AN: So it's been some time, more than it should have been. Sorry, school had me really busy for a while there. Thankfully, I only have like 27 more days of school, not counting weekends, until I can be finished with high school forever-but who's counting?
Remember how last chapter was supposed to be a Big Plot Chapter but it just didn't make it there? Well, here's the Big Plot Chapter, finally! Yup, we're started to reeeeeaaaaally get into the transfiguration-y-ness of Mina's story here. We're also seeing development with Annie, and we're gonna get a little hint at some more plot development that I haven't actually figured out yet at the very end. Sorry it's a little short, but a lot happens.
I'd like to give a shout out to my friend lillylivered for keeping me motivated to write and for reassuring me that I'm actually getting what I want across to readers. She's only got a few things, and only one of them is about Harry Potter, but she's a good writer, and you should go give her some love!
Marina frowned as she neared the back of the train, carefully holding Maia close to her chest with one arm and dragging her trunk along behind her with the other. Usually, Annie arrived early to the station and caught a compartment before they were all taken, but Marina had walked the length of the Express twice now and her friend was nowhere to be found. She wasn't any earlier than usual, and Annie hadn't said anything odd in her letters over the holiday...
"Hey, Min," Gideon said from behind her. Marina felt the weight of her trunk lift, and she turned around to see her friend had picked up the other side, despite toting his own luggage. "Have you seen Quincy yet?"
Marina shook her head. "I haven't found Annie yet either," she said, "and she's usually one of the first people on the train."
Gideon's wide mouth puckered to one side in a funny sort of frown Marina had seen him make on multiple occasions. "Well, let's snag a compartment before they all fill up. You know how Quin is," he said, starting to walk towards the less crowded front of the Express. "He'll turn up. I'm sure Annie'll get here too."
"She could just be running late," Marina mused, following Gideon into an empty compartment. Maia was beginning to squirm. "That's not very like her, though. She's early for everything."
"Happens to the best of us."
She and Gideon lifted their trunks up to the luggage racks and sat down across from each other. Maia rubbed her cheek against Marina's hand a few times before hopping off her lap and nosing around the compartment. For a while, they talked about how their holidays had gone and Gideon told her about his nephew, Billy, who was now old enough to walk around pretty effectively and becoming too adventurous for his own good. Marina tried to pay attention, she really did, but her mind kept wandering to Annie, flying through "what if" after "what if" and slipping deeper and deeper into her own thoughts about where her friend could possibly be that she didn't even notice when Quincy entered the compartment. He must've walked in at some point, because Marina was shaken from her thoughts by a knit hat to the face, making her jump and smack her elbow on the edge of the window. She looked up and frowned, glancing between the two boys.
Quincy snorted—he must've been the one to throw it—and asked, "What's got you thinking so hard?"
"Annie's not here yet."
"Uh, I did notice that," Quincy said in a thanks-Captain-Obvious sort of tone.
Marina rolled her eyes at his response. "I'm worried. She's usually here before any of us."
Gideon looked at his watch. "The train won't leave for another ten minutes or so," he said. "That's enough time for her to still show up. Don't worry," he continued, dropping his wrist back to his side and shooting Marina a comforting smile, "she wouldn't miss coming back to school for anything, I'll bet."
For seven agonizing minutes that seemed to stretch out over an eternity, Marina stared out the compartment window at the platform while Gideon brought Quincy up to speed on his nephew. She thought she heard him mention how his sister's husband had a weird obsession with muggle objects and had raved about rubber ducks for a solid hour and fifteen minutes, but perhaps she was mistaken. Rubber ducks were an odd topic to rave about for so long. Quincy in turn began telling Gideon about his own experience with extremely young family over the holiday, but Marina tuned him out; he'd already told her about it. Instead of listening, she watched the crowds on the platform dwindle as students boarded the train and parents either stepped out of the way or left for home. Her attention was drawn to one family for no particular reason; a mum hugged her son tight—he must've been a first or second year, because he didn't look very familiar at all—while he squirmed, until he finally squirmed away from her only to have his curly hair ruffled by his dad. His owl suddenly beat its wings in its cage, and he jumped away to fuss over the bird for a moment before taking his luggage, waving a final "goodbye" to his parents, and heading for the train. Marina followed him as he neared the edge of the platform, until suddenly a blonde blur interrupted her view of the boy.
