Ugh! I'm sooo sorry for not updating, I've just been so overworked with school and I've had hardly any time to write! But anyway, you probably don't want to hear me grovelling, so on with the story.
"Raw skill means nothing without proper guidance and final mastery,"
Chapter Thirteen:
"But you're an animagus not a metamorphmagus, and you can't be both, that's biological and magically impossible," Sirius stared at me with the look of sheer perplexity.
"Then maybe, I was never an animagus in the first place and I've been a metamorphmagus the entire time!" I sighed in frustration, falling back onto his bed.
"Only an extremely powerful and practised metamorphmagus could fully transform into a completely different species, and didn't you say your parents had you drugged on potions for your entire life?"
"Yeah, but the potions didn't block my power, they made me not want it, made me forget it… but every time I needed to change for whatever reason, it came back… although now that I think of it, there were times when it wouldn't happen – I just assumed I was having a bad day…" My voice trailed off into a whisper.
Sirius leaned back on the headboard of his four-poster bed. It was almost midnight, and the rest of his dorm mates were sleeping soundly around us, "Well they aren't magical, and they probably didn't know the exact dosage and such, so sometimes you could override it if you drank to little that month,"
"I guess that's possible," I nodded to his theory, "I've been reading up, and becoming an animagus isn't biologically inherited, but being a metamorphmagus is, and if my grandmother was one, then it makes sense that I'm one also,"
He shrugged, "Yeah. So, how good are you now?" He asked curiously.
I frowned, it had been three weeks since the beginning of my lessons with McGonagall, in that time I'd mastered changing the colours of my eyes and my skin, but it was changing my hair that still challenged me. The Professor said it was because I was thinking of it as a whole, when instead their many strands that make up a bunched mass. Usually what happened was only a portion of my hair would change and even then, the colour was never exactly as I pictured it.
"Hopeless," I sighed, laying across the end of his bed so my head fell over the edge.
"You can't be that bad… I mean, you can turn into a fox, that's got to count for something, right?" He attempted to cheer me up.
I crossed my arms across my chest, "McGonagall said that was an anomaly – there are records of metamorphmagai who could shape-shift into animals, but they were experienced and practised. She thinks it's something instinctual I have, not some insane skill, since I'm unable to turn into any other animal. She's probably right,"
"I'm sure it'll click someday, but until then, we need to sleep," he yawned, "You can either return to your dorