortably in Ron's trunk. "They're not even supposed to get here until four. We've got time."
"'Sides, we've skived off dinners more than once the past week," Harry said dismissively, echoing Ron's tone.
"We have not skived off," Hermione retorted, clearly affronted by the notion that she would ever skive off anything. "We've only been late a few times. And that's rather different than not being present to welcome guests. Don't you think McGonagall would notice?"
"Reckon she'd be too busy to notice," Ron muttered half-intelligibly, his mouth full of two orange slices. Harry nodded his agreement.
Hermione groaned quietly, blowing a tuft of hair out of her face as she did. "You two are hopeless. Don't you ever worry about anything!?"
Harry grinned impishly. "Why would we need to, Hermione?" he asked sweetly. "We've got you for that."
Hermione tried in vain to fight the exasperated smile that tugged at her lips, and Ron and Harry descended into raucous laughter. "Honestly," Hermione muttered with fond exasperation.
Whatever Harry or Ron may have said in response was drowned out by the collective gasp of most of the student body, immediately drawing the trio's attention away from their faux squabble. Around them, hundreds of students were looking upward, their bodies contorted in various examples of excitement, be it shaky jitters, tiny little in-place jumps or hands raised to cover mouths that were still gasping. "In the sky!" someone shouted near the back.
As one, the students craned their necks to see that there was something in the sky moving swiftly towards them. Far too distant to be seen properly, it looked like a shapeless shadow, its blurry, formless edges slowly solidifying into recognizable shapes the closer it got. Harry thought he could see the outline of a corner near the left, but he was, perhaps, not the best judge when it came to seeing anything at a distance – or even really just seeing anything.
Hermione, her hand raised to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun, smirked lightly. "Is it a bird?" she asked dryly.
"I think it's a plane," Harry laughed.
Ron looked at both of them askance. "What are you two on about, it's a carriage. Look!"
Ron was correct. Now much closer, the shadow had taken on the indistinguishable shape of a horse-drawn carriage – complete with four stunning, golden winged horses flapping their powerful wings in the front. Clearly a French design, he could see the reflective shine of artistic golden filigree all along the sides and front, set on baby blue wooden panels. It was stunning to look at, Harry would admit – for the French. The carriage banked suddenly, falling into a dive that carried them hundreds of feet down. The winged horses tucked their wings tight against their bodies as the carriage plummeted towards the earth, only to open them back wide, catching the wind and gliding over the assembled student body of Hogwarts, hooves and carriage wheels passing bare feet over their heads. Most of the students let out startled gasps of fear and excitement.
Hermione, her hand still raised to block the sun, turned to track the carriage's movement as it banked into a wide turn, slowing considerably. "Superman!" she whispered with faux excitement, her lips still quirked in humor.
Harry met her gaze, and the muggle raised duo fell into fitful giggles as Ron looked on in abject confusion.
"Mental, you two," he shook his head.
Serenaded by their own laughter, the trio settled in to await the arrival of the Durmstrang contingent.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
November 9th, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
5:53 P.M.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus"
Given how well the year had been going for Harry thus far – a Death Eater attack at the World Cup notwithstanding – he ought to have known that something was soon going to come along and burst his bubble. And, on top of that, he ought to have known that it would happen on Halloween. Why he had not yet boycotted that holiday, he didn't know, but he was going to seriously consider it next year. If it wasn't Quirrell running in to whinge about a troll that he let in, it was Mrs. Norris being found petrified by a bloody basilisk. If it wasn't his half-deranged godfather breaking into Gryffindor Tower in a murderous rage, it was being chosen as the bloody fourth Tri-Wizard Champion for Hogwarts!
Harry had, had no less than four furious breakdowns over the fact that he ought to be disqualified for being the fourth Champion in the Tri-Wizard tournament, one of which had been in front of the combined panel of judges and Ministry officials. Nothing had yet come of it and Hermione seemed to be growing increasingly agitated with each repetition. That was nothing compared to the supreme agitation – and that was really stretching the definition of the word – of the rest of the school. The Hufflepuffs, usually incredibly kind, easy-going people he got along with – Zacharias Smith being the obvious exception – had completely turned on him. Not an hour went by without passing a yellow trimmed student in the hallways, their fierce glares usually accompanied by curses – both verbally and magically. One first year had gone so far as to stomp on his foot, and he'd been so gobsmacked by the audacity of the little swot that he hadn't done anything to retaliate. The Slytherins were actually fairly excited about the entire ordeal, if only because they greatly enjoyed watching him suffer. He heard the betting pool on when he would die had reached two thousand galleons. Fred had put down fifteen galleons that he would survive the entire thing. George had put down fifteen on him dying in the Second Task.
"Got to cover our bases, mate," he'd explained, not the least bit apologetic.
"We're trying to start a business, you know," Fred had supplied.
The Ravenclaws were the only relatively neutral group in the school, but even then, he saw plenty of them proudly displaying their 'Potter Stinks' badges, a sentiment that, while annoying, was childish enough for him to largely ignore. As for the Gryffindors, their betrayal had hurt the most. "Your House will be like your family," McGonagall had told them with no small amount of severity on that gloomy evening they'd first stepped into Hogwarts. Well, Gryffindor had proven themselves resoundingly similar to his family, turning their backs on him at the first chance they got. They matched the Hufflepuffs glare for glare, and while the hissed insults were less common and the magical jinxes and curses completely nonexistent, every whispered word into his ear by a fellow Lion hurt all the more. He had even heard one or two of the younger years use the term 'freak'. He had steadfastly refused to show exactly how much that had shaken him.
