Chapter 15

Charlie was doing his NEWTs and had apologetically ended our regular study sessions. I wasn't too upset, I'd known that they'd have to end when Charlie graduated. While Percy had tagged along with the rest of us, ou personalities and learning styles differed on a few key points, such that continuing without someone else being present as a moderating factor was futile. Needless to say, the twins were not willing to be that moderating factor.

And so I was reduced to studying by myself and had lost one of my few regular forms of social interaction. The only bright side to the incident was that my Potions work—the original reason for the tutoring sessions—had advanced to the point where I was able to keep afloat without the personal tutelage of a more experienced potioneer. And, as an OWL student in good standing with Professor Snape with a flawless disciplinary record, I was permitted to brew my own potions outside of class provided I took all necessary safety precautions. I made a point of taking a number of unnecessary ones as well, just to be safe.

There was no Dolores Umbridge in my fifth year. As a matter of fact, our teacher was an immensely competent ex-Auror from an unidentified foreign country—their accent was distinctly Irish with an unidentified twang, likely the place they'd learnt the language—whose sole oddity was in wearing gloved, a long-sleeved overcoat, a hat and a scarf at all times, leaving only the barest strip of dark skin on their face. I had a bad feeling that whatever they were hiding would be their undoing, but put my suspicions aside in order to focus on enjoying the tutelage of a competent teacher for a change.

As I'd suspected, my ability to silently cast spells with accuracy during combat, combined with an encyclopedic knowledge of dark creatures and curses—I read a lot, and some stuff seemed to stick—placed as one of the best in my year at the subject. I didn't place too much value in grades... But I still felt a twinge of pleasure at being handed back an assignment with an O and being awarded a score of house points regularly.

I was going to miss Professor Madadin whenever they were forced to leave.

—tN—tN—tN—

It was late January when I entered the Great Hall at breakfast and the ceiling was flashing with sparks of plasma. Breakfast, I decided, could wait, and I went to find Professor McGonagall.

After carrying a mandrake leaf for a straight month, finishing on a full moon, it must be spat into phial lit by the light of the moon. Two of my attempts at brewing the Animagus potion had been foiled by clouds on the night of the full moon.

Once that obstacle was navigated, I had to add one of my hairs, a silver teaspoon of dew (harvested before sunrise and untouched by human feet), and the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawk moth. Then the actual brewing part was technically complete and the potion was stored in a quiet, dark place where it would be completely undisturbed.

While the potion waited, the brewer—me, in this case—must say the incantation "Amato Animo Animato Animagus" with their wandtip over their heart at sunrise and sunset each day, without fail. Missing sunset or sunrise had foiled several more of my attempts.

This continued every day until it was time to complete the process. On the day of a lightning storm, the incantation was to be said one final time before downing the potion in a large, secure space.

My most recent try had come within literal minutes of success when the storm quieted just moments before I was to drink the potion. Professor McGonagall had hexed the potion out of my hand when she realised what had happened, just to make sure I didn't drink it before she could get her warning through.

There was another storm raging now though, and this would have to be it.

—tN—tN—tN—

I met Professor McGonagall coming down the main staircase.

"Professor," I called, heedless of the other students passing by whose attention was caught by my shout. "The weather! It's lightning!"

The Professor caught my meaning in an instant, her eyes widening and a vicious grin breaking across her face. The students who had stopped to watch our exchange found themselves something else to busy themselves with at the sight.

"Quickly then, before it passes! Where did you put the potion?"

Both of us forgoing breakfast, I lead Professor McGonagall up a succession of staircases at a near-sprint.

"Where the devil did you put the thing, Poe? This is nowhere near the dormitories!" McGonagall said, frowning out the window at the still-crackling storm.

"There's a secret room I knew of that was perfect," I said as we turned into the seventh-floor corridor. Hoping that Professor McGonagall wouldn't ask any questions about what the room was or how I'd come to find it, I beckoned her to stand back while I paced back and forth thrice, wishing each time for the room in which I'd placed the potion. The Room of Requirement revealed itself and I pushed open the door to reveal a wide near-empty room with a pair of tall windows looking over the grounds in the far wall and a sturdy cabinet between them.

Drawing my wand, I quickly examined the spells I'd placed in the Room to detect if anyone else had happened upon this particular iteration since I'd last opened it. They were undisturbed and I let out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.

"What is this place?" McGonagall said behind me, astonishment as plain as the lightning outside. "And what possessed you to risk putting your potion here, so far away from where you can easily monitor it?"

"I'll explain the details of the Room of Requirement later, Professor, we're on a clock at the moment." I hurried over to the cabinet and began working through the locking charms I'd put on it. "But in answer to the second part, I have several good reasons. The main one being that my last attempt nearly ended in disaster both because I took so long to retrieve the potion from its hiding place and move to a suitable space for consumption and because I didn't realise that the storm had calmed until you blasted the phial from my hand. Thanks again, by the way."

"My pleasure," McGonagall said, the response automatic as she watched me silently undo the defences with an arched brow.

"Given that, the obvious solution seemed to be to store the potion in a secure place large enough to drink it in with a view of the weather outside. Almost nobody knows about this room and even those that do are unlikely to be able to disturb my potion once it's hidden here. So, it seemed more or less perfect."

The final security measure was the handle of the cabinet itself, enchanted to have a flesh memory like a golden snitch. It turned in my grasp and revealed the potion within. Also within was a clear glass bauble that clouded and crumbled within moments. A final sensor to alert me if anyone had opened or disturbed the cabinet.

"And before you ask, I cleared it with Professor Dumbledore and he said it should be perfectly safe to use the potion after it's been stored in here."

"Well, if Albus has approved," McGonagall muttered, mollified by the mention of her own mentor. Her eyes settled on the phial. "So then, you remember the last steps?"

"Chant the incantation one last time, then drink the phial," I said, the process burned into my memory through sheer repetition.

"Very good. I'll move to the doorway so you'll have space."

While McGonagall hurried to the entrance, glancing over her shoulder at the clouds outside every few seconds, I moved to the middle of the room and took a few steadying breaths. First I raised my wand and brought it to bear on my heart and said—for what I hoped was the last time—"Amato Animo Animato Animagus!". Then, double-checking the weather was still tempestuous, I uncorked the phial and brought it to my lips.

I turned to smile at the Professor, saluting her awkwardly with my wand. Then I tilted my head back and downed the phial.

At the very moment I swallowed, the sky lit up with a blinding bolt that painted the Room in shades of black and white, the thunder reaching us even through the charms I'd cast for sound-proofing. All extremely dramatic.

The potion itself didn't have any particular taste. Instead, it was more a sensation of something moving down my gullet, something long, cold, and smooth. It slid smoothly down into my very core, where it curled up and then spread out.

Pins and needles, waves of hot and cold, ran up my limbs and I dropped to the floor. The sensation spread out and out, heating up all the while. It pervaded every part of me from my toes to my fingers to the top of my scalp. Within heartbeats, it had replaced all parts of me, a blinding boiling heat bubbling just under my skin.

Then it cooled, shrinking back down again. Only this time it brought my body with it. My body collapsed in on itself in an instant, my head and extremities melting down and reforming into something entirely new.

I was tired like I'd just finished a triathlon in a firesuit. I let my head lie on the ground, eyes shut. I could tell I'd changed but didn't have the energy to see what had happened. The ground shook under my skull as Professor McGonagall approached.

"Poe, wake up. Respond, even if you're tired. Just a twitch of a wing will do."

Wing? I must have turned into some kind of bird. That was cool. I guessed I didn't have to worry about heights anymore.

I tried to move what had been my right hand and felt the new limb shift. The joints and muscles were all different, so I didn't try and make it do anything. What I did was enough for Professor McGonagall though. I heard a sigh of relief and a muttered incantation.

The world twisted inside out as I was forced back into my human shape, leaving me gasping on the floor, propped up by my knees and elbows.

"I'd forgotten how tiring this was... Here, let me help you up."

A hand gripped my shoulders, guiding me up. I followed the insistent tugging, letting it pull me to my feet. My vision was blurry and distorted, even though I had my glasses on.

"Ah, we should probably take you to the Hospital Wing for a checkup, just in case. Poppy will be most vexed. Regardless, Poe, congratulations."

The remaining hand on my shoulders—one of them had transferred to my left arm at some point—squeezed tight for a moment.

"You did it after two years of work. You're an Animagus."

Most of me was too busy remaining on my feet. But the rest of me was beaming with pride.

—tN—tN—tN—

"Show us, show us," Fred begged me. Or I thought it was Fred. I was bad enough at putting names to faces even without those faces being identical.

