It always happened when Harry was at Hogwarts, but he was surprised how much it was possible for learning magic to become routine.
It wasn't boring, not at all, there was always something interesting to learn – Professor Flitwick, for example, taught them a charm to fold paper, and demonstrated how it could be a relatively simple spell which could be made to do very complex things if you had the focus to put it through the right set of instructions. Folding paper in half was just the start, and by the end of that lesson Hermione had turned a piece of red-and-white paper into a neat little crane shape according to the instructions.
Harry hadn't managed it quite that well, and the best he'd done was a boat, but it was still a neat result. And it was a good way to show how much it was important to have focus and care in magic.
Dean had managed to fold his paper into a very small cube which took him five minutes to tease apart again, which presumably in some way counted.
There was more homework than there'd been last year, but even with his two new clubs to replace Quidditch Harry found that he did actually have a bit more free time – enough time to go to Fort William and pick up some new books, like Green Mars for Ron and a story collection about Pern called First Fall, for himself.
First Fall was actually a really neat read. There were lots of things that were more about the setting than about the dragons themselves, like how the planet Pern had got its name (it was a bit like if you'd decided a place was Nice And Rather Lovely and then called it Narl) and how Ruatha Hold had been founded, but the thing which really caught Harry's attention and got him thinking was the one about how the last few survivors on the southern continent had been evacuated by the space navy – a space navy that sounded at least a bit like the one in books like The Ship Who Sang – and they'd completely missed not only everyone on the northern continent but the existence of flying, teleporting fire-lizards.
It did explain why Pern had been left alone, he supposed, but it was still fun to speculate.
Hermione asked them all – Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean and both Fred and George – to come to a meeting in a more-or-less random classroom one Sunday, and once they were all there she put a big lunar chart down on the table.
"Okay, so I've been thinking about this," she began. "And when our best choice is for timing."
She paused. "Or, rather, when the best choice of some of us is for timing. Harry doesn't need to do it and I've mostly asked you two because you might have some advice."
"What kind of thing are you talking about?" Fred asked.
"It's a complete mystery, George," George replied. "There's no possible reason she could have for inviting this combination of people."
"Don't be silly," Hermione sighed. "We've been thinking about this for months."
"Thinking about what for months?" Fred asked.
George shrugged. "Because if you've been thinking about leaving our sister out of the Animagus thing, you're probably going to end up bat-bogeyed."
"She's got a point," Ron volunteered. "You're telling her if we're leaving her out."
"It's because I'm worried if she can do it," Hermione defended herself. "But I will talk to her about it, yes. Anyway."
She tapped the chart with her wand, making it expand. "As you might remember, the Animagus process means you need to keep a mandrake leaf in your mouth for a month from full moon to full moon – without swallowing it. Once you've done that, and when the sky's clear at the full moon, the potion can be prepared – it's not actually all that difficult-"
"Just to check," Neville said, raising his hand. "You do mean difficult by the standards of mortals, not difficult by the standards of people who get scores on exams higher than the highest score the examiners thought were possible?"
"Yes, yes, there's no unusual stirring and there's only three other ingredients," Hermione answered. "Anyway. Once the mixture's ready, you need to cast a spell at sunrise and sunset, and then you cast the spell again during a lightning storm and drink the potion."
She nodded towards Fred and George. "Fortunately, you can just go to Lake Victoria and do it there, where there's always a lightning storm."
"Right, so what's the problem?" Ron asked. "Fred and George have done it, so it can't be that hard."
"Are you suggesting we're not good at magic?" Fred asked.
George shook his head, sighing. "That's a vile slander, right enough."
"Think he'd change his mind if we turned him into a newt, George?" Fred asked.
Harry noticed with amusement that they'd each called the other George.
"No, I'm saying you're not always good at sticking to the plan you started with," Ron explained. "Remember when you said you'd make a memory improving potion?"
"...do you know, no, I don't remember that at all," Fred frowned. "Fred?"
"Not at all, Fred," George replied.
"Exactly," Ron said smugly.
"He's got us there," George admitted.
"Anyway," Hermione said, getting their attention again. "The full moons for the rest of the year are – there's one on the last day of September, and then there's one on the thirtieth of October. That's the day before Halloween, of course. After that the next full moon is the twenty-ninth of November, which is a lunar eclipse, and after that it's after Christmas."
