As usual – thanks to my beta-reader, Queen of the Jungle
Chapter Four:
Ron and Hermione were sitting at the kitchen table when an odd owl that they had never seen before flew in the window. Mrs. Weasley watched it with a wary look in her eyes as she called Arthur to come and look at the letter it had brought.
The bird dropped it on the table but made no move to take off; it was waiting for a reply. Arthur Weasley hurried into the kitchen taking out his wand to scan the letter for any curses, to find out it was a Portkey or a number of other things.
After ten minutes he pronounced it safe and picked it up. "It's for you and Hermione, Ron," he said, handing it to them. The writing on the front of the letter was unfamiliar, but they opened it quickly anyway.
Ron, Hermione,
It's James, and Peter too, but he isn't here right now. I just thought I'd better send a note to tell you that I'm all right. You'd have heard about Moony's house, I suppose, tell him me'n'Peter'll help pay for him to rebuild it if he needs it.
If you see him sometime soon, ask him about their Graduation Day, and tell him I want one of the badges – you'll understand that once you hear the story behind it.
I can't tell you where I am right now, but be assured I am safe and well, and enjoying myself, although this place can be scary sometimes … it's even bigger than Hogwarts, and, I know it sounds impossible, but it's even harder to find your away around this place!
I'll tell you more the next time I see you, which won't be for quite a long time yet, since you'll be going to Hogwarts, and I don't think that I'll be going anywhere near there in a hurry!
Well, I hope you're both well, this owl will bring letters and parcels to me, if you want to send them, but do not try a tracking spell, it will kill the bird, and I don't want to do that, but the security here is a little … shall we say, fanatical.
I have to go now, I'm always busy these days, its even worse than all that homework you guys have to do for Hogwarts, from what you showed me!
Hopefully I'll hear from you soon,
James.
"It's from James!" Ron and Hermione yelled at the same time after reading it, and instantly the entire household was clamoring to know what it said.
Hermione read it out in a clear voice, and they settled down to trying to work out what it meant, and where Harry was, though he gave few clues, and no way to tie them together and form a proper answer.
"Well, the only thing that you can do is write back, I suppose,' Mrs. Weasley said."I'll bake him a cake, it's his birthday soon! And now you can send those presents you found for him," she added to Ron and Hermione, who brightened up considerably.
The family dispersed again, now that the happiness of hearing from Harry had faded slightly, Fred and George headed to their own rooms to go back to their experiments, Ginny wandered listlessly up to her own room to most likely do homework, and Arthur headed for the fire to Floo to the Ministry.
Molly Weasley bustled into the kitchen to start on the birthday cake that she had decided to bake for Harry, and Ron and Hermione headed up to Ron's room to gather the things that they had bought for Harry.
Far away the person on all of their minds was just being awoken by Sparrow, who, as usual, left the room the moment that she knew he was awake, to wait for him to dress and meet her in the hall.
Sirius would not be woken for some time yet, but Harry spent more of his time on lessons than his godfather did, and today would be a long day on all accounts.
The only thing that kept Harry going was the fact that if he could succeed today then he would be able to learn other things, and relax slightly until he learned the Academy's Laws.
Sirius had told him that he could not explain the laws of the Academy, because a person had to learn them from the teachers, but had told Harry that he would learn quickly and well when the time came for it.
Shaking his head slightly, Harry stood up and got dressed quickly. He was just trying to put this off. When he had first been told that he would become an animagus, he'd been thrilled, but now he knew the dangers, and his main concern was coming out of Tiger's classroom tonight alive … and sane.
With a sigh he pushed the door open and walked out, Sparrow fell in step with him to keep an eye on the changing corridors, but Harry pretty much knew his way to Tiger's rooms by now.
All too soon, in Harry's opinion they reached their destination and Sparrow was gone. He didn't know what she did with her time after waking him and Sirius in the morning and taking them back in the evenings… stop trying to put this off, he told himself firmly, striding forward he pushed the door open resolutely and walked inside.
