A/N: Sorry this took so long. But I'm back now!

"Dementors!" Ron half-shouted, half-grumbled. "Bloody dementors! This is a bunch of dragonshite." Walking in a semicircle around him, the five of us could only vaguely nod along in half-hearted agreement. We still didn't know what dementors were anyway — they sounded bad, but we didn't exactly understand what the big deal was.

So we asked.

Ron shuddered as he formed the words in his mind. "Dementors are the worst sort of monster there are. They have an aura that makes you feel hopeless and horrible, making you go literally mental if you stay near them too bloody long, and if they kiss you, they eat your soul, leaving you like a vegetable." He shuddered again, and this time, we could sympathize with that a bit more. "I've never met one, and I bloody well hope I never meet one again."

"AND THEY GUARD AZKABAN?!" Red growled. His human voice didn't do his anger justice.

"Yeah."

"Poor Hagrid," Yellow remarked. "They sent him there because of the chamber of secrets."

Ron stopped in his tracks, making Grey nearly bump into him. "Merlin's beard, I'd nearly forgotten that. Between the spiders, the basilisk, Ginny, Hermione, and now this—" He gestured to all of us. "—it slipped my mind. Hagrid's not going to be happy about this."

We, Ron included, collectively frowned. If the dementors were patrolling the grounds, then that would put Hagrid uncomfortably close to them. We, not including Ron this time, had no idea how far a dementor's aura spread. If it was wide enough, Hagrid would be miserable even when he was safe in his home.

The six of us soon arrived at Hagrid's home, where we heard voices inside. Yellow knocked on his door.

A second later, the massive man pulled the door open, revealing that Charlie was sitting in there with him. "'Ello there, Harrys, Ron."

"Hey, guys," Charlie added.

"What brings you six here?"

"Dementors," Blue began, only for Red to interject, "THE MINISTRY WANTS TO STATION DEMENTOR GUARDS AROUND HOGWARTS TO PROTECT IT FROM SIRIUS BLACK!"

"They want to what?" Hagrid demanded. "What are those fools thinking?"

Behind him, Charlie muttered something under his breath that we couldn't make out. It was probably not something one would say in polite company.

Hagrid stepped aside and motioned inwards. "Alright, come in, you lot. How did you hear about this?"

What had started as a rather somber conversation about the dementors turned into a much more lighthearted one with Ron's asking of a simple question: "What happens if you set a dementor on fire with dragon fire?"

"Blimey, good question," Hagrid said. He mused, "Well, I think they'd burn just fine, or at least their robes would. Might actually make you feel warm instead."

"It definitely makes me feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about it," Charlie agreed with a grin that reminded us of the twins. It quickly faded into a more ponderous expression as he began to contemplate it seriously. "Well, I'd imagine it would depend on the dragon. The properties of dragon fire are linked to their scales. For instance, the Ukrainian Ironbelly has the thickest scales of all dragons, defending against a rival's flames with sheer mass; their flames are thus ultra-hot. Compare that to the Chinese fireball, the scales of which are much thinner but are magically resistant to flame. Their fires aren't nearly as hot, but the fireballs explode with a force proportional to how much magic is in the target. Which one would do more damage all depends on how the dementors deal with flame and magic."

"WE'D BE HAPPY TO HELP YOU TEST THAT OUT!" Red bellowed merrily.

"Red, don't go burnin the dementors," Hagrid warned. "You shouldn't be anywhere near them."

"please don't get us killed, red." Grey stared at Red, his eyes as pleading as his dour-by-default face could muster.

Red snorted and crossed his arms. "Ғɪɴᴇ!" he grumped softly. Well, softly for him; it still came out as a bellow by any human standard.

"Not that I'm suggesting you do it, Red," Ron remarked, "but seeing a dementor burn against dragon fire would be pretty cool."

