Chapter 7: Fur, Eyes and Feathers

On Thursday morning, the entire sixth-year level was abuzz with excitement as they discussed their various projects. Harry and Ron feigned interest in Neville's animated description of the mandrake and venomous tentacula cross-breeding project he was working on while they waited for Hermione to come down to breakfast, though why anyone would want to create something that could knock you out with a scream while it strangled and poisoned you was quite beyond Harry.

There was a loud thump beside them as Hermione dumped her near-bursting book bag on the floor, providing a welcome interruption to Neville's enthusiastic accounts on the properties of dragon dung fertilizer.

"We get special animagus training as our Transfiguration project!" Hermione squealed, barely able to contain her excitement. "What about the both of you?"

"Jusomfin unvampires." Ron mumbled unintelligibly through a mouthful of scrambled eggs, not meeting Hermione's eyes.

"Who else is in the Transfiguration project?" Harry asked hurriedly.

"A couple of Ravenclaws...Terry Boot and Padma Parvati. Ernie Macmillan from Hufflepuff." Hermione made a face like she had just tasted something awful. "And Malfoy."

Ron choked on his eggs and Harry nearly spat out his tea.

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked, patting his back.

"Yeah. I always make a habit of drinking tea with my lungs." Harry choked out.

"How can we be okay? With Malfoy getting to turn himself into some beast so he can sneak around and spy on us!" Ron said angrily.

"We'll have to register our forms and markings after we have completed the transformation." Hermione said. "We'll be able to recognise him. Besides it's illegal to use the transformation to spy on anyone, unless you're an Unspeakable."

"He'll be unspeakably annoying after this alright." Ron muttered.

"Any idea what animal you'll become?" Harry asked.

"I bet you're a bird, bird-brain." Malfoy sneered at Hermione as he passed the Gryffindor table.

"And I bet you're something small and furry, Amazing Bouncing Ferret." Ron retorted.

Malfoy flushed pink at the reminder and scowled in fury.

"What do you know, Weasel? You didn't even qualify for the project."

"And I don't see you qualifying for See—" Ron said hotly.

Harry stamped hard on Ron's toe. Malfoy's eyes narrowed shrewdly as Ron turned red and busied himself with his eggs again.

"Quit staring at us, Malfoy." Hermione said. "Go back to your table where you belong."

"I don't take orders from you, Mudblood." Malfoy spat as he strolled off towards Kera as she entered the Great Hall.

Once he was gone, it was Hermione's turn to stare at the two boys.

"Qualifying for what?"

"Er…Seeker!" Harry improvised hastily.

"Yeah, 'cause, you know, the stupid git bought his way onto the team and everything." Ron agreed.

Hermione gave them a look that said she didn't quite believe them, but let it pass.

"Anyway…"

"What's this?" Ron asked as she pushed the sets of coloured papers into his hands.

"N.E.W.T.s study schedules." Hermione replied, digging out one set for Harry as well.

"'Mione, it's the first week of the term and the N.E.W.T.s are two years away!" Ron said in exasperation.

"And look what happened to the both of you the last time you left your O.W.L.s to the last minute." Hermione said primly.

"We didn't do that badly!" Ron protested.

"You could have done better!"

"'Mione…" Ron began with a bit of a whine.

Looks like everything's back to normal then. Harry thought with a grin as the familiar bickering started up around him.

*~*~~*~**~*~*~~*

The weeks flew past in a flurry of homework, prefect duties and Quidditch practice. There were no more mentions of the Chalice in The Daily Prophet—in fact, there were not more mentions of anything of real importance in it anymore as far as the Gryffindor trio were concerned since the paper was sticking to Fudge's side of the story. Kera was seen disappearing into the dungeons with increasing frequency, presumably to look for Malfoy or Snape, so that Harry rarely got a chance to talk to her anymore. Even the first Quidditch match of the season against Gryffindor was a letdown. Ravenclaw fared dismally again, since Cho had spent most of it flying aimlessly like a robot that had been programmed to keep doing something but wasn't very sure why it was still doing it.