Tiger sat at his desk, watching Harry carefully as the boy walked inside. "James, it's good to see that you came," he remarked, deep voice calm and steady. Harry felt the tension falling away from him and smiled faintly.
Tiger had something that made Harry trust him, he wasn't sure if it was like he felt with the Death Eaters, or the way that he had felt that he could trust the Shadow Master to an extent.
Tiger's voice inspired trust as well, which seemed odd in a man who had apparently come here for dealing on the black market with magical artifacts like brooms that had been stolen in the first place. Well, a voice that made you trust a person was a good thing for a thief, if not for the people he robbed.
"Why would I not come?" was all he said in reply to Tiger's statement. "I wish to remain here and learn what I can, and if I fail or refuse to take part in this lesson then I will not get the chance to learn any others, and will be told to go away from here."
Tiger smiled faintly, grimly. Tiger was a deadly person, for all his apparent affection for Harry. Affection could turn to dislike, or even hate, in the blink of an eye for a person who studied here.
"Good. Come with me, we will go to rooms
that are warded so that you cannot hurt yourself with the amount of magic that
will be spilled out of your mind from the uncontrolled part of the spell that
chooses the animal you will become. I will oversee the operation and make sure
that nothing too bad happens, if I can. Come along now!"
Tiger headed out of the rooms that were
among the only four he had seen in the entire castle. The others being his,
Sirius's and the chambers that the Shadow Master had first taken them too.
Now it seemed that he would find yet another of the castle rooms, though it turned out that these were not far from Tiger's, and appeared to be a large room with no furnishings whatsoever.
Tiger motioned Harry inside and closed the door behind them. "You know what to do, James," Tiger stated calmly, turning to walk into a passageway in the wall, which he opened by pressing his palm on a particular stone, even with the enormity of the task ahead, Harry automatically marked the stone that had been touched even as he walked to the centre of the room.
There he sat down, cross-legged, resting his hands on his thighs and closing his eyes. There was no sound in his ears save for his own breathing, no disturbance in the air around him.
Inward, he told himself, focus on the mind, and forget about his body, he did not have a body, the mind was all.
It took him quite some time to reach that state, but once he had, he felt completely at peace, he was on the inside of his mind, as if encased in clear cool glass, looking out he saw through someone else's eyes. He did not move, but instead let his thoughts go even as that other person spoke words that he did not hear in the roaring of his mind as magic ran wild around his skull. Encased in glass, he did not feel it personally, but it was as though a high wind rushed around his mind, dimly he heard a voice scream in pain, he did not realize that it was himself.
A wind seemed to ripple over his body, at first just a breeze, but it did not take long for that breeze to become a cyclone, shoving things into positions that were impossible for a human body to accomplish.
It was then that he realized that it was because his body was no longer that of a human. For a moment he remained in his glass enclosure, before it suddenly collapsed.
He did not remember his human form, he stretched, feeling muscles ripple beneath fur, claws extended almost a foot, pure silver and gleaming in the room that had once – he vaguely recalled – been dim, now it was alive with colours and scents, and sounds. The slight creak of age old stone moving slowly, oh so slowly over the eons that it had existed, the smell of every person who had been there in the last decade or so, some smells fresh and others so faint that it was all but impossible to pick them out, and was impossible to distinguish them as anything other people, they lacked a defining tint that would allow him to recognize them if he ever smelled them again.
Then something else changed, as wings sprouted from his shoulder blades, he swept them open, admiring these snowy feathers that seemed to glow with a pale moony light.
Retracting his claws the giant Black Panther prowled across the room, smells overwhelming its nose, until it came across one that was familiar, but how? Who was it?
And then an internal battle began, between something that was hiding beneath the panther's awareness and the panthers mind and instincts. It was the hidden being that won, and abruptly there was soft pop and Harry Potter, a human being knelt on the floor of the chamber, panting slightly.