Finally, it was Annie! Or at least she hoped it was Annie. Marina drew back from the window to watch the corridor—there she was; she made it. Marina hopped up to open the compartment door, and Annie, panting, ducked inside. The corner of her trunk caught the edge of the door, though, and Annie huffed, pushed her glasses up her nose, and yanked, leveraging her body weight, of which there was very little, to pull it free. Marina moved the door, releasing Annie's trunk with a soft noise of some sort, she expected, though whatever noise the trunk made was out-noised by the sound of Annie squeaking and falling further into the compartment. Quincy happened to be closest. To save her from sprawling on the floor in a heap, he dove forward to catch her, but Gideon also had moved at the same time with the same end. Gideon somehow tripped or knocked into Quincy, and Annie was still falling, and Gideon tripped over his own feet—Marina saw that part specifically—and with a "bloody hell" they all ended up on the floor in a pile together. Marina snorted out a sharp laugh and slid the compartment door shut.
All of this happened very quickly, in a matter of seconds. No one in the pile moved for a moment, until Maia jumped on top and started kneading her paws on Gideon's shoulder. He moved sharply, probably because Maia was kneading sharply, and Annie yelped, and then Quincy grunted. Marina rolled her eyes at the chain reaction of jostling and reached across Gideon's long legs to lift her cat away. Then the ginger carefully hopped up, and then Annie carefully rolled off Quincy, and then Quincy stood up, flushing red.
Once everyone was finally settled into proper seats and Annie's trunk was stowed away and Quincy could look Annie properly in the face again, Marina asked her friend, "What took you so long?"
Annie winced and looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. Maybe Marina had phrased her question a little insensitively; Annie didn't answer right away, and instead picked at a loose bit of skin around the edge of her nail. Hesitance like this, Marina suddenly remembered, happened because of her parents. What could have happened this time?
"I'll tell you later," Annie said quietly. She took a breath and perked up into the Annie everyone was quite familiar with, then, and grinned. "How were all of your holidays?" she asked.
The whistle sounded, and the train lurched forward, beginning the journey to Hogwarts. As everyone ran through their holiday stories again, Marina wondered why Annie hadn't said anything and instead said that she'd talk about it later. When was later? Marina was worried, and she wanted to know what was wrong. Everyone laughed at a story Quincy was telling—he had a knack for telling things in a way to make everyone laugh. Annie, Marina noticed, laughed less than she usually did at Quincy's stories and had begun again to pick at the skin around her nails. She bit her lip when Gideon started talking once again about his nephew Billy, though she smiled and "aww"ed like she normally would. Yes, Marina was convinced something was very wrong. Never before had Annie been so bothered about something that she continued to be bothered after the boys showed up—…
That was it! That's why Annie had declined to talk about what had happened to detain her earlier: Quincy and Gideon were already in the compartment. Marina couldn't think of a time when Annie had spoken about her troubles with her family in front of the two Gryffindors, and she now doubted they even knew anything about it. Maybe Annie didn't want anyone to know. Did Annie even want Marina to know? What if Marina had been pushy with her questions and Annie gave in and told Marina though she didn't really want to? No, that couldn't be true; if Annie hadn't wanted to tell Marina, then she wouldn't have. Would she?
"—and that's why I'll never understand mothers," Gideon concluded, though Marina wasn't sure what he was concluding. Maybe she should actually listen to her friends more instead of getting lost inside her head like she always seemed to. "What about you, Annie? How was your holiday?"
"Oh, well, I—um—"
"Anything from the trolley?" the trolley witch called from the corridor.
Hurriedly, snack orders were taken, money was found and pooled, and Quincy stood to buy their sweets from the trolley witch. It only took a moment, but when he came back, laden with treats, Maia darted out of the compartment. The next half-hour was spent searching for the little Siamese, whom Annie found in an open compartment with a muggleborn and four other cats.
"Someone brought catnip on the train," Annie explained with a grin, scratching Maia behind the ears.
Talk of their holiday was dropped, though it still bothered Marina. She thought that Annie wouldn't like for her to ask about it until they were alone, though, so she kept quiet and listened to Quincy and Gideon try to explain some Quidditch technique, which they were doing very badly. As the rolling green landscape outside grew darker, the friends got down their luggage and took out robes to throw on over their street clothes. Marina noticed the hems on Quincy's robe were about an inch too short; had he had a growth spurt recently? Gideon noticed too and teased him about it, but then Quincy retorted with a quip about how Gideon had smacked his head on the headboard before the end of first semester because he was too tall.
