Harry Potter and The Marauding Champions

By NonsensicalRants


Chapter 7:

Their Forms Revealed


Taking turns tormenting the twins became utterly boring after several days. This was especially true after they exhausted every classic prank in the book, to the point that they'd each wedgied one twin or the other to the point of rectal bleeding at least twice. Hell, they managed to discover Ravenclaw's common room by pure accident on their second night of post-curfew exploration. It was a random wooden door atop a random, and uncomfortably narrow, spiral staircase in Ravenclaw tower. Upon it's surface was an eagle knocker.

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The knocker had asked them.

Harry's mind had immediately gone to Darwin's theory of evolution, by which the ancestor of the chicken surely layed eggs, and one day instead of the chickens predecessor a chicken hatched from the egg; Ergo, the egg came first. He felt rather clever for coming up with such an answer and was about to tell it to the knocker when Cedric stole his thunder.

"Let's see. I had eggs for breakfast and chicken for lunch, as do most people. So the egg clearly came first."

Motherfucker!

And the door opened too, which just made the theft sting even worse.

Once they finished up adding the poozooka enchantment - as Harry had come to call it in his head - to every toilet in Ravenclaw tower there was no place decent for the twins to relieve themselves save for the private quarters of the Hogwarts faculty. They left those undisturbed, as it would be more entertaining for the redheaded duo to get caught sneaking into McGonagall's bedroom than to have them make a mess.

From there they pulled off every prank in the book.

Thumb tacks on the floor beside their beds? You betcha.

Blow-horn whoopie-cushions enchanted to go off only when one of them sat on a chair? Damn straight.

Harry's personal favorite was when they transfigured every book and school supply in their bags into a different animal and put a delaying charm so that each thing in their school bags ran, flew, scurried, crawled and slithered away all at once. They timed it perfectly so that it would happen while the sixth-years were in potions class too. Snape had a field day taking points from Gryffindor.

At this point all that was left for them to do was kidnap them in the middle of the night - along with their beds - and send them on a voyage out to sea; Which is what they were doing right now.

"Hey Harry, you mind contributing!" Cedric cursed at him.

"Cut me some slack! I'm not accustomed to casting levitation charms while flying." Harry retorted.

And indeed they, along with Viktor, were hovering alongside Gryffindor tower; Their wands raised and levitation charms cast as they cooperatively hovered Fred's bed out through the window; frame, canopy and all.

Under normal circumstance there was no way in hell such a large piece of furniture could fit through the portal, but with Fleurs excellent charm and transfiguration work enlarging the gap to comical proportions it was child's play. And since she hated flying - Veela jokes aside - it was a good role for her to fill while the men did the heavy lifting, figuratively speaking.

Their yelling, fortunately, failed to wake a single soul. It had been Harry's intention to cast silencing charms around the bedroom, but when Cedric mentioned the earmuffs used for herbology class Viktor was dead-set on using those to deafen the entirety of the sixth year dorm. He argued it was more challenging, would allow them to still curse each-other out and fit more into the spirit of things.

The Bulgarian had a unique sense of irony and superstition that seemed to follow neither rhyme nor reason. In all honesty he seemed to be making it up as he went. The guy was inventing new rules and traditions by the day, though all were at least fun or challenging. Harry wondered if Viktor would declare it to be good luck if a certain foul-mouthed blue tit took up nesting in that foliage of pubic hair sprouting from his face.

Probably, Harry concluded.

Through the sweat, precise work and foul language they managed to levitate one bed down to the nearest flying buttress below the window. Then the other bed. Then they repeated the process to the next nearest flying buttress. Then to the roof of an adjoining tower. Then three more levels of buttresses, another roof, another-nother roof, then to an outcropping of stone Fleur insisted was called a triforium - which sparked an entire debate on Gothic architectural terms followed by a discussion on how a castle built in the early middle ages had architectural features ranging from pre-medieval to that of the Victorian era - and then finally, after what felt like hours, two red and gold clad beds sat on the frozen grass of the Hogwarts grounds.

From there casting a few buoyancy and water-proofing charms on their beds and placing them on the calm surface of the black lake was a breeze.

"Bye Fred! Bye George!" Harry yelled out to the pair of bed-boats as they floated towards the dark horizon.

"Have a safe trip!" Yelled Cedric.

"Bon voyage!" Fleur called as she dangled a flowery handkerchief in farewell. The phrase sounded completely different in actual french.

"Be mindful of sharks!" The shark animagi warned the voyagers with a twisted grin.

"Be sure to stop by Majorca! I hear it's lovely this time of year!" Yelled Remus from within their midst.