"Watching dragons burn anything is cool," Charlie added. He clapped his hands together and exclaimed, "Oh! What if we fed you Harrys some fireworks the twins are working on? Would you burp fireworks?"

"BWAHAHAHA! THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!" Red cheered, his good mood returning full-force. The rest of us grinned at that as well, even Grey.

"It would definitely be safer than facing a dementor," Added Blue. "We are fireproof, after all."

Green aimed his head towards the open window of Hagrid's hut. "Verdimilliousss," he incanted, before opening his mouth wide. Despite being in human form, green sparks shot from Green's mouth before exploding into a larger green flare outside the hut. "Definitely fun, ssshoting fireworksss."

"Somehow," Charlie remarked, "it's even weirder seeing a human shoot magic out of their mouth than a dragon."

"True," Yellow agreed, "but the novelty makes it even more entertaining. And look, we get to be our own cheering squad during quidditch."

"Professor McGonagall's still letting you play quidditch?" Charlie asked. "Ron said you were brilliant, so it would be a shame to lose you from the team."

"Err..." Blue replied, speaking for all of us, "we think so? She's not said anything against us playing, and neither has Dumbledore, but maybe? Although Snape would probably accuse us of cheating because we have more eyes and can see the entire pitch at once."

"Bloody Hell..." Ron grumbled. His expression lightened a second later. "Then again, as long as only one of you was on the pitch at any one time, or you were all sharing the same body, he couldn't complain."

"That worksss," Green hissed.

"I think it would be funny to see Harry trying to catch the snitch as a dragon." Charlie chuckled.

"WE MIGHT JUST EAT THE SNITCH IF WE DID THAT!" Red bellowed.

"You mean eat again," Yellow corrected. Hagrid, Ron, and the other heads chuckled, while Charlie looked curious. Yellow explained, "Our first quidditch match ever, we ended up catching the snitch with our mouth."

"Damn I would have liked to have seen that," Charlie marveled. "Catching the snitch with your hands is hard enough, you know."

"Charlie was the Gryffindor Seeker up until our first year," Ron remarked.

"Are all you Weasssleysss ssso good at quidditch?" Green wondered, thinking back to last summer and watching Ron fly quite skillfully on our Nimbus 2000.

Which wouldn't happen again, now that we thought about it. We'd tried flying on it when we'd first run away, only to misjudge our strength and snap the handle, sending us falling to the ground. We didn't miss it, not when we could now fly on our own wings, but we regretted snacking on the pieces. It probably could have been fixed, and we were sure Ron would have loved it. And, since we now might be able to play Quidditch again...

Best not to mention the broom. Or any of our other lost things. Or...

"BLOODY HELL!" Red suddenly bellowed, jumping to his feet. The rest of us jumped up an instant later as his realization hit us all. "WE FORGOT THE CLOAK!"

"The cloak?" Ron asked. "Your invisibility cloak? What?"

"We took our trunk from our relatives' house when we first started changing," Blue explained. "After a certain point, we started breaking everything we touched. Most of our stuff got ruined, but the cloak was fine. We hid it, the trunk, and what we didn't break in the middle of a forest! We need to go back and get it."

"It's probably ruined by now..." Grey moaned.

"I'll come with you," Charlie offered. We gave him a curious look. "Well, the last time you flew to Hogwarts, you got seen by muggles." He gave Ron and us a significant look. Right, the flying car incident. "Someone has to keep you hidden."

"Thanks, Charlie. You're a lifesaver," Yellow replied.

"You be careful, Harrys," Hagrid added. "I'll let Professor Dumbledore know you went to get your stuff, but you best be gettin' back here in one piece, you hear me?"

"Of courssse. Wouldn't dream of getting hurt." Green nodded for us.

With that, the seven of us (Ron included) stood and departed Hagrid's hut. A moment later, we Harrys had merged back into a singular, five-headed dragon, let Ron and Charlie mount us, and took to the skies.

