We didn't know what sort of things our body needed to stay healthy, not exactly. Madam Pomfrey's advice was, medically speaking, was basically to always eat a wide variety of delicious flavors, since those flavors almost always corresponded to the appropriate nutrients. We had nine basic tastes now, not five — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory, plus metallic, combustible, magical, and earthy — which meant our meals were equally complex. Luckily for us, the five of us each had a different set of favorite flavors, meaning that five different breakfasts would give us everything we needed.
Green was a fan of sweet and salty. His breakfasts were usually the most human of ours, consisting mostly of pastries, but also of oddly salted fruits. Since we'd gotten the amulet, he'd taken to eating in the Great hall while we were split up, and though his portions were huge by human standards, they were small compared to what we normally ate.
Red liked savory and combustible. Fatty meat was his favorite, but he liked chicken dipped in petrol as well, when he wasn't munching on beef and candles. With the number of sheep and cows (and acromantulas, not that we'd ever tell Hagrid that), we were munching through each day, Red's contributions actually made up the bulk of our diet.
Yellow was a fan of sour and magical. More fruit for him, usually citrus fruits, but his real joy was eating random items that had been enchanted. His go-to enchantment was the color-changing charm, which he used as liberally as Green salted his food, but Yellow always claimed that things enchanted by others were the best — especially lemons enchanted by the house-elves to burst into a flame if swallowed.
Blue disliked most food but loved rusty metal, which had a superb mix of earthy and metallic flavors. If he couldn't get our claws on rusty iron, then he settled for gold, silver, bronze, and gemstones — which made him by far the most expensive head to feed, since he literally ate money. Usually, however, he satisfied himself with dirt and stone.
Grey was the only one of us who liked bitter things. He drank coffee by the gallon, preferring that over any solid food. He also liked the smell and taste of potions, strangely enough, which made us wonder if he'd actually find Snape delicious.
Snape wasn't in tasting range, thankfully. The only thing as bitter as Snape (ha!) that we had on hand was the newspaper. Grey really liked the taste of the ink, though he at least let us read the paper before eating it.
"oh, fudge called yet another emergency press conference," Grey noted.
"More about Sirius Black?"
"no." Our depressed head paused, his eyes skimming the Daily Prophet article again. It was short enough that the paper it covered had a smaller area than even one of Grey's huge eyes, so it didn't take long for him to read it. "actually, i don't see why. the article just rambles worse than we do a potions essay. it had no point. kind of like us."
Ignoring Grey's insult to the rest of us, Blue took the paper for himself. After a few seconds of reading, he asked, "Huh. Is that even slightly normal?"
We collectively shrugged, then resumed eating with gusto — Grey disposing of the paper down his gullet. We were still a growing dragon, after all.
When all the food was gone (which was about five minutes later), we had nothing left to distract us. Ron still hadn't come down, and neither had McGonagall. Considering that there might have been an animagus that may or may not have been stuck as Scabbers, their absence was just a touch more worrying than usual.
So, with our meal finished, we activated our Form Stone and once more became a one-headed little boy. Setting off at a brisk jog (which, sadly, was much slower than even a casual stroll as a dragon), we headed back up the many flights of stairs to the Gryffindor dorms.
But there was a commotion. Lots of voices — paintings — shouting. When we were a few feet away, the Fat Lady's portrait swung open, revealing Professor McGonagall and Ron. She had her hand on the back of her head, and when she pulled it away, it came away slightly bloody. She hissed.
Then the scent of blood hit our nose.
Our train of thought ripped itself in half. Blue and Red thought, 'HOLY SHITE! THAT SMELLS AMAZING!' Conversely, yellow and Green thought, 'Holy Ssshite! They're hurt!' And Grey, caught in the middle, screamed incoherently in his section of our mind.
Yellow seized total control of our body. "Professor McGonagall! What happened?!"
She winced a little bit and wobbled unsteadily. "You were right. The rat was an animagus. He attacked us."