After a moment he realized that he ached all over with what must have been excruciating pain, muscles week and trembling, he doubted that he could move, let alone stand.
Suddenly Tiger was there at his side, the pride in the other mans eyes was surprising, Harry did not understand it in the least, but at the moment he couldn't quite remember the words to phrase the question he wanted to ask.
Tiger gripped Harry's upper arm, but the boy did not want to stand, and simply fall again. Tiger was insistent, however, and soon had Harry on his feet.
He partly carried, partly dragged and partly supported the boy back to his rooms, where he slept in complete oblivion of what was going on in the world around him.
Dreams chased each other through Harry's mind, each forgotten the moment it came to its conclusion, none that he paid any heed too. He was coming to himself now, aware of pain and weakness, but otherwise he was lost in this world of dreams.
Life called him though, the waking life, as he was forced to answer that call. Eyes drifted open and he was surprised to find himself in his room with Tiger and Sirius seated at either side of his bed.
"You're awake," Sirius remarked with obvious relief. "You've slept for five days, you know," he added, eyes filled with worry.
"Five?" Harry shot up in the bed, eyes widening in surprise, all thoughts of sleep vanishing from his mind, before his arms collapsed, dumping him back on his back on the bed.
"Yes, five. We've been worried sick, but you are awake now, and that is what matters," Tiger replied, unflappable.
Harry smiled weakly. "So I am," he remarked.
"Food will arrive shortly, we'll leave you to your own devices," Sirius added, standing up and stretching slightly, he and Tiger leaving Harry lying on his bed.
Sure enough, not long after, a house elf appeared with a tray of food, which the little creature actually had to feed to Harry, since he could not move his arm well enough to lift the spoon.
When food was finished, he slept again, but what felt like only minutes later hunger pangs woke him once more, and an elf appeared to feed him.
In this manner he built up strength, recovering faster than either Sirius or Tiger seemed to think that he would be able to. Vision was sharper without his glasses, and he could smell things that he had not been able to before.
As the days passed on the memories that led up to his collapse returned, and shivered, remembering the feeling of being thrust aside in his own mind, something much more powerful taking over for a few precious moments.
He spent much of his time conversing with Sirius about his godfather's transformation, which had apparently been nowhere near as bad as this had.
"It hurt, but it was just like the ache of muscles after a long days work, a single night's sleep and some decent meals had me back to normal in no time. By the way, what is your form? Tiger only told me that it was for you to tell me about when you awoke and were ready to speak of it," Sirius told him once.
"It's a black panther with white wings … they were pale, like moonlight, but they glowed slightly," Harry replied, the last was more thinking aloud as he remembered it.
He heard Sirius's intake of breath, but it seemed unimportant as he remembered those wings. He would be able to fly without needing his broom now. The freedom he felt in the air would be a daily reality, he would no longer be bound to the ground, forced to use tools like brooms, however fun they were, to fly.
"I will let you sleep, I have to speak with Tiger on a matter that I have just remembered," Sirius, said, and Harry only nodded absently, not really paying his godfather any heed.
He slept soon after the other man left, and his dreams were filled with the air currents swirling around him, held up by wings of snowy white feathers …
The morning came far too quickly, but he could feed himself now, and ate the food that had been there when he woke before dressing himself.
When Sparrow entered the room, she smiled faintly to find him already awake, up and dressed. He was used to waking up at the usual time she came for him.
"Today you will begin learning the rules of the Academy," she told him. "Which means that you must have mastered your animagus form, or at least the first of them?"
"Yes", was his simple reply. He would tell her the name that he had chosen when he felt the time right, and that was not now.
She only nodded in acceptance that he had either not decided on a name to be called, or did not want to tell anyone what it was yet.
She led the way to a room, as it had been with Tiger; a single teacher occupied it. It seemed that all of the lessons were taught one on one at this stage.
"Please be seated, you may call me Serpent," the woman told him, looking up at him suddenly, her eyes were a shocking purple colour, combined with pale silver hair and white skin she looked decidedly creepy.