Without guidance and without the strength our wings now possessed, the flight from southern England to northern Scotland had taken us four days — partially from us wandering and avoiding cities, but mostly because our wings were weak. The same journey in reverse took only a few hours.

The Point-Me spell was killer on the neck, though. At least it made actually finding our trunk possible; we'd have never found it otherwise. How were we supposed to tell one generic stretch of forest from another, especially since it had been around a month since we'd been through here?

Only when the spell was starting to yank our heads downwards did we finally start descending. By then, it was getting pretty late. The summer sun was halfway across the horizon, and that was from our elevated position; on the ground below, the shadows of night were already creeping up the valleys. One such valley, vaguely familiar now that we had a good look at it, was our destination.

There was a dancing speck of orange light coming from it. A campfire. Great.

Red pointed it out to Charlie, who replied, "Go ahead and land near there. If they're muggles, we can just stun them and obliviate them after we get your trunk."

"AND WHAT IF THEY ARE WIZARDS?!"

"Be ready to close your eyes in case they lob a spell your way before I can calm them down," he replied after a moment's hesitation.

Trusting Charlie's judgment, we angled our wings to begin a spiraling descent towards the small clearing. Only, as we approached, we realized that there was a really good chance of squashing someone if we landed by the campfire. Foregoing all subtlety, Green and Blue wrapped their necks protectively around Charlie and Ron as we crashed through the nearby treetops and landed with a tremendous boom.

"Everyone alright?" Yellow asked as the debris settled.

"Bloody hell, Harry. Warn a guy next time," Ron exclaimed, sounding a bit dazed but not hurt.

"Grow up, Ron. You've taken harder falls off your broom and walked away," Charlie grunted. "Four out of ten on the landing job, Harry."

"Assss if you could do better," Green hissed in mock annoyance.

We helped Charlie and Ron down. Then, since we no longer needed to be quite so massive, we activated our form stone and shrank down to a singular, human body. While Consensus controlled our body easily enough, the five of us were forced to wrestle for control over our face, causing it to jerk around uncomfortably.

Despite our rather confined state, we set off towards the campfire. The Weasley brothers held their wands up while we — or more accurately, Red — kept alert and ready to cast a spell.

We entered the clearing, only to find it deserted. There was a burning campfire with two skewered rabbits roasting over it, as well as a tarp draped over a couple branches like a makeshift tent, but other than that, it was devoid of signs of human habitation. It certainly looked far sparser than any camp we'd imagined (though we really didn't know what a campsite was supposed to look like).

There was, however, an unfamiliar scent. It was a bizarre blending of dog and man that we really didn't know what to make of it. That combination niggled something in the back of our mind, something recent, but we couldn't put our claw on it.

Whoever — or whatever — was making that scent, they were still close. Not in the clearing, but they had been only a few moments ago. Perhaps we'd scared them off?

"Nobody's here," Ron remarked.

We pointed in the direction the scent was the strongest, which, not coincidentally, was directly opposite the side of the camp where we'd landed. "They went that way. I bet they're still close enough to hear us," Blue remarked. Red took over. "HELLO?! WE'RE SORRY FOR SCARING YOU! WE JUST CAME TO GET THE STUFF I HID HERE!"

The bushes nearby rustled a bit. Out popped an incredibly mangy dog. Black as night, with matted fur caked in dirt, the poor dog looked like it had been through the wringer. But, despite its rather feral appearance, the dog, after a small pause to look at us, trotted up to us and started licking our hand.

Yellow pulled our hand back, saying, "That tickles." But instead of pulling back completely, he set our hand on the dog's head and started scratching. It made happy noises and leaned in closer.

"Poor thing," Ron remarked. "I wonder if it belongs to the owner of the camp. He's not doing a good job of taking care of it."

The dog gave Ron a curious look, which quickly turned into a searching one. It wandered over to our friend and started sniffing him. After a few seconds, it started sticking its snouts into Ron's pockets. Ron tried to push the dog away, only for it to keep coming back. "What do you want?! I don't have anything in my pockets!"