"So… oh, I see," Dean realized. "The lunar eclipse might make the magic go wrong, and anyway two of those periods have a big feast in the middle so it'd be hard to find the time for the spell."
"Yes, but I don't think we can get away during Halloween," Hermione clarified. "So we'd have to do the sensitization spell every day at sunrise and sunset until the next weekend, and that's if Sirius can take us to Lake Victoria."
"I'll see what he thinks?" Harry suggested, then reached into his pocket. "Actually, he might be up now, I'll check."
As the closest thing to expert opinion they had – even counting Fred and/or Fred – Sirius listened to their conundrum, then told them that basically they had a choice between getting it done early in Third Year or waiting until some time in 1994.
Including a lunar eclipse in consideration was 'batty, as in, the sort of thing Severus would come up with if you asked him because he thinks only the potion matters, that joke fell flat, forget about it', while he also happily pointed out that he was quite capable of getting the four of them down to Africa and back over the course of Halloween.
It was a Hogsmeade day, after all.
"It is?" Dean asked. "I thought they didn't tell us more than a few days in advance."
"I can spot patterns," Sirius said proudly. "Every time I was at school and Halloween fell on a Sunday, they let us go down there for it."
Hermione counted under her breath.
"So… twice?" she asked. "One of which you were in first year and couldn't have gone anyway?"
"Blimey, you lot haven't used the Marauder's Map at all, have you?" Sirius asked. "We found passages leading down to Hogsmeade ages ago. One of them even comes out in the sweet shop."
Ron snorted. "It's almost a pity we don't need them."
"Of course you need them," Sirius replied. "How else are you going to be able to go into the sweet shop when it's not a Hogsmeade weekend?"
"I'm pretty sure we'd stick out like sore thumbs," Dean said. "On account of how Hogsmeade is a magical village, and we're children, and when Hogwarts is in session every magical child in the country is there."
"I was going to mention Squibs, but you've got a point, they're usually at a Muggle school," Sirius said. "That explains how quickly James, Remus and I always got in trouble after sneaking down there. I always did wonder how they knew..."
Harry snorted.
"Anyway, if you're impatient then go for the October slot," Sirius resumed. "And either way, good luck."
As the mirror returned to a simple reflection, Neville frowned.
"He didn't mention Peter Pettigrew," he observed.
"Yeah, he doesn't really," Harry answered. "He's able to talk about Peter now, but only if he has to. I think he once said that he's trying to have two versions of Hogwarts memories, accurate ones and ones where there's no Peter."
"I'd kind of like those," Ron muttered.
"Are you sure that's healthy?" Hermione asked. "It doesn't sound healthy."
Harry was about to say that Sirius was an adult and would know what was best for himself, then decided that maybe that wasn't the best way to put it. Sirius was more responsible than he'd been before, certainly, but it was a bit hard to tell from the outside and it would take too long to explain.
"If it isn't, I don't think he minds," he said instead.
A few days later, Harry lay on his back not far from the fire.
Ron and Neville were doing Muggle Studies together, and Harry was half-listening (and providing a helpful ear along with Dean in case one of them said something that sounded obviously troublesome), but most of his attention was on the book in his paws.
He'd been following Sparhawk and his friends for several books now, and the intrigue was just getting really ramped up in this one. It did give him a few questions that apparently all twenty-five thousand Pandion knights really had been trained in magic by the same person, but maybe it was just easier to teach the magic kind of things in this world. Or maybe Aphrael had something to do with it, since magic was mostly asking a god nicely to do something in this world.
His tail flicked lazily, and he turned over a page – the contents of which made him do a double-take.
"Oh, so that's who it was," he said.
"Who what was?" Ron asked, looking up from his work. "Blimey, Harry, you like that Hobbit book with how many times you've read it."
"Huh?" Harry asked, then flipped the book over. "Oh, no, this is because of a present Sirius and Remus got me. It's actually a new book I disguised as a smaller one so it'd be easier to read."
"Neat," Ron pronounced. "Hey, what's the difference between a tram and a train?"
"Well, you know what trains are, you've been on one," Harry said. "Most Muggle trains are quite a lot like that, really. Trams are… more like buses."
"What's a bus?" Ron asked. "I know the Knight Bus exists, but we've never had to use it."
"A bus is sort of… okay, look, do you know what a car is?" Dean tried.
"Yeah, Dad's got one," Ron nodded. "It flies."