"Here you will learn the code of rules that govern the Seekers Academy, before you join the other new arrivals and learn the history and other written work, as well weapons and spells with them.
"You know, of course, that this is a school which teaches things that are generally shunned in the world outside. Assassination and theft being two of the foremost among those."
Here she paused, looking at him, and waited for his nod before continuing. She had the sound of someone who had done this a hundred times before.
"Here there is no past, and no future, only the present. You may die or live, depending on how strong you are and how quickly and well you learn your lessons.
"Many here die, whether by their own stupidity, such as cutting themselves open with the weapon that they are learning to use, or for insulting another student and losing the resulting fight. Fights are encouraged, and only the strongest, ruthless people can move up in the world. Here, death is life, and our motto is Demori Iuvenis Nunquam Vester – you're never too young to die." (Please forgive me if I got that wrong, I'm just going by an Internet site, if you know the correct form, please tell me in a review).
"Now, there are laws governing this as much as anything else. No one in the all white uniform can be killed, and only harmed on very rare occasions. The moment you move up to the next level – you'll learn about that later in another class, thank god – you could well be killed, but it is unlikely, because you are still new, and only one of your own level would be able to challenge you for most reasons. It depends, of course, on what you do. If you insult one of the older more experienced people, they may well kill you.
"Once you go up a level after that, and it is a lot harder to achieve that than it is to get through to the second level, you stand a very good chance of being killed.
"The only way that a Shadow Master can be replaced is if someone kills him and takes the place, or there is a fight to see who is the most ruthless and the best fighter here. Our current Shadow Master has lasted longer than the last twenty before him combined, and has been here for the past five years."
Harry found it hard not to gape. Five years was longer than the last twenty combined? How often did the position change?
"To be Shadow Master is to put your life at great risk, because all of the students want to be the Shadow Master, although you can only become Shadow Master if you reach the third level at least …"
Serpent's voice went on and on, detailing many things that Harry did not really understand, but all of which he filed away to keep for the time that he did understand it.
By that night he had learned the Laws of the Academy, and would join the same class as Sirius in the morning. Sirius had been able to tell Harry little about the class, as it was necessary to attend them to fully understand, but what he had said was good.
Sirius had obviously overcome all doubts that he had had about coming to this place, and was enjoying the lessons immensely, so Harry looked forward to attending them as well.
When he got back to his room that night, Sirius was waiting for him, settled on the chair beside Harry's bed. He leapt to his feet the moment he saw Harry, smiling in welcome.
Harry hugged his godfather gently, smiling faintly at how familiar this had become. They'd both been somewhat nervous around each other at first, not knowing how to behave, but that was gone now, and that was all that mattered.
"So, are you going to show me your animagus form?" Sirius asked curiously. Harry blinked, and realized that he hadn't shown his godfather his form yet, but then, it would be a slow process to change form again, but he would do it, to show Sirius his form.
Harry settled down on the ground, cross-legged as he had been when he first changed, and he found the same place in his mind. He came there quicker this time, but it took him some time to find the memory of the shape change in his mind.
When he found it he … embraced it, he felt it flow around him, felt the slight breeze that was fur rippling over his skin, felt the sudden shift in his bones as the moved to make the change to his new form.
Finally, and he was aware that it took some time, if not how much exactly, the shape shift was done and the glass bubble that surrounded his mind disappeared.
Immediately the mind of the panther tried to take control, but this time Harry was more ready for it, and pushed it down firmly, turning to face Sirius and unfolding his beautiful glowing wings.
The expression on Sirius's face was delightful, the man was gaping in awe at the creature before him, strong and proud it was the Harry that was hidden most of the time, for fear of his relatives, or something else, or the depression that had come after Cedric Diggory's death.
Harry changed back after a moment, slowly, savoring the ability to do so. "So, you like it?" he asked his godfather with a faint smile.