"Oh, shut up," Gideon laughed. "You tripped over a table that one time, remember?"
Annie and Marina sat and laughed as the boys threw increasingly ridiculous examples of clumsiness at each other until the Express pulled into Hogsmeade Station. All the Christmas decorations had been taken down in the Great Hall, as they always were when everyone returned for the new semester, and Dumbledore ran through his usual exams-are-on-this-date-this-year-and-don't-wander-into-the-forest announcements before Marina and Annie could start tucking into the turkey dinner on the long tables. Lark talked about her oldest sister's boyfriend over dinner, who she said had come to spend the holiday, which she apparently thought was weird and made the whole thing awkward. Marina snuck glances at Annie all through the meal, but she seemed to be perfectly fine.
It wasn't until the two girls were walking to Transfiguration together after lunch a few days later that Marina had a chance to properly ask about her holiday. "What happened? Did something go very wrong with your parents?" she asked, taking care to make her voice as gentle as she could.
Annie sighed. "It was a lot worse than it was over the summer, even," she said quietly. "My mum wouldn't even look at me; it was like I just wasn't there to her. My dad was alright—he's always nicer—but he still never engaged me himself. I asked my brother, since he eavesdrops on my parents a lot and gets away with it pretty well, and he said it's all down to magic because it's not right to do magic or believe in it for real when you're religious like my family is," she tried to explain. "I'm supposed to believe it's evil," Annie shrugged, "but I'm not practicing or interested in practicing dark arts. I guess my mum thinks I am. But I didn't choose magic," she continued, looking down at her hands. "It just started happening."
"I don't think anyone can choose to have magic or not," Marina supplied.
"My brother said my mum said something about—… Well, I won't get into it. I don't think I can explain it right. But I hated being at home all holiday. I felt like no one wanted me there except my brother and my littlest sister, but she's too young to understand magic anyway." Annie lifted her head to look at Marina, then. Her blue eyes were misty behind her glasses. "Mina, I don't want to go home for Easter or summer holiday, but I don't know where else I'd go."
They were just about to walk into McGonagall's classroom, so Marina couldn't answer, but she squeezed Annie's hand when they sat down and decided that she would help however she could. Transfiguration proved to be a good distraction, though, because today they were taking notes over a topic that had fascinated Marina since she was a child.
Self-transfiguration, as explained by McGonagall, was something extraordinarily difficult and would never be studied practically at the OWL level, and only marginally at the NEWT level. Though Marina understood this was likely for safety reasons, she was still disappointed. Maybe she would fail spectacularly as she usually did, but it sounded interesting, and she might like to try. Anyway, self-transfiguration meant either turning yourself into an inanimate object or a different animate one, and the most challenging part in both cases was being able to turn yourself back. Many wizards found inanimate self-transformation to be useful in some situations, the professor explained, but she emphasized with her stern voice and serious expression that it was never to be attempted alone as a beginner, and you couldn't even begin learning until you mastered nonverbal magic, or else you could never turn yourself back. Animate self-transfiguration was even trickier. McGonagall presented examples of famous cases where wizards had transfigured theirselves into an animal, hoping for the benefits of that animal's size or speed, but they usually lost all higher human reasoning and couldn't transfigure themselves back into a human. Marina thought for a moment of how horrible it would be to think you'd found a genius solution to some problem, only to have it backfire so spectacularly.
A student must've raised their hand because McGonagall paused and nodded somewhere behind Marina. "If you loose your mind, then why do some people train to become animaguses?" asked Toni Zabini.
"The plural form is animagi, Miss Zabini, and if you'll let me continue, you'll learn that an animagus transformation is not the same as simply transfiguring oneself into an animal. An animagus," Professor McGonagall continued, now addressing the whole class, "is a highly skilled wizard or witch who has learned to transform into an animal at will. One's animagus form is one constant animal, and is only discoverable on one's own in the process of learning the skill. It is quite different in the sense that the witch or wizard retains their mind in animagus form, and therefore has complete control while one who has simply transfigured oneself into an animal may lose control in the face of animal instinct."
Irving raised his hand. "Is it true that you're an animagus, yourself, Professor?"