"And erased parts of our memories!" Ron growled as he moved to help stabilize McGonagall.
Five different rumbling growls escaped our throat, our anger partially overcoming the transfiguration. "GET TO THE HOSSSPITAL WING. WE'LL TAKE CARE OF THISSSS," we snarled.
"Potter, no!" McGonagall snapped, her Scottish accent thickening noticeably. "I've already told the paintings to pass the word on. That Rat will be found. But I will not have you running off like a bloody fool again! This is my problem."
Green felt that she hadn't meant to add that last bit, but approved of the sentiment. In bowing out, Green partially quenched the inferno of rage violently burning in our chest. "Then we're sticking with you — now and when you deal with Scabbers."
McGonagall nodded, then winced. "Better, Potter."
Madam Pomfrey, I'm fine," Ron insisted. He fidgeted about, but the sticking charm securing his legs to the hospital bed didn't budge.
"Perhaps physically, but you were attacked and had parts of your memory erased! I have to check that you weren't cursed in the time you forgot and that your attacker didn't melt something important in your brain!" the matron quipped, even as diagnostic spell after diagnostic spell flew out of her wand.
Ron humphed and crossed his arms. In the bed next to him, McGonagall rolled her eyes a bit — though who she was rolling her eyes at eluded us. She wasn't bleeding anymore, her shallow, mundane wound having been healed and cleaned up with only two expertly-cast spells, but she was awaiting the same battery of tests that Ron was going through. Without her wand, she couldn't check herself.
"Mr. Weasley, this is for your own good."
"I feel fine," he insisted.
"It's my job to make sure!"
Whatever Ron was going to say next was interrupted by a banshee shot out of a cannon. Err... we mean Mrs. Weasley bursting into the hospital wing so hard that the door slammed open and wailing as she ran to her son. She enveloped Ron in the biggest, tightest hug we'd ever seen.
A spike of envy stabbed Grey's portion of our heart. Red wordlessly shoved the feeling away from the consensus and back into Grey alone. The lingering guilt, however, wasn't so easily shoved aside.
But as the hug subsided, Mrs. Weasley's anger came out in full force. "Mortal peril! That's the second time this year that it's said you've been in mortal peril! And now you're in the hospital wing!"
As Ron argued with his mother — and Madam Pomfrey — that he was fine, Blue mentally turned to the rest of us and thought, 'The second time?'
'Maybe the Chamber doesssn't count,' Green suggested.
'You'd think a Basilisk roaming the school would count as mortal peril.'
'mrs. weasley probably didn't even notice.'
'If that were the case, it's probably the spiders she didn't notice — that was pretty late in the evening, after all.'
'But all of second year and she only notices one instance on the clock? And what about Voldemort in first year? We had classes with the man in the room!'
'LOCKHART COUNTS AS A MORTAL PERIL!' Red added cheekily.
'Hear! Hear!' agreed Green.
The sound of our name caught our attention, pulling us out of our thoughts. Ron gestured to us while talking to his mum, and after a second, we picked up the context. He was re-telling how we'd smelled the rat and alerted Professor McGonagall.
When Mrs. Weasley noticed us watching, she waved us over. We hopped off the chair and started towards her, only for her to meet us halfway and hug us as well. It was like being wrapped in a flame, and, for an instant, we never wanted that moment to end.
"Harry, dear! Thank you! I couldn't have asked for a better friend for Ron!" She gave one last squeeze and then let us go. The cool air of the hospital wing didn't hold a candle to the warmth that lingered in our chest — not the literal flame, but that other warmth. Hell, if we'd still possessed the ability to blush, Red and Green definitely would have been blushing happily. Even Grey smiled a bit.
"Well, Mr. Weasley," Madam Pomfrey spoke, grabbing our attention, "I think it's safe to say that you're well enough to leave now. Let me know if you have any headaches or are unusually forgetful. The obliviation looks clean enough, but it's best to check up on these things when they aren't done by a professional." She tapped her wand on Ron's pants, freeing them from the sticking charm.