The only saving grace was that Ron and Hermione, stalwart as always, had patently refused to abandon him. Indeed, they had circled the wagons around him so severely that they had more than once gotten in trouble with McGonagall – and in one particularly explosive incident, Snape – on his behalf. Hermione had nearly clawed Lavender's eyes out for insinuating that Harry had done it only for the attention, and Ron had cursed Seamus bald when the git had admitted to cashing in on the 'Harry's Going to Die' pool. The Gryffindors seemed to take it as a personal insult that Ron and Hermione had both announced that they believed him, and he had been wracked with horrible guilt the moment the rest of the House had begun to level the same accusations of 'cheat' and 'glory hound' at them. Ron and Hermione had simply brushed it off.
It was, frankly, astounding just how protective Ron was being of him. He seemed to take every insult levied at Harry as a personal slight, responding as if he were the one being insulted. After the fifth such incident – involving an upper year Hufflepuff and a particularly unsightly bowel loosening curse – Harry and Hermione had sat him down to insist he ease up on the retributions. Ron had claimed fervently that even he didn't know exactly where this new protective streak was coming from. Certainly, he had always stuck up for Harry whenever the likes of Malfoy sauntered over to make wise cracks about dead parents, but it had never before extended beyond petty retorts and the occasional drawn wand. Ron had sat two detentions in the last week and a half, all on behalf of Harry. It was Hermione – of course – who speculated that it had to do with their Animagus meditations. Ron, being the most in tune with animal form, was exuding characteristics similar to what his animal form would – namely, fierce, aggressive protectiveness. Hermione called it 'The Bleeding Effect', a well-documented phenomenon inherent to Animaguses. In almost every case, an Animagus was known to exhibit some aspect of their animal form's personality or characteristics. Professor McGonagall, for instance, was well known for her love of seafood. Harry had learned from a few letters from Remus that Sirius had inherited a dog's ability so fall asleep instantaneously whenever he wanted to, and the less said about Pettigrew's rat like features, the better. On the positive, that narrowed the possibilities of Ron's form down considerably – he was obviously some kind of pack animal, probably a predator based on his aggressive responses. On the negative side of things, Ron was now having to learn how to control a newfound temper, something he had never been good at in the first place.
As for Harry and Hermione, their meditations continued with little deviance. Harry continued to feel the odd, random sensation here and there – chiefly, he felt random bursts of wind on his face or chest – and he had become fairly certain that his form was a bird of some sort, although that hardly narrowed it down. Hermione's one major breakthrough had been, as she described it, "the uncomfortable sensation of having sandpaper run up her arms and chest". Harry and Ron didn't know what to make of that at all, and they wisely kept their remarks to themselves. Morning and evening meditations became Harry's favorite time of day. Safe in a solitary, quiet environment with the only two people in the castle who did not think he was an attention-seeking glory hound, Harry could just manage to forget his woes and worries as he sunk into the spell and its incantation. He could forget the glares and harsh words of classmates, the disappointed stares of his Professors, the harsh betrayal of his Housemates. At times, deep within his meditative trance, he could even pretend that he had already mastered his transformation – that he really was a bird, free and unfettered. The disappointment grew everyday that a thunderstorm – or a volcano, earthquake, tsunami, birth, or death, Harry thought dryly – failed to show up.
Harry, realizing with that thought that the trance had well and truly broken, finished his final incantation for the night and withdrew from his thoughts. He was more and more reluctant everyday to return to the waking world of human responsibility. Being 'Harry' seemed a weight that got heavier every day. Only, he could at any time look across the room to his two friends and feel the weight lessen. Ron had already withdrawn from his own meditations and was waiting quietly at the far end of the disused classroom they'd decided to occupy. He was trailing bright red and gold lights through the air with his wand, occasionally flicking them to form crude words that Hermione would slap him for. Hermione herself was still quietly incanting, her wand pointed – rather too hard, Harry thought – into her chest. Her face was scrunched up tight in the way that it got when she was puzzling over a particularly difficult question that she didn't yet have the answer to. He knew that it irked her that she was the least in tune with her form of the three of them, and he was all the more grateful for her cooperation in this ridiculous scheme of his for it. It wouldn't have been possible without Hermione.
Harry sighed, beleaguered. A hand rose to run through his messy hair, distractedly knotting it in to even more of a crow's nest then it had been before – was his form a crow, he wondered idly, smiling briefly at the thought. At the beginning of the year, it had seemed like such a laugh, learning how to be an Animagus. Never mind that it just seemed like an awesome skill to have, it made him feel connected to his father – and Sirius – in a truly profound way. Harry had thought he'd reached the peak of his connection to his dad when his Patronus had taken the form of a stag, which he now knew to be his father's Animagus form. Now, though, he had a chance to follow in his footsteps, breaking rules and learning skills that few others in the entire world knew. He would be part of an exclusive club, the same exclusive club that had included his father. He had even hoped that his form would turn out to be a stag just like his father's, and, although he had hidden it well from his friends, he had been rather disappointed when he discovered that wasn't going to happen. He had brought Ron and Hermione in on it to share in the wonder, to do what they always did – get into more trouble than they should reasonably ever be in. It had been amazing! Even the horror of the leaves, he knew would one day be a fond memory he'd reminisce about to his kids. Now, though, he wasn't entirely sure if it had been the right call.
The First Task was a little over two weeks away. He had no idea what awaited him, what he would do, how he would survive let alone win. He was outclassed in every way imaginable by the other Champions, and his very presence in the Tournament was a violation of international law. He was fairly certain that every Ministry official that had been present when his name had spat out of the Goblet firmly believed him to be a cheat, and it was only his status as the Boy-Who-Lived that had saved him from litigation. And here he was, meditating on a stupid spell every morning and every night while he waited for a 'natural event' to free him from the routine, as if it mattered at all. The odds were, the Weasley Twins and most of the rest of Hogwarts would be cashing out an enormous payday in two weeks when he was killed by whatever 'test of strength' the officials had planned. Well, there would be a benefit at least. Harry's death would no doubt set Ron and Hermione's potions and allow them to finish the process. It was a macabre thought, but Harry had found no small amount of sick joy in it.
