Chapter Eight
A/N: have decided to only update once a week, 'stead of every other day. Sorry, folkes!
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"So...it is done."
"Yes, my Lord. The curse is set. It will lay dormant for a few months, then... he will wish for death before the end."
"...Excellent... You have done well, Lucius."
"Um...m-my Lord?"
"What is it now, Wormtail?"
"Why can't you just kill him... well...quickly?"
"Well, just killing him would not give me the satisfaction I need... he deserves what he gets for foiling my plans as long as he has... a nice, slow, painful death..."
Harry opened his eyes, to see the face of the Hogwarts healer hovering above.
"If you drink your potions every day, I'd say you have a good chance of being perfectly healed by the time school starts."
Harry sat up, and looked down. He saw that the thick bandages that used to be wrapped around his torso were gone, replaced by light gauze. He felt healthier than he had in weeks, and his strength was coming back... but something seemed... off. He couldn't place his finger on it, but he felt it nonetheless.
Madame Pomfrey placed a few potions on the bedside table, told him when to take them, then left the room.
Harry flopped back down on the bed, going over the recent events in his head. After getting to the Black house, his memory was a blur. He vaguely remembered Sirius carrying him up the stairs... but the rest was faded and distant.
The door to the room opened, and Ron and Hermione walked in.
"Harry! You're awake!" Hermione exclaimed, rushing over. "We were so worried!"
"Yeah, you've been out for a couple of days...Mum's been going ballistic." Ron said, sitting down on the corner of the bed.
"A couple of DAYS?" Harry said, dazed.
"Yeah, but Madam Pomfrey said you'll be up and at 'em in a while!" Ron reassured.
"Mmm...." Harry turned his gaze down, so he was looking at his knees. He suddenly didn't really want to talk.
"Harry...are you hungry?" Hermione asked. "You haven't eaten anything in quite a while... why don't we go down to the kitchen and get some food?"
Harry considered her words for a moment, and realized he was hungry.
"...Ok..."
"Great! Come on, let's go!"
Harry swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood up. He swayed a bit, but otherwise was all right. He followed Ron and Hermione down the stairs, and entered the kitchen.
"Harry!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed. "You're awake!" she rushed over and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.
"Um... mum? No need to squish him." Ron told his mother, who was hugging Harry as if she was afraid that when she let go he would disappear.
"Oh, right." she let go of Harry. "Sorry dear." She turned toward the table. "Here, I made you some soup. Eat!" she pointed at the bowl resting on the table. Harry obligingly sat down at the table, and ate his soup as Hermione and Ron talked amongst themselves. After he was finished eating, Mrs. Weasley took his bowl, put it in the sink, and left.
Hermione and Ron shared a glance.
"Harry..." Hermione started "We have an idea, of sorts..."
"One we think might help..." Ron put in, "With the war and all..."
Hermione plopped a bunch of old papers on the desk, and Ron placed a rather large book down next to them.
Intrigued, harry lent closer, and squinted down at the title of the book.
" 'The Animal Within: a guide to becoming an Animagus'?" He looked up at Ron and Hermione, confused.
"Yes... We thought it might be good to have a disguise, just look at how much Sirius' form has helped him!" said Hermione.
"He'd still be in Azkaban if he wasn't an Animagus... and my dad said that it is harder to find a wizard when they are in an animal form, it messes up tracking spells and the such." Ron added.
Harry sat for a moment, thinking. Being able to tun into an animal would help him greatly, especially if Voldemort didn't know, giving him a step up. On the other hand...
"But it's illegal." He said, looking Hermione and Ron in the eyes. "What if we get caught?"
"If we don't tell anyone, they won't know. If we get caught.... well..." Hermione said slowly, "We'll think of that later."
"It's not like we would go to Azkaban, anyway," Ron said. "We would just get a fine and have to register ourselves."
Harry considered it a bit more.
"What if we can't do it?" he asked.
"Oh, come on, Harry! If Rita Skeeter could become an illegal animagus, of all people, you can!" Ron looked at him pointedly.
"And you father could do it, so it gives you a better chance of being able to become an Animagus, Harry" Hermione added.
