Halfway
April 2nd, 1995
Sixth Year
Today was Leili's 17th birthday. The Ministry applied Trace had broken this morning, she could do magic away from school with out having to be sneaky about it and she could Apparate at will, once she learned how. She and Jo had stayed at school for the Easter holiday this year; they'd had something they wanted to work on.
For the past several months they had worked with McGonagall on human Transfiguration. They weren't getting anywhere on their own so she was scrapping that plan and starting over.
Every morning at sunrise, wand tips over their hearts, the girls recited, "Amato Animo Animato Animagus." Every evening at sunset they chanted it again.
There were complaints galore, mostly from the girls' dorm-mates, though also from the girls themselves as they too did not like waking before dawn.
Jo and Leilani snuck into one of the green houses and picked a single leaf each from the largest, healthiest Mandrake plant before literally running to their lesson with Professor McGonagall.
She looked over the tops of her glasses at them as they burst into her classroom.
"Got our leaves!" Jo grinned. She was significantly less out of breath than Leilani who detested running.
McGonagall continued her stern look before instructing, "Shrink your leaves to a size you are comfortable with keeping in your mouth for a month. Small enough so it is out of the way, not so small that you won't be able to retrieve it when it is time."
Jo removed an earring, a roughly ten-millimeter sun. She placed it on a desk between the leaves she and Leilani had picked.
"Reducio," they cast, watching the leaves shrink. Jo replaced her earring when the leaves were done.
"Ok, now what?" Leili asked.
McGonagall rose from her desk and headed toward them, her robes rustling against her ankles. "Tip your head back." Leili was the first to obey, Jo following half a second behind. McGonagall pressed her wand tip against the leaf on the table. When she lifted her wand, the leaf came with. "Lift up your tongue." Leilani's eyebrows pulled together as she opened her mouth and did as told. The leaf was fixed on the bottom of her tongue.
"Miss Montgomery, your turn."
When McGonagall's back was turned, Leili stuck a finger under her tongue to poke at the strange feeling now residing there.
"Leave it alone, Miss Akina," McGonagall warned sternly.
Leili yanked her finger out of her mouth with an audible pop. "Yes, Professor."
Jo snickered.
They checked every day to ensure their leaves were still there—otherwise they'd have to start all over.
McGonagall had insisted the girls collect the ingredients themselves, which saw the girls picking out several obscure, deep-shade spots weeks in advance looking for dew untouched by sunlight or human feet, this part they had to do on their own with no help from professor McGonagall or each other.
They started in the Artefact room and then the Room of Requirement. It was there that they parted company. Jo headed for the Quidditch pitch and Leili for the Whomping Willow.
When thirty days were up, each leaf was unstuck and each was dropped into a phial containing one Death's Head Hawk Moth chrysalis and one freshly plucked strand of hair—"Ow! A little warning next time?" Jo and Leili yelped when McGonagall tore said hair from their heads.
The girls looked at each other, eyes wide, grins wider, "JINX!" they called, momentary pain forgotten.
"JINX AGAIN!"
They stared at each other.
"JINX!" Leili called, grinning fiendishly.
"JINXYOUOWEMEASODA!" Jo countered, eyes glittering.
Leili gasped in delight, "Shucks!" she said, not at all disappointed.
For the next two months the potions sat in the back of a locked cupboard in the Transfiguration classroom.
Today was the day they'd been waiting for.
Now, a lightning storm flashed above the castle and the potion in their hands turned blood red. It had never done that when they'd tried it before. It had been brewed correctly, that was something, at least.
They'd received Professor McGonagall's instructions that morning. The next step was to walk to either end of the Quidditch pitch where they would have plenty of room. From the middle, they turned and walked. The ground squelched beneath their boots, the rain came down in buckets, soaking the girls to the skin within minutes.
At the next lightning strike, they downed the potions in the phials. Every nerve screamed in instant pain. Areas they didn't know they even had hurt.
Jo dug her fingers into the goal post—which, in hindsight, she probably shouldn't have been touching in an electrical storm.
Leili fell to her knees in the sodden grass and gulped down air, eyes and hands squeezing closed.
With the next flash of lightning an image shimmered into the girls minds, different for both, similar only in that they both saw an animal.
A second heartbeat joined the one they'd had since birth and with a roll of thunder: they changed.
Applause was the first thing their ears heard after. Professor McGonagall's voice instructing, "Don't panic" was the second.
It took a minute because it seems the first thing their minds wanted to do was panic. Sheer bloody panic.