Sirius merely pointed to the mirror that was in the room. "Take a look at yourself," he said quietly.
Harry, not understanding what his godfather meant, did so, and gaped, for his eyes, normally a brilliant green, now had a sheen of misty gold that was fading slightly even as he looked, there was a ring of black around the inner edges of his eyes, but that too was fading to white and disappearing.
"What happened?" Harry asked eyes wide with surprise.
"I was hoping that you'd tell me," Sirius replied. "Dammit, I hate mysteries, and this seems all too much like one."
Harry merely smiled at his godfather and walked over to his bed. "I feel worn out, and I'm joining you tomorrow, so I think I should get some rest," he remarked.
Sirius nodded immediately. "Yes, rest would be very good, before your first day," Harry wondered what made him say that. First day must be the worst.
He fell into bed and was asleep before Sirius had even walked out the door, fatigued beyond belief, though he did not know why. He did not even remember closing his eyes.
Harry spent the night in a sleep that made that the dead seem rowdy, and it was all Sparrow could do to wake him in the morning. In fact, it she didn't manage to wake him, and had to call Sirius in to perform the operation.
Harry, therefore, had the doubtable honor of being awakened the same way his father had, every day of his Hogwarts life. That is to say, being hauled out of the bed and dumped unceremoniously on the floor, and, when that failed (as it apparently had often done with his father) Sirius directed a load of water, strewn with ice cubes over his godson's head.
That managed to wake him up, and Sirius informed him (after hearing quite a bit of choice language) that they needed to work on his vocabulary. "Your father could do much better than that on his first day at Hogwarts when he was eleven," Sirius told Harry with a look of surprise on his face. "I'm surprised you didn't know more than that!"
Harry merely grumbled under his breath and shooed both his godfather and Sparrow out of the room so that he could change without Sirius doing something even worse than he had by waking him up.
When he walked out of the room five minutes later, however, he appeared completely happy and wide awake. They both gaped at him, but then Sparrow led the way to the classrooms muttering something under her breath.
Harry didn't pay her much attention; apparently deciding that it was much more fun teasing Sirius, or torturing him into getting his godfather to tell him about what the school was like.
The only thing that he learned, however, was something that he was already aware of. He would find out when he got there.
Finally, they arrived at the classroom, Sparrow left them then, heading to her own class, why this was, was one of the only questions Sirius would answer. She had been there longer, and there were different classes for those who had been in the Academy for longer periods of time.
"There are people of all ages in all of the classes, I am certainly not the only adult here, and most of what they teach, I was not aware could be done," Sirius added, pushing open the door. "You, I believe, are the youngest among us."
He was right about that, certainly. Apart from him, the youngest appeared to be a woman who looked about nineteen, and she also appeared young compared to the rest of the class.
Harry felt quite nervous about being here, but Sirius directed an encouraging smile his way before leaving to make his way towards a seat, there were no desks, just seats, in the row second from the front.
A moment later a man, tall with pale grey eyes and grey hair who seemed very old, walked into the room. "Ah, you have joined us now, have you?" He remarked, turning pale eyes to Harry, who only nodded, and gulped when the man looked away from him.
The man walked to front of the room and sat down. "Now, none of you have had this lesson before, so I won't have to go over anything that other people have already learned, which is good, we can start from the beginning!" The man said, his voice was cool, misty but at the same time there was hardness hidden in its icy depths. Harry didn't like him at all.
"The Seekers Academy was founded by a murderer on the run from the law, who decided to gather all of the other people like him to a safe haven. At first there was just a small village, but as numbers grew the wizards and witches among them began building this place, and Muggle carpenters and such helped to make it look its best.
"It did not take long for each of them, thieves, spies, murders, assassins and the like to begin teaching one another what they knew, and as time passed and the original founders died and were replaced, it became a school where anyone who wanted to learn such things would be found and brought to us, if they did not find us themselves…"
The man went on and on about various things, gave a brief overview of what they would learn with him, all of it sounded somewhat boring, and then quite suddenly shooed them from the classroom into the corridor, informing them to hurry on to their next lesson.