Harry and company reacted as well as one can be expected to react to a middle-aged former-teacher catching them in the middle of their prank, which is to say, with many four letter words and reactionary spellfire - which thankfully missed the laughing werewolf and howling grim.

"Moony! What are you doing here?!" Harry breathed as he approached the older Marauder and embraced him.

Padfoot, still literally howling with laughter, transformed back into the well-dressed godfather only to continue figuratively howling with laughter. They too, embraced.

"Remus was feeling better from his most recent case of PMS and insisted on meeting the new Marauders." Sirius informed him. "We were just discussing my vacation to Spain when you arrived and we just couldn't resist sneaking up on you."

Harry did the honors of introducing the new mentor.

"TrionSkin, Firebird. This is Remus Lupin, werewolf of the previous generation of Marauders and owner of the venerated title, Moony. PaddleCul, I believe you're familiar with him." Harry introduced.

Remus nodded politely to them and shook each person's hand in turn, except for a blushing Fleur Delacour who received a kiss on the back of her from the dashing lycanthrope. Harry supposed he should feel jealous, but damned if uncle Moony didn't deserve a dazzling smile from a French Veela every now and then. The guy has it tough.

"Wait wait wait." Krum interrupted when the information Harry just revealed finally registered. "You're a werewolf?"

Remus nodded hesitantly.

"And your name is... Lupin?"

Cedric sniggered and Remus' concerned look turned to one of annoyance. No doubt he was worried Viktor would take issue with his condition, not mock his name.

"I know right?" Said Cedric. "The whole school was up in arms about the ridiculous name when news of his condition got out. Was there really a point in picking a Marauder Alias? Lupin would have done just fine."

Harry's fellow Marauders kept on laughing at the poor man, even Fleur, though she tried to hide it behind a hand over her mouth.

Remus held up a hand to silence them and succinctly explained the tragic story Harry had heard once before, when he himself had brought it up.

"A serial biter by the name of Fenrir Greyback targeted my family due to our surname with the intention of turning us all. He thought it ironic and humorous to turn a family with the name Lupin into werewolves as well, sadly only I survived."

Well, that sobered them all up something fierce. Maybe there's a lesson here about not making fun of people's names? Harry couldn't bring himself to rub it in just yet, but he'd save it for later in case he ever needed shaming material.

"Now that the mandatory verbal ass-whooping is done with, let us get on with our business for the day." Sirius said before opening his robes to reveal an interior lined with vials of a familiar looking potion. "Might I interest you four in highly illegal, and incredibly dangerous, forced animagi draughts?"

He might indeed interest them in such a draught. His price was steep - the pleasure of watching them take it and helping them master their forms - but it was a price they happily agreed to. When talk to where and when to do the whole shebang Harry decided not to waste any of time.

"Chamber of Secrets." He decided aloud. "Right now.

They didn't actually do it immediately at his pronouncement as each had errands to run first. Harry had to make a detour to the library to borrow his own bird books back out of the stacks, then he headed back to his dorm room to retrieve the remainder of his own forced animagi draught from that fateful morning weeks ago. Fleur, Cedric and Viktor did the same, returning the the Beauxbatons carriage, Slytherin common room and Hufflepuff common room respectively to retrieve their own vials. Soon enough they were all finished with this task and met up in front of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

After an uncomfortable explanation about the entrance and how it worked they entered so that Harry could hiss a quick 'open' in parseltongue. Small blessing, Myrtle was missing from her bathroom and they thankfully avoided any conversation with the moody ghost. They did, however, have to deal with Fleur's snooty complaints.

"This pipe eez filthy!" She snarled as she arrived at the bottom of the pipe.

The men present could only shrug and agree. She wasn't wrong, seeing as they were all covered in grime, dirt and an unspecified slime after their trip down the slide and soft landing by way of rat bones. To say nothing of the meter deep pile of dead animals sitting at the bottom of said slide.

"We must clean eet up properly on ze way back out."

"Yes dear." Harry acquiesced without a hint of sarcasm.

Sirius gave him a patronizing look before they continued deeper into the chamber.


After clearing the cave-in and harvesting the shed skin just beyond - to be used for the creation of wallets for the gentleman and boots for the lady, of course - they were upon the chamber entrance proper. With another hissed 'open' the vault-like door swung ajar and permitted them passage.

The last two years, it turned out, had not been kind to the basilisk corpse. The bacterial life, not to mention the swarms of rats that pervaded the underground tunnels, had corroborating in picking the corpse clean long ago, leaving nothing behind but a yellowed skeleton. Although the fangs still looked visibly toxic, the black venom preserved within the cartilage.