He had even briefly considered giving up on the process altogether. Stopping the meditations, allowing the potion to spoil and going on with his tormented, cursed life. He was convinced that magic had purposefully tipped the scales away from him at every single turn. He could reap the benefits of escaping the Dursleys to a world of magic and wonder, but the price was discovering that he was famous for something he couldn't remember, for something that had taken his parents from him. He could hope beyond hope that his godfather would be proven innocent of the crimes he didn't commit, that he could have a real home with a man who wanted him, but the price for such foolish dreams was watching them crumble around him. And he could dare to try and form a lasting connection with his father's spirit, but the price would be serving as a pawn in someone else's scheme with this ridiculous tournament. Maybe, he figured, if he stopped trying to do what he wanted, the universe would stop fucking him over.
A thick, wadded up ball of parchment bounced suddenly off his head. Harry looked up, affronted only to see Ron with a slick grin on his face, his arms splayed over the back of the desks behind him. His best mate was watching him with an evil eye. "Stop brooding," Ron commanded.
Harry glared at him, miffed. "I wasn't brooding!" he said in a very broody tone.
"You're always brooding," Hermione muttered from her position to his left. Her head was bent down as she packed her books away, but she had most certainly meant for him to hear her.
"I am not!"
Ron hummed his disagreement, rubbing idly at his chin as if in thought. "Your mouth is closed and you're frowning. So, you're brooding."
Hermione nodded sagely, as if Ron had just spoken a phrase of great wisdom. "He's right."
Harry opened his mouth to retort, but Ron was ahead of him. "Let me guess!" he cried over him, raising a hand and making a 'go on' gesture. "Something about 'woe is me', 'nothing ever goes right', right?"
"You forgot 'fourth wizard in a Tri-Wizard tournament'," Hermione faux whispered in a mocking voice, emphasizing 'Tri' in exactly the way that Harry would during one of his rants.
"Right, right," Ron nodded at her. "Your parents are dead too, right? Haven't heard that one before."
Harry gaped at him, jaw dropped and all. Hermione gazed long into Ron's face as he fought a smirk, desperate to keep the serious mask on his face. He broke as a giggle escaped Hermione's mouth, his smile cracking into a wide-open grin. Raucous laughter escaped his lips. Harry, try as he might to muster up some kind of indignant anger, could not fight the smile that twitched onto his face.
"You two are the worst," he shook his head at them, prompting even louder laughter.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
November 19th, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
12:03 P.M.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
Harry had – perhaps naively – believed that the universe had already had its fill of surprising him this year. After all, the Death Eater attack at the World Cup had caught him completely off guard to the point that he had misplaced his wand, and to say that he had been floored by his name coming out of the Goblet was a severe understatement. He ought to have known better. He ought to have known that even thinking such things was tempting fate. At the very least, this surprise turned out to be rather pleasant when the shock had faded.
It occurred in perhaps the best place it was possible for it to have occurred given the circumstances – the middle of one of Binns' dry lectures. Harry had been going about his usual routine doodling absently on blank parchment while pretending to listen to Binns recite a monotonous tale of the fifth Goblin Rebellion of 1497. He was aware enough of the lecture to know that, that was the subject, but he did not know if that meant that it was the fifth Goblin Rebellion to occur in 1497 alone – which seemed excessive to him – or if it was simply the fifth Goblin Rebellion to ever occur. He didn't worry too much about it. If it was really necessary to know, Hermione was sure to have kept encyclopedic notes.
Hermione herself was beside him doing just that, head bent dutifully over a long piece of parchment that she had filled to bursting with Binns' dry words. Hermione always complained of wrist cramps walking out of History of Magic. For as dry and boring as his words were, Binns certainly didn't lack for them. Harry was glad to see that she had given up on glaring at him during this class – something that had taken years. It was an affront to Hermione's studious nature to do anything other than pay attention when a Professor was speaking, but she had evidently finally come to the decision that Harry's doodling was less offensive than Ron's drooling. The youngest Weasley male usually used this period as a chance to catch up on his sleep – especially these days when they had to wake up so early to meet their meditations.
Harry smiled lightly. He, Ron, and Hermione's sudden schedule shift had put them among the first students to enter the Great Hall for breakfast every day. McGonagall had pulled him aside to congratulate him on his new, disciplined, studious outlook, wrongly attributing it to his preparations for the Tournament. He had thought about correcting her, but the five points she'd given him for it had dissuaded him. His smile pulled into a frown. He wished that he could attribute it to Tournament preparations, but the truth was he was barely doing any Tournament preparations. With no idea as to what the First Task would be, Harry was completely in the dark as to what he should be preparing for. That, combined with the enormous skill and knowledge difference between himself and the other Champions had completely overwhelmed him. The condescending, disdainful article by Rita Skeeter had done little to improve his confidence.
Hermione nudged him with her shoulder and, still not looking up, slid a ripped piece of parchment into his view. It'll be alright.
Harry, genuinely amused, resisted a snort. He scribbled a hasty note in reply, grinning all the while. Passing notes in class, Ms. Granger?
He was careful not to look at her, but he barely choked down his laughter at her offended huff. The note slid back into his view. Don't be ridiculous!
