If you're looking for someone who can actually write, go buy the Harry Potter books. If you stay here, you'll be disappointed.

Sitting down for the Halloween feast, Harry completely forgot about his prediction of Black's attack in favour of filling his plate with the oddest combinations of foods. He had the regular things, such as pumpkin pasties, but he had also taken things like raw tuna and an entire family-sized bowl of popcorn. He looked around, gnawing on a couple of un-popped kernels, taking in the bats flying overhead (he felt a pang of jealousy as he watched), the floating pumpkins and the orange and black streamers decorating the hall.

Eventually he got over his wonder, and he listened in on other people, each conversation distracting him from the others so he never got the full picture. He heard Hermione and Ron arguing about broomsticks versus the Floo network, while Seamus and Dean were chatting about the next Quidditch game, Gryffindor against Hufflepuff. Harry tuned them out and reached for a cauldron cake that had just appeared.

"Harry?"

The scarless (not that anyone noticed) boy looked up at Hermione, who was looking at him with a strange expression, and he fought down the urge to laugh. She seemed worried about him, after all, so he replied with a simple "Yeah?"

She seemed to relax, then put on a stern face. "That's it. If you're falling asleep all the time, we need to see Madam Pomfrey after dinner."

Harry looked a little put out, but knew Hermione was trying to help so he agreed without hesitation, diving into his dessert, then recoiling as the cream inside proved far too sweet. "Anyone want a cauldron cake? I've just discovered that I hate them."

Harry spent the next twenty minutes testing which desserts he liked, with Ron accepting the ones he didn't. He eventually found himself eating popcorn again; all the other dishes having proved themselves sickening to the now-depressed boy. "I used to like this stuff," he wailed. "Why, Merlin, why?"

Hermione steeled herself, aware of the havoc she would cause with the dreaded c-word, then put an arm round his back, her hand resting on his shoulder in a soothing manner. "Don't worry, you can have some catnip when we get back to the Gryffindor tower," she consoled him in a whisper.

The green eyed Boggart forgot to whine after that.

half an hour later saw Hermione and Ron dragging Harry, who had abruptly changed his mind at the end of the feast, towards the hospital wing. "Harry, if you don't come willingly with us," Hermione began, but couldn't think of a good enough threat.

Ron could, however, and he finished the sentence for her. "You won't get any catnip!" Harry went limp and allowed the pair to pull him along. Hermione went pale in remembrance of her promise at the feast, and Ron, who hadn't seen Shift at Hogsmeade, was left contemplating what could possibly be so wrong about catnip as to provoke her reaction.

Poppy Pomfrey glanced up as the hospital wing door opened, and let out a sigh. "Really, Mr Potter, is it too much to ask that you go three months without ending up here?"

Harry shrugged. "Sorry, Madam Pomfrey, but the others forced me to come."

"Right, well what seems to be the problem?" the matron asked distractedly, filling out a form of some kind.

"Well," he started, but Hermione cut in.

"He's been falling asleep for around ten minutes each hour," she explained, dislodging Harry's concentration.

"I have?"

Hermione nodded. "You don't ever notice it, so we haven't mentioned it outside of the first and last time, but since I first saw you this morning, you've just closed your eyes and dozed off every hour, at around forty minutes past each time."

"That explains why you've been looking at me so weirdly," he assumed. "Wait, won't this interrupt classes?"

"That's one reason I'm worried," Hermione confessed. "What do you think, Professor Lupin?"

As she turned towards the door, a dry cough was heard emanating from behind the closed door, and it creaked open, revealing a haggard Defence Professor, who chuckled and asked, "how did you know, Miss Granger?"

"I saw you get up when we left the feast, so I tracked you as we walked," she told him. "Being an owl is really helpful sometimes."

Ron cringed worse that he ever had in mention of Voldemort. "Hermione, Madam Pomfrey's right here-"

"Well she needs to know so she can treat us, right?" Hermione reasoned, shutting Ron's protesting mouth.

