Chapter Seven – The Off-Month

The beginning of March was surprisingly and considerably warmer than the entirety of the previous month. Instead of being below zero and rainy, it was actually somewhat warm. The air was still crisp, but with few clouds in the sky, the sun was allowed to shine and warm the ground below. With just over a month left to prepare for the game against Gryffindor, the Slytherins were having a team meeting in their usual corner of the Common Room, situated around a low table. Of course, "team meeting" usually meant that Brad tried to talk, while the others went about doing other things as they pretended to listen.

Cory and Ryan sat on the floor, while the rest either reclined in various beanbag chairs or couches. Alexia sat on Cory's shoulder, and open in front of them both was one of the books about Animagi which Alexia had checked out of the library. Cory was reading passages now and then, and while she was actually starting to be able to recognize and read most of the words, she didn't indicate that in any way. She liked him to read to her… Besides, he didn't seem to mind it, either. They'd never really talked much outside of Quidditch before, but Lex was finding that she was starting to really enjoy Cory's company.

The others seemed to notice that, too. More than once, they'd endured good-natured jibes about the impossibility of their relationship. It was all in good fun.

"All I'm saying," Brad continued, after Cory finished reading a rather boring passage about focusing on the Inner Self. "…Is that we have this game coming up against Gryffindor…"

"Really?" Ryan said. "I wasn't aware. Maybe you should tell us again!"

Brad ignored him. "We can't just sit around like this. That's just what they'll be expecting!"

"We've been practicing twice a week," Lucas pointed out. "And you've already decided that we'll be on the pitch three times a week starting Friday. Frankly, I don't see why you're worried."

Ryan was no longer paying attention to the conversation. He'd gotten to his feet and moved to hide behind the high back of the chair, peering around it as if spying on the rest of the team. "Ryan Delveccio here," he said, holding his hand up to his mouth as if speaking into a two-way radio. "Just as we expected… The Slytherin team is sitting around talking about bloody Quidditch again! Honestly, you'd think they had nothing better to—"

"Sit down, Ryan!" Brad commanded. He rolled his eyes, but he was obviously fighting fiercely not to chuckle, as the others were doing. Ryan obediently took a seat on the floor.

"Look," the captain continued. "We really should be working on strategy here. On average, Kylee spots the Snitch an hour into the game. We have to hold Gryffindor off until then… Play a defensive match. What we need to do this time is leave everything up to our Seeker, and that's where we'll win it."

"But no pressure, Kylee," Ryan whispered.

"We also have to consider that Lex might still be out of commission," Lucas stated. The others were quiet for a moment… Alexia earnestly wished she was able to respond. Green smiled a bit, though. "We'd love to have you back, Lex, but it's something we have to think about."

She nodded.

"I don't want to pull in a sub," Brad pondered to himself. "But we might have to…"

"We're working on it," Cory said. His voice was measured, but somewhat annoyed. "Just give us a while." He flipped through a couple pages, and Alexia pretended not to be able to read the content.

Kylee, too, was flipping through the pages of a book. It was a copy of Famous Familiars of the Seventeenth Century. She claimed it was for research, but Alexia noticed her reading the page about ravens. Apparently, they'd been a popular companion many years back. Suddenly, she slammed her hand down on the book, finger pointing at a paragraph halfway down the page. "I knew it."

Brad threw up his arms, finally surrendering to the fact that they weren't going to get any Quidditch discussion underway any time soon. He did, however, turn his attention to Kylee and her paragraph. It was something she seemed to be quite excited about. "What did you know?" he asked.

"Corvus Corax," Kylee read, "Better known by it's common name, the raven, was a favorite among witches and wizards from the fourteen-hundreds on. These intelligent birds, though aloof and moody," (She paused in her reading, and everyone glanced in Alexia's direction) "…made excellent familiars. Like cats, ravens are self-sufficient and resourceful, and many situations arose where an exceptionally intelligent bird was able to help its master out of a difficult situation. They are also gifted with the ability of speech, and learn through repetition. There are several reports of ravens actually calling for help when their master was in trouble."