"Alright, alright," I said, giving into the pleading.

Just like in his OWL year, Charlie had decided that going out for a quick jaunt around the sky was a good form of stress relief made better by company. Specifically by the company of myself, Percy and his younger twin brothers.

It was warmer than the last time I'd gone flying with Charlie, thought the sky was still overcast and drab. This time I'd needed no encouragement to take my broom high and even tried a few dives under Charlie's supervision and tutelage. The swooping sensation it engendered was still discomfiting, but it was far more familiar than it used to be and I was no longer letting myself accept it as an excuse.

After half an hour of flying though, we'd stopped to hover over the Lake in a rough circle. At which point the twins had taken to badgering me about seeing my Animagus form. I didn't actually have any objection to showing them—transforming was a pleasant rush now, unlike my initial change—but their nagging quickly grated on my ears. I double-checked my altitude before calling to Charlie.

"Keep an eye on my broom and catch me if it looks like I'm not going to change in time, 'kay?"

Charlie responded with a thumbs up and I let myself fall backwards off my broomstick.

I twisted in midair so I was falling on my front before willing myself to change, to shift into my other skin. In under a heartbeat, my body was gone, consumed by feathers as I rose back over the now-whooping Weasleys in the body of a raven. The irony of someone called 'Poe' turning into a raven had not escaped me, no.

I swooped around the broomsticks, flapping my wings every now and then to stay aloft, and enjoyed the sensation of flying under my own power. For all that it was slower than flying by broomstick, nor could I fly as high, I enjoyed flying as a raven far more than I did on a broom. It felt more natural, the fears and worries that gripped me otherwise fading away. Where before I had to be coached through the most basic of manoeuvres, as a raven I could be as acrobatic as I liked.

Noting that Charlie had my broom floating next to his so it wouldn't drift off, I decided to give the Weasleys a bit of a show. Banking left towards them, I flipped around in the air and flew past them inverted for a moment before righting myself and flying in a quick series of somersaults. The cheers of the twins was a balm against the dizziness inflicted by so many consecutive inversions.

I'd gained more of an audience than that though.

The Weasleys and I were the only people in the air, but there were a number of other students walking the grounds and a number of them had noticed my performance and stopped to spectate.

Unlike the creators of the Marauder's Map, I was a registered Animagus, fully certified by the Ministry. I'd never be able to keep it secret for long. What I hadn't expected was for someone to notice the addition to the Registry almost immediately and run a story about it in the Daily Prophet. As a result, I'd become a minor celebrity and been forced to transform just to avoid crowds on several occasions. With a bit of luck, the novelty would be wiped away once exams loomed and I'd be able to focus properly.

I'd received quite a bit of fan mail as well from various witches and wizards, some of them Animagi themselves. Several of the people I'd been corresponding with for the past few years had also sent their congratulations, letters that I'd tucked away with other precious tokens.

McGonagall had mixed feelings about the affair. On the one hand, more students were paying attention in her classes—for however long that lasted—but on the other, she'd had to turn down several requests/demands from students who also wanted to become Animagi. Leaving aside the fact that mentoring a student through the transformation was a long and stressful process, she had told me that she could never take more than one student at a time, even if any of the applicants had the required maturity and skill.

As with Rita Skeeter and McGonagall herself, my glasses had made themselves known as a curious discolouration encircling both my eyes in raven form. Aside from that, I was a prime specimen of Corvus Corax, the common raven. According to the book on ornithology I'd taken out of the Library—last checked out in the 1950s, I noted—I had become one of the largest species of corvid. Ravens were known for, among other things, being quite playful and intelligent, flying higher than their cousins—the crows—and being able to replicate many of the stunts of aerial acrobatics employed by larger birds of prey. It was the last of these that gave me the most joy. Though the association with ravens being the harbingers of storms and disaster also rang eerily true, for all that I aimed to avert a disaster.

I shook the bothersome thoughts aside. I couldn't do anything to change them. For the moment, I was content to just fly. And so I did, dive-bombing Percy and tricking him into falling into the Lake. He'd probably be annoyed later, but what could I do? Mischief was buried somewhere in my nature and it now had a way out.

—tN—tN—tN—

"Can I help you, Poe?" Professor Madadin asked when I approached them after class.

"Sorry to bother you, sir," I said. "But could I trouble you to look at a spell I've been struggling with for a while now. I had a breakthrough recently and I want to make sure I'm not doing it incorrectly."