"I need to know what, exactly?" the medi-witch snapped, feeling a little left out of this nonsensical conversation.

Harry jumped into the conversation. "We'll tell you, but we need you to promise something."

She raised a dubious eyebrow. "And what might that be?"

"Not to tell Professor Dumbledore."

Pomfrey huffed indignantly. "Me tell that old codger about my patients' secrets! Of course I won't, he might have given me a job, but he's nosey enough without me making it easier!"

Ron sighed in relief, but Harry ignored him in favour of setting the healer straight. "Me, Ron, Hermione and a few others are Animagi, Ron's a dragon, Hermione's an owl and I'm a Boggart," he rattled off, watching Pomfrey's shocked face.

Except that her face hadn't changed. At all. She simply blinked twice, before dropping her head into her hands. "Why must you always make my job difficult?" she complained morosely, then raised her head when Professor Lupin decided to make a statement.

"I seem to remember that some Boggarts have a so called 'preferred form', with traits that pass to all other forms," Lupin mused, "and I remember a magical rodent of some description, with a similar sleep pattern to what you described during the winter months. They are called draconemuses, a mashup of draconem, for dragon, and mus, for mouse, because they are essentially flying mice."

"How are they magical?" Hermione asked, confused. "The non-magical world has flying squirrels, although they actually just glide, so does the draconemus use magic to fly?"

"Almost correct, Hermione. They actually use magic to create water vapour, then eject that out of their bodies to push themselves up, almost like a muggle space rocket."

Harry's eyes went wide. "Ooh! Ooh! I know!" he yelled, swinging his arm above his head wildly and bouncing on his toes. Lupin chuckled and pointed to the boy like he would in class. "That's why I keep freezing up in the cold! I'm always making water vapour, which turns back to water and freezes on me!"

"That would make the most sense, Harry," the professor replied. "What intrigues me is that the dementors don't affect you in the usual sense."

"Usual?"

Lupin sighed. Honestly, couldn't the brightest boy in his year add two and two together? "Most people experience their worst memory during contact with the dementors, no matter how well it had been forgotten. You, on the other hand, seem to suffer no ill effects mental-wise, despite having seen one of your parents die."

"Well the first few times I saw one, I accidentally Shifted into a Patronus," the Boggart admitted hastily, eager to sort out any misconceptions. "Maybe that held them off, because I heard screaming when I couldn't Shift in Hogsmeade."

The werewolf nodded absently, but the action was lost in Ron's quick change of subject. "Is there any way to stop Harry from falling asleep?" he asked nobody in particular.

Madam Pomfrey was, predictably, the one to answer. "The only reasonable choice of action I can think of is to gradually change Harry's sleep patterns so that he's only asleep between lessons, and have you take him to each one," she muttered. "I suppose that it's lucky you all attend the same classes, or this arrangement wouldn't be possible!"

"Sorry, Madam Pomfrey," Harry started, but Poppy was having none of it.

"Sorry for what, Harry? Your father would be proud, always sneaking off to break the rules in some roundabout way." A smile curved the corner of her mouth in remembrance of Harry's father and his friends. "He would be especially proud of your achievement, or maybe a little jealous, because he managed the transformation far later than you, and that was with the whole library at his disposal!"

Harry was distracted once more by Hermione, who was the only person present that remembered the current dilemma. "How are we going to get Harry between lessons if he's asleep, anyway?"

Professor Lupin chipped in once more. "You could just levitate him under the invisibility cloak," he suggested, then slapped a hand over his mouth.

Fortunately, Pomfrey didn't seem to notice his mention of the rare magical object, instead saying something along the lines of, "that could work..."

Back at the Gryffindor tower, Harry walked into the Fat Lady's portrait. His head bounced off the canvas, and he cursed mildly and said the password, before dragging Ron and Hermione through the common room. Hermione rolled her eyes and fetched the catnip and butterbeer, levitating them under the exceptionally useful invisibility cloak so nobody would notice.