At Dean's look, he held up his hand. "Don't worry, I know that's not a normal thing cars do. It's strictly for emergencies, Dad says… that reminds me, Muggle cars need petroil, right?"
"Most people say petrol, but yeah," Dean agreed. "Anyway, a bus is like a car in how it goes on the road, but it's taller so people can stand up in it, and it's a lot longer. People pay to travel in it, and there's lots of seats – like, twenty or thirty at least – and sometimes it's got two floors."
Ron nodded along. "Okay… and a tram?"
"A tram is like a bus that only goes along certain routes," Dean said, and Harry wasn't sure if there was a better way to put it – even as confusing as it was. "It's kind of halfway between a bus and a train, because it has tracks to follow like a train but it goes on roads where cars and stuff go."
Ron blinked, a little bewildered.
"Muggles are weird," he said. "That just sounds like all the bad sides of trains and buses."
"I think the idea is that it's easier to run?" Dean offered. "Cheaper and stuff. Muggles can't do things by magic."
"Oh, yeah, that's kind of what Muggle means, isn't it," Ron nodded.
"I'm going to put down that trams look more interesting," Neville said.
"...have you ever seen a tram?" Dean asked. "I don't think there's been any in London for forty years."
"I've seen trains several times," Neville pointed out. "Trams would be new and interesting."
Harry smiled, and went back to his book – keeping an ear perked in case someone had another question.
Harry tilted his wings, trimming through the air a little, then pulled up slightly and let the air fall off them.
The eddies that resulted let him shed height without gaining speed, and he flapped hard twice to help the process along before flaring and touching down at walking pace.
"Harry, good to see yeh," Hagrid nodded to him. "All going well?"
"Yeah, sorry I haven't visited in a few days," Harry replied. "I meant to yesterday, but Runes was being tricky."
"You don't need to apologize to me about doing your homework," Hagrid told him firmly. "You're at Hogwarts to learn, not to visit silly old buggers like me."
He paused. "Forget I said that, that's not a nice word."
Harry chuckled, looking around at the area around Hagrid's hut, then picked one of the taller rocks to jump up onto. It was just about the equinox, and at twenty minutes to six the sun was sinking steadily towards the distant western horizon and the Cuilins on Skye, but it still felt pleasant.
"What kind of thing are you doing in Runes?" Hagrid asked, after a few minutes of comfortable silence.
"It's mostly the bit which is about learning Runes as a language," Harry replied. "So we've got the letters – mostly – and we're learning about the words. It's still at the stage of learning vocabulary, though."
"Ah, words for sun and water and summat like that," Hagrid said. "I can see how that might be a mite tricky. Well, keep up the good work, Harry."
Harry nodded.
"Arithmancy is being interesting too," he reported. "We're talking about this thing called Pascal's Triangle, which you can use to do calculations about coin flips and stuff. So the more coins you have, the more the likely result kind of… spreads out?"
He spread his paws, trying to explain it. "With two coins, you can only have both heads, or both tails, or one heads and one tails."
"What about one tails and one heads?" Hagrid asked.
"Oh, they treat that the same," Harry answered. "Or, they do if the coins are the same kind of coin, but you treat it differently if you can tell the difference between the coins… but a lot of it's the same. That's why there's only a one in four chance of getting two heads on two coins, even if the coins are the same."
He shook his head. "I'm not really explaining it well."
"It's okay, Harry, you're the one doing Arithmancy," Hagrid chuckled. "I couldn't do that. Did Divination and Creatures, back when I was at Hogwarts."
"I bet you were really good at Care of Magical Creatures," Harry said.
Hagrid nodded, but he seemed a bit downcast all of a sudden. Harry wondered how he could cheer his big friend up, but it was only a few seconds later that Hagrid cheered up all on his own.
"There she is!" he announced, putting his knitting to the side and waving. Harry rolled over onto his front and stood up on all four legs on his rock, watching as Nora came swooping low over the lake, then landed much like Harry had in the clear space by Hagrid's hut.
If with a bit more of a thump.
"I'm back!" Nora announced. "My wings feel tired now."
"Tired, eh?" Hagrid asked. "Let's get you heading off to bed, then. Sorry, Harry, got to take care of this."
"I don't mind," Harry assured him.
"Mind?" Nora repeated, looking back at Harry and tilting her head. "Mind what?"
"Oh, sorry, I was talking to Hagrid," Harry apologized, then repeated what he'd wanted to say to Hagrid in the first place without looking at Nora.