Harry really did fail to choke down the laugh completely this time, but the rest of the class was too zoned out to notice the chortles from the back of the room. Harry reached down to scribble another sarcastic response only to pause, his hand halfway to the paper. A glob of ink collected on the point of his quill and fell onto the scrap of parchment below, smudging their previous notes. Harry strained his eyes, blinking and shaking his head in confusion. He…couldn't see. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He could see insofar as he could make out enormous, shapeless blobs of fuzzy color, but he would scarcely be able to tell how many fingers someone was holding up if they tested him. Harry reached up, rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses, but it did no good. He still could not see.
Harry snatched his glasses off his head, thinking maybe they had fogged for some reason – perhaps one of the students in the class had jinxed them about this bloody Tournament. For the second time, Harry paused. More precisely, he froze, and his glasses slipped from his grasp, clattering noisily with the floor. A few students turned around – Binns continued droning on, unconcerned – but they turned their heads away quickly when they saw who had caused the ruckus.
Harry, his gaze still trained fixedly at a single, wobbly grain on the desk, reached out blindly to pat urgently on Hermione's shoulder. She looked up, sputtering momentarily as the movement put her face directly in line with his patting hand. "What?" she demanded in a low hiss. "Are you alright?"
Harry blinked. He blinked again. He blinked one last time just to be sure. "I can see," he whispered hoarsely at her.
Hermione furrowed her brow. "What? Of course you can. What are you talking about?"
"No," he responded urgently, excitement trickling into his voice and giving it a little volume. Hermione made a frantic shushing gesture. "No, Hermione. I can see." He pointed aggressively at his unencumbered eyes.
Hermione drew back, eyes wide. "What?" This time, she sounded more stunned than annoyed.
"Your eyes are brown," Harry told her gleefully. "You've got three freckles underneath your left eye that look like a triangle. And that!" he pointed down at her sheet. "That says '417 dead at Battle of Gringotts, November 1497'. Hermione, I can see!"
"Shhhhh!" she insisted, glancing warily at the annoyed looks they were getting from their classmates. It was one thing to not pay attention in History of Magic – everyone did that – but it was another to infringe on someone else's not paying attention. "I don't get it, what happened?"
Harry shrugged in a mighty 'I dunno' gesture. "It just happened. One second to the next. I could see through my glasses and then I couldn't."
Hermione's eyes glazed, and she began to mutter random syllables of fragmented words in that way she did when she began to think faster than her mouth could work. For several long seconds, her eyes darted back and forth, her mouth working wildly as she catalogued and dissected the issue in her mind's eye. Then the fog cleared. "The Bleeding Effect," she determined.
Harry frowned. "I thought that was only with like…minor things. Like Ron's temper. Or McGonagall's appetite."
"Professor McGonagall," Hermione corrected out of habit, chewing lightly on the end of her quill. "It's not unheard of. Powerful witches and wizards usually reap greater benefits from the Bleeding Effect. Charlemagne was a hippopotamus Animagus, and the stories say he could bite through iron chains. You said you were sure it was a bird?"
Harry nodded absently, disconcerted by her words. "Must be, yeah, I know what it feels like to fly…"
"Must be a bird of prey, then. Something with amazing sight, powerful enough to overcome your own ocular issues."
"Ocular issues?" Harry echoed. Only Hermione could make his legal blindness sound so clinical. "But I don't get it, why would that happen for me?"
Hermione looked up at him oddly. "What do you mean?"
"You said powerful wizards," Harry retorted.
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "Yes," she said, as if she didn't get what he was saying.
"Why would it–" Harry cut himself off, reaching up to scratch at the side of his head. "I mean, I'm just…well, I'm just me."
Hermione's gaze softened like butter. "Oh, Harry," she said, as one might say to a troubled child who didn't understand what he was saying. "You don't really think that, do you?"
Harry furrowed his brow at her.
"It seems we are out of time," Binns' monotonous voice drifted from the front. Harry's brain was well programed to keep an ear out for a dismissal amidst the endling droning of useless facts. "Please collect your things. Seven inches on goblin genealogies from 1432-1576 by next class, with special emphasis on what bloodlines proved most influential towards–"
Harry tuned him out again, sure that Hermione would remember the assignment on his behalf. Across the aisle from him, Ron snorted himself awake, falling off of his hand momentarily. He blinked blearily at the two of them, smacking his lips. "I miss anything interesting?"
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
November 24th, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
3:16 P.M.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
The thunderous roars were still ringing in his ears. The roar of the crowd. The roar of his own blood pounding in his ears. The roar of the wind as he sheared through it, faster than he had ever gone in any Quidditch game. And, of course, the sky splitting roar of the Hungarian Horntail. It was over, he reminded himself. He had done it. The cool metal of the egg pressed against his burning leg – still exceedingly warm and blistered from the near miss he'd had with the Dragon's flames – was testament to that. He had done it. He had succeeded. He had done it. It was over. The thunderous roars were still ringing in his ears. The roar of the crowd. The roar of his own blood pounding in his ears…
Madame Pomphrey bustled around him, worried lines creasing her face as she waved her wand back and forth across his figure. Physically, he was fine. The burn on his leg was surface level, the scrapes on his face and hands easily healed. Something had caught his lower back rather viciously – who knew what he had gotten up to while he'd been off trying to out fly a dragon – but that too would be right as rain after a night of rest and potions. All things considered, he'd gotten off rather well. Indeed, all the Champions had with the exception of Miss Delacour who had taken rather too long to put out her burning skirt. She'd be applying that topical ointment for at least a week. Unfortunately, she was quite certain Mr. Potter was descending rapidly into shock. He was looking everywhere but nowhere, his eyes glazed over and faraway. He seemed to be swaying in place, as if he were still banking his broom to escape the Dragon's clutching jaws. He only barely responded when she snapped her fingers in front of his gaze. She was halfway to sedating him, but the cursed judges wouldn't allow it until his score was rendered. She'd wanted to hex Dumbledore when she'd been informed of Mr. Potter's involvement in the Tournament, and she was quite certain it wouldn't be the last time she'd experience that feeling this year.