"And how, exactly, are we going to do this?" Harry asked.
"Well, we have all these notes from when the Marauders became Animaguses, and there is this book, which I have flipped through-"
"Memorized is more like it" Ron interrupted, earning a swat on the shoulder from Hermione.
"As I was saying-" Hermione glared at Ron. "This book has a lot of useful tips and information on becoming an Animagus. And, since you are allowed to do magic, we could start now!"
"And there is this old sitting room upstairs we could use, and no-one would bother us because it smells kinda funny and everyone avoids it." Ron added.
"And how long would this take?" asked Harry. "Didn't the Marauders only become full Animaguses after, like, two years?"
"Well, they had to do it on their own," started Hermione. "Without the in- depth information we have. They had never seen an Animagus in action before, and we have countless times... so we have a bit of an advantage."
Hermione and Ron looked at Harry, waiting for his answer.
"Alright. Let's do it!"
"An Animagus takes the form of the animal that best suits the witch or wizard's personality," she was saying. "So you can't choose what animal you become, but if you do some analyzing, we might have a good idea of what it would be."
"That would kinda suck if after years of research and hard work, you turned into something like a flobberworm..." Ron shook his head at the thought.
"Hey, I was thinking..." Harry mused, "... all the people we have seen become an animal have had non- magical forms. Is it even possible to become something magical, like a unicorn or a hippogriff?"
"Hmmm...." Hermione flipped through her book. "It says here that it IS possible, but it is very rare for anyone's Animagus form to be magical, and the person would have to be extremely powerful to use their form's abilities even if it was something like a unicorn or a Hippogriff."
"Right..."
Harry, Ron, and Hermione went into the odd smelling sitting room every day to learn about Animaguses. Hermione had found a few other books about how to become an Animagus, and in one, 'The self-help guide to becoming an Animagus' by Leonard Hiwett, was a potion that would sow you four possible forms your Animagus could be.
"It's actually fairly simple." Hermione muttered, looking at the directions. "We have pretty much all the ingredients we need already, and it'll only take about two days to brew."
"Thank Merlin it doesn't take a month, like the Polyjuice Potion did." Ron said, looking over her shoulder.
"What happens when it is finished?" Harry asked. "How do we use it?"
"Well, it says here all you do is put some on a spoon with a drop of blood from the index finger on your wand hand, pour it onto a blank piece of parchment, and it will form the names of the four animals you could turn into." Hermione said, eyes flickering over the page in the book.
"Well, why don't we get started?" Harry said enthusiastically.
Hermione insisted on brewing the potion herself, so that there weren't any mistakes, and made Harry and Ron go to the other side of the room to practice charms and do homework. Since Ron couldn't do magic outside of school, he decided to get started on his homework, while Harry busied himself with a new dusting charm he had read about in his book.
So far, he was doing quite well. He mastered the charm using words pretty quick, but when he tried doing it without the words, it seemed to just smear the dust around, instead of removing it.
"Come on, you can do it..." He flicked his wand at the jar sitting on the shelf. This time, most of the dust went away, but it wasn't quite finished, and left a dirty smear on the surface.
After a few more tries, Harry finally mastered the dusting spell, and turned back to the book of householdy spells for something else to try.
After a few hours, and lunch, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were back in the room. Hermione had found the two ingredients she didn't have in one of the cupboards, and was back to brewing the potion, which was currently giving of wispy orange smoke. Ron was still doing homework, and he had whole summers worth to complete, so he was not going to be finished anytime soon. Harry decided he had done enough charmwork for the day, and picked up a book on curses he had found on a shelf in one of the rooms a while ago.
"Hmmmm...." he muttered, looking at one of the spells. "This one looks interesting..."
