Hermione was intensely curious about the animagus process and becoming an animagus, especially if she could become an Asari like Harry. However, she recognized the wisdom of waiting untile she was older and they understood the process better and was more or less resigned to waiting before attempting it herself.

The off-hand comment on the Hogwarts Express by Harry that they were waiting to register his adoption into the T'Soni family until they understood whether his Animagus body aged like an Asaari or like a human threw her into a panic. It intensified her fears that Harry would leave her behind after they left Hogwarts.

The thought of being without her best friend in her life was unbearable. At nearly 15, Hermione had of course thought about marriage. Out of all the boys in Hogwarts and that she knew from elsewhere, she thought she'd like to try being Harry's girlfriend and maybe even his wife someday. The problem was that she didn't know if Harry thought of her that way and was too afraid of losing what they had to find out. One of her biggest nightmares was that Harry would marry someone else and that girl would refuse to let her remain friends with Harry.

The thought of Harry remaining young while she aged and grew old likewise terrified her. Once at Hogwarts, she found herself looking up all that she could find in the library about animagi, the process, and if there was any way to choose the animal. From what she read, there was no way to choose the animal.

A week after her birthday in late September, as she was thinking about the process and was struck by the thought that all the texts only described one way to become an animagi. Surely there were indigenous cultures that had come up with a similar outcome that used a different method before European contact? She knew that both Native American and Japanese mythology had shape shifters in them. Unfortunately, the Hogwarts library had very little in the way of descriptions of non-European magic. There was a tantalizing tidbit in the description of the 1952 International Symposium of Animagi which had a description of the Uagadou School Team. Evidently the African Wizard School routinely sent a "team" of students to the Symposium.

Digging into what she could find about Uagadou, she was disappointed. There was very little she could find on it. What she did find was fascinating. Uagadou claimed to be founded in 950 AD, which would make it several decades older than Hogwarts. It was known for teaching its students wandless magic in addition to wand use and was well known for its excellence in transfiguration, including self-transfiguration. She resolved to write to the school and see if she could find out its curriculum.

It wasn't until November that she heard back from Uagadou. Despite the anxiety involved in Harry's involvement in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, she took the time to correspond with a transfiguration professor from Uagadou and eventually got a book list for the entire Uagadou transfiguration curriculum and the name of a store that would take mail order requests. Harry was amused whenever a secretary bird, which seemed to be the preferred delivery bird for Uagadou and looked like a cross between an eagle and a crane, delivered her mail. She was relieved when he didn't press her too much on the nature of her correspondence once he heard that it was academic in nature. Unfortunately, the books were only available in Konjo, a Bantu language spoken in the Mountains of the Moon where Uagadou was located in Uganda and so she also ordered an English-Konjo dictionary and language program. Luckily, very few of Uagadou's students spoke Konjo before attending and so there was a robust, academic program for learning the language from English, French, or Arabic as well as a smattering of African languages such as Swahili. In January, she finally had everything she needed to thoroughly research Uagadou's Transfiguration curriculum.

She was certain by February that Uagadou used a different method to teach its students to become animagi and that there appeared to be some matter of guiding the choice of animal. It took her another two months to be confident in her analysis of the procedure. She was particularly excited when she discovered that someone had used the procedure to change back and forth to a European appearance. The text generally considered this to be a waste of the ability since, like the European procedure, it could only be done once. There were cautions against using the procedure with an incompatible animal or a magical animal that had more magic than the user. The text particularly mentioned that several people had died trying to become dragon animagi. Much of the preparation time for the procedure was to ensure compatibility.

In May, she received the ingredients for both the compatibility-checking potion and the initial transformation potion. Unlike the European method, where most of the time to achieve the ability was spent in preparing the potion, in the Uagadou method the initial transformation was relatively easy if one was compatible and the hard part was achieving mastery. Once you had taken the potion and achieved the initial transfiguration, you had to meditate and focus your will to achieve reliable transformations. For most students, it took 3 months to achieve quick, reliable animagus transformations, the quickest took a week and some never achieved mastery.

Despite being tempted to skip the compatibility potion, Hermione was nothing if not methodical. The compatibility potion took only an hour to brew and the compatibility check involved being in close proximity to the creature one wanted to use while in the potion-induced state. It was relatively easy to convince Harry to study alone with her in an empty classroom. He looked askance at her when she asked him to change to his Asari form, but complied.

"Why?" he asked, after reluctantly changing form.

"Being around an alien may not be a big deal to you, Harry," she said, "but I find it fascinating."

"You've been around Liara and Tika enough that it shouldn't be a big deal to you either," he told her.

"But it's been months," she told him.

He rolled his eyes, but didn't complain any more.