"Maybe he smells Scabbers on you. Scabbers does smell kind of weird, after all," Blue theorized.

The dog paused, looked at us, then barked once. We furrowed our brow, an expression shared by the majority of us at the same time. "Can you understand us?"

A strange, unreadable sequence of expressions flickered across the dog's face. Settling on a neutral expression, it trotted over to the fire, laid down, and closed its eyes. It's breathing did not slow or soften. Blue silently wondered if it was actually smart but just acting dumb. "Weird dog," the rest of us muttered.

The dog snorted.

We turned our attention back to Charlie and Ron. "It's the only one we can smell around here. No other humans."

"So, what, a dog started a campfire?" Ron asked bemusedly. We could only shrug.

"Let's just get your stuff and get back to Hogwarts." Charlie gazed up at the darkening sky which, while still orange, was rapidly losing color. "The flight out here took longer than I expected."

"We could always apparate back once Harry's got his trunk," Ron suggested.

Charlie's face brightened, then soured a second later. "I could do it with you, Ron, but given Harry's condition, I think we'd end up a red smear across the UK if I tried it with him."

"You guys can go ahead back to Hogwarts," Yellow said as we repositioned ourselves. "It'll be dark soon. We won't need Charlie to keep us disillusioned anymore."

Green added, "Thanksss for that, by the way."

The dog suddenly stood up and trotted back over to Ron, but stood with its gaze on Charlie. The Weasley boys paid it little mind. "Glad to help. Well, If you're sure."

Consensus made a shooing motion with our hand. "Go, we'll be fine," Blue insisted.

"Come on, then, Ron," Charlie said. He reached out and grabbed Ron's hand. He, Ron, and, strangely, the dog all vanished with a pop.

We blinked. "Did that dog just hitch a ride back to Hogwarts?"

"It smelled like McGonagall..." Grey finally said. For a second, his non-sequitur threw us for a loop, until his thoughts filled us in on what exactly he was implying.

"THAT DOG WAS AN ANIMAGUS, WASN'T IT?!" Red bellowed loudly. It was rhetorical.

"Bollocksss," Green cursed. "Let'sss get our ssstuff and get back to the cassstle quickly."

We transformed back, knocking over a few trees as we did. A few scoops of dirt later, we had our trunk once more, which looked to be in surprisingly good condition for how long it had spent in the dirt. Not great condition, but it and potentially everything inside was salvageable.

After eating the cooking rabbits the dog had left behind (and the burning logs and the dirt underneath), we quickly took to the sky, trunk clutched in one set of claws. Without passengers, we were free to put even more power than usual into our wing beats. Cutting across the sky, we made the trip in our fastest time yet.

By the time we reached Hogwarts, we were cranky, starving, and utterly exhausted, and for good reason. We'd just flown almost twice the length of the UK today, at speeds that outpaced the Hogwarts Express, no less! But all of that was secondary to making sure that Ron was alright.

We landed hard in front of the castle and bellowed in unison, "RON!" Fire erupted from each of our mouths, but none shot off more flame or bellowed louder than Grey.

Charging at the castle door (and only remembering to change back to human at the last second), we bolted through the front door, trunk abandoned behind us. We shot up the Grand Staircase, only to freeze in place. We each wanted to search different places — the Great Hall, the Infirmary, the Gryffindor dorms — so badly that we couldn't reach consensus. Our thoughts churned away, debating what to do with ideas and emotions, not words, while our body remained statue-stiff.

"Aaahhh! There you are, dragon-boy." We turned our head to find Filch walking our way, Mrs. Norris trailing behind him. For as much as he was one of the more annoying — and slightly scary — parts of the school, we were actually glad to see him. "If this was a school night, it'd be detention for you." He grunted sullenly.

Alright, maybe not glad, per se. "Do you know where Ron is?"