"Harry!" two voices cried at once behind her.
Poppy rounded on them in an instant. "No!" she ground out emphatically, splaying her arms wide and blocking their view of the boy. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him list suddenly to the side, only to right himself like a toddler fighting sleep. "He is harassed and barely functional! I will not have you stressing him further with undo noise!"
Ron snorted. "Fat chance of that, isn't there?" He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the tent flap. A wind was catching it at periodic intervals, throwing it open far enough to let in the roar of the crowd. "Have you heard the ruckus out there?"
Poppy brandished her wand in his face, a scathing scalp cleaning charm on the tip of her tongue. "That does not in any way relate to how I shall run my medical tent, Mr. Weasley!"
Ron leaned away, his eyes crossing. "Right," he said quickly, stammering his words. "Of course. Sorry, Madame Pomphrey. Course you're right." He had his hands up in surrender, a nervous, tittering smile on his lips.
The tent flap pealed back, this time by a dark-skinned hand, and a young man leaned his head into the tent. Pomphrey resisted the urge to curl her lip at the man. He was another faceless Ministry official she couldn't bother to learn the name of. All the better to keep them faceless and nameless – it made them easier to blame for putting her charges in danger like this.
Still, his smile was pleasant enough. "Sorry, Madame, but if he's alright, the judges are ready for him."
Poppy did not curl her lip at the man, but she made no effort to disguise her displeased grimace. Her wand fell away, and she harrumphed angrily. "Oh, very well!" She waved the two other Gryffindors towards their friend. "You two, help him out! Keep him steady, and as soon as he has his scores, you get him straight back here so I can knock him out!"
Ron and Hermione had both moved to stand on either side of the Boy-Who-Lived before she had even finished speaking. Each of them took a firm grip on one of his arms, Ron going so far as to sling Harry's over his shoulder to better support him. Harry swayed on his feet briefly, threatening to spill over Ron's back before Hermione tugged him back into balance. A dopey smile alighted on his face. "I'm good, I'm good," he assured her in an almost loopy voice. "It's over. I did it. I'm safe. It's good. It's over…" The muttered reassurances continued, petering off into an inaudible murmur that had Hermione looking at him with no small amount of worry.
"You see what I mean, then?" Poppy asked rakishly.
Hermione grimaced. "We'll get him back as soon as we can, Madame. Come on, Harry."
As the three Gryffindors half-stumbled their way out of the tent – that annoyingly pleasant Ministry official gesturing grandly in the direction they were meant to go – Poppy ran a hand down her face. She wondered if she would ever have anyone in her life to prevent her from experiencing undo stress.
"Really!" she muttered scathingly, turning around to organize her already perfectly organized potions. "Tournaments and teenagers and dragons! These children will be the death of me! And none more so than Harry Potter!"
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
December 7th, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
4:09 P.M.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
Harry rode something of a high in the days following the First Task. Once the shock had worn off – courtesy of much appreciated medical coma induced by Madame Pomphrey – the reality of his situation had truly set in. Not only was he still alive – and certainly he had bankrupted no small amount of Slytherins for pulling that off – but he had done even more than just survive! He had thrived! His performance in the First Task had been, as Ludo Bagman had been quick to assure him, exemplary! The judges, barring the blatantly biased Karkaroff, had been quite impressed with his death-defying flight against the Horntail. While it had not been the most economical solution in terms of time, it had by far been the most entertaining to witness. Krum's brute force solution had cost him in the long run, Cedric's ingenious Transfigurations had required too much focus and Fleur's had likewise not accounted for circumstances like a Dragon's deep slumber fire breathing. Indeed, the judges – again, with the exception of Karkaroff – agreed that he had made the most successful use of his individual skillset to best the Task. That was no small compliment, and the fact that he was currently tied for first place with Krum had twisted many a nipple in the Hogwarts student body.
Oh, the majority still thought he was an attention seeking glory hound, of course. It was just that no one really wanted to be on the bad side of a fourteen-year-old that had successfully tussled with one of the most aggressive dragon species in the world.
The Trio's meditations continued with barely any change.
Enthused by Harry's newfound 20/20 vision (an estimate on the part of Hermione who was by no means an expert in vision testing), the Trio threw themselves even further into the meditations than before, often times taking up hours in the evenings as they sunk deeper and deeper into their respective trances. More than once, they'd had to huddle uncomfortably close to each other beneath the Cloak and shuffle their way back to the Tower to avoid Filch or McGonagall or – worst of all – Snape, which was a prospect made far more difficult as fourteen-year-olds than as eleven-year-olds.
Unfortunately, despite Hermione's insistence on meditating for at least five minutes longer than the boys and Ron's apparently natural talent for connecting with his 'wild side', what few examples of the Bleeding Effect they could conjure served only to drive Hermione spare as she had suddenly developed an alarming penchant for random, short lived naps. Ron had laughed himself into a coughing fit at the absolutely harried look she had sported when she'd wandered into the Common Room, fresh from a severe telling off by Madame Pince about the 'proper care of historical tomes'. Evidently, she had drooled on the school's only copy of Oscar Wilde's Magically Mundane, one of only seventeen copies of the closeted wizard's collection of magical poems in existence.