"Okay," Nora said, accepting that.
The journey up towards the castle was a bit long and slow, but Harry didn't mind that either.
"You're getting big," Hagrid said, looking Nora over. "Isn't that right? Nora big dragon!"
"I'm a big dragon," Nora agreed. "Harry is a small dragon!"
Harry chuckled, and there was a clatter as the Ravenclaw Quidditch team went past on their way back up to the castle now the sun was setting.
That did make him wonder, though, because he couldn't remember every detail of his Dragonish lessons with Hagrid but he was sure Nora was using a lot of grammar and stuff that he hadn't ever taught her.
Maybe that was just magic? But if she'd magically learned Dragonish, then surely at least some other dragons must have learned it the same way…
"Summat on your mind, Harry?" Hagrid asked, as they got close to the postern gate that led to Nora's inside accommodations. That might need rethinking some time in the next year or so, but for now she could still fit through the corridor behind it.
"Oh, just wondering how Nora learned to speak Dragonish," Harry explained, glancing at her as he spoke.
Then he realized he'd forgotten again, and so he'd said it in Dragonish instead of human.
"I learned at night!" Nora said. "When I sleep, there's a voice!"
Harry blinked.
"...what?"
"I said!" Nora reiterated. "When I sleep, at night, I hear a voice! It says words and I learn them!"
"Something wrong, Harry?" Hagrid asked. "I didn't get all that."
"Nora says she learned to speak Dragonish because a voice she hears at night told her how to," Harry repeated, slightly baffled.
Hagrid considered that, then nodded. "Well, that sounds odd, right enough. Think it's one of the ghosts? Don't think there's a portrait in that room."
"I suppose it could be Lord Ridley," Harry frowned. "But usually when I run into him he tries to stab me."
"Is it food time soon?" Nora asked.
"Oh, sorry," Hagrid said, giving her a scratch, and she leaned happily into it – making a rawr noise and twitching slightly – before following Hagrid into the corridor for her supper and to get settled down for bed.
Harry watched her go, wondering what on earth could be going on.
Maybe the Marauder's Map would help.
When Harry passed what Nora had said onto his friends, none of them had any idea what it could mean.
Neville suggested that maybe there was a dragon ghost somewhere in the castle and that the spirit in question was hiding from Lord Ridley, and only coming out at night, which seemed like it could be possible but not very likely.
As Ron pointed out, it just raised the question of how that dragon had learned to speak Dragonish.
Neville agreed, shrugging. "I don't claim to have all the answers. I'm the thick one."
"You're the thick one?" Ron asked. "I thought I was the thick one."
"I'm pretty sure I've got the thickest skin," Harry volunteered, inspecting his arm. "If that means anything."
"Mate, you've got the darkest skin, too," Dean shrugged. "I think everyone's just labelling you as an exception to everything."
"Except ability to catch the Snitch," Ron pointed out. "Anyway, we're missing the point. Which of us is the thick one?"
"I don't think there has to be a thick one," Hermione said, looking up from her Transfiguration work. "And if it's a ghost, it will show up on that map that the Marauders made, right?"
"Yeah, ghosts do show up," Harry confirmed. "I'll have to look one of these nights."
"It's kind of a pity there isn't a way to rewind on that map," Dean said, then frowned. "There isn't a way to rewind, right?"
Harry shook his head. "No, Sirius showed me everything it could do over the summer. Except for all the secret messages, apparently there's reactions to a few names but he didn't demonstrate the lot. I said I was Harry Potter and it filled up with messages about how Prongs totally wasn't related to me, but that's just one that's for any Potter name."
"I wonder who else it reacts to," Ron mused. "Maybe it reacts to He Who Must Not Be Named?"
"But he mustn't be named," Neville pointed out reasonably. "Why would you use his name in the first place?"
"I don't really want to test it either way, in case the Map self destructs," Harry said, shaking his head. "Anyway, we do have Transfiguration homework to do… I'll have a look at the Map tonight and see if I spot anything."
The homework was still sitting on the table, so Harry got to work on it.
Harry didn't exactly spend all night looking at the Marauders' Map – or the Marauder's Map, depending on whether it was a map for a Marauder to use or the map all the Marauders had made – but none of his looks showed anything besides Nora herself in her sleeping chamber inside the castle.
