Chapter 12: Eagle's essence

By midday Saturday, Leah finished making the eagle's essence. The cooled liquid now stood in a glass bottle in a secret compartment of her trunk, but didn't stay in there for long. Excited thoughts kept on creeping in her mind and thought that it was time to fly. She grabbed the two bottles one containing the essence of eagle and the other with the vital potion that could change her into any animal.

The empty classroom was bathed in pools of afternoon light. Clearing a couple of desks away and making some room for herself, she sat down and bought out the two bottles. Ten drops, no more, no less was put into the bottle and she lightly shook the bottle containing the Animatus potion. The potion turned from a light green to a vibrant scarlet and Leah gulped, not sure about her actions. She began to worry – what if I can't change back into a human again? What if the essence was wrong? What if…

She shook her head. This is stupid, she thought. She took the cork out of the bottle and let two drops of the potion fall into her mouth. The cool drops were tasteless and no immediate effect came. That's strange, she though as she wedged the cork back into top of the bottle. She slipped the two bottles inside her pocket, but as she did so a hot surge erupted from the depth of her body and Leah crouched, her eyes shut tight and holding her chest. The heat intensified and by the time it was so hot she thought she would scream, it fainted away and Leah was just crouching but no longer holding onto her chest.

She opened her eyes and looked about her. Everything around her was normal; but it was she who had changed. She looked down at her own body and saw her chest covered in plumes of golden feathers. She looked behind her and saw that two wings were attached to her back and she spread her wings, still gaping at them with disbelief. She stretched her wings to its full extent and flapped them. They carried her light body towards the open window and perched on the sill. The world in front of her seemed so exciting from where she sat. She could see for miles around, better than any binocular-eye charm. She had a whole new world to explore; only this time the sky wasn't a limit.

She spread her wings and flew into the vast open sky. It was a dream come true. She sawed above the treetops of the Forbidden Forest and around the lake. She flew so low that she could skim the water with the tips of her magnificent wings. For a glorious hour she flew around the grounds of Hogwarts. Around every tower and post and she flew to the Quidditch pitch and weaved her way in and out and around the goal posts. But time drifted on and was snatched away only too soon for Leah.

However she didn't realise this and flew to an ash tree by the lake. She sat gracefully at the topmost branch but soon heard voices coming from directly under her. She flew down a couple of branches and saw three boys sitting around talking. It was Malfoy, and his goons, Crabbe and Goyle. Something evil sprang up inside Leah and she stayed, listening to their conversation, hidden from the tree's leaves.

"I think Millicent likes me," a low voice said, and Leah guessed this must be Crabbe. "She hasn't been throwing so many curses on me lately. Do you reckon the bunch of flowers did the job at Valentine's Day?"

"Probably," said Malfoy's voice, clearly distinguishable from that of Crabbe. The tone in his voice though was of one of no interest.

"How about you Goyle, have you been able to steal Blaise's heart back from Montague's?" Malfoy said, a sneer could be heard in his voice.

"No," said Goyle his voice a disappointed growl.

"You got an eye for someone, Malfoy?" one of the goons asked.

"Not really, I'm too busy trying to get away from Pansy. I wish she'd get the idea though. I've told her on countless times that I have no intention, what so ever, to go out with her and every time I say that, I get landed with a howler. But can you imagine anyone going out with her? Imagine kissing that bulldog. Ugh!"

Leah, hidden, but listening to every single word said in this conversation, could feel herself sneer. Pansy, Pansy, Pansy, she thought. When will you ever realise that you're wasting your time on a pig-headed git sitting right underneath me? But a mention of her name caught Leah in her thoughts.

"Hey, what do you think of that new girl, Leah Harrison?" Malfoy asked the two.

Leah silently moved down a couple of branches to get a better hearing.

Goyle shrugged, "I dunno. She's alright – been nice to me since she came."

Leah smiled. He's a good guy, she thought.

But Malfoy's reply was less than pleasing. He growled, "That's what you think, huh? Well I think not. How can she have to nerve to barge into this school and then be taken into our hands and make friends with the filthy Gryffindors? By the way she's acted, it's surprising that she even went to Durmstrang – I thought they taught dark magic there, but she's as dark as god. All she's done while being here was come and put stains on our reputation. Slytherin of all should be extra careful of who joins the circle of friendship."