She surreptitiously took the potion. She wasn't sure if being around an Asari animagus would count the same as being around a real Asari, but couldn't wait until summer and figured that a positive reaction might be more convincing when she attempted the actual transformation with Liara present. She wasn't desperate enough to try it on her own yet and didn't think Harry would not involve his Asari family once she told him what she planned.

The potion induced a hazy, befuddled state on her. She didn't remember much of what happened, only that it was a positive reaction (a mild euphoria; a negative reaction would have been mild fear). She barely convinced Harry not to take her to the hospital wing, only by admitting what she'd done did she get him to relent.

XXXXXXX

"Why have you been working on this by yourself?" Harry asked Hermione when they were alone in another empty classroom after classes the next day.

"It was just research, Harry," Hermione protested. "I haven't started the actual procedure. What I did last night was just a compatibility check to see if I could become an Asari animagus."

Harry sighed. "You know that won't reassure Liara. She'll have wanted to be involved from the beginning to make sure you're safe."

"The potion I used was harmless," she protested again. "At worst it would have induced a little fear if I wasn't compatible with an Asari. They use this potion at Uagadou all the time!"

Harry stared at her. She looked away.

When she could look at him again, he asked. "How do you know that it was treating me as an Asari and not a human or a human-Asari mix?"

She harrumphed. "It was just an initial test for proof of concept. I can try it again this summer. I wasn't planning to do the final procedure until then anyway."

Harry shook his head. "You think that you can convince Liara and Aunt Benezia to let you do the potion or ritual that quickly? They'll probably want to interview someone academically authoritative at that Uagadou place among other things."

Hermione stiffened and tried to keep control of her breathing. They wouldn't let her fall too far behind Harry, would they?

Harry noticed and asked, "What's wrong, Hermione?"

"You won't leave me behind, will you?"

"Leave you behind?" Harry asked, confused. "What are you talking about? I don't understand."

"I'm already nearly a year older than you," she confessed. "If you stop aging and I grow old, how will we stay best friends?"

Harry burst into laughter.

She glared at him. "Harry James Potter, stop laughing! I'm seriously worried about this. If I don't do the procedure until I'm in my twenties, I'll be the equivalent of 100 to 200 Asari years old while you'll still be in your 50s!"

Harry smiled at her. "I'm sorry for laughing, Hermione, but you're worried about nothing. Asari live to be about a thousand years old. A few decades to them is nothing. It would be like a 30-year-old not being friends with a 35-year-old because they're too old." He shook his head. "Listen. I'll talk to Liara about it and I'm sure she'll be okay with doing the procedure by the end of the summer as long as it checks out."

Suddenly, Harry's visage turned thoughtful. "Do you think it would work on Asari or even Quarians? It would be neat if Liara or Benezia could become human animagi. Tika would probably prefer to become an Asari animagus rather than a human one."

Hermione pondered the question. "I don't know. The main caution besides checking for compatibility is to make sure than target is not substantially more powerful magically than the user. People have died trying to become dragon amimagi. It would depend on how biotic strength correlates to magic strength, if it does at all."

"It may or may not work on Liara or Aunt Benezia then, but probably not Tika, as she's not a biotic. How would we tell?"

"The compatibility potion," Hermione answered. "The procedure always works when a positive reaction is achieved with it."

XXXXXXX

Hermione felt a little foolish about worrying so much after talking to Harry, but she still couldn't stop feeling that she might be left behind. She decided that while she'd wait and show what she'd gathered to Liara, she's also start brewing the transformation potion. It took almost a month to brew and with the Third Task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament coming up and then the end of the school year, now was the best time to do it.

This time, instead of using Myrtle's loo, she'd use an abandoned classroom and ward the room to be hidden from others.

XXXXXXX

Hermione snuck into the hospital wing under Harry's invisibility cloak. She was frankly astonished that he was still there. She half expected to find him gone when he got there. Liara had been toweringly furious about what had happened to her adopted little brother and had threatened Dumbledore publicly with withdrawing him. Hermione knew that if that happened, they would be on their way back to Thessia, perhaps not returning during her lifetime. She didn't think they'd leave without saying goodbye to her, but she couldn't take the chance.

She kept herself from sighing in relief at finding Harry asleep in the hospital bed. It wouldn't do to let anyone know she was here. Harry looked worn out. He had with a new scar on his arm and they had said he had suffered the Cruciatus Curse. On top of this, there was his altercations with Voldemort, Fake Moody, and the Third Task itself. She didn't blame him for being exhausted. She looked around and saw that Liara was asleep in a chair not far from the bed. She was a little embarrassed at not noticing her right away.