He did notice that she spent a bit of time moving around, but maybe that wasn't surprising. It was interesting that she showed up at all, because not everything did – pets did, sure enough, and Harry could see Crookshanks prowling around Gryffindor Tower at night, but Ron's magically animated griffin statue didn't. Ghosts showed up, but portraits didn't either, and some portraits like the Fat Lady did seem every bit as much living, thinking personalities as some ghosts.
It was another odd question to add to the hoard, and Harry sometimes wondered if he should be keeping notes.
A few days later, with the topic of Boggarts finally exhausted, Remus started their Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson by chalking the words RED CAPS on the board.
"Do any of you know what a Red Cap is?" he asked, and several hands went up. "Not you, Miss Granger, eager as you are..."
"Why not, Sir?" Hermione asked, sounding quite offended.
"I'm afraid that answering questions makes people feel more confident in their knowledge," Remus told her. "I'm quite sure you know anyway, but I'd rather approach someone else… Mr. Finnegan."
"They're one of that grab-bag of magical beings, beasts and spirits called the shee or the fey," Seamus said. "You tend to find them on old battlefields."
"Correct," Remus agreed. "Though strictly it's places where blood has been violently spilled, and where not much has happened since. A little blood won't do, which is why they're found on battlefields that haven't been built on or in the dungeons of old castles, or other places with dark histories… Miss Perks?"
"They try to kill Muggles who they find in what they think is their territory," Sally-Anne volunteered. "With clubs."
Harry winced, remembering what he'd read in the textbook about them. They did sound like thoroughly unpleasant creatures, and not the sort who were just misunderstood animals either.
"Also correct," Remus said, chalking that on the board as well. "Red Caps can be distinguished in several ways, and one of them is their red caps. They try to kill unwary travellers, Muggle or Wizard, and soak their caps in the blood."
That brought a round of 'eww, gross' from most of the class, Harry among them.
"Fortunately, they have a number of weaknesses," Remus went on. "Mr. Longbottom?"
"Hitting them with a big metal club," Neville suggested.
Remus blinked. "That's not… quite what I was going for..."
"I would have thought it would work the same way it works on most things," Neville said. "The textbook doesn't say hitting a Boggart with a club will stop it, and that worked."
"That is true," Remus allowed. "But, despite Muggle folklore about the magical creatures and spirits known as the fae, cold iron does not harm Red Caps."
"I wasn't suggesting using cold iron, Professor," Neville tried to explain. "Just hitting them with something, because I'm not very good at magic."
Remus chuckled. "I think you're better than you may realize, Neville. But in fact with a Red Cap your instinct would betray you. They are hard indeed to harm with mundane physical force, and are best driven off with hexes and jinxes."
Neville nodded, absorbing that.
"Is that why they're so dangerous to Muggles?" Fay Dunbar asked.
"Correct," Remus agreed. "They are cowardly enough to not wish to fight a group of humans, whether Wizards or Muggles, but they are brave enough to go after someone who has become lost and bludgeon them over the head from behind."
He turned to the board. "One of the ways to tell if you might be in a place inhabited by Red Caps is to listen out for an apparently sourceless grinding noise..."
A few days later, Professor Dumbledore asked to see Harry in his office.
Wondering if that meant there was more news about Tom Riddle, Harry gave the password (Black Magic, which was a bit ominous) and climbed the stairs which were gradually becoming more familiar.
"Ah, Harry, I was just thinking about you," Dumbledore said pleasantly, waving him to a seat. "Do you know of a reason why that might be?"
"I… think you asked to see me, Sir," Harry said.
"I suppose that could be it," Dumbledore agreed, nodding to himself. "It's rather a boring explanation, but it's as good as any."
He pushed a bowl across the table for Harry. "Would you like a sour sweet?"
"I wouldn't mind, sir," Harry replied, looking at the bowl. It looked a lot more like it was full of Rolos.
"What a pity," Dumbledore sighed. "I only really have chocolates at the moment. Will those do?"
On Harry's nod, Dumbledore indicated the bowl with his hand, and Harry picked one out between the tips of two talons. It turned out to be surprisingly cool, and tasted really quite nice.
"Is there any news about Tom Riddle, Professor?" Harry asked, once he'd finished the chocolate-and-caramel piece.
"Oh, well, there is good news," Dumbledore replied. "But only in the sense that no news is good news. Sorry to say, I have no further information, though I do have an idea where I might find further information; I will let you know when more progress is made."
He smiled. "But I did call you here, unless my memory is worse than I remember, and I am sure you would like to hear why."