The Cultellus Curse: This curse summons usually about ten knives, which fly directly at the target. The Cultellus curse takes only a spot of magic when cast after the curse is mastered, but is fairly hard to master. Many common mistakes result in summoning butter knives, or only two or three, instead of ten. If the wizard or witch casting the curse is particularly powerful, and feeling quite a bit of hate towards their opponent, the knives may become poisoned, and multiply. If the caster concentrates, the knives may also be made to follow the person they are cast at, until they hit, or for a certain amount of time. This spell can only be blocked if the blocker knows how to do the Cultellus Curse the same way as the caster. Once the knives penetrate the opponent or object cast at, they will disappear after twenty seconds unless the caster concentrates on making them permanent when casting the curse.
Harry looked around for something to cast at, and saw a ragged- looking pillow sitting on a chair on the other end of the room.
'Perfect' he thought. He strode over to the pillow, and picked it up. He then returned, put a sticking charm on the pillow, and stuck it to the wall. "Okay dokay then..." He muttered, concentrating.
"Cultellus!" he hissed, pointing at the pillow on the wall. Ten blurs flew out of his wand, hit the pillow right in the middle, and fell to the floor.
Harry walked over to where they fell to the ground, and knelt to examine the knives. "Well, at least my aim was good..." He said sadly, looking at the ten butter knives on the floor." Maybe I just don't hate that pillow enough..." He stood up to try again. This time, he walked a bit farther away from his target.
'Okaaay... I need to feel hatred...' he thought to himself. An image popped into his mind of when he learnt whom really betrayed his parents. He looked at the pillow, and imagined it to be Pettigrew, and a burning hate welled p inside him.
"Cultellus!" He hissed again. Again, he saw the blurs streak out of his and, but this time, it deemed like there were more, and they were going faster. About fifteen or so sinister looking knives were now wedged into the middle of the pillow, the tips buried deep. It looked like there was a slight bit of steam coming from where the knives embedded into the pillow, and on closer inspection, Harry saw the pillow melting away from the blades. A few seconds later, the blades vanished in a puff of smoke.
"That-" Said Ron, who was watching, "was cool."
Harry practiced a particularly difficult shield spell, 'contego', for the rest of the day, and tiredly flopped down into bed after dinner.
"Aaaaah, yes, Mr. Tibbles has arrived!" Said Sirius, rushing towards the door of Hagrid's hut. He opened it to let in a cloaked man, who was quite short.
"YOU KILLED MY SOCK!" Mr. Tibbles yelled.
"Er- excuse me?" Harry was bewildered. Did the man, who looked oddly like Professor Flitwick, just accuse him of murdering a sock?
"I'm afraid you will have to be expelled, Potter." Said Professor McGonnogal, who was standing behind Harry.
"Yes, and to Azkaban for such a horrid crime." Said Sirius.
"Oh, Harry, how could you? That poor sock!" Sobbed a crying Hermione.
"What? I didn't do anything!"
"We all saw it. There are many witnesses!" Said Professor Dumbledore.
"What are you talking about?"
"It didn't do anything to you!" Hermione continued.
Dumbledore walked up to him, and showed him a small box. In the box was a sock, severed cleanly in the middle.
"The young sock didn't even stand a chance..." Ron stated, wiping teary eyes. Harry sat up quickly.
"Just a dream..." he muttered.
"You awake?" Ron asked, pulling on a shirt. "Mum came up and said breakfast is ready."
"Great. I'm starving!" Harry said, hopping out of bed and finding some clothes.
After the two were dressed, they went down the stairs to the kitchen. Hermione saw them, and walked over.
"It'll be ready by this afternoon." She whispered.
---------------------AUTHORS NOTE--------------------
Dn dun dun! Such a horrid cliffie, eh? Well, maybe not. At least this chapter is longer than my other ones!
Mayleesa: Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt my hand, I just wasn't paying attention when I closed the door!
JJ: Thank you! Heres another chappie for ya!
The Vampire Story Hunter: Wha....? ::is confused:: urm... I dunno...
PadfootsNoxed: I know, me too! 'tis why I wrote this little fic of mine... ::sob:: poor Sirius...
SailorC: Glad you liked!
Krissy Riddle: hopefully this one is nice and longer...ish..
Lady Riddle: it tells in the first few chapters why he isn't dead.... must've slipped your mind.
insanechildfanfic: Thankies!
BlackHuntress: Hopefully, you will like this one....