Liara's presence actually made things a little bit less complicated. With her here, as long as she was careful, she didn't need to wake Harry up and convince him to change his form. The Uagadou Animagus Transformation Potion required a bit of the target animal to prime it, much like Polyjuice Potion did. Unfortunately, Asari did not have hair, which was the easiest thing to use, so she had brought fingernail clippers. Thankfully, the text discussing the potion had specifically mentioned that bits of claw or horn worked which would mean that no actual genetic material would be required. Likewise with hair it didn't matter if the hair was cut, pulled out, or fell out. A cut hair would not have the follicle attached to it, which was the only part of the hair to actually contain DNA.

She briefly thought about not going forward with her plan. Since Harry was still here, maybe Liara had decided to stay. She shook her head. She wasn't willing to take the chance of them leaving or that Liara would think the potion too risky to try before they left. She carefully took out the bottle with the potion and unstoppered it. She set it on the floor table next to the chair Liara was sleeping in. Thankfully, Liara had her hand resting on the chair's armrest. She carefully lined up the clippers and cut a small piece of fingernail. The snap of the clippers seemed thunderous to her, but Liara didn't move and she managed to catch the bit of fingernail with her other hand. Backing away carefully, she carefully grabbed her potion and added the fingernail bit.

Before taking the potion, she cast a silencing charm on the room so that any commotion would not attract any unwanted attention. She also decided to wake Harry so that he would know what was happening. She intended to be quick enough that he couldn't stop her.

She gently shook him with her left hand, holding the potion in her right. "Harry, wake up," she said quietly.

"What?" Harry said groggily. "Hermione? What's going on?"

"I can't wait and take the chance that you'll leave me behind."

"What?" he said confusedly. His eyes locked on the potion in her hand.

"I can't take the chance that Liara will take you to her home and not come back for a long time."

"Hermione, don't do it yet," he pleaded with her. "We can make sure it's safe."

"There's no time," she said in an equally pleading whisper.

She drank the potion.

"Hermione!" he yelled.

Hermione felt warm all over. Her scalp itched and she raised her hands to her head. Harry was staring at her wide eyed.

"Harry? Hermione?" Liara asked. "What's going on?"

"Hermione drank an African animagus potion that's supposed to let her choose what her animagus form will be."

"African?" Liara asked. "How did she get the potion from Africa? Why is this the first I'm hearing about it."

"She brewed it herself from African instructions, I assume," Harry said.

"What?" Liara exclaimed. "You tested a potion you brewed for the first time without supervision on yourself?

"I'm very good at brewing potions and I spent a lot of time making sure the translation was correct," Hermione protested.

"Translation!?" Harry and Liara yelled in near unison.

Hermione could definitely feel her hair moving past her hands. It must be being absorbed into her scalp. She moved her right hand down so she could look at it. Her skin seemed paler, perhaps. She stared at it longer. Yes, it was definitely losing the pinkish Caucasian hue.

Liara rushed to her. She put a hand to Hermione's neck, feeling for her carotid artery. "Her pulse is normal, if a little fast," she said. She put the back of her hand to Hermione's forehead. "Same with her temperature, it feels a little warm, but not abnormally so."

Hermione bore the examination with patience. She was certain she'd done the potion correctly, but figured it was better to let the Asari get her worry out of her system.

By this time, Hermione's scalp was bare and her hand was starting to gain a blue hue. She felt ridges develop on her scalp as her crest grew in. The changes seemed to happen more quickly. She had to undue the button on her trousers as her hips expanded a little. A few moments later, she unhooked her bra. Neither change was huge, but enough to make her clothes feel tight. Perhaps one size each for her bra and knickers. Her waist was perhaps a bit trimmer and her legs were definitely longer by two to three inches.

"Do you need to change clothes?" Liara asked. "I'm not sure where we'd get some quickly without raiding your roommates' closets and I'd like to avoid drawing attention to this."

"No," Hermione said. "The change should only last 15 minutes before I change back. I'll have to meditate quite a bit to repeat the change and then practice a lot to get as good as Harry is at changing. The median time to mastery after taking the potion is three months, the quickest anyone has mastered it is a week, and some people never master the change."

Liara sighed. "Hopefully it works as expected."

While they were waiting for Hermione to change back, Liara asked, "How does the potion work?"

"I tested it earlier with a simpler potion that let me know I was compatible with the Asari form."

"Really?" Liara said. "When did you do that?"

"About a month ago," Hermione said. "I had Harry switch to his Asari form."

Liara ground the heel of her palm into her forehead. "Athame save me from impulsive teenage humans." She glared at Hermione. "You know that Harry is not a good testbed for the Asari form. The fact that he's human most of the time casts doubt on whether it was a good sample."