In the boys' dorm, Harry and Ron cleared their beds for the mass quantities of alchohol, then Ron had an idea. "Why don't we send for the rest of the group?"

And so, Harry gave Hedwig a series of letters addressed to Luna, the twins and the rest, and ten minutes later, the entire group were strewn across the room, over thirty bottles of butterbeer accompanying them, along with five bottles of firewhiskey (bought by the twins under a glamour in Hogsmeade), and the small box, labelled 'Catnip Candies!', sitting in a forcefield next to a pursed-lipped Hermione.

With many cries of "Cheers!", the butterbeer was opened, and the barrier over the catnip was removed. Hermione threw one of what seemed to be sugar cubes, and lobbed it into the centre of the room. Everyone dove for cover as a black-haired missile snatched up to treat, already hyper just from the smell.

Unfortunately, nobody had realised the effect that catnip would have on Harry. Adding hyperactivity to general playfulness wasn't usually a good idea, especially when you're dealing with a shapeshifter. The next twenty minutes were spent with Harry leaping around the room on all fours, managing incredible feats of ignorance, such as sprinting up a wall, only stopping when he hit his face on the ceiling. After a few minutes of simply watching his antics, the twins discovered a spell to emulate a muggle laser-pointer (Lumos Trabem), and Harry started chasing the light, smacking Ron on the head more than once in his attempt to catch the glowing prey.

Neville voiced a question that set everyone's mind racing, around halfway through Harry's search for the red light. "Shouldn't we all have names for our Animagus forms, like Harry has Shift?"

Ginny and Neville began brainstorming ideas together, with the others chiming in for their own names, and several ironic names for others. Eventually, Ginny became Hexit, derived from her Bat Bogey 'Hex'; Neville was Stria, another word for line or stripe; Lee was aptly named Mr Daddy after a daddy longlegs buzzed around his head for over five minutes; the twins were Heads and Tails, for obvious reasons, before they changed it to Teads and Hails; Luna decided on Norbert for some odd reason; Hermione had picked Clip, after Ron had jokingly suggested Streaker; and Harry had picked Ron's name of Burst while still stalking the red light. Harry's future draconemus form was given the name Fog, just in case.

Eventually, everyone became so drunk that nobody really cared about much. The names were written down in shaky handwriting by Hermione, before she fell asleep on Harry's lap. Luckily the Boggart had drunk a little butterbeer by then, and the catnip had been confiscated, so he was mostly sober. Except for the huge amount of firewhiskey that he had also drunk. As he teetered on the edge of consciousness, an inebriated voice from his left caught what remained of his attention: "Harry, mate, yeh hav' a tail. An' big ears."

One by one, everyone fell asleep, the twins and Lee with the Marauders' Map spread out between them, Neville and Ginny curled up together, and Ron and Luna likewise. The dorm-mates who hadn't been invited stepped in around half an hour later, saw the state of the room, and turned right back around, planning to sleep on the sofas.

A silent figure went unnoticed as it crept up to the dorms, shuffled through clothing, bedding and the like, before calling its mission a failure and turning heel before dawn came around.

I don't know what possessed me to write this, but it might be the fact that I accidentally overwrote the chapter when I was messing around. I like this version so much better, anyway. The old one made as much sense as purple and a half.

A few things to clear up, mostly about Harry: He doesn't have his scar, still. He just hides that fact under his now fairly long fringe. He does wear his glasses, even though he doesn't need them, but he took the lenses out.

About Shifting: Harry can Shift into any HUMANOID form, as long as he has the required fear catalyst nearby. Without one, he can still transform, but he runs a risk of getting form locked. He can transform into any HUMAN form without a fear catalyst, and without any danger, but he still tries to be careful just in case.

Also, he can transform certain features. For example, with Ron's fear, he could become a black spider or a brown one, because Ron seriously doesn't care about the colour.

Hope that cleared a few things up.

Peace out.