"Calm down Draco," Crabbe said, his eyes wide. "Gees, you need some anger management or something to let it all out. That's not healthy, you know."

"Yeah, yeah," snapped Draco. He took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. "Sorry, some of Pansy must have rubbed off onto me." He thought again about what he said, "Ok, that didn't so sound good."

Leah's anger subsided slightly as Malfoy rephrased what he meant. Shortly afterwards, Crabbe and Goyle left to back up to the castle, but Malfoy stayed on. She swooped down to the ground and came to land beside Malfoy. He jumped when he saw the eagle approach him, but didn't move from where he sat. Surprisingly though, he talked to her. "Hello, you're not from around here, are you?" he asked and extended his hand to pat the bird. Leah moved away slightly, and Malfoy took back his hand. Don't you dare touch me, she thought.

He kept on talking though looking a little embarrassed, "You from Africa? Yeah, I thought you might be. Is it nice there?" Leah silently laughed – he was asking all these question when he knew very well that she couldn't answer him.

He talked to her for at least ten minutes; just blabbing on about random things. His house, family, friends and all the time he asked her what she thought as if involving her in his life. By the end, Malfoy's hand reached over again, but this time Leah didn't move away. She stood there as Malfoy's fingers tickled behind her head. Leah would not have normally liked this, but since now she was a bird, the strange custom was somewhat pleasing. Leah's eyes began to droop as Malfoy kept on tickling her neck. But he stopped and started talking again making Leah's eyes blink open.

"So what do you think of this Leah girl?" it was the same question asked to Crabbe and Goyle. A fantastic person and a good looking one, if you want to know, thought Leah but before she could even answer him (even though she couldn't), he started talking.

"Yeah, she's alright, I guess. But she's a rude bitch sometimes. And how she just goes up to those Gryffindors and makes friends with them, it drives me up the wall sometimes. I swear, the worst thing she could do is to go out with Scarhead – I could seriously puke."

How interesting, though Leah. Anything to make this git pay. He sighed, closed his eyes and let his head fall backwards onto the Ash tree on which he sat against. Leah saw from the watch tied to Malfoy's wrist was pointing to nearly five. This meant that Leah's time would be over soon. Leah smirked with the information she now possessed and flew away silently from Malfoy.

Malfoy, who still had his eyes closed started talking again, not aware that the eagle had flown away. "But you know, she's alright. Definitely a better choice than Pansy. I suppose she's not that bad, is she?" he asked and looked up. But the bird had gone. He looked around him; left, right and above but he was alone again, sitting on the ground under the Ash tree. He gave a short laughed and said under his breath, "Bloody birds."

Leah reached the window to the empty classroom and stood around waiting for the last few minutes to wear away. At last a surge of heat penetrated through her body and left as quickly as it came, and Leah found herself standing in the middle of the room, arms out stretched as if about to fly. The magnificent wings had gone and not even a trace of her experience could be found. Except for one thing that Leah didn't notice; it was a feather from her wing that was stuck in her ponytail.

By the time she walked out, in time for dinner she would have passed at least a dozen people, none of which noticed this. The only person that did notice however was the one and only Draco Malfoy. He sat near her and as she turned away from him to talk to Elise, he looked up to see a golden feather glitter in her dark hair. He tilted his head sideways reminiscing of his afternoon. He shrugged, maybe she had encountered the eagle as well.

At this point in time, Elise noticed that Malfoy was looking at Leah in a strange way; unlike his usual spiteful self. She smiled a little and treasured the little secret.

While Leah didn't have enough time to change into an eagle over the week, she took the time to blow the dust off some of the brooms in the brooms shed. Every afternoon, she got a broom out and carried it off to the pitch. It was her time away from life; an hour to herself, in the air where the ground grew small and nothing could stop her.

However, Malfoy also had an 'addiction'. Though, he didn't need to steal broomsticks; he had his own Nimbus Two Thousand and One – one of the best.