It had taken Hermione several minutes to admit – in a voice like she had survived a bombing – that she had been banned from handling the library's rarer books until the next term. Ron's redoubled laughter had been enough to draw her from her shellshocked stupor, though only long enough to begin chasing him around the Common Room with the thickest volume of Hogwarts: A History that she could find – which Harry and Ron privately believed she kept hold of for the soul purpose of wholloping them when they got too much on her nerves. Harry had only sat back and observed, as he had been doing for the better part of a month now.
It had been quite a shock to the Wizarding World when Harry Potter, who was infamous for exactly two things – his scar and his glasses – had arrived at breakfast one morning completely devoid of the eponymously round spectacles everyone had come to associate him with. Neville had, in fact, shyly attempted to tell Harry that he must have forgotten them in the dorms, and Malfoy had attempted to make a loud and entirely unfunny joke out of the fact that Harry must have had his brain singed to forget something so obvious.
Mouth stuffed full of butter, toast, and eggs, Harry had only grinned, and the blonde ponce had eventually wandered off.
Operating under the – admittedly flimsy – excuse that Hermione had dug up some old Optometry Charms to heal his vision, he and the would-be eye doctor had, had to sit through nearly an hour of McGonagall's heated lecturing about the danger of unsupervised ocular surgery. And really, they hadn't meant to laugh. It had been an offhanded thing, beginning at the corner of the lips with a twitch of amusement that the other would mirror and exacerbate. A vicious cycle that had eventually ended up with the both of them holding on to heaving sides and clinging to the other for support so as to not fall from their chairs in the midst of their delirium. McGonagall had, of course, given them a furious detention for the 'disrespect', which had only served to add fuel to the fire.
Really, given that the likely outcome of their botching the Animagus procedure could result in permanent, un-healable disfigurations that would trap them in a hellish middle ground between man and beast, 'botched ocular surgery' just didn't seem to have the same bite. Neither, they had thought in the mist of their raucous laughter, did the threat of a detention hold much sway in the face of the minimum sentence of three years in Azkaban if they were caught.
McGonagall had given them two subsequent detentions for the outburst before throwing her hands up, accepted that Harry's vision had turned out perfectly fine, and Harry had settled into the quiet, personally pleased routine of learning how to observe without the obscuring influence of too thick glass.
Things, he felt safe enough in thinking, were looking up.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
December 17th, 1994
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
7:38 P.M.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
Things were not looking up.
Despite the distance that had grown between him and Halloween as time drug on, the aftereffects of the night's fateful events continued to plague him. It irked Harry – and by extension, Ron and Hermione, who'd sat through hours of his whinging over the last few months – to no end that he'd had to split his time between loving the Animagus process and despising the Tri-Wizard Tournament. He felt most days as if he were pivoting from one extreme to the next, often more than once in a single day. From the elation of his animal form's stuttering heartbeat to the annoyance of the rest of the school's lack of belief in him. From the giddiness of remembering – for the twelfth time in a day – that he no longer needed his glasses to the shuddering breaths of his now fire and dragon filled nightmares. It had all been bad enough in the lead up to the First Task, when he had known little and expected less. But now the Tournament had thrown a dragon at him, leaving any and all death defying options open to him in the future. And far worse than simply not being told what the next Task entailed, he now felt every further day he continued in ignorance of the Second Task's details to be a personal failure. The answers were there, reflecting distorted, golden images in his hand and filling his ears with ringing screeches. He just couldn't find his way to them.
And then, of course, there was the Yule Ball. Far worse – in Harry's opinion – than anything that the next Task could throw at him was his ongoing inability to muster up the courage to even try and find a date. It didn't help that Hermione – who had been his first choice to ask – had apparently already secured her date to the Ball, although she continued to refuse to say who it was in the face of Ron's continued refusal to believe she actually had one. The redhead himself had also managed to find some newfound confidence and had asked Lavender Brown to the Ball no less than five minutes before an elder Durmstrang boy had attempted to do the same. Meanwhile, Harry had been shown up in courage by six separate girls, one of which was a Ravenclaw first year who had somehow found the gumption to ask him to the Ball in the middle of the Great Hall at dinner. He'd still been fairly certain that he'd been more mortified to decline her invitation than she had been to receive his declination. He had been fully prepared to skip the ordeal all together, but McGonagall – who he had become certain in the last few months had inherited feline hearing from the Bleeding Effect – had descended upon him within an hour to inform him that, that was not possible as he, a Champion, was required to open the Ball with his partner.
"Ah," Harry had tried, eyes darting back and forth across the hallway in a desperate bid to latch onto anything that wasn't the overbearing form of his Head of House. "Well, technically as it is a Tri-Wizard Tournament–"
He had trailed off in the wake of McGonagall's furious glare at the words that she – along with most of the rest of Gryffindor – had become painstakingly used to from him.
He had sighed and muttered quite defeatedly, "Yes, ma'am."
That had been a week ago, and he was no closer to finding a date today than he had been then. His efforts – or, more specifically, the lack thereof – had been met with no small amount of derision from both Hermione and Ron as well as others. Seamus and Dean had spent the previous night ribbing him about his priorities. "You can outfly a bloody dragon, but you can't ask a girl out!?" Lavender had likewise spent the morning giggling behind her hand to Parvati while throwing him looks that could, at best, be classified as blatant. He'd caught no words of their conversation, but the mirth swimming in Parvati's eyes had disabused him of the notion to even think about asking her. Even Neville had gotten in on the jokes, citing "I asked Ginny the day after Dumbledore announced it." as his excuse to do so. That had doubly annoyed him, seeing as how Ginny would have been a perfect candidate to ask to the Ball and Harry could find absolutely no reason to shoot down Neville's ribbing.
"Just ask someone!" Hermione had hissed at him that very morning in apparent annoyance. As if it were simply that easy!