He immediately leaped to his feet, only for his mom to swoop in and hug him again. Mrs. Weasley looked up at Madam Pomfrey again and thanked her profusely.
Madam Pomfrey simply smiled. "Just doing my job. Though, Molly, while I have you here, how is Ginevra?"
Mrs. Weasley's smile faded a bit, but didn't leave entirely. "She's doing well. Still needs a calming draught before bed on occasion, but we're done with the dreamless sleep. Your advice really helped — I don't know what I would have done without it."
"Good," the mediwitch replied. "You can keep her on that as long as you need, though I recommend shifting down to a half dose in the weeks leading up to the start of term. Try to wean her off it so that the transition is easier."
"Of course. And again, thank you, Poppy."
"Any time." With a nod, she turned her attention towards McGonagall, who'd been patiently waiting off to the side.
Molly turned back to Ron and the five of us. "Ronald, I think that's enough excitement for one summer. Perhaps we should get you home now, and out of your professors' hair. This is their summer too." A little more sweetly, she added, "Harry — all of you — you're welcome to come to the Burrow too. We'd all be happy to have you."
"Err..." Blue began, but Ron beat us to the point.
"They'd eat us out of house and home," he snickered. "Hell, he'd probably eat the house itself."
Any defense or reply we could have mustered was mangled by the fact that all five of us tried to use our mouth at the same time, which only made us look guilty. The fact that there was a distinct possibility that we might have nibbled on the house anyway was inconsequential. (After all, we'd already nibbled on some of the snake statues in the Chamber of Secrets, just to see what they'd tasted like).
Professor McGonagall chose that moment to pipe in. "Molly, as much as you and all five Harrys want them to visit, Dumbledore and I are of the strong opinion that Harry should stay here until we find a more permanent solution to his current predicament. I can't stop them from going with you, at least until term starts, but I would suggest foregoing it."
"Yeah. I think we'll pass on that," Blue spoke for us. "We wouldn't want to be a burden."
"Well, if you're sure..." She smiled. "But you're not a burden, Harry. Never think that." She hugged us again.
It was nice.
After McGonagall was released, she went off to inform Professor Dumbledore and Professor Flitwick of the full details of what had happened — most of which she herself had gotten from the paintings in the Gryffindor common room. We had a basic description of the animagus that had been masquerading as Ron's pet, but unfortunately, not a name.
Meanwhile, Ron and the five of us had gone up to the Gryffindor common room — me to get my trunk to take down to the Chamber, and Ron to pack up his stuff to head back home. As we entered our dorm, Ron glanced at his bed and shuddered. "Ugh. Can you burn my mattress?"
"Hmm?"
"Just the thought that there was some bloody old man sleeping on it with me kind of grosses me out."
We stuck out our tongue. "Blech, yeah. Will do."
Ron nodded. "Thanks, mate."
Packing didn't take long — Ron hadn't brought much here, and most of it was still in his trunk, rather than in the dresser by his bed. With his stuff taken care of, the six of us left the Gryffindor dorms.
Our trip down to the entrance hall passed by in comfortable silence — that sort of silence where nobody feels the need to break it because we're all just enjoying each other's company. That silence ended when we got there; Mrs. Weasley was there waiting for us, and we took that as our signal to say our final goodbyes.
"See you when term starts, Harry."
"OF COURSE, RON! THAT IS IF WE DON'T FLY DOWN TO VISIT YOU FIRST!" Red bellowed happily.
"And if we sssee the rat man, we'll be sssure not to eat hisss head," Green added, his tone metaphorically bashing Ron upside the head with the implications.
"Harry!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed in shock.
"Misssusss Weasssley!" Green playfully replied.
She sighed. "I get enough of that from the twins. Don't you start that too."
"We don't know what you're talking about," Green "innocently" replied.