Remus and Sirius carefully adjusted the skull to close its' mouth in order to use the forehead as a desk to place all of their materials upon. Sirius moved onto transfiguring the pool of water behind the skeleton into a massive wall of reflective ice near the back, thus hiding Slytherin's bald ugly mug, but leaving plenty of water to swim in if need be. As his godfather did this, Harry's quasi-god-father organized the four full vials of navy blue potions, and four half-filled ones. Alongside these he placed the bestiaries, bird dictionaries and a leather bag from which he pulled out food samples. Dried meets, fresh vegetables and sliced fruit exclusively.

"To get accustomed to your new senses of taste and smell." Remus explained at their curious looks. "It's an easier place to start when becoming accustomed to your forms, and more enjoyable. There is a magic in food that transcends words, just as with music, which we will be using during the next physical therapy session."

That was a good euphemism for it. Physical therapy sessions.

"I vill go first." Viktor declared as he approached the skull table and downed the remaining dose of his original vial.

No-one was surprised to witness the rough scales form on his skin, nor the rows of jagged teeth forming in his mouth. They were surprised by the increase in his size as he transformed into a fully grown great white shark, ripping his clothes to shreds in the process. The thirteen-foot monstrosity flopped on the cold stone floor and it quickly became evident that TrionSkin was suffocating to death.

It took all five of them pushing against his mass but they managed to slide him into the water. They had to coax him with stinging hexes to swim, as sharks must keep moving in order to breath, but soon he was swimming circles around the small - for him - pool. Sirius extended the mirror of ice below the water's surface so TrionSkin could admire his reflection during these laps and better get used to swimming with fins as opposed to arms.

Remus took to reading the section on great-whites from their book on Cartilaginous fishes as this went on, telling them every little detail.

This went on for half an hour. Remus and Sirius would give TrionSkin commands by yelling - he was underwater and had a new type of ear entirely - to find out if TrionSkin could still understand them. They would have him attempt to make human-like gestures as a shark. Seeing a great white try to shake its head in the affirmative or negative was certainly odd, and reminded Harry of a trained seal or sea-lion responding to a trainer. The rest of the hour Viktor was under the potion's effects amounted to food tasting, in which they would all toss the small food samples and watch as he majestically leapt out of the water to snatch them from the air. He was a showman, through and through.

They stuck entirely to meat for him, as feeding an aquatic carnivore broccoli might not be great for his health, but soon enough his transformation ended and he reverted to human form, naked.

"Erase that from your brain, that was for only 'Ermione to see." Viktor joked to Fleur as Sirius covered the man with a blanket.

Fleur made a playful motion as if scrubbing her eyes clean with a squeegee, even going so far as to make the sound-effect for it with her mouth. God, Harry was in love with this woman.

Then it was Cedric's turn.


The potion tasted of midnight dew scrubbed from the leaves of English ivy and soaked in the bark of redwood trees, with just a hint fresh blueberries. On the other hand, the potion felt like being strapped into a torture rack to have your body stretched - but in reverse. In a word, it was painful, and yet Cedric refused to yell out. Viktor had gritted his teeth through it and, by Merlin, so would he.

His limbs shrunk, his body squashed and hair sprouted from strange places, much like puberty but without the inconvenient erections and back acne. That pleasant trade-off came with the painful caveats of sharp claws growing from his fingertips, webbing stretching between them, a paddle jutting from his back side and a... bill? Beavers don't have bills like a duck.

And so PaddleCul fell to the floor, a lot smaller, and a lot stranger than the Castoridae he'd expected to become. So small, in fact, that Viktor was easily able to lift him up off the ground and hold him up to his his disgustingly bearded face.

"I knew it! Noble Platypus. You could be nothing but!" Viktor said as he rubbed his cheeks on Paddlecul's back fur.

On the plus side, Paddlecul got a crash course in becoming accustomed to his heightened sense of smell. On the downside, he got a nose-full of every bit of food Viktor had eaten in the last week and saw fit to save leftovers of on his face. In his desperation he panicked and kicked out with his newly webbed feet and felt something jutting from his heel connect and dig deep into the skin of Viktor's wrist.


Viktor yelped and dropped PaddleCul back to the ground where he scurried away into the water where the amphibious creature disappeared into its murky depths.

"Hm. I thought the venomwould hurt worse than this." Viktor commented as he held his already swelling wrist up to his face to examine. "No, vait, there it is. Oooooooooowwwwweee."

He moaned in pain and slowly lowered himself to the floor and Harry had to laugh at the complete lack of inflection in the man's voice. But it turned out he wasn't faking, for male Paltypi were indeed venemous. Remus tried to cast myriad of pan relief spells on his wrist, but none worked.