Harry nodded, sort of glad it wasn't about Tom Riddle – if all his conversations with Dumbledore were about him then it would get quite sad, because Dumbledore was nice to talk to. "What is it, Professor?"
In reply, Dumbledore waved his wand. Something on a shelf over to the side moved, floating calmly over to land on the desk, and Harry inspected it.
"Do you like it?" Dumbledore asked, smiling. "I've heard that Muggles use them these days."
Harry looked at it again.
It was still a typewriter.
"I don't think most Muggles use them any more, Sir," he said, thinking about the one Archimedes computer that had been at Little Whinging JMI and how he'd learned that typing on the keyboard would make things happen – he was a little vague on the details because there'd only been one computer and a lot of students to use it. "I know that Uncle Vernon was quite proud of having something called a Next Station, which he said meant that nobody would need typewriters any more, but I never saw it."
"Ah, well, it appears I have been mistaken," Dumbledore said, still pleasant as usual. "However, I would ask that you indulge an old man and see if your friends such as young Miss Sanura can use it. If it allows them to write faster, then perhaps we could see about Silencing the clacky bits of it and allowing them to use them in exams."
Harry brightened, thinking that sounded like an excellent idea. "I never thought of that, Professor, that's really clever!"
"Alas, the idea was not mine," Dumbledore told him. "I asked Professor Burbage what she could do to help, and this was her second idea – I will not share her first, though, for I always think it better to judge someone based on their best ideas rather than their worse ones."
Harry did wonder what the first idea was, but if Dumbledore didn't want to share it he supposed that was Dumbledore's choice. He tested the weight of the typewriter, carefully avoiding using his talons in case they punctured anything, and found that it was heavy enough to be awkward because he had to use both paws to lift it.
After a bit of thought, he took out his wand and cast a feather-light charm on it. They'd learned the Charm last year, and it didn't last for more than a day or so, but it made the machine much lighter and easy to lift in one paw.
"Well done, Harry," Dumbledore complimented him. "If this works then of course we shall have to get hold of a number of other typewriters, and perhaps in addition to the silencing charm I might add handles. But do let me know how it goes – perhaps you might type me a letter?"
Harry left Dumbledore's office much happier than he'd been expecting, and later that same day he was showing the typewriter to the rest of the club – especially June, Tanisis, and Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.
"I'm not really sure I understand this," June admitted, poking at the letters. One of them went click, and she inspected her paw in case that had something to do with it.
"I haven't used one myself," Harry replied, but then Luna pulled it over to the side.
She hit one of the keys, and the parchment in it slid up a little. Then she began hammering on them in earnest, tapping away, until after a minute or so she pulled the parchment roll out of the top and showed them.
F
You press the keys to make it write a letter. The shift one makes it do capital
letters. You press the Return key to make it go up so you can write on the
new line.
"I didn't know you could type, Luna," Tanisis said. "I've always seen you using a quill in class."
"Daddy said it was a useful skill," Luna answered pleasantly. "You do have to practice, though. Who wants to give it a go?"
"I will," Flopsy suggested. "Or, we will, I suppose."
"We only have to hand in one set of essays between us," Mopsy agreed. "Okay, um… the keys are a bit small, we'll have to use claws?"
"Sounds good," Flopsy agreed. "Better than sticking wands in our mouths, anyway."
"Don't forget to put some new parchment in to practice on," Luna pointed out.
As they did, Harry noticed Tiobald wave Tyler and Anne over. He passed them a small book of basic British Sign Language that he'd taken to carrying around, then slowly spelled something out.
Harry couldn't read BSL yet, not reliably, but he thought he recognized a bit of it. Something about handwriting, from when they'd been discussing how fast each of them could write.
The fact the two Slytherin kitsune started giggling at one another was probably a bad sign. Mostly for Fred and George though.
The morning of the full moon, none of Harry's best friends (or inner circle, or friend hoard, or whatever term was appropriate to collectively refer to Ron, Hermione, Dean and Neville) seemed to be very focused.
Harry was fairly sure he knew why, and did his best to watch out that nothing went wrong in any of the lessons they had that day – or, at least, the lessons he was actually in. Hermione had all her electives (which meant all the electives the school offered) and Harry was only in three of them, and of course he couldn't help whoever else was in Muggle Studies or Divination either.