The woman sighed. "Alright, enough of that." She shook her head. "Anyway, goodbye, Harry. We'll see you soon."
After dropping our trunk off down in the Chamber (and finally verifying that everything in it had survived its time out in the woods), we made our way back up to find Dumbledore. Around us, the castle itself hummed with activity as paintings ran back and forth, carrying messages back and forth, while house elves popped around, their scents rapidly appearing and disappearing in splotchy, unconnected clouds.
The smell of rodent caught our attention. If we hadn't noticed the scent of the house elves, and thus had been paying attention to our sense of smell, we'd have missed it. With all the animals that regularly moved through Hogwarts' halls, and with what we'd been smelling specifically for several days now, the scent of a rat would have gone unremarked upon. Now, though?
It made us hungry.
Before, we'd been too concerned with ensuring they were alright, but now that McGonagall and Ron were alright, and now that there was a trail for me to follow and something we could do, the urge to hunt, to eat, the one who'd attacked what was ours? It was overwhelming.
We turned to follow the trail. It was thin, made by something small moving very fast, but it was distinct. The cross of man and rodent made it a sharp enough of a scent that we could follow it anyway.
Jogging, we followed the trail to a corridor on the ground floor, where it went until it quite suddenly stopped. Walking around a bit, we took a moment to confirm that it did indeed stop there, and when we were sure it had, we returned there.
The trail stopped just behind a statue of a one-eyed witch. Knowing Hogwarts, Blue figured it was a pretty safe bet that this was a secret passageway. Unfortunately, there were no paintings of people here, nobody to ask what the password might have been.
"ALLOW ME!" Red bellowed. And before we could stop him, he grabbed our form stone and canceled the transfiguration on our body. Our mass exploded outwards, sending a mountain of metallic flesh crashing into everything. Our bulk wasn't wide enough to smash through the walls, even if we were pinned quite tightly, but the statue, which had been standing a few feet from the walls, wasn't so lucky.
We reactivate our stone, shrinking back to human size and revealing the hole under the witch statue. "THERE YOU GO!" Red boasted. "ONE SECRET PASSAGEWAY ENTRANCE!"
"You idiot!" Blue hollered. "You could have brought the castle down on us! You could have smashed through the walls!"
"BUT I DIDN'T!"
"Did you even think?!"
"OF COURSE, I DID! I KNOW EXACTLY HOW BIG WE ARE! I KNEW WE WOULD FIT!"
Blue paused, a realization dawning on him. Of course, Red was vain enough to have memorized our exact dimensions. Our size and strength made him weirdly giddy every time he thought about it, and the thought of getting bigger made him drool. We'd never thought that that would ever come in handy.
"Come on," Green urged. He took control of our feet and had us jump into the hole. In the rear of our collective mind, Blue sent Red a glare while Red smugly grinned back.
The passageway was a straight line, and the rat's scent was the only scent that had passed through here in a long time. With only one way forward, we sprinted as fast as we could, no longer having to worry about losing the scent trail.
Down, down the passageway went. On and on it went, and as we ran, we debated what we were going to do to the rat. Eat him, most likely. A part of us (Yellow) recognized that we'd never seriously considered murdering someone before (even though we'd willingly killed Quirrell with our bare hands), but that same part of us didn't actually care.
The rat had attacked Ron and Professor McGonagall. That rat had spied on all the boys in the dormitory. This was personal.
The smell of peppermint smashed that train of thought like a whomping willow. The ladder in front of us led up to a trap door, and as we climbed through it, the scent of candy overwhelmed us. That would have been fine, except for one little problem:
The rat's trail was gone, hidden by the smell of confections.
We think this is the first time we've ever been furious at a candy store.
We stomped out of the store and into the streets of Hogsmeade. A labyrinthine maze of walls and streets, the perfect place to get lost if you were a rat. And if you were a dragon hunting said rat, well, there was really only one way to ensure that it didn't escape.