Harry had no idea what he was talking about, but the others from his class seemed to, so he followed them and ended up in a large room, the walls lined with various weapons, swords, daggers, bow and arrows … there were too many to count.
Sirius was in the room already, fencing with a man that was about the same size as he, sword's flickering, searching for an opening. There were a lot of people in the room, all in the pure white robes that proclaimed them as new.
Some of those who had been there when Harry arrived came over, Sirius included. Harry's godfather walked straight to him. "I'll get you started with weapons, you'll need to know something about them by tomorrow, because there will be a proper teacher then," he said softly.
Harry merely nodded. "The history teacher is freaky," he remarked to Sirius, who nodded in fervent agreement.
"Don't trust him, kid," he told Harry firmly.
"I won't, he felt untrustworthy … I wonder if he's a Death Eater or something, because anyone can come here and no questions will be asked about them," Harry replied, frowning slightly.
"That was a thought that I did not need," Sirius muttered in annoyance, "but you are right, we need to remember that no one here is a friend, save for the two of us. Everyone else cannot be trusted."
"I think that Tiger can, but we can talk of that later," Harry replied. Sirius nodded.
"Come with me, we'll get you a practice sword. Once you've mastered a weapon, you can get the proper thing, it's like wands really, the weapon chooses you, not you it," Sirius told him.
A few minutes later Sirius was teaching him the basics of swords craft. Harry was a little clumsy at first, but it did not take him long to find his balance, and working the basic forms came fairly easily after a few practices.
Sirius smiled at Harry, and the boy could see pride in his godfather's eyes, which made him strive even harder to do well at this.
After a short time, Sirius told him to put the sword down, and Harry frowned slightly. "We have to move from weapon to weapon both so that what you learn varies and so that we can find out where you're weak and strong points are," he explained.
Harry nodded and put the sword down and let Sirius lead him into a corner where he began learning the basics of unarmed fighting. This took longer than the sword had, but again it did not take Harry long to find his balance, and the stretches were fairly easy, Harry was good at twisting his body to get into small places, some of the jobs the Dursley's had asked him to do required it, and when he was hiding from Dudley, the smaller his chosen hiding place, the less chance Dudley would find him. When they got to the actual moves, however, was when things got a little more difficult.
They moved on to daggers some time later, and then to archery. Harry found that actually aiming the bow was very difficult, though it did not take him long to learn how to draw it, he still managed to miss the target almost every time.
By the day's end he was completely worn out, and counted himself lucky that he did not have to find his own way back to his rooms, because he didn't think that he'd have made it otherwise.
The moment he reached his rooms he fell asleep, without even bothering to eat dinner, but when Sparrow came for him in the morning, he was awake and eating breakfast hungrily.
"It won't be long before you can find your own way to the classes, you'll remember the changes after a while," she remarked, before leaving to wake Sirius.
Harry was eager to begin again that day, to see how far he could get, and was relieved to find that they only had the history teacher once a week.
There were other lessons, but you did not learn them until you reached the next level, just dueling and non-magic fighting was taught to beginners.
They would be spending all of that day on fighting skills, and all of the next on magical dueling, which Harry was eager to learn, since he would certainly need it against Voldemort and the Death Eaters at some point.
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There, another chapter come and passed! Please review and the next chapter will be out very soon!
Thanks To:
BlackDragon, Katy99, shdurrani, Queen of the Jungle, Queen of the Jungle, Queen of the Jungle, Queen of the Jungle, Clare, maria, brion, PR LUCKEN, ADJ, Songbreeze Swifteye, Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Syd, Mr. Happy Java Man, Queen of Redwall, ~Mary~, Old Fawkes and blackunicorn! Thanks for the support guys, 21 reviews! Please keep up the reviews, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as the previous ones!
~WolfMoon~