Marina missed the professor's answer because she was suddenly distracted by Evan. His hair, she noticed, caught the light from the windows in the classroom particularly well today. Sitting a couple rows behind him, she had a wonderful vantage point for watching the back of his head. Certainly not for the first time that year, Marina wondered how it would feel if she were to run her fingers through his hair. It looked so soft, especially in the sunlight filtering through the old panes of glass in the windows—
When the toe of Annie's shoe connected with Marina's ankle, she looked up. Professor McGonagall was gone, and in her place was a stern-looking tabby cat with rectangular shapes around its eyes. Other students in the room were chattering in wonder, and then the cat leapt off of the professor's podium, becoming McGonagall again in the middle of the air.
With that demonstration stirring up the students, McGonagall could only get a few more important remarks about animagi and self-transfiguration in before the hour was up and class was over. Marina walked out with her mind reeling. Transfiguration had jogged her memory—her papa was an animagus! How could she have just forgotten? Something as amazing as that was sitting right under her nose all this time, and she couldn't believe she forgot about it! Well, really, if she thought about it, it could maybe perhaps be justified by the fact that her papa's form was a dolphin, so he rarely transformed. He had taught Marina to swim, though, on a holiday to southern France. That was back before her papa lived in England full-time, and her mum brought Marina to visit her paternal grandparents in France.
Wait, wasn't she forgetting something else? Marina fell into step with Annie as they headed towards the Defense hallway, thinking. What had she been talking about before Transfig? She frowned; this was frustrating—all she could think about was how cool it would be to learn the animagus transformation. Maybe later she could ask Professor McGonagall about where she could learn more, and she could send a letter to her papa too.
Annie had been quiet all through class, which wasn't very unusual, since she liked to pay attention and take notes and bring Marina back to Earth. Now, though, she was still quiet, while Marina had grown quite accustomed to her conversation between classes. Marina looked over at Annie, mouth open to ask if she was okay, when she suddenly remembered that no, Annie was not okay. That's what she had forgotten in her excitement over something new to learn—Marina had forgotten about Annie. She closed her mouth and looked down at her shoes, her stomach twisting into a knot. How could she have forgotten Annie, her second-closest friend in the whole world?
Determined to make up for forgetting, Marina settled into thinking over Annie's situation and what could be done. Personally getting involved with Mr. and Mrs. Brennan was out of the question, she figured, because she'd only briefly met Mr. Brennan, and there was no way they'd listen to a thir—no, a fourteen-year-old. What else could she do? She thought she was already offering Annie her full support, or at least, she was offering as much as Annie wanted to take. It was one thing to be pushy about asking questions, but it was another thing altogether to be pushy about giving someone advice they didn't ask for, so Marina tried to avoid doing that.
Unfortunately, her thoughts had to stop there. They'd arrived at Professor Raleigh's door, and Marina needed to keep her wits about her if she wanted to make it through class without being nearly jinxed.
—
With the resumption of school, there came the resumption of her tutoring sessions, even more serious now that exams were looming. Marina remembered when she had scoffed at her professors telling her to start studying early, and now here she was saying the same thing to the kids she tutored. Levi, especially, she was worried about: after the holiday, he seemed extra jittery, with an extra short attention span for all things class-related.
"I got a lute for Christmas," he told Marina as they sat down to discuss his homework. "I'm really excited to learn to play."
"Can you make time for doing your assignments when you're not practicing?" Marina asked, raising an eyebrow.
Levi colored, his many freckles standing out against his blush. "Well, I suppose I'll have to," he sighed, looking down at the cover of his Charms textbook in a way that convinced Marina he had already made plans to play music rather than work.
"You got all your work done over the holiday?"
"I did!" Levi perked up again and grinned. "I finished it all, and I didn't even leave anything for the last day, either."
"Fantastic," Marina praised. "Now, what have you been assigned already?"
And so went her Fridays with her fellow Ravenclaw. By late September, Marina could tell he didn't want help with learning material, since he was quite a brilliant boy, but he desperately needed help with his procrastination habit. There were plenty of things he'd rather be doing; last semester, he worked ahead in the Potions textbook, impressing Slughorn of course, but he fell far behind in almost every other class, and this semester it would be the lute, she expected. It helped to set him specific, step-by-step deadlines for larger projects, and she developed the habit of checking in on his day-to-day homework progress anytime she noticed him in the common room.
On this particular Friday, the last one of January, Marina had collected a number of books on transfiguration to look through while Levi worked on his homework. She was hunting for something very specific: the animagus transformation. After almost a week of this nagging urge to try it just to see if she could constantly in the back of her mind, she had decided to do something about it. Any good experiment began with research, of course, because one couldn't do anything if one didn't know what to do or where to start. Marina thought at first that she could owl her papa or ask McGonagall directly, but she wanted to try the thing by herself first.