She shut the book, looking triumphantly in Alexia's direction. "It might not be much, but maybe… You can at least tell us what you need?"

Honestly, Alexia had never even tried to speak before. It was one of those things that just never occurred to her. She was an animal, which logically meant that she wouldn't be able to speak…

She tried it. The result was a dry caw.

"They'd form words differently, I bet," Kylee encouraged.

How could she form a word any differently than just saying it? As the others looked at her expectantly, she felt compelled to try again, but wasn't sure how. Focusing on a simple word – hello – she tried it again. The result was the same. Forming a sort of "recording" of the word in her mind, she attempted it again, and this time, it sounded remarkably like the word "hello."

Of course, it also sounded like a hollow recording, but she could talk! Or… At least she could say one word. Her mind was almost processing it as a new type of call instead of an actual word. Strange, but useful. She said it again, and again.

"Alright already!" Ryan said, reaching over to bat lightly at Alexia. Raising a wing, she batted right back.

Forming her mind around her own name, she attempted to create a call that mimicked it. After thinking about it for a moment, she was able to say, "Alexia."

Ryan clapped, looking ridiculously impressed. "Good! You can say 'Hello Alexia.' I'm sure that'll come in handy one day."

---

Ryan absolutely could not stand transfiguration. He didn't get the class… Why would you want to take something that was perfectly happy in its natural state – like a beetle, or a hedgehog… Or a teammate, for example – and turn it into something else? If he needed buttons, he wouldn't go out and dig up beetles from his yard to transform. He'd march himself to a Muggle store and purchase some buttons.

However, the fact that his fellow chaser was now a large-ish black bird got him thinking all over again about transfiguration. He supposed it had its uses. For instance, if he'd somehow cemented his feet into the floor of his room and happened to need a thimble, and there was nothing around but a housefly, he could see the immediate advantage in having the ability to successfully transfigure something.

Having borrowed Alexia's library book, Ryan was sitting in the Great Hall, having a bit of lunch, while paging through it. Most of it was pretty dry and boring, though he found it interesting that there were usually a scant handful of animagi every century. There had only been three in the nineteen hundreds at the time of the book's publication in nineteen forty-nine. And he remembered hearing Professor McGonagall say sometime in class that there were only a total of six registered animagi in the century, which made Alexia the seventh.

Registered. Which begged the question, how many unregistered animagi were there?

Bored, he finally slammed the book shut and looked up from it, noticing that the Great Hall had cleared out since he'd arrived. That wasn't a surprise, really, as he glanced at his watch and realized he'd been there for over an hour. It was way past lunchtime, and he was missing class. Oh, well. One class wouldn't hurt. He looked around, wondering what he could do with this newfound free time…

Sometime along the line, Green must have arrived, as he was sitting at a considerable distance down the table from Ryan. Every once in a while, he'd look up at something across the Hall.

Anna.

Green would look at her when he was sure she wasn't looking. Oddly enough, Anna was doing the same thing.

Ryan couldn't understand why they didn't just get together. Green said something about Anna being a half-blood, and didn't seem to understand that there were actually a few Slytherins that weren't pure-blooded wizards. It just didn't seem like a terrible crime to befriend someone who was different. Then again, Ryan was familiar with the Muggle world a bit more than most, as his father's brother was a Squib. He'd spent a bit of time in urban Chicago.

Eventually, Ryan stood up and made his way down the table to where Green was sitting. "Why don't you just go talk to her?" he asked.

As if horribly offended at the recommendation, the other Chaser gathered all his things and simply walked away, leaving Ryan alone.

…This was going to take some doing.

Figuring he really had nothing else better to do, he next headed over to Anna, sitting across from her. The girl was so absorbed in her work, that she didn't even notice he was there until he said, "Lovely day, isn't it?"

She jumped, nearly falling off her seat as she stared up at him. "…Oh. For a second I thought you— I mean, you sound like— Sorry."

Ryan shrugged. "We're both Irish. Must be the charm. We tend to knock girls right off their feet. Or… Seats, in this case. You're Anna, aren't you?"