"It kind of is, mate," Ron had supplied with a shit-eating grin on his face after Harry had voiced such complaints.
Again, Harry had been quite annoyed at his inability to poke holes in his best friend's logic.
Desperate to escape the claustrophobic, girl-filled halls of the school, Harry had fled to the clear, open air of the grounds after lunch, a freshly written letter to Sirius clasped tightly in his hands. Harry had no way of knowing if Sirius was even getting these letters as he had received no response from his godfather, but that had not discouraged him from trying. There was too much on the line for Harry to sit back and let the man put himself in danger on account of Harry having a few bad dreams. Harry was certain that Hedwig wouldn't take kindly to him making use of one of the school's owls again, but at the least, she was certainly not going to mock him about his inability to find a date. And anyway, worrying about Sirius, while not fun, offered him a bit of reprieve from the myriad of other worries that were plaguing him these days.
The Second Task, the Yule Ball, the Tournament as a whole, the persistent worry that any of the ever-present Ministry officials would catch onto his and his friend's highly illegal extracurricular activities. These were all problems that directly affected him. If he failed to unlock the secrets of the Egg, the Second Task might well and truly spell his end. If he failed to muster up the courage necessary to ask a girl to the Ball, he would be ridiculed endlessly by friend and foe alike as well as lambasted by McGonagall. Failing to sleuth out the mystery of who had put his name into the Goblet could easily result in his death, and if the Ministry discovered the unfinished potions in Ron's trunk, he'd be spending the next several years in Azkaban. But with Sirius, there was no immediate danger to himself. Of course, if Sirius was captured, he would be executed, and Harry would go round the bend about it. But it still wouldn't be him getting executed - just, somebody he cared about. It was refreshing, he thought, to spend time worrying about what might happen to someone else as opposed to what might happen to him.
Harry wondered for a moment if that was why Hermione spent so much time fussing on him before remembering that it was him he was talking about, and that she had every conceivable reason to worry.
Within the Owlery, Harry called down to a completely unassuming barn owl that was tinted the same color as rotten leaves. He tried to be stealthy about it, clicking out of the side of his mouth as close to a whisper as he could manage, but of course he had failed. Hedwig had spied him the moment he came in and flown down to proffer her leg to him as she had done every time he'd visited the Owlery in the past few months.
Harry looked every bit as nervous and shamefaced as he had the last five times, reaching up with his free hand to scratch at the back of his neck in the face of Hedwig's narrowed glare. "Sorry, girl," he attempted a smile. Hedwig remained unphased, clearly unamused. "You know you're too visible, girl. I can't send you."
Hedwig hooted in a horrendously affronted tone, and Harry had to look away from the intensity of her glare. He wished he had more reason to make use of her since he obviously couldn't with these letters to Sirius, but the truth was that Harry didn't know enough people to warrant writing more often. What few people he wanted to talk to were at Hogwarts with him, and the one time he had written a faux note to Ron to give her something to do, she had bitten a chunk out of his ear and refused to come down to him for two weeks.
"I know," he whispered to her shamefully, reaching out to run the backs of his fingers down her feathers. "Soon. I promise. With any luck, you and I'll be able to fly together any day now. That'll be fun, yeah?"
Harry dreaded the day he'd actually get to do that as Hedwig puffed up her chest in anger and nipped painfully at the backs of his fingers.
"Gah!" he cried, cradling the hand in his stomach. It was surface level, of course, as Hedwig's wounds always were, but she still somehow always found a way to manage to cause the most pain with the least damage. Shaking off the pain, Harry sucked away the excess blood before wiping what remained on his robes.
Hedwig was above him now, pointedly glaring into the wall and away from him all while the rotten leaf colored owl watched the proceedings with an empty, patient expression. It had its leg out as it had the entire time.
Grumbling to himself about traitorous owls and bloody beaks, Harry set to work tying his latest plea to Sirius around the barn owl's leg. He would admit to taking some small glee in the creature's patient willingness to assist him after the disaster of Hedwig's attitude. The owl was the first friend he'd ever made in the wizarding world, but some days he wished he hadn't stumbled into so intelligent a familiar. Of course, that desire paled in comparison to his regret at annoying his oldest friend, but he was allowed to be as vindictive as she was.
Trying hard not to think about the longstanding argument he was currently involved in with a bird, Harry finished up his work with the owl's leg and carried it to the nearby window. "Be safe," he entreated the blank little thing, patting his head perhaps touch too hard. If this owl were capable of intense expressions, it would probably be glaring at him. "And try to get to him before he does something stupid."
Harry lightly tossed the bird out the window, marveling at the way it took wing and caught the air beneath its wings as it leveled itself and set out towards the horizon. He smiled at the sight, watching the bird drift off into the ether until it was a speck at the farthest edges of his vision. A moment later he blinked, and the bird was gone.
Harry was jealous. How marvelous it would be, he thought, to be able to do just that. To go and go and go and go and have no one care that you had. Harry had spent his entire life looking past horizons, wondering at the secrets the world was keeping from him just beyond the borders of his own little world. As a kid, his horizon had been the cupboard's dusty walls. Then it was school and the release being away from Dudley would give him. Then it was Hogwarts and that sense of belonging he was sure was waiting for him. Then it was Sirius, and hadn't that been a bit of a letdown? Lately, it had been the potion. That potion, patiently waiting at the bottom of Ron's trunk for a sky that wasn't clear, a day that wasn't routine.
There was freedom in that bottle, he was sure. There were a hundred horizons waiting for him at the bottom of that potion. A thousand.
"Alright there, Harry?" A voice cut into his monologue.