Hermione shrank into herself, but did not apologize. She had done what she had had to do. Liara must have recognized something in her face because she sighed heavily.

"Harry told me to wait until you could look over the procedure and I agreed with him, but after what happened today, I was afraid you would take him and leave," she admitted.

"We would never leave without saying goodbye to you," Liara scolded her.

"Yes, but would you wait and spend the time to make sure the potion met your specifications?" Hermione asked with a glare.

Liara turned thoughtful. "We actually probably would. Such a potion would be incredibly useful, especially if it works on non-humans."

"It has worked on non-humans," Hermione said, feeling a little bit embarrassed at Liara's response. "The two major qualification to its usage are that one must be compatible with the chosen target. Compatibility varies from individual to individual. The other qualification is that the target cannot have substantially more magic than the user, but that also is shown by the compatibility potion."

Liara made a thoughtful humming sound. "We know that magic and biotics are related, but not if it would suffice for this potion."

"It's easy enough to test with the compatibility potion," Hermione said. "Muggles have taken the compatibility potion without harm. They just end up being incompatible with everything, even nonmagical animals."

"So Tika could likely not use it," Liara mused. "That's a shame." She sighed. "How is the target animal chosen?"

Hermione blushed. "A piece of the animal is added to the potion." She hesitated. "I clipped off a piece of your fingernail. I apologize for doing it without asking."

Liara shook her head in resignation and then said, "There's no genetic material in fingernails."

"I know, but I specifically figured out that it wasn't necessary based on what the text said were acceptable samples."

They lapsed into silence while they waited for the potion to wear off.

Eventually, Liara said, "It's been 15 minutes."

"The text said that approximately 15 minutes," Hermione clarified.

About a minute later, she felt an itching in her scalp and her bra and trousers both felt looser. Within a minute her changes had completely reversed. She refastened the button on her trousers and turned her back to Liara.

"Refasten me, please?" she asked over her shoulder.

Liara complied. "How do you feel?"

"I feel fine," Hermione said. "A little tired from the excitement and being up late, but normal otherwise."

"I'm taking Harry home to Oxford tomorrow," Liara said. "Even before today's events, he wasn't required to sit his exams. I'll take you with me and you can undergo a thorough exam to make sure."

"Okay…" Hermione agreed tentatively.

"At least you won't be as shocked as I was by my exam after I changed for the first time," Harry teased.

Hermione rolled her eyes.

XXXXXXX

Hermione suffered her exam when they returned to Oxford with good grace. Harry complained that she didn't get the "full" exam, but she was currently human and the full facilities were not available. Hermione also informed Harry that she had already had a pelvic exam and wasn't due for another.

It took Hermione three weeks to be able to turn back into an Asari and a week beyond that in order to be able to change quickly and at will.

Harry spent his first birthday in many years on Earth, with Benezia making her first visit to the planet in person. Both Liara and Benezia were found to be able to use the process to become human by using the compatibility potion. As suspected, Tika was found to be incompatible. Neither Asari chose to use the transformation potion at that time, but Hermione thought that Liara eventually would. Harry confided in her that Benezia would be too tempted to hold the potion in reserve against needing it for a specific species since it could only be used once.

Liara was able to convince Hermione's parents to allow them to take her on a two-week "mountain backpacking" trip toward the middle of August and Hermione got to visit Thessia for the first time for some more thorough testing.

Harry and Hermione both found that they aged like Asari in Asari form, meaning that Harry was stuck at the "kiddie table" on Thessia for another 50 years. In human form, they aged like normal until they were about 25 and their aging just tailed off. Harry complained about having to use makeup to go out in public so that he looked the right age, but that was mostly an act, since he was vain enough to use a small amount when he went out as an Asari when in Citadel space.

Hernione was correct in that not long before Harry's fifteenth birthday, Liara took the potion in order to become a human "animagus." Harry was correct in that Benezia kept the potion in reserve. Thankfully, becoming an animagus did not affect Liara's aging in her natural form and her human form did not perceptually age. It seemed that animagi, at least using the Uagadou method, aged in both forms according to the slower aging of their two forms.

Only Remus and Dumbledore noticed the difference that Liara's human form made, but neither made a big deal of it.

Harry was supremely grateful to never need his heavy Asari makeup again, but to his chagrin, Hermione and Liara were able to occasionally convince him to utilize Liara's old human makeup to have girls' nights out. He would never admit it to either of them, but he did enjoy the events (but not enough to put up with the makeup more than once a year).

Author's Note: Thus ends the main part of Blue Animagus. I have a bonus chapter that doesn't fit with the story, but was one of the first scenes I envisioned before the form of the omake/story came together.