So... here we are, chapter 1.4 Not quite chapter 2 I'm thinking.
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I'd underestimated my parents' observation skills. It had taken a few weeks for them to suss it all out, but getting lost in the Amazon jungle for three months had been enough to finally make them stop me for a talk. It wasn't quite what I expected. I thought I'd been caught time traveling due to the sudden change of haircut that I'd been too homesick to notice, or the subtle sharpening of my cheekbones that came from aging three months in a single day. Turned out they'd decided to stage an intervention over the bras of mine Mom had washed for me. Apparently a sudden cup size increase immediately made them think I was magically enhancing myself.
Explaining why and how I'd been aging faster than normal had taken a few hours, but overall they'd taken it with aplomb. Well, after crying a bit about their little baby growing up too fast. Mentioning that witches tended to age a little slower after reaching maturity had helped smooth things over a bit. Though, upon learning that I was already fifteen, they mandated that I do my own laundry from now on. They'd also put their foot down about muggle history. They were happy that I'd picked up some foreign languages during my time turner-aided globe traveling, but apparently being well on my way to voting age and knowing hardly anything about English history besides several supposed goblin wars was criminally deficient.
I didn't really mind the extra studies, but it was a shame I had less and less free time. I'd read that powerful wizards and witches as well as the famous had a harder time using time turners but I hadn't thought it would apply to me anytime soon. Apparently I was wrong. I could hear a sort of hum whenever I came close to creating a paradox, and it was happening awfully frequently. Stupid muggle cellphones were making it harder and harder to do month-in-a-day trips now that I was pretty enough to be noticed and remembered by random passerby. Not that I was terribly unhappy about that, but it was a bit of a mixed gift. On top of that, I seemed to have acquired more "magical mass." Another natural part of becoming an adult witch, or so I'd read. Unfortunately, while a larger magical core allowed for stronger spells, it also meant the itsy bitsy hourglass had to work a lot harder to send me back in time. The repeated overuse when I'd gotten lost in the Amazon had even left a worrisome crack in it.
What it all boiled down to was that I had to either steal an industrial-strength time turner and learn how to glamour myself to escape attention... or start limiting my jaunts through time. I was reluctantly going with the latter option, but I was holding the former in reserve. It was probably for the best that I cut things down to forty hours a day or less. Not only was time traveling dangerous, sometimes it felt like an unhealthy addiction. It certainly hadn't helped my social life thus far. It was hard to relate with Harry and Ron when they were moving through life at half my speed, and they weren't the sharpest tacks to begin with.
As it turned out, it wasn't much longer before the whole time travel issue completely blew over with my parents.
I really shouldn't have screamed. That was the key issue. Not playing around with magic beyond capabilities or forgetting to turn off the alarm clock while I was meditating to achieve my animagus form, no, it was definitely the scream. I wasn't a little girl anymore, but that hadn't stopped my parents from running into my room. Given the way they also started screaming I suspected they'd stop to knock in the future.
It took an hour to get Mom to relinquish her death grip on the broom. It almost made things better that she freaked out as much as she did. It meant I could concentrate on calming her down rather than focusing on the fact that I had eight freaking spider legs. Honestly, I had a feeling that I might be seriously screwed. Madam Pomfrey had covered up the polyjuice potion (and honestly, turning oneself into an animal hybrid once in a lifetime was already too often) but there was no guarantee she'd do the same for this. And if her scan revealed my true age... I had a feeling that hoping for the minimum security section of Azkaban would be overly optimistic.
There had to be a way to fix this. Most of the horror stories about partial anigmagus transformations involved foolish young wizards transforming their heads into animals and not retaining the sense to change back, but thankfully I'd only managed to alter my legs. Unfortunately according to the books I'd picked up from Knockturn Alley, now that the animagus transformation had started and been allowed to set there was no way to become fully human without turning fully into a... a spider. Even ignoring the unexpected animal, transforming fully and then back to human was easier said than done. Thanks to that damned alarmed clock interrupting my meditation I'd gone seriously off script. Even with the timer turner it could take months to transform safely, and if I grew steadily more spider-like, well, it would be hard to go to class if I was only a foot tall. At least as I was I could pass for human if I figured out a way to keep my lower half concealed.
But how... School robes were terribly unflattering and had helped hide my age, but they weren't bulky enough to hide my giant spider abdomen and accompanying legs. Nor was I anywhere near good enough at illusion magic to simply glamour myself, not that I had the power to keep a glamour up all day and still cast spells for class anyways. But maybe, just maybe, there was a third option. Hopefully Harry would forgive me.
End chapter
Wheeeeeee. Past the intro.