Harry jumped as if bitten, turning in place to spy the intruder. Across the way, silhouetted by the late-day sun in the doorway of the Owlery was Cho Chang. There was amusement on her face, quirking at her lips and crinkling the edges of her eyes. She was dressed casually in a sky-blue sweater that was two sizes too big. It hung down past her waist halfway to her denim clad knees, and the sleeves reached out to cup the tips of her fingers.
Harry swallowed with a throat that was suddenly dry. "Cho!" he said, a touch too loud and as if he were greeting her. He cringed at himself and said in a much quieter tone, "I didn't see you."
Saint that she was, Cho made no mention of his bipolar tone as she left the doorway to cross into the center of the room. A laugh wrapped itself around her words. "Yeah, that'll happen when you're staring off into nothing. What were you thinking so hard about?"
"Owls," Harry answered immediately, and immediately, he regretted it.
Cho found a great amount of humor in this if the mighty snort she made was any indication. Making a great show of looking all around her, she leveled him with a smirk. "Good place to do that," she told him dryly.
He laughed – just once – though at what, he wasn't sure. "Yeah," he said dumbly for want of anything else to say. "What about you?"
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"What are you-uh-doing here?"
With one hand, she reached behind her to pull a tightly crumpled envelope out of her back pocket. Her sleeve fell away from her hand, falling halfway to the elbow and revealing the dusky skin of her wrist. A moment later, Harry wondered to himself why he'd bothered to notice that.
"A letter to my mum."
"Good place to do that," he said with a desperate little laugh in a tone that was almost what Cho had managed.
Cho, though, found it funny, or at least, pretended to. Harry could never really tell. "Yeah, she's been going spare about this whole Ball thing," she said in a tone that suggested that this was funny as she idly tapped the letter against her open palm.
She's not the only one, Harry thought vindictively.
Cho found his eyes. "She wants me home." She nodded, eyes trailing away from his as if following some thought to another place entirely. She muttered her next words. "Misses me."
Harry was at a bit of a loss, being entirely unfamiliar with the concept of anyone at home missing him. He was certain that if Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon had spared him a single thought in the leadup to Christmas Break, it was to thank whatever deity they worshipped that he'd not decided to come home. But that didn't seem the type of thing that Cho wanted to hear, and it certainly wasn't the type of thing that Harry wanted to say. In lieu of that, he asked, "Do you?"
Cho looked back at him, puzzled.
He cleared his throat. "Miss her? Them?" he quickly corrected. "Do you miss them?"
A smile broke across her face then, more genuine than any Harry had yet seen from her outside of the Pitch. Her eyes got that faraway look again. She was remembering, though Harry could only guess at what. "Course I do," she said with a little laugh. "Loads. But the Yule Ball...It's gonna be amazing, you know?"
This time Harry was the one who laughed, and he worried it may have come across a touch too bitter. "Yeah. Amazing." Harry couldn't be sure exactly what part of him decided to speak up in that moment. Certainly, it was a part he hadn't previously known existed outside of life-or-death situations. But the voice that spoke to him did so with the same ferocity and fervor as the one that had shouted in his ear as he faced down the Basilisk and Quirrell and Lupin. Nut up, Potter! So, he did. "Do you want to go?"
The words caught her attention. "Hm?" Harry didn't know if the reaction was for having not heard his mumbled words or for not being quite happy to have heard them.
He tried to clear his suddenly thick throat again but failed. He soldiered on. "Do you," he said again, haltingly, "want to go to the Ball? With me?"
Another part of Harry, this one more distant than any he had yet heard from, took the moment to congratulate him. Truly, he had a better grasp of understanding other people's emotions than he truly thought. Harry knew instantly that she was going to say no.
It was the way her face tightened up in an instant. The way she tried to smile but couldn't quite manage it. The simultaneous widening and softening of her eyes. He could give her credit that she obviously wasn't going to take any joy in what she was about to tell him, and he could give himself credit that he had noticed that.
"Oh," was her first word, and Harry thought that it was a fairly shit one to start with. Her second – "Harry," – was an even shittier follow-up.
He headed her off, throwing up his arms to wildly wave the situation away as fast he could. "It's alright, Cho," he said, attempting a smile and managing a grimace. "It's fine."
"No, Harry, it's-" she began but cut herself off, suddenly unsure. She tried to continue. "It's not that-I mean, it's just-Well, somebody already asked me."
"Yeah, of course!" he exclaimed a bit too loudly. "Course they did. Why wouldn't they? I mean, you're-Yeah. Well! Anyway, I just..."
He trailed off, unable to complete the sentence in the wake of the emotional rollercoaster the world had decided to put him on in the past few minutes.
"I just..." he tried again, staring clear past her shoulder.
Confused by his reaction, she threw a brief glance over her shoulder, but could see only the window, the owls, the rocks. "I really am sorry, Harry," she said again, quietly. And she meant it. Harry would recall the tone of her voice later, and he would take a bit of heart in the truth of her words.
Right now, though, he was still looking directly away from her, out the Owlery window. "It's fine," he replied, and he meant it, odd as that was. Finally, his eyes snapped back to the girl he'd just been turned down by, and he found it oddly amusing how little he actually cared about that in the moment. "It's fine, Cho. Promise. I gotta go."
She blanched, clearly having not expected that. "Harry?" she called after him, but he had already slung his bag over his shoulder and taken off towards the door. He was halfway down the steps by the time she managed to follow him. "Harry!"
He didn't even pause in his sprinting. "I gotta go!" he screamed again. "Bye, Cho!"
And then he leapt clear over the last eight feet of stairway, colliding with the rough, highland dirt. Bag and clothes askew, he took off for the school, chased by the distant, oncoming sound of thunder.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."