"The platypus is vone of the few magical animals Muggles are aware of, ut their magic is in their venom." Viktor told them. "Extremely painful, cannot be relieved by medicine nor magic. But it is not deadly, I vil be fine."

He then produced a small pocketbook titled "A Magizooligists Guide to the Noble Platypus" from within his jacket pocket and handed it to Remus. Harry was now starting to worry his comrade might be a little too interested in Platypi.

"Male Platypi produce venom in a gland near the barb on their hind legs during late winter, which is their mating season." Remus read aloud.

Oh it was mating season for Cedric wa it? that certainly explained why he and Cho were sneaking off so much more often than before. Cho had even commented to Fleur and Hermione how Cedric had become more, ehem, aggressive during one of their Triple dates. She had meant to whisper it, but Harry overheard anyways. his ears always picked up on girls whispering. When women are loud, tune them out, when they're quiet, pay close attention. It was a good rule Viktor had confided in them in private once.

They repeated the same exercises with PaddeCul as they had with TrionSkin. Trying to give him commands, after coaxing him out of his hiding place, which he obeyed happily. The platypus is an insectivore but they didn't have any bugs on the dinner menu, so they fed him pieces of shrimp which he apparently enjoyed.

It wasn't anywhere near as impressive watching him leap from the water to catch pieces as it was for TrionSkin, but that was mostly because he wasn't coordinated enough in his new form to actually catch it. Some seeker, eh?

They also tested his resistance to the cold, freezing different parts of the pond, and through interrogation and the use of nods Paddlecul confirmed that the colder he was the more comfortable he was, to the point that they cast the glacius charm directly on him and it didn't faze him in the slightest. They concluded his resistance to the cold must have been magical in nature, just as with his venom. to be fair, his fur was very thick and very soft, as they discovered when fleur convinced him to let her pet him. Only her though.

When the hour was up it was Harry's turn and he wasted no time in downing the potion himself.

He screamed. He screamed a lot. It would have been nice if the other two had seen fit to warn him, but instead he was left screaming as his arms twisted into wings, what little body hair he had transfigured into feathers, and the bones of his face fused into a beak.

His screams turned into a continuous squawk as he shrank into his clothes. He was able to swim in Dudley's hand-me-downs before, but now he was drowning in them as he struggled to move his odd limbs. He couldn't see it, but his beak was so very heavy that he could hardly lift his head. An angel saw fit to descend from heaven and rescue him from the sea of cloth and hold him to her small, but lovely chest.

"Oooh, now zat is what I would call a voulge nose." Fleur said as she cradled him.

VoulgeNeb tried to stand on the platform her arms provided but was stymied by his impossibly heavy head and his traitorous desire to remain in her embrace. He gave up the task entirely when she started stroking the feathers on the back of his head. It was a divine sensation and he couldn't stop his tongue from hanging out of his beak like a dog.

"Let's see here." Remus interrupted as he brought one of the bird dictionaries over as Sirius provided a mirror.

Harry recognized himself instantly. The black plumage with white tips, the long, white curved beak and the perfectly crescent horn jutting from it. He was a hornbill.

"An oriental pied hornbill." Remus concluded as he proffered the book for Harry to examine. It was uncomfortable having a hand mirror and dictionary shoved so close to his face, but with the two side-by-side Harry had to admit it looked like a perfect match. with one minor exception.

"Non, his hair is wild and thick like mon boyfriend."

She was right. If you were take Harry Potter's mess of black unruly hair and turned it into feathers that's what VoulgeNeb had. It was so thick, in fact, that you could hardly see the back half of his crescent horn. The pied hornbill, on the other hand, had a perfectly smooth head of foliage. Otherwise they looked identical.

"Hmmm." Remus considered as he withdrew the book. "Maybe a trumpeter hornbill?"

He proffered the book again and, indeed, it had his head of hair. But there was still a problem.

"Ewww, non. Eet's beek eez ugly, Harry's is perfect and white, except for zee lightning bold."

Oh yeah, Harry had a lightning bolt shaped black spot on his horn. Fancy that.

"I vould like to propose he is both." Viktor offered helpfully. "If this trumpeter hornbill were to mate with the oriental pied hornbill, then VoulgeNeb would be the result of their union."

They all accepted that explanation in stride, and then proceeded to argue about his name.

"It looked more like a halberd than a Voulge." Cedric argued.

"A halberd is a voulge, and there are many types." Remus offered.

"Then vhy not call him HalberdNose?" Viktor suggested.

"Because we've already settled on our names, we can't change them now!"

And so their debate raged on. VoulgeNeb let them continue uninterrupted, content to enjoy sitting in Fleur's arms as she fed him berries and stroke his head with a single finger. The physical therapy could wait.


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