The fire within us burned furiously, but we very carefully made sure that not even the slightest wisp of smoke escaped our lips. We'd been so bloody close to finding that bastard, and now...
"BOLLOCKS!" Red roared. Our human voice failed to properly convey his frustration. He wanted, needed, to roar. Instead, we sat down on a short wall.
'What now?' Yellow wondered.
'There'sss nothing we can do. Outssside of sssheer, dumb luck, we're not going to find the rat.' Green gave the mental equivalent of a sigh. 'I vote we explore Hogsssmeade to take our mindsss off thingsss. Thisss isss the only chanccce we might have. Not like Uncle Vernon would sssign our permisssion ssslip.'
'He might now,' Blue thought, 'if we showed him what we really are.'
That got a chuckle out of every one of us, except Grey. He decided that now was the perfect time to bring down the mood. 'we're failures. we let him get away. and we smashed that statue for nothing, so now dumbledore is going to be mad at us too.'
"Bloody hell, Grey?! Do you have to be such a killjoy?" Blue muttered aloud.
Internally, Yellow suggested, 'We could go and repair it ourselves. That would fix that problem really quickly.'
'The houssse elvesss probably already fixed it,' Green chimed in. 'They fix the ssscratches we leave in the ssstone pretty quick. Thatsss the sssort of thing Dobby would love to do.'
With only one head at the moment, we couldn't exactly turn to look at Green. Still, we think our disapproval came through quite clearly through our consensus.
'What?'
'Rude, Green. We shouldn't make them clean up our own messes. And just assuming that they like it?'
'But Dobby—'
'Is crazy and the other elves are probably scared that we'd eat them if they didn't pamper us,' Yellow retorted.
'Fine.' And with that, we turned away and walked towards the castle. This time, at least, we took the scenic, above-ground route. It was definitely nicer than the dark passageway. More calming too. The last thing the professors needed was a moody, five-headed dragon to deal with.
On the other side of Honeydukes, a starving dog had been digging through the trash for anything to eat — even old candy. The human within warned that the candy would make him feel sick (at least until he transformed back), but the dog didn't care. It was too hungry at the moment to worry about almost anything else.
His rooting for candy came to a halt when the scent of rat tickled his nose. Normally, such vermin would have disgusted it, but the dog was hungry enough to eat it anyway, and the human within felt sadistic glee every time he killed one of those rodents.
Besides, it wasn't like he was killing a person, now was he? The traitor was some Hogwarts' kid's pet. Any other rat was fair game.
So, when his jaws snapped around the unsuspecting rat's neck, the dog was rather painfully surprising when it changed from a live rat's neck to a dead man's. It took the dog far longer to extract his teeth from the fatty neck than he would have liked.
That time and sharp pain, however, were exactly what he needed. The pain cut through both the shock and dampened his immediate reaction to seeing his enemy dead before him. He barked only once, that small bit of joy escaping before he could clamp it back down.
With a sudden bout of clarity and rationality, the human within the dog had formulated a simple plan.
First, he shifted back. Where once a skinny, mangy dog had stood, a skinny, mangy man crouched instead. Next, he fished out the wand from the dead man's pocket. The living man didn't recognize it, but after giving it a flick and getting tolerable results, he tucked it into the loose folds of his prison robes. Shifting back (incidentally hiding the wand within his other form), he set to work on part two of his little plan.
Teeth and claws made quick work of the dead man's jacket, especially the sleeve. There, on his once-friend's forearm, was a hated symbol: the Dark Mark.
Exposed to his satisfaction. The dog started barking loudly and desperately. Whimpers and whines interlaced his loud barking, as if he were a dog in pain instead of the savage beast he was currently imagining himself to be. He wanted people to find him this time. Or rather, to find the body.
And then, just as people were approaching to investigate, he bolted. Running as fast as he could, the dog ducked into a side street and out of sight.
The instant he was sure he was unobserved, Sirius Black became human once more and, twisting on the spot, apparated under his own power for the first time in twelve years.