The first book she'd grabbed had both an index and a glossary of terms, and as it was probably bigger than Marina's head it was unlikely there could be anything left out, but an examination of the index and glossary indicated not so much as a mention of animagi. The next book was more difficult to look through because it had chapters but no index, and the chapter titles were unhelpful at best, so Marina skimmed six promising chapters before deciding there would be nothing easily found there. Besides, the language was annoyingly flowery for an informative book, Marina thought, and she had a hard time breaking down the long sentences anyway. Her third book professed to be an extensive treatise on self-transfiguration, and it did actually discuss the animagus transformation with incredible detail. However, its one shortcoming was that nowhere did it actually tell her how to perform the transformation, which she now understood could only be accomplished after an almost interminable training process (she learned the word "interminable" from the book).
With a frustrated sigh, Marina pulled a notebook—Annie had gotten all the girls in their dorm hooked on muggle notebooks for notes rather than endless rolls of lose parchment—out of her bag and uncapped her ink pot to jot down the information this book did offer her.
"What are you doing?" Levi asked. She looked up; he was looking at her with concerned confusion, his eyebrows pushed together and up in the center. "You've been flipping pages and slamming covers pretty angrily."
"I'm doing research, and it's not going the way I want it to." She turned back to the book, rolling her eyes at her poor luck so far.
"What for? Can I help?"
"Do your work, Levi."
"Well you're not doing homework either, are you? Isn't that heppa—hippa—"
"Hypocritical?" Marina finished for him. "Maybe," she shrugged, "but this is actually about something I learned about in class last week. And anyway, I already finished all the work I'm supposed to have finished."
No sound rose from their table besides the turning of pages, the shuffle of paper, and the scratch of quill nibs for a while. Briefly, Marina rose to put her books away and dig up some new ones, but those turned up just as useless as the other ones. Could none of the books in the library contain information on animagi? With the size of the place, Marina found it quite unfathomable that she still couldn't find anything, yet here she was.
"That's the hour," Levi said, breaking the silence. He stood and began packing up his work. "Can I know what you're researching now?"
Marina pulled her upper lip between her teeth. Even if they could tell her little else, the books did all emphasize that all animagi must register with the Ministry, and anyone training to become one should also notify of the Ministry of their intention. It was implied, Marina understood, that an unregistered animagi was automatically a criminal to some degree. If she told Levi about her research, it could get back to a teacher, and she could get in trouble. On the other hand, simple research wouldn't get her in trouble, would it? Should she stick to the safe side and keep it a secret?
Levi, she noticed, popped up onto his toes to peek over at her notes. She scrambled to flip the notebook closed and shut the huge transfiguration book with a startlingly loud bang. The second year blinked and backed off.
"It's just—I—I'm only—" she stuttered.
He nodded. "Secret project. Got it."
Marina raised an eyebrow. "That's it?"
"Well, it seems like plenty of people in Ravenclaw have their own things they like. I've tried asking some older year students who look like they have some pretty cool books they're reading in the common room sometimes about what they're doing, and they always tell me it's a secret project for them only." Levi shrugged and scratched his shoulder. "It makes sense, I guess. Not everyone likes to share or explain."
Marina was about to thank Levi for understanding so well, but she was interrupted by the sound of running feet in the quiet library. Madame Pince screeched something about walking, for Merlin's sake, but then Peter Pettigrew was catching his breath at the table next to Levi.
"Alright, Pettigrew?"
"Erm, yeah—Marina, uh, we—er, you see, well, that is, James, uh—and Lily is—er, well, you'd better come quickly," Peter said, tripping over and mixing up all his words, probably from his run and clear state of excitement. The general message, however, was conveyed: James did something to Lily, and Lily reacted in some kind of way that warranted her help.
Marina took a moment, as she was hurriedly cramming her stuff into her bag and books back onto shelves, to roll her eyes and wonder how she ended up being the go-to girl for Peter Pettigrew's friend James in his time of need. She only advised him about Lily, what, once? Twice? Did she still owe him a favor from that time with Alfred perhaps? No matter the reason, she may as well go help the poor bloke, since Peter ran all the way to the library to fetch her. When she was ready, she said good night to Levi and walked with a brisk pace out of the library, right on Peter's heels.