The quiet and calm brought a sense of uneasiness that weighed on Harry's mind. The idea of Voldemort laying low and licking his wounds was just too tempting to be true.

The only bright spot in his life turned out to be his Seer training sessions with Arabella and Professor Figg. Neither he nor Ron seemed to be making much progress, but he was starting to feel less freaked out about all the strange things he had been hearing and feeling as he learnt about the extent of their abilities. Besides reading minds, they had been told that they could sense magic and emotions to a certain extent, and they would also have some visions as they got better, which were much more accurate then the divination techniques they'd learnt (or had pretended to learn) in Trelawney's class.

"Those things Sibyl teaches are for people without The Gift, or with a very shallow inclination towards it." Professor Figg had explained. "People like her."

In addition, Harry also found he got to spend more time with his godfather, and for once he didn't really have to worry about Sirius getting caught. But it always felt bad to lie to Hermione about what they were really doing, and in time they began to find that Hermione was spending more time with Ginny then with them.

Which is why they were spending their first Hogsmeade weekend in a musty bookshop with Hermione instead of making the most of their time in Honeydukes or the twins' new shop (most of the Gryffindors had sworn off Zonko's to show their support to Fred and George).

Hermione had been genuinely pleased and had gone off looking for books on Animagus-transformations in a better mood than she had been in for a long time, while Ron and Harry flipped through the newest addition of Quidditch Through The Ages. The move Hufflepuff had used last year at the Quidditch Finals had been entered as "Cedric Chaser", and to Harry's disconcertion and Ron's great amusement, there was another new entry entitled "Potter Gulp", detailing the move where Harry had nearly swallowed the Snitch in his first match. But there were only so many times you could read it from cover to cover after practically memorising the bits that hadn't been in previously.

"'Mione…" Ron grumbled as Hermione dumped another book on the over-towering stack in his arms.

"Oh alright, just this last book." Hermione said, attempting to pull a thick volume off one of the higher shelves.

"You said that about ten books ago!"

"This is important! I've read about so many ways the transformation could go wrong, and—"

"All the more reason you should stop scaring yourself with all these books." Harry said firmly, taking the book away from her. "There is such a thing as too much information."

"Besides, all you need to do is ask Sirius." Ron said rather too loudly as he tried to make himself heard from behind the stack of books.

"Shh! Not here." Hermione hissed with a glance around to make sure nobody had heard.

"Sorry."

"Let's get out of here."

It wasn't hard to find Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Besides the loud and frequent explosions and shrieks of delight and amazement that could be heard for halfway down the length of the street, there was also an enormous crowd of what looked like almost the entire school, minus the Slytherins, gathered outside.

After a lot of jostling and apologising, they finally made their way into the shop, which was—as expected—in complete chaos. Although the shop had been magically expanded to fit more people, everybody was still treading on somebody else's toes or getting elbowed. Fireworks capered around above their heads like they had a mind of their own, Gobbling Gobstones nipped at unsuspecting fingers, big feathery canaries were turning back to people in a burst of feathers and every few minutes or so someone would step on a trap and get swallowed into the walls or into the floor.

"That's dangerous! They're going to get sued!" Hermione exclaimed after a Hufflepuff first year in front of them sprung a trap and seemed to vanish into the floorboards. Not that anyone could actually hear her above the whoops of amusement and surprise that ensued.

"Startling Sinkholes!" Fred shouted above the cheering, his voice magically amplified. "Keep your enemies out of the way for a while, or give a good shock to your friends!"

"Ten Sickles for one, while stocks last!" his twin joined in just as the missing Hufflepuff turned up a few feet away from him and was loaded with a bagful of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes for being sporting.

"Oi, Fred! George!" Ron waved, practically having to shout at the top of his voice to be heard.

"Ickle Prefect Ronnie-kins and his ickle girlfriend!" they crowed, somehow managing to get through the crowd to their sides in a flash.