"Gryffindor tower, where he belongs. And if you know what's good for you, you'll be joining him as fast as you can. I don't care what you are; you're still a student and I can give you detentions as soon as the school year starts. Oh, yes, that's what I'll do..."

We, quite wisely, immediately sprinted back for our trunk and then ran up to the dorms.

"Ron! Ron!" We shouted as we burst into our dorm room.

"...uuuuuhhh..." He rolled over in bed. "...wha?"

Oh, thank Merlin. He was fine. "Never mind. Go back to sleep."

"Uuhhh huh..." He rolled back.

Mentally, not literally, we four colored heads turned to glare at Grey, whose irrational fear was what had driven us into such a panic. He withered and retracted deeper into the recesses of our mind.

With the fear and anxiety gone, so went our adrenaline. Already tired, the wave of fatigue that crashed over us almost knocked us out right then and there. We barely managed to flop into bed before we were out like a light.

We dreamed of monsters — half-men, half-beast.

Poke.

Poke.

Poke.

Someone was poking us.

We growled, a pleasantly bestial sound despite our currently human form.

The poking stopped. Then resumed a second later. Poke, poke, poke.

We clawed at the hand poking us. "The next time you touch us, we will eat you."

The hand didn't return. Instead, it's owner spoke, "Harry! Breakfast."

The five of us had never bolted upright so fast. We blinked, only fully and collectively coming to consciousness when we were halfway out the dormitory door. Glancing back, we saw Ron standing right where we'd just been.

"Come on! Breakfast. We're hungry enough to eat five cows!"

Ron shook his head and followed. "When did you get back anyway?"

"Pretty late," Yellow admitted. "Or early? It was definitely well after midnight. We got our stuff." "WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE DOG?!" Red butted in.

Ron blinked. "The dog? Oh! It ran off into the woods near Hogsmeade after Charlie accidentally brought it with us. We must have scared it or something."

"It sssmelled like an—" But Green cut himself off as a thought occurred to him, which he shared with the rest of us. Ron smelled like that, but indirectly. Rat-man. Scabbers. We frowned. "Hang on. We want to asssk Professsser McGonagall sssomething firssst."

We jogged downstairs, any thoughts of last night's adventures and this morning's hunger momentarily shoved aside. McGonagall's office was, thankfully, not terribly far, though we did have to make a slight detour to avoid Peeves. Eventually, however, we did make it to her office. We knocked on the door.

"Yes? Come in." We opened the door and stepped through. Now that we knew what we were looking for, the cat-woman scent clinging to McGonagall was so very obvious to us. "Oh? Good morning, boys. I see you made it back safe and sound. Were your belongings unharmed?"

"We... didn't even check, to be honest. It's still in our trunk," Blue spoke. Green took over. "But we had a quessstion. Isss there a way to forccce an animagusss to change back, Professsor?"

"Hmm?" She set down the quill she'd been writing with. "Yes, there is. It's not a particularly difficult spell, at least to cast, but you have to know that a target is an animagus first and the difficulty scales with how hard the animagus is trying to resist you. Are you worried that someone will use it to force you back after you learned the process?"

Our opinions disagreed, which made our head go around in circles as we tried to nod and shake it at the same time. We stopped that and spoke, "Yesss and no. We originally came becaussse we think we figured out how to sssmell animagi, regardlessss of which form they're in. And we think Ron'sss rat, Ssscabbersss, might be one."

Yellow commented, "Perhaps they're stuck in that form." Then, Red added, "OR PERHAPS THEY'RE A CREEP!"

The pleasant smile that had been on McGonagall's lips practically apparated away, it vanished so fast. "I see. Excuse me. I'll deal with this right now. Thank you for bringing this to my attention." Upon hearing our stomach rumbled, she added, "Why don't you head on to breakfast? I'll take care of this myself — no need to starve a growing dragon, now is there?"

We nodded politely. "Thank you, Professor."