These two both had a dream to fly but the time for them to meet finally came. Malfoy, after a difficult day of avoiding Pansy, plotting Harry's fall and any other mischief that had to be made, came to the Quidditch pitch, his broom leaning on his shoulder, to find that his private time had been bombarded by none other than Leah. He growled and leapt on his broom and kicked off, soaring through the air and zooming towards the flying figure.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Leah tuned around, "Flying; is that a crime?" she looked at him coldly before adding, "And why are you here? Quidditch practise should be over by now."

"I like flying. I don't see why I can't do so in my own time," he said trying to look angry. Even though he didn't want to admit it, she wasn't a bad flyer. But he pushed that aside and concentrated on being angry with her. He wasn't going to blow his cover just because of a stupid muggle-lover like her. He changed the subject, "So, have you just started to fly?"

"No, what makes you say that?" she looked at him wearily.

He sneered, "'cause you don't seem so experienced."

Leah narrowed her eyes with anger, "then why don't you show me, if you're such a fantastic flyer?"

Malfoy didn't expect this, "uh, alright." He flew ahead and did a couple of broom tricks. He looked back at Leah and she flew towards him, her determined face focused with concentration. She did every trick, in the same order and perfectly the same to Malfoy's attempts. She didn't even falter or fly off course. She came up beside Malfoy and smiled triumph.

He was unable to hide his astonished expression. She's not going to be an easy one to get rid of, thought Draco.

After their encounter at the Quidditch pitch, Leah started planning. It was a plan to make Malfoy suffer to his words. She was going to sacrifice herself just to see Malfoy hurt, angry, anything but happy.

She started with spending more time around the Gryffindors. She could feel Malfoy cringe every double potions with Gryffindor and she would greet them and work with them. This, however, didn't have a good effect on any of the other Slytherins either. Elise pulled her up after one particular lesson when Leah went as far as working with Callisto as Annie was sick.

"What do you think you're playing at? You're upsetting the whole system we have here in this school," Elise said.

"I'm just trying to play revenge against someone," was all Leah said.

Leah didn't give up however hard Elise tried to stop her, but pushed the revenge level up a notch. Nearly every afternoon possible, Leah would climb up to Gryffindor Tower and spend time with Callisto, Annie, Harry, Ron and Hermione, who she was introduced to later on. In one particular conversation, the talk of house elves came up and Hermione questioned Leah thoroughly about their wages, holidays, working hours, sick leaves, blah, blah, blah. The conversation, fortunately didn't last very long.

Malfoy grew very pale and malicious towards Leah by the day, but if he thought that Leah had finished, he was wrong. This was Leah's finale to her revenge.

Over the days Leah had spent in Gryffindor common room, she had gotten to know Harry quite well. So well in fact that one day, when she had walked back to the common room with him, he asked for her company at Hogsmeade just before they opened the portrait. The fat lady in the portrait gushed and whooped when over hearing the conversation and pushed Leah to say 'yes'. But Leah didn't need to be asked twice – the word was out before the portrait could even swing open.

Harry blushed slightly and smiled. His green eyes sparkled as he waited for her to go in first. Leah didn't mind this bit of the revenge; Harry had quite grown on her. He was quite cute anyhow and if asked the question again, even without the revenge factor, she would still have said yes.

The rumours spread fast, thanks to the faster-than-light rumour spreading squad situated in the paintings around the castle. The famous Harry Potter was going out with 'the exchange student'. Pansy however didn't mind the situation between Harry and Leah; it only increased her chances with Malfoy. Malfoy though, was very pale and would rarely be seen in the same room together. Leah knew she had pressed the right buttons and the right buttons she had pressed.

Elise had been concerned about Leah over the last week or so that the rumours about Harry and Leah flew around and had a chat with her. They sat on Elise's bed talking, Elise trying to get to the bottom of it all.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I like -"

"And don't say because you like him, I know it's not true."

"I do like him. He's kind of grown on me over the last couple of weeks."

"Come off it, Leah. I've seen the way you look at Malfoy. You cringe every time Pansy is near him, you look sad whenever he's not there. Have you noticed this?"

Leah thought for a moment. She hadn't even thought about Draco, except that she wanted him to suffer as much as possible. Leah bit her lip.

A/N: Please R&R! Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed!!!