Jo picked herself up off the ground, using the post to support herself as she stood upright.
Across the field, Leili was more inclined to lie on her back with her arms out and her eyes closed. She couldn't get the world around her to stop spinning.
Jo looked around, her distance vision was still as sharp as when her eyes had been human—better, even—but her nose! Wow! Her sense of smell was sharper than she could believe. She could smell So! Many! Things! The scent of the lightning was sharp and crisp; though the grass shoved up her nose made her sneeze when she bent down to sniff it.
She could see that her hands had been transformed into furry, dark colored paws with sharply curved claws. She turned her head in the lightning light to get a look at her body and saw sleek fur, the hint of a tail and rear paws.
"Am I… a bear?" she tried to ask, only it came out as a sort of growl as her jaw and vocal cords had changed well beyond human speech.
Jo padded around the field, ambling over to where she had last seen Leili. She thought she could get used to being a bear; it was really quite comfortable. She liked having paws that padded softly as she walked. Though falling up to her chest in muddy puddles was not fun.
She exercised her vocal cords, trying to discover all the different sounds she could make now, she even discovered a sort of purr, which she found very intriguing.
Professor McGonagall walked beside her asking questions and expecting full answers, not just a head shake up or down. Trying to give answers was frustrating.
Jo and Professor McGonagall came upon where Leili lay. "Are you alright Miss Akina?" Professor McGonagall asked.
Leili lifted one hand to show that she was still alive.
Jo whined a little and nudged Leili's now tiny body with her own wet nose before giving in to a very cartoon-ey thing: she licked her.
Leili's eyes flew open, "Did you just lick me?!"
She lifted one hand to de-slime her face. She stopped short at the sight of a wing where her hand should have been. She had seen the outline of a bird in her mind, she remembered now—the pain had taken something of a precedence over seemingly random images appearing in her head.
Jo blew something akin to a raspberry as the tried to get tiny muddy feathers off her tongue.
Leilani was covered in mud, when she'd transformed, she'd fallen straight into a soft, wet mud pit.
"Lets get you out of this rain," Professor McGonagall said, helping Leili extricate herself from the muddy abyss.
Inside, McGonagall siphoned off the mud, leaving the girls simply wet. Jo shook herself off, her fur briefly poofing out to stand on end before lying flat again.
Leili followed suit, figuring if it worked for Jo and dogs, it might work for her too. It helped; until she shook so hard she lost her balance and fell over.
Flat on her back, Leili crossed her still blue-grey eyes to look at the black beak on her face. She didn't need to turn her head to look at her arms, now wings, skinny, grey, fuzzy wings. "It WORKED!" She literally chirped as she tried to roll over. She was stuck. Jo nudged her to her feet—talons. She had tiny talons now!
Professor McGonagall asked Leilani all the same questions she had asked Jo. Leili had an easier time answering, being a member of the parrot family. This was the main area in which she differed from an actual bird: she could speak, clearly, concisely and immediately while a true bird would take months to learn a handful of words. Not that she knew what she was yet; all she knew was that she was covered in tiny grey down.
"To transform back into yourselves, picture your body in your mind and will yourself back into it," Professor McGonagall instructed.
The girls did as they were told and envisioned their human bodies with the intent of transforming back.
It didn't work.
They were stuck. Professor McGonagall watched them struggle for a few minutes before flicking her wand at each in turn. A blue-white light flashed, leaving the girls human in its wake.
"You did well today, I'm proud of you. As you practice and grow, so will your animagus." As it stood, their animagus forms were young; Jo was a cub, roughly three months old and Leilani a fledgling, maybe a month and a half old.
"Thank you, Professor," they chorused.
"Don't thank me yet, you're only half way. See me tomorrow at our usual time. Now, you'd best get back to your dormitory. Good night, Ladies."
"Good night, Professor McGonagall!"
"Oh, and girls?"
They turned.
"Be sure to fill out the registration forms when they arrive." Her look turned stern as she said, "if you do not, I will see it as a personal affront and drag you to the ministry myself."
"Yes, Professor," they promised.
She stared them down for another moment or two before nodding her dismissal.
From there, the girls made their way to the showers. They were soaked to the skin, joys of having to be out in the middle of a storm to complete the process.
"I wonder what kind of bird I am…"
"Penguin," Jo decided.
"I'm not a penguin!" Leili laughed in mock outrage.
"Yer a penguin, Leili," Jo imitated Hagrid.