Anna smiled a bit. That was a good sign… At least she wasn't going to get up and walk away. "Yes," she answered simply. "And you're… One of the Slytherin chasers. I'm sorry. I don't remember who…"

He held out his hand, and she took it. "Ryan Delveccio."

"Well, it's nice to meet you. Is there something I can help you with? I was just trying to sort out what I was going to study next year."

Might as well cut right to the point. "What's up with you and Green?" he asked.

Suddenly her passively friendly demeanor vanished, and her face froze in an expression that might have either been rage or fear. It could have also indicated that the sandwich she was eating wasn't quite as good as it looked, but Ryan surmised that it was one of the former emotions.

Then she, too, gathered her stuff, stood up, and walked away.

A few moments passed, then he said to himself, "They're a lot more alike than they even realize."

Perhaps transfiguration could come in handy. Because he was bored, and because he had nothing else better to do, he was going to find a way to change both of them. Ryan was going to find a way to make them like each other again.

---

Cory jerked awake as Ryan ran past him. The movement also woke Alexia, who'd been dozing on Cory's shoulder for some time. Open in front of them, almost forgotten, was the book from the restricted section of the library… Unfortunately, they hadn't made much progress in reading between the lines of the text, and it didn't seem there was any magical cure for being stuck within an animagus transformation. It really wasn't so bad, though. Alexia missed Quidditch, but at least she could communicate – in one or two syllables at a time – and she was also close to Cory, who had, for some reason, taken a personal interest in returning her to normal.

It was sweet.

"I wonder what he's up to," the boy muttered, flipping the pages of the book until they were back on the page they'd been reading before they fell asleep. Alexia could actually read most of the text now, though occasionally a word that should be familiar to her ended up looking like a jumble of random lines. It was hard to override the raven's limited intelligence at times.

"I don't know," she replied in the stiff, almost mechanical voice that didn't really sound like her at all.

They watched as Ryan thudded up the stairs to his dorm, and then rumbled back down a few moments later, disappearing through the dungeon wall leading out into the corridor.

"Well," Cory said, after their teammate was gone. "It's getting a bit late, but we can read more if you want. As long as I can still wake up for class tomorrow."

Alexia hopped down onto the arm of the chair so she was a little closer to the book, which made it easier for her to see. Still, she turned back toward Cory, looking way up into his brown eyes. "…Why?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Because. If it'll help you—"

She shook her head, trying to figure out how to form the the questions she wanted to vocalize. It wasn't that she didn't know the words, it was just that transferring them from her mind to her voice was difficult. Why was he taking so much time out of his life to help her? They'd been acquaintances at best before, and now it almost seemed like there was more to it than that. It was creepy, really, considering she'd resigned herself to the fact that she might be a raven for a while. Maybe she'd set a record, like Fargus the Whatever, and be stuck for several years.

"Why?" she asked again.

She could see the conflict in his eyes. Finally, he said, "Because I want to."

Her ability to see in color was limited, but she was sure he was blushing.

He pretended as if he was reading the text, trying not to notice that Alexia was still staring up at him. Logically, she should perhaps feel sad that they were unable to have any sort of a proper relationship, or embarrassed, or something like that. Instead, she felt such a warmth and sense of belonging, that it was hard to understand.

"I should get up to bed," he mumbled. It was almost as if he'd misinterpreted her silence as disgust, rather than admiration.

"Stay," she said quickly, as quietly as possible. It still sounded impersonal, and she hated that… But at least Cory smiled, and settled back down into the chair. Alexia nosed the book shut, and Cory picked it up and set it on the table in front of him; to make sure no one took it, he then propped his feet up on it.

He fell asleep, then, with Alexia resting just next to him on the chair. She watched him for a long time, feeling relaxed, even happy. It took her a few moments to realize that was exactly how she'd felt before she became the raven. Holding that thought in her mind, she was finally able to release herself from the hold the transformation had on her.

The first thing she did was lay her head on Cory's shoulder. He didn't even wake up. Closing her eyes, she brushed the stray feathers off the robe she'd been wearing when she changed, and fell asleep.