"A spell that's given you trouble? Can't be that many of those." I couldn't make out many details, but I fancied that the Defence professor had one eyebrow raised. "Let's see... you say you've been working at it for a while, which in these circumstances I'm taking as being multiple years. As such, it's a spell whose details would be freely available at younger years but be complex enough to tax even a student as diligent as yourself. Moreover, you specifically asked me to look at it, implying that it produces a demonstrable result without requiring a living target. That does rather narrow the list..."

I smiled. Professor Madadin embodied the 'detective' aspects of being an Auror as much as the martial side of the profession. He had a tremendous knowledge of spells that he could mentally cross-reference with ease. I had compared his tendency to work out solutions to problems aloud to Sherlock Holmes, a parallel he found most amusing.

"I'll save you the bother of guessing, sir. It's the Patronus Charm."

That got a reaction. A not-actually-visible-behind-folds-of-fabric-but-I'm-fairly-sure-it's-there reaction, to be precise.

"Very well then, please demonstrate. I'll trust you enough not to be on guard for maggots."

I shuddered at the reminder of what allegedly happened to Dark wizards who tried to cast a Patronus.

Raising my wand—directed away from my teacher, just to be safe—I shut my eyes and reached back. Before, I'd fed the spell with memories of my time with the Weasleys, with visiting the Burrow, with long hours spent enraptured by the possibilities of magic in the Library. Now I reached to a more recent memory.

A memory of shedding my dead weight and taking wing. A memory of being free of gravity, free of everything. Of soaring high and not flinching in the slightest at the fall below. And most of all of diving, twisting, somersaulting through the air to delighted cheers.

"Expecto Patronum."

I knew without even opening my eyes that it had worked. The spell felt different now. It was like the difference between being wrapped in a blanket and being wrapped in a hug. There was more life to it.

"Well, this is rather unexpected," said Professor Madadin. I opened my eyes and looked down at my conjured guardian threading its way between my legs. "I was under the impression that most Animagi's patronus matches their animal form?"

"Most, not all," I said, speaking softly. "The sample size is quite small, all things considered. I talked with Professor McGonagall about the subject years ago and we still don't have a definitive answer. Although..."

"You have a theory?"

"Yes. Being an Animagus is about becoming something else. It's about change and freedom, of baring to the world a part of you that you normally cannot. A Patronus is... Different. It's a part of you that makes you feel safe, that is familiar and comforting. For a lot of people, I think that the two are the same. But some people, like me, are a bit contrary. If I turn into a raven because I want to take flight, then perhaps my Patronus is a cat because I actually feel safer in comfort? Or something. I'm not as familiar with the symbolism involved with cats. It's just a theory."

"Not a bad one," Madadin said, rubbing his chin through his scarf and watching the black and white cat circling me. I'd had to double check before I was sure that it specifically was a black and white cat, but the silver still conveyed a sense of contrast, somehow. Another mystery. "If you can write it out and put a bit more research behind it, I think that may even be a worthy topic for a paper. I'm sure there'd be quite a bit of interest in certain circles, given the rarity of cases to study."

"I might do that," I said, watching the cat finally disperse. Since it was my cat, rather than someone else's, it faded from the tail up, with the mouth vanishing last. "So, did I do it right?"

"As near as I can tell," the Defence professor said. "It was substantial, glowing, didn't disperse until you let it and was in a clearly defined shape with appropriate behaviours. Those are usually good signs that a Patronus has been correctly conjured. Though, as I'm sure you're aware, that performance just there would not suffice for, let's say, Auror purposes."

"I know, I took too long to focus before casting," I said, shrugging. "I'll work on that. Try and make a few more happy memories to draw on."

"You do that. And congratulations on defying expectations and convention again. Now get out, I have another class in here soon and I'm sure you have something to be doing as well. Shoo!"

I made my thanks and retreated from the classroom. I did turn his words over as I went though. It went without saying that almost no Hogwarts student became an Animagus at age fifteen and only slightly more mastered the Patronus charm at the same age. Once I factored in the non-verbal casting that I was gaining increasing proficiency in, I was quite a bit ahead of pretty much all my peers.

Scratch that, I was probably more capable than many adult witches and wizards.

I made a note to talk to Albus about that and continued on to the Library. Professor Madadatin was right, after all. I did have study to do.