At least the lessons were fun. In Arithmancy Professor Vector told them about a Muggle concept called Monte-Carlo simulations, which turned out to be sort of like reverse Arithmancy. Instead of doing a lot of maths to work out what the probability of something happening was, you did the thing a lot of times and counted it up to work out what the probability was.
Then in Transfiguration they talked about transfiguring taste and how it was much easier to make, say, cheese taste sweet or bitter than it was to make cheese not taste fundamentally cheesy, and Runes had them trying word games like wordsearches where all the words they had to find were in futhark.
It was surprisingly tricky, but it did help them get into the habit of seeing the runes as letters.
After lunch it was Care of Magical Creatures out in blustery showers, where Professor Kettleburn introduced them to the Augurey – a peculiar and mournful bird, which had originally been thought to foretell death but instead merely foretold rain.
It seemed like an animal where the decision to hide it from Muggles had been made based on what it had been thought to do, though Professor Kettleburn helpfully told them that it also had taxonomic problems and so it was a jolly good piece of luck that they'd decided to hide it.
Harry did find it a bit hard to hear the lesson with how often the Augurey wailed about the drizzle, though.
Some hours later, as the clock passed six – about sunset, and also about full-moon-rise because that was how astronomy worked – Hermione checked that they had everything.
"Okay, that's six mandrake leaves, in case any of us have a problem," she said. "I'm going to use a sticking charm to make things easier."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Ron asked.
"Sirius said it was the only way an unnamed Marauder could do it," Harry supplied, remembering the conversation. "He said that he and my dad didn't have any trouble, but the unnamed Marauder needed magical help because he was a pillock."
Neville tried not to giggle. "Sirius isn't exactly subtle, is he?"
"No, I don't think so," Harry agreed.
"Are you coming, Harry?" Dean added. "For moral support or something?"
"I can't, really," Harry apologized. "I've got to check on Remus, and that won't give me much time left to get back to the room before Curfew."
"Oh, that's a good point," Dean admitted. "Forgot about that."
He glanced out at the window. "Pity it wasn't like this earlier, you'd think it hadn't rained a bit."
The moon was just starting to peek over the eastern horizon, and Harry wished them all good luck before setting off for Remus's office.
When he got there, the door was shut and locked.
It made sense, Harry supposed, and he carefully knocked.
He could hear Remus moving around inside, and several seconds of scrabbling at the door, until finally it unlocked with a click and Harry pushed the door open.
Remus had already transformed, obviously, and he gave Harry a lupine smile before leading him into the office. Harry shut the door behind him, looking around at the dog-eared reference books and fishtank full of what he thought were Grindylows, and held up his wand in a question.
In reply, Moony held out his paw flat and wiggled it a bit; maybe, but not just yet.
The werewolf picked up his own wand in a paw, fitting it between two toes, and pointed it at a huge sheet of blank parchment pinned up on the wall.
Clearing his throat, Moony made a little yip noise, and lines appeared on the parchment. They drew themselves in very much the same way as the Marauder's Map did, and within seconds there was a drawing of a very large cat in the middle of the parchment.
Another yip, and the word Nundu appeared. Then a third, and the instruction to run away if you saw one appeared.
"That's very impressive," Harry said, and Moony looked quite pleased with himself. Then he agreed to let Harry turn him back, burrowing under a sheet as he began to revert, and a few minutes later Remus emerged – fully clothed.
"Thank you, Harry," he smiled. "I came up with it last week, and I thought I'd test it. It might let me handle a lesson while I'm Moony, if I need to."
He checked the clock. "Have your friends decided if tonight is the night?"
"Yes, they were about to set off when I left the tower," Harry confirmed.
"Well, good luck to them from me," Remus decided. "I'll make sure to include the bit about how Animagi get on well with werewolves when I get around to doing a lesson on werewolves."
He winked. "I think I'm a bit of an expert."
That reminded Harry of something. "Is… is the fact you're a werewolf going to cause problems if you're found out?"
"It's not a secret any more, as it happens," Remus told him. "I'm just not making a fuss about it either. That's what my appearance at the Sorting Feast was about. There aren't any laws against it, and you've seen yourself how good Dumbledore is with loopholes."
Harry had to agree.
"Now, I think we've got about half an hour before curfew," Remus went on. "How are my lessons going so far?"
"A lot better than Professor Quirrell or Lockhart," Harry replied. "But that's not really hard, so..."
AN:
Dean hasn't seen any trams either, except possibly once in a transport museum years ago.