Then they started in unison, as if just spotting Harry standing next to them.

"I don't believe it!"

"It can't be—"

"—Famous Harry Potter?"

"Sod off." Harry grinned, punching one of them in the arm.

"How's everything?" Hermione asked.

"Spiffing. We were told by an old witch that we sounded like The Shrieking Shack on a chocolate high." Fred informed them gleefully.

"Hey, didn't Kera come?" George asked.

"Don't tell me she's off with Malfoy again." Fred said.

"Nah, we just saw that smarmy git in Flourish and Blotts. She's probably back in school with Snape."

"Even worse." The twins proclaimed.

"Pass this to her when you get back." Fred said, handing them a bag.

"What's in there?" Ron asked, mystified.

"That's for us to know, and you to find out." George said with a grin. "It's got some pretty nasty hexes on it, so don't you open it unless you want your nose turned inside out."

She wasn't anywhere in Gryffindor Tower when they got back, and judging from the way Malfoy was sulking around in a black mood, she wasn't in the dungeons either.

"I'll check the Quidditch field, you check the library." Harry suggested to Ron.

He hurried down the steps to the main entrance…then he heard a hissing noise he identified quickly as not Parseltongue but Pythostongue.

The first thing Harry noticed about the strange man talking to Kera was that his eyes were the exact shade of green as Kera's.

He skidded to a stop and found himself instinctively hiding behind a statue of a winged boar, hoping Peeves or Mrs. Norris wouldn't come nosing around and give him away.

"You know the Law," the moustached man hissed, the rougher growl-like accent in his speech harder than Kera's, making his words difficult to follow.

"And I will go on breaking it as I see fit."

"Did he put you up to this?"

"Nobody put me up to anything. It is my choice."

At that, the man lapsed into another language that Harry could not understand.

"C' ar son an duine earb?" [1] He asked, sounding agitated.

"Air earb mo máthair esan." [2]

"Bha do máthair amadan, coslach agad." [3] He muttered.

"You grow bolder with each day." She said coldly in Pythostongue.

 "Air eug ise a chionn esan!" He replied harshly. [4]

"She died to save him." Kera said flatly.

Were they talking about Snape? Harry wondered.

The man twisted his face into a hideous grimace of anger and opened his mouth to speak.

 "Harry!" Ron's voice came from the staircase. "Have you found her?"

Kera froze.

"Hist!" [5] She snapped at the man, turning around to find Harry standing sheepishly behind her.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to—" Harry began. The moustached man was looking at him like he was something nasty he'd stepped in by accident.

"Lord Veneficus was just leaving." Kera said pointedly. The man scowled and made a visible effort to regain his composure.

"Eisimeil." He murmured, still glaring at Kera, and left. [6]

"Who was that?"

"That is not your business."

"What was that language you were speaking in?" Harry asked.

She paused.

"Gaelic." Kera finally replied.

"Why?" He frowned.

"It's an old language. Few people understand it." She said tersely.

"There are even fewer Parseltongues and Pythostongues in the world." Harry persisted, ignoring her glare.

"But as it so happens, they are the very people who are not supposed to know what has been spoken."

"Like me?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Maybe."

Before he could ask anything more, they heard Ron coming down the stairs behind them. Kera received the package with curt thanks, and disappeared into the dungeons again.

[A/N: translations are as follows:

1) "How can you trust the human?"

2) "My mother trusted him"

3) "Your mother was a fool, just as you are."

4) "She died because of him!"

5) "Silence!"

6) "In your reverence."

Again with my horrible half-baked Gaelic. *grins*

I've taken a leaf from JKR… no more blow by blow accounts of Quidditch matches. Oh and there will be no changes made in previous chapters to reflect the new information given in OotP, since this fic is largely AU.

line-Granger: well, as Arabella said, they are a slightly different kind of Seer from Trelawney. It has nothing to do with Divination class. *grins* sorry about taking some time to write this, I was busy with some school stuff.]