When Neville drank his potion, his other hand clenched suddenly, then went to his chest.

Harry remembered what Sirius had said about the moment of first transformation – there was a flash of fiery pain, then a kind of strong, intense double heartbeat. It sounded like it was something to do with your other-body-shape being made, though Harry wasn't sure about that.

Neville slipped forwards, supporting himself with one arm as the potion bottle rolled away. Then, all at once, he transformed.

Even though Harry was becoming used to it, with Fred and George and Percy and Sirius all in his life to varying degrees, it was still startling just how sudden it was. A blink would have missed the whole thing, and then all of a sudden instead of a thirteen year old boy there was a big night-black panther stood on three paws.

"Blimey," Ron said. "Nice one, Nev."

Neville looked down at himself, head twisting as he tried to see what he looked like, then he and everyone else reacted as Sirius cleared his throat.

"Speculo," he said, and a six-foot mirror appeared next to him.

A little unsteady on his paws, Neville padded over to the mirror to have a look at himself. That meant he was closer to Harry, as well, and Harry could give him a good look over at things like his paws – claws safely retracted away – or his coat, which had little leopard-style spots almost hidden in the general blackness of the fur.

"I thought you could only turn into animals from the place you lived?" Dean asked. "Or did I make that up?"

"If you've ever seen a five foot wild dog in Britain, let me know," Sirius shrugged. "Maybe it's supposed to be like that, but after zoos got invented it was all mixed up."

After the initial shock of what Neville had changed into, Harry sort of understood where the Animagus transformation was coming from. He'd read the Jungle Book, anyway, and Bagheera was a loyal friend and strong guardian.

"Don't try and force it," Sirius added, looking down at Neville. "Your new form has instincts. Don't let them rule you, but don't ignore them either – it'll be much easier to get used to moving about if you let them nudge you along."

Neville nodded, a little uncertainly, then opened his mouth to look at his teeth.

The noise he made was quite startling.

"Is something wrong?" Dean asked.

Neville repeated the noise, and waved at his teeth.

"...oh," Ron said, and tried not to snigger. "Yeah, they do look a bit buck toothed. Sorry, mate."

Panther-Neville made a rumbling noise deep in his chest.

Another thundercrack reminded them that the storm was still going on, and Ron held up his potion. "Should, um, should I go next?"

"Probably," Sirius agreed. "Remember what I said about instincts."

Ron shuffled over to the middle of the floor, and as he did Neville tried to lie down.

"Not going to change back yet?" Harry asked.

"There's a bit of a knack to changing back the first time," Sirius said, for all of them. "I can walk you through it all at once, probably better to do it that way so we can get you all done while the thunderstorm's still going."

"Right," Ron agreed, flipping his wand around to point at his heart. "Amato Animo Animato Animagus."

The very first part, just after Ron took his Animagus potion, was more-or-less the same as what had happened to Neville – though for his part Ron stayed upright, wobbling a little but not falling forward like Neville had.

Then Ron yelped. "Uh, wait-"

A moment later, there was nothing but a reddish-grey squirrel.

Harry vaguely remembered how there were red squirrels and grey squirrels in Britain, and Ron looked like he was halfway between red and grey. It was hard to tell without a book to compare him to both possibilities, though.

"...somehow these always manage to be surprising," Sirius murmured, as Ron's new tufted ears twitched around.

Ron looked around, saw Neville, and gave a big whole-body flinch. It was quite eye-catching, especially his tail – which sort of rippled like a wave, and which had a bright orange down the back – and when he landed from it Ron was about to dart away from the big cat. But he stopped, clearly controlling his reaction, and sighed a squirrelly sigh.

"I suppose that must be the instincts!" Hermione said brightly, scribbling down some notes. "You see two big predators, and you want to run away?"

Ron nodded.

Harry wondered for a moment who the second predator was, then thought about how he would look to a squirrel-ified Ron and realized that… oh, yeah, that would do it.

"I wonder why Ron ended up as a squirrel," Dean said, thinking out loud. "Maybe it's because they climb things?"

He snapped his fingers. "Hey, that's right! Now you need a much less powerful rocket to get you into space! You can just make most of your weight go away, and if you don't mind being a squirrel for the whole journey you can make the capsule really small too."

"Maybe it would help your balance?" Harry suggested. "Percy got a lot more comfortable with flying after he became Issola, and squirrels are good at balancing."

That prospect seemed to make Ron feel a lot better about all this. It was still hard to tell, because Harry wasn't very good at reading squirrel expressions, but he came bounding over to join Harry and clambered up his clothes to rest just on top of Harry's head.

Harry had the feeling that that sort of thing was going to happen more often. Sure, Ron was pretty tall – only Dean was taller in their year, at least so far – but maybe it felt different if someone else was being tall for you.

"Hightail, perhaps?" Sirius wondered.

Harry couldn't see what Ron was doing, but he felt Ron's weight shifting a bit.

"You don't get to pick your own Marauder name," Sirius added. "You can suggest, but you can't veto unless there's a very good reason."

"Should I go next?" Dean asked. "Or you, Hermione?"

"I'm taking notes," Hermione explained. "I've never seen an Animagus ritual before and there's enough of them happening now that I can get some useful information. I'll go last."

"All right, if you say so," Dean agreed. "Here goes."

Dean shrank down much as Ron had, rather than growing as Neville had, but didn't go down quite so far – and didn't end up as a mammal, unlike both of the other boys. His legs grew scales, his arms became wings, and when the blurring, eyeblink-fast change had finished it was some kind of big black bird that was stood there.

"Hmm," Sirius said, considering. "Is that a raven, a rook or a crow?"

"Can't be a raven," Harry replied. "He's not a Ravenclaw."

Neville coughed a few times, which Harry thought was probably laughter.

"I think we might need a book on that one," Sirius decided. "Unless you know, Dean?"

Dean shrugged expansively, and took off.

Based on his extensive experience with flying with wings, not all of it having gone entirely properly, Harry was fairly sure that Dean hadn't intended to take off. He cawed in surprise, flapping instinctively to try and make things better, and made things worse quickly enough that Harry had to catch Dean out of the air before he hit the wall.

"Yeah, wings can be hard," he said, setting Dean down again. "I wouldn't mind teaching you, though. Until then, um… maybe try kind of walking around, then jumping a bit?"

The corvid-Dean bobbed his head in a quick little nod.

"I think I've seen what his tell is," Sirius volunteered. "I'm pretty sure most black birds like that don't have pale undersides to their wings."

"I don't think most birds can do that, not with their flight feathers," Hermione volunteered. "Can you raise a wing again, Dean?"

Dean duly did, and Hermione pointed. "Yes, that looks like the underside of the primary feathers are paler as well. That's a really interesting one."

"What was Prongs' tell?" Harry asked, suddenly realizing that he didn't even know. "And can they change?"

"They might be able to change," Sirius replied. "Or… yeah, a certain rat who will go unnamed had a missing toe as well as the rest of how he looked. So the animal form isn't locked in… and it was markings around his eyes, like his glasses."

Harry nodded, swallowing slightly.

"I think that's just Hermione to go," Sirius added, changing the subject slightly. "Are you done with your notes?"

"For now," Hermione replied. "I wonder if Dean is a crow, those are supposed to be good at art. I think I read something about that… that's crows from New Caledonia, though, which is a long way off-"

Hermione visibly stopped herself, and carefully blew on her parchment to help the ink dry. She put it to the side, on the nearest shelf, then put her quill in the same place and got out her wand.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and she pointed her wand at her heart. "Amato Animo Animato Animagus."

As she drank the potion, Hermione seemed torn between nerves and excitement and curiosity. Her hand was already on her chest, ready to feel her double-heartbeat, and though it was obvious when the painful part of the ritual began she just took a sudden sharp breath and stayed upright.

Then she blinked. "What-"

A moment later, the transformation was over, and everyone stared.

Everyone else had been something easily recognizable, at least in the basic details. Neville was a big black cat, Ron was a greyish-red squirrel, Dean was a black bird. But what Hermione had become was so unusual that Harry wasn't quite sure he had any idea at all.

She was about three feet tall, maybe a bit taller, with two scaled and taloned feet that led up into legs coated with a fuzz of small brown feathers. Her similarly-feathered body was sort of horizontal, like a bird, and she had an enormously long tail with a strake of longer flight feathers hanging off it in colours shading from dark brown to glossy black.

That might have made her a bird, if a really big one, but her arms made it even more confusing. They had black flight feathers as well, but there were also three separate claws, and her feather-fuzz-topped head had a mouth with some impressive teeth instead of a toothless beak.

"...that's a new one on me," Sirius admitted, as Hermione tilted her head to look back at herself.

Harry wasn't an expert on the body language of whatever it was Hermione had turned out to be, but he was fairly sure that Hermione herself was baffled about the whole situation. She held up one of her forearms – were they wings or not? - and examined it carefully, before shaking her head.

Neville moved aside so Hermione could look in the mirror, and that just seemed to make her more annoyed about something. It was when she was actually lifting one of her feet – holding it up to look at more closely and testing the sickle claw – that Harry realized something.

"Wait, is that what velociraptors were like?" he asked. "You remember that film we went to see, Sirius?"

"I remember the film," Sirius agreed. "And I remember that the velociraptors weren't fluffy."

"Maybe they got it wrong?" Harry suggested.

Ron squeaked.

Sirius frowned. "What? Sorry, I don't speak squirrel."

Another squeak, and Harry felt Ron moving around and trying to act something out.

"Oh, yeah, right, teaching you how to change back," Sirius realized. "Nice charades by the way."

"Okay, here we go," Sirius said, once everyone was properly arranged so that – just for example – Harry wouldn't suddenly find a Weasley on his head. "This took us something like three hours the first time, because the instructions say it'll be easy to change back but they don't really go into detail how. Fortunately for you, though, I know the trick."

He shifted to Padfoot, then right back to Sirius again as a demonstration. "The trick is to remember that your human form is you, just the same as your animal form is you. It's a kind of magic that doesn't need a wand, and that means the way to access it is all about emotions at first. So… remember that."

The four newly-minted Animagi visibly thought about that for a few seconds, then Dean turned back into a human.

"That was weird," he said, looking at his hands. "Now these feel small."

"Yeah, you get over it," Sirius assured him. "A few changes back and forth and they both feel natural."

Neville blurred back into human form perhaps half a minute later, and Ron and Hermione followed him almost at the same time.

"This is so annoying!" Hermione announced, picking up her notes again and starting to write. "I'm sure I must be some kind of raptor, but… but..."

"I'm more concerned with why you're a dinosaur," Ron volunteered. "They went extinct sixty five million years ago."

"That's probably because I was using a time turner during the whole sensitization period," Hermione fretted. "But there's no way to test that – Percy must have stopped using his one because he could make it to all his lessons, that's why he's not ended up as a dinosaur as well. But it's that I had feathers!"

Putting the quill down, Hermione shifted into her Animagus form for a moment, then straight back to human. "This is proof that dinosaurs had feathers, and I can't show it to anyone! Or anyone Muggle, at least – do you have any idea how annoying that is?"

"...well," Neville said, after several seconds of silence. "You're still Hermione, at least."

It was still only the middle of the afternoon, about half past three, and nobody particularly wanted to get wet going out into the still-raging storm.

Sirius supplied all four of Harry's friends with what tips he had about getting used to an Animagus form – shifting back and forth as much as possible so that both sets of rules for how to move your body got properly set in place, for example – and Harry helped out Dean specifically by walking him through the basics of flight. It was a bit different to dragonflight because feathers could shift around, so Harry wasn't entirely able to explain everything, but just being able to give Dean the basics of how air moved over wings was quite helpful enough.

Or at least that was how Harry interpreted it, after Dean reached the point he could fly up in the air and land on Harry's tail as a perch.

"It's really convenient how changing into our Animagus forms takes all our clothes and stuff with us," Ron said, after what might have been his tenth change. "Is that different from normal Transfiguration?"

"I know a werewolf transformation doesn't take any possessions with it," Harry told him. "I don't know what happens if an Animagus is wearing clothes in animal form, though."

"I don't think we ever tried it," Sirius reported. "If you want to do experiments that's up to you, though."

"To be honest, that would be pretty cool," Ron volunteered. "Maybe Neville could have, I don't know, a glove or something?"

He paused. "No, that's a stupid idea. Never mind."

Dean jumped down from Harry's tail and shifted back into human-form. "I kind of want to see what it's like carrying things as a crow," he said, frowning. "Some birds can sing, right? Could I cast spells if I had my wand as a crow?"

"Now that would be cool!" Ron enthused. "Or if we learned silent casting, or whatever – imagine Hermione running through with both of us standing on her back throwing spells everywhere!"

Hermione sniffed, and shifted into her dinosaur-form before pacing over to one end of the room.

She made a little gesture with her arm, and everyone in front of her got out of her way. Then she tried running across the room, and got up to what looked like a fairly respectable speed – before slowing down again to avoid hitting the wall on the other side.

Changing back to human, she made another note. "Not as fast as I expected, really. That's surprising because raptors are always shown as being very fast."

"It looked kind of fast to me," Ron volunteered.

"Well, we can try and measure it some time," Hermione suggested. "I'm sure there's somewhere around here where we can try it – oh, but that means we have to register first. How does that work?"

"Registering?" Sirius repeated. "That's pretty easy, actually. You send in an application which lists your name, age, wand, alternate form and distinguishing marks, then the registry commission makes an appointment to verify that you can actually do the transformation."

He shrugged. "Honestly, I'd probably have actually registered after leaving school if I knew how easy it was."

"What about your Animagus name?" Neville asked. "Do you need to include that?"

"No, Animagus names aren't an official thing," Harry pointed out. "They're just something that the Marauders did, and we sort of kept it up. Moony isn't an Animagus, and nor am I."

"But you never use your Marauder name, Puff," Sirius said.

"That's because I'm never not in my normal form," Harry replied. "And those names are for when you're not in your normal form, right?"

"Unless it would be funny," Sirius corrected him. "We didn't make the Map as a dog, a stag and a wolf. Stags have famously terrible handwriting."

He clapped his hands. "Anyway! Speaking of Marauder names, I think I've got one for Hermione already – Clever Girl."

"That sounds like I'm boasting," Hermione said, frowning. "But it does sound like it fits, as well…"

"Well, Gryffindor isn't the humble house," Dean pointed out. "Actually, which house is the humble house?"

"Hufflepuff," Ron answered. "You don't hear about it much, because they don't like to make a fuss."

Harry sniggered.

"Not sure about you, Ron," Sirius added. "Apart from Hightail. Any other ideas?"

"What about something from Redwall?" Harry suggested. "Or Nutty, like Moony."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of being called Nutty," Ron countered. "What about Space Squirrel?"

"Brushtail?" Harry said. "It might be a bit similar to another one, though."

"I'll think about it," Sirius judged.

"Hey, don't I get to think about it?" Ron asked plaintively.

"I think I got one for Neville, actually," Dean said. "Can you change back, Nev?"

Neville duly did so, stretching a little, and Dean pointed.

"Don't you think he looks like a Lapcat?" he asked.

The panther-Neville's head tilted on one side, and he blinked a few times.

Then he changed back to human. "What."

"It's not much sillier than Prongs," Dean shrugged. "Or Puff the magic dragon."

Harry waved.

"I like it," Sirius declared. "Hmm… well, we don't need to decide right now for anyone, it took months to decide on Puff…"

"If Dean's a raven, I've got an idea," Hermione said. "What about Inky?"

"You what?" Neville asked. "How do you get from a raven to that?"

"It's in Alice in Wonderland," she explained. "Someone asks a riddle – why is a raven like a writing desk?"

Harry completely lost track of the discussion at that point, and nobody else seemed to have much idea where it was going either. Apparently it was something to do with how the riddle was about being never put with the wrong end in front, or possibly nevar put with the wrong end in front, but a much better answer was about inky quills?

Ron just asked why Hermione thought Dean was like a writing desk, because Dean did do drawings but that wasn't writing, and if anyone did more writing than anyone else in the room it was Hermione.

The storm petered out into rain, and then finally into spotty drizzle, about an hour or so before dinner. Nobody had eaten very much at lunch, partly because of nerves and partly because of the coming Halloween Feast, and the friends made their way back up to the castle through air chilled by the recent rain just as the sun was setting.

Harry lit his wand with a Lumos spell and held it overhead in his tail, giving them all a little extra light.

"...so, what was that about a time turner?" Dean eventually asked, as they hiked up towards the castle.

"Oh… bother," Hermione groaned. "I just realized I mentioned it..."

"Afraid so," Harry agreed, then shrugged. "We'd already worked out something was going on, Hermione, and it was either that there was more than one of you or that the one of you there was was being in more than one place at once."

He stopped, repeating what he'd said to himself, then nodding. "Yeah, I think that makes sense."

"Took me a moment to get it, but I think it does," Ron agreed. "You're saying it was time travel or duplication."

"Exactly," Harry nodded.

Hermione shook her head, huffing out a sigh. "Well… Professor McGonagall told me not to tell anyone, so please don't pass it on any further?"

Harry was only too happy to agree, and everyone else did as well.

After an afternoon full of still-obscure personal revelation, the subsequent Halloween feast was a delight. The House Elves always put in even more effort for a named feast like Sorting or Christmas than with a normal day, and this was no exception – there were giant pumpkins with moving carvings, 'bandaged' sausages with croissant dough wrapped around them, spicy glow-in-the-dark dips in bread cauldrons and pasta with 'eyeballs' in it, just to name a few.

Harry particularly appreciated one dish that arrived in front of him, with the little dragon flag that indicated it was intended for him and him alone. It was a little strange at first, because it looked like nothing more nor less than a meat cleaver with red tomato purée splattered on it like blood, but when he sniffed it Harry could smell some different metals than the ones that were in normal cutlery.

Biting into the cleaver confirmed it – the metal inside was mixed together, layered, with at least a dozen different metals all swirled together into one of the most unusual dishes Harry had had in a while.

"What does that taste like?" Colin asked. "Is it like something normal humans eat?"

"Sort of," Harry replied. "It's… well, the difference between copper and iron is sort of like the difference between bread and rice, only not? But the iridium is more like a spice… it's kind of hard to tell which metal is what when they're all together like this, but it's nice."

"Be kind of funny if that was just a kitchen knife, and there's a pastry made with… dunno, a reflective car blanket or something down in the kitchen," Dean said.

"A what?" Ron asked. "Cars have blankets?"

"It's more of a summer thing," Dean tried to explain. "If a car is out in sunlight, it heats up a lot, but you can put a reflective blanket inside on the windscreen so it doesn't heat up as much. It sort of… reflects the heat out, I think."

"But heat's heat, isn't it?" Neville frowned. "Can you reflect heat?"

"Don't see why not," Ron said. "In winter it's annoying when Harry accidentally blocks the heat from the fire, and if you can block it why not reflect it?"

"I don't think we actually did how it works in school," Dean admitted. "You'd have to ask Harry for a physics book. And Hermione to read it."

Harry snorted, then bit the tip off his cleaver.

After the main course, the desserts replaced them – which was fairly standard – but what was unexpected was when seventeen great big trees made out of sugar-icing appeared on all four House tables and up at the high table as well.

Fred was the first to reach up and pluck one of the fruits, sending a little cascade of dusted sugar down from the branch, and bit into it.

"Neat," he announced. "It's a toffee apple."

"It doesn't look like it," George said, then took a bite of his own. "Oh, so it is!"

"This one's a caramel orange," Cormac volunteered from a little way down the table.

Harry had heard of toffee apples, but a caramel orange was new to him. So was a chocolate pear, and when he pulled a fruit of his own down from the tree it turned out to be a banana made entirely out of white chocolate.

"I wonder if this is what happens when House Elves get bored?" Ginny asked, using her knife and fork to cut slices off a fudge fig. "Because I know it's a terrible thing to say, but if this is what happens then I think I want them to be bored more often."

"What's a good one without chocolate?" Mopsy asked.

"I was reading about that, actually," Hermione interjected. "Dogs can have a little bit of chocolate… but admittedly, something the size of an apple is probably too much."

"The apples are just made of toffee," Fred called. "So those should be fine."

"Great!" Flopsy said, nosing around in her robes for a moment. She came back up with a wand, and mumbled something.

"What?" Mopsy asked.

"I think she said about that spell we did in Charms this week," Cottontail guessed.

"Oh, right," Mopsy realized, and gave her sister a tiny little nudge with one ear. "Wingardium Leviosa."

Flopsy flicked her wand in time, and they levitated an apple slowly off the tree before putting it down on their plate.

Some of the Gryffindors applauded.

"That's really impressive to watch," Fred added. "It's hard to time joint spellcasting like that."

"How exactly do you even know that?" Seamus asked. "Do you two do joint spellcasting?"

"Well, not exactly," George answered. "You see, I'm Fred, and I hold the wand."

"And I'm Fred, and I say the words," Fred continued. "So there's just one of us."

Seamus rolled his eyes. "Should have known better than asking you two for a straight answer."

Fortunately, and despite what Harry sort of expected, no pets turned out to secretly be wanted and thought-dead traitors in hiding. The Smiths were even at the Halloween Feast, presumably because after last time everyone would be expecting it, and so apart from the really quite wonderful food and the fact that Harry's friends could now turn into animals there was nothing much unusual about the evening at all.

It was right back into classes after Halloween, because Hogwarts was apparently too old an educational establishment to have heard of the half-term. Not that Harry really minded, though, because he had the suspicion that the missing half terms just went into normal holidays instead, and it wouldn't be very fair on the people who lived somewhere like London to give them a holiday too short to get used to being back at home but long enough to make it feel like you had to go there.

Possibly Harry was overthinking it.

The upshot of that, though, was that after a few back-and-forth owls via Hedwig it was decided that the best time for the Animagus Registry Commission to come and visit was on the following Sunday, the seventh of November. They were advised that it was probably a good idea not to adopt their alternative forms too openly until they were registered, simply as a matter of courtesy, and Harry found that a bit disappointing but it wasn't really a long time to wait to do things like teach Dean to fly.

During the Quidditch practice on Tuesday, though, it was already obvious that something had changed. Before Ron had usually managed to save a bit more than half of the shots on goal by the Gryffindor Chasers, sometimes a bit less, depending on how confident he was feeling and how good the individual shots were… but now he was moving around more quickly, making more daring saves by dangling from his broom by one hand and one foot or even standing up mid-flight without any trouble.

"That's pretty impressive, actually," Neville said, looking up and then frowning down at the Arithmancy homework resting on his lap. "So… okay, how does this sampling thing work?"

"The sampling with replacement?" Hermione checked. "Okay, so that's-"

"Can I try?" Harry asked. "I think I understand it, but I want to be sure."

"Another shot on goal," Dean called, and they all looked up.

Alicia flew straight and level towards the top hoop, and Ron drifted up slightly to block it. Then she threw the Quaffle down to Katie, who was coming in faster and towards the middle hoop, and Katie took the shot only a moment later to try and give Ron too little time to react.

Ron rolled his broom around, grabbing onto the middle of the handle, and hung by one arm as he kicked the red ball out of the way before it could actually pass through the hoops.

"...cripes," Dean summarized. "That's not a normal move, right?"

"Don't think so," Neville replied.

Wood called out that it was time for Seeker practice for a bit, where this time it would be about trying to beat the other Seeker to something you'd both seen at the same time, and Harry began to explain. "Okay, so… imagine you've got a big pile of gold."

Dean sniggered. "Dragon."

"I know," Harry admitted. "Anyway. You don't know how much gold there is, and it's way too much of a pain to actually count it all, so what you do is you take… say, a hundred coins."

"A hundred, right," Neville nodded along.

"It doesn't matter what the number is, so long as it's fairly big and you make a note of it," Hermione clarified.

"Am I doing okay so far?" Harry checked, and got a nod. "Okay, so you have those hundred coins, and you mark them… say, you put paint on all of them, or you enchant them all so they've got a silly face on them, it doesn't matter as long as you recognize it. Then you put them back, and you mix everything up so it's nice and mixed around."

"Riiight..." Neville said, looking like he didn't understand and hoping that he just didn't understand yet.

"Then you get another lot of coins," Harry finished. "And if there's twenty of the coins you marked, then that means that you've probably got about a fifth of the total coins in the pile."

"So… if I got out eighty coins," Neville tried. "And there were ten of the coins I marked, that would mean I had about a tenth of the coins in the pile… so there would be eight hundred?"

"That's it exactly!" Hermione said. "Great work!"

"And well done to you, too, Harry," Dean chimed in. "I think I understood that, and I'm not doing Arithmancy."

Harry ducked his head, embarrassed.

Classes meant that it simply wasn't feasible for Harry to go to visit Sirius on his birthday, and Remus couldn't go either because of his work – which was pretty sad, as far as Harry was concerned.

He was able to send Sirius a card, though, one which had a bad joke about how outside of a dog, a book was man's best friend. (Inside of a dog, it was too dark to read.) Accompanying it was a long letter Harry had written, in which he thanked Sirius for everything he'd done over the last year – for being some kind of combination of parent, guardian, supportive older sibling and whatever else he thought Harry needed at the time.

Accompanying that was a wind up dog toy he'd found in Fort William a couple of weeks ago, for Padfoot, and a big joke book from the same place for Sirius.

Hopefully Sirius would have fun with both of them. Even if that meant reading some of them out to Kreacher.

That Thursday, at breakfast, Granny Longbottom's screech owl Darius came flying down to drop a letter on Neville's place.

Harry's friend opened it, smiling, then when he got a look inside his face fell.

"Is something wrong?" Ron asked. "I usually see the Twins look like that whenever Mum sends them a letter that just says 'I noticed'."

Neville smiled a little, but then looked back at the letter and sighed.

"It's from my Great-Uncle Algie," he explained. "I told Granny that I was an Animagus now, but Great Uncle Algie keeps going on about how surprising that is and how he never would have thought I'd be able to do it. I don't think he really thinks I can do it at all."

"Is that the same one you had an argument with over the summer?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," Neville agreed. "He's never really thought I was very good at magic. He even dangled me out a window once to try and make me do accidental magic, but my great aunt offered him some meringue and he accidentally let go… um, Harry, are you okay?"

Harry realized he was growling, and did his best to stop.

It was quite hard, and when he did he noticed that Hermione seemed to be bristling as well. Neither of the others looked happy either, come to that.

"I bounced, it's okay," Neville hastened to explain. "But I haven't been very good with my magic, not since I came here. I'm surprised the Animagus transformation went so well..."

Ron frowned, then snapped his fingers.

"Nev," he said, reaching into his pocket. "Here. Do a bluebell flames spell."

Neville caught Ron's wand, startled, then tried the spell.

It came out about how Neville's bluebell flames normally did, a bit underpowered and slightly too hot to be comfortable.

"Okay, that settles it," Ron declared. "We need to get you a new wand. If mine fits you as well as the one you're using does..."

Problem diagnosed or not, getting Neville a new wand had to wait at least a little longer simply because of the timings. There wasn't a Hogsmeade weekend for another few weeks, and besides that going during the holidays might work better.

Granny Longbottom did send Neville's mother's wand, which worked noticeably better for him, and a few days later came the meeting with the Animagus Registration Committee.

That was one meeting that Harry wasn't involved with in the least, because he wasn't one of the Animaguses being registered, and he spent the time making a guess at the map of the town of Cair Andros in Gondor. That was going to be important in the next couple of sessions of the Dungeons and Dragons game, and it was important to be prepared.

(He'd certainly learned a lesson about that after last session, when the collection of puzzles he'd had in an old tomb had taken Tanisis only about half an hour to do from start to finish. She hadn't even needed any of the clues hidden in other bits of the tomb.)

Dean came out of the meeting and back up to Gryffindor tower first, sliding into one of the free seats, and Harry left off marking where the gates were. "How was it?"

"Kind of like cycling proficiency or flying lessons, in a way," Dean replied, frowning. "I had to change in both directions, and do it without my wand so I could prove I wasn't just doing human transfiguration."

Harry tilted his head. "Isn't human transfiguration much harder? And if they thought you were doing it anyway, couldn't you do that without a wand?"

"Dunno." Dean shook his head. "Maybe it's because practically nobody can do wandless human transfiguration, but normally they're dealing with older people? I know she was surprised to hear I was thirteen."

He frowned. "But then why would anyone bother registering a fake Animagus form in the first place?"

"To sound cool?" Harry suggested.

"Yeah, probably," Dean agreed. "That's usually why."

"Fred and George were fourth year, though..." Harry added, thinking. "But they do kind of break the rules."

He paused. "In more than one way."

Ron turned up about ten minutes after Dean had, and then Neville joined them ten minutes after that.

"I asked if she knew anything about what our Animagus forms say about ourself," he said, taking a seat. "No luck."

"I'm kind of wondering about Peter Pettigrew being a rat," Harry admitted. "Because it's kind of… something that reflects on him? But I don't see a way to know that."

He frowned, tapping a claw. "And I've heard that rats aren't actually all that bad, but does that matter? And does it matter what country you're from?"

"I wonder if maybe he'd have been nicer if he was a mouse," Ron admitted. "Or a bat? Bats are neat."

"If anyone in the school is a bat, it's Professor Snape," Dean suggested.

"Oh, what do you think Professor Vector is?" Neville asked.

Neither Dean nor Ron had actually had Professor Vector, but Harry had, and he frowned for a bit before making a guess. "What about… a kingfisher? I think light bends when it goes into water, so kingfishers have to work that kind of thing out with maths. Sort of."

"I kind of want to know what Professor Burbage would be," Ron admitted. "Or Charlie, actually..."

Fred and George came over to join in, bringing Ginny with them, and while nobody had any idea what Ginny might be there were several suggestions. With how there was a Quidditch game tomorrow – her first – Harry thought she might be some sort of bird, or something else agile like a cheetah, but it really was hard to tell without actually doing it.

Harry and everyone else lost track of time a bit, but he still noticed how long it had been when Hermione turned up – forty minutes after Neville had, and looking slightly flushed.

"Professor McGonagall said she'd never seen anything like my Animagus form!" she told them all. "And she went and got Professor Dumbledore, and he was impressed as well – I had to explain to him what we thought it was, because he'd heard of dinosaurs but he thought they were all slow and sluggish and lived in swamps. And then I had to tell all of them, even the lady from the registration commission, about how sure I was that feathers were something that dinosaurs originally had… and about how I think I got an extinct animal."

"Okay, we need to see this," Fred said. "George, is it before curfew?"

"I think you'll find it bloody well is," said the other twin, who Harry had originally thought was George – though he was now reconsidering that, as you had to do with the Twins. "So, what do you say, Miss Granger?"

Hermione didn't mind, and they all headed to one of the disused classrooms for Hermione to show what she looked like. That turned into everyone demonstrating their Animagus forms, to Dean asking for more flying lessons, and to all three of Ron's siblings concurring that he should probably be called 'Nutkin'.

Ron wasn't happy about that, but Ginny informed him he was most likely outvoted.

November continued, getting colder and chillier as the nights rapidly drew in. The first Gryffindor Quidditch game of the year took place, and even though Ginny wasn't as good a Seeker as Harry had been everyone actually seemed to enjoy the game a lot more. Possibly that was just because it took more than about five to ten minutes, letting Oliver and the rest get some good playing-Quidditch in.

The Slytherin team wasn't exactly bad either, though it looked like they lost about as many points from penalties as they got from fouls, and after nearly an hour of play Malfoy beat Ginny to the Snitch by seconds – though that only meant Slytherin won by about thirty points, thanks to relentless Chaser play from the Gryffindor team.

Nobody seemed too upset about the result, at least, which was nice.

Harry had flying lessons to give to Dean, as well, and halfway through the first one they had an unexpected visitor.

"Hello!" Nora said, flying up through the crisp November air to hover in front of Harry.

She tilted her head as Harry flared his wings, switching into a hover, and her gaze went up to the crow-Dean sitting on Harry's forehead. "Bird on head."

"Yes," Harry agreed. "Do you remember how Percy turns into a bird?"

That question made Nora frown for a moment, flying around in a circle with her scarf streaming behind her, and then she nodded. "Yes! Boy turns into bird!"

She pointed her foreleg at Dean. "That one too?"

"That's right!" Harry agreed. "He's just learned how, so I'm teaching him how to fly."

"How to fly," Nora said, contemplatively. "How to glide? And how to flap?"

"Exactly," Harry told her.

Dean chirped something, and Harry looked away from Nora so he could speak English instead of Dragonish. "I'm explaining how I'm teaching you to fly."

"Can I help?" Nora asked.

"Actually, you probably could," Harry said. "Can you fly around in a circle for a bit?"

Nora's whole expression brightened when Harry told her she could help, and she nodded enthusiastically before flying a little way away and starting to fly in a circle.

"So you know about-" Harry began, then realized he was still speaking Dragonish and looked away from Nora. "So you know about banking around, sort of tilting so you turn a corner? It's a bit trickier with wings, because when you flap you do odd things to the air flow. Flapping means you overall turn harder, but if you're relying on turning smoothly it's better to not flap."

It was a bit hard to tell with Dean perched on his head, but Harry got the sense that his friend was nodding.

"Okay, let's have you try," Harry added. "Thanks, Nora!"

"I'm helping!" Nora announced proudly, and a moment later Dean hopped down off Harry's head and spread out his wings.

He wobbled a bit, not yet used to adjusting his flight slightly to even out any little irregularities, then tried banking around. It sort of went okay the first time, then he tried to flap while banking and overdid it.

The force of his wingbeat sent Dean into a tumble, flapping harder as he tried to figure out how to undo what had gone wrong, and Harry was about to head down and catch him when Nora did it first.

Dean bounced once off the membrane of her outstretched wing before coming to a skidding stop, looking distinctly dizzy but at least glad to not be tumbling any more, and Nora beamed up at Harry. "Catching!"

"Well done," Harry told her, impressed, then closed his eyes to switch to English. "Okay, Dean, ready to try again?"

When he looked again, crow-Dean was a little nervous, but he nodded and spread his wings again. As Nora was herself gliding along, that meant there was a wind, and Dean rose smoothly into the air away from the Ridgeback's wings.

"Right, now let's get used to banking without flapping first," Harry resumed. "Then we'll try gentle wingbeats..."

Dean still hadn't fully got flying down by the time of the first snow of the year, and as Harry had come to realize was normal for Hogwarts it was a big one. A foot of snow fell on the grounds all at once, and that afternoon – more-or-less by mutual agreement – everyone went out to play in the snow.

There was a recently-released Discworld book called Men At Arms up in Gryffindor Tower with Harry's name on it (metaphorically, not literally, unless someone in it was called Harry) but he didn't mind skipping it for a day or so – not when there was snow-related fun to be had right now. There were snowballs to throw, thick snowdrifts to hide in, and most of all friends to enjoy it with.

Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail had never seen snow so thick, and while it wasn't thick enough to really hide them they definitely gave it a try. Half the Gryffindor first-years and a few of the second-years joined in in helping to make a big snow pile covering the girls, and when they broke out of it and shook themselves it pelted everyone within ten feet with thick chunks of fluffy snow. Then Dean tried using the snow as a soft landing to practice flying, which resulted in him rolling down a drift and fetching up against a small rise, and he changed straight back to human for just long enough to point something out.

"You guys realize that if you can turn smaller there's more snow, right?" he asked.

Moments later, Percy and Ginny were the only visible Weasleys.

"Aren't you worried by that?" Neville asked, glancing up at Percy.

"My brothers haven't yet realized that they can't throw snowballs of any reasonable size like that," Percy replied. "I, on the other hand, can fly if I want to… and cast certain spells silently. Like, for example, spells to lift large amounts of snow."

Neville nodded understanding, then shifted to Lapcat to hide under the snow himself.

"You need to hide your tail as well," Harry told him. "It's black, so it stands out."

A snowball sailed over one of the nearby drifts and hit Hermione, and was quickly followed by a second which Harry blocked with his wing.

"Who did that?" she asked, brushing the snow off the front of her robes.

"I think that was Tyler and Anna," Harry said, sniffing the air. "I can smell fox, anyway."

A muffled giggle all but confirmed it.

"All right," Hermione said, nodding to herself, and began packing snow together into a snowball. It started out normal-sized, but Hermione kept making it bigger and bigger until it was almost eight inches across.

Then, in a fluid motion, she shifted to Clever Girl and jumped. Her powerful legs launched her much higher off the ground than even Harry had expected, and even in dinosaur-form her wing claws let her hold onto her snowball until she was at the apex of her jump.

Snow avalanched down on top of what Harry judged was probably Tyler, based on the exact sound of the startled yip, and Hermione landed again before shifting back to human and dusting her hands off.

"That was satisfying," she said.

AN:

So that's what I decided on for their forms.

I've been waiting to do raptor-Hermione for... a while, though I only actually chose how big she should be recently. (She's a Deinonychus, as they seem about the right size.)

The others were a bit harder to decide on. For reference, Ron is a red squirrel (not a grey one; grey ones don't get on with pine martens), Neville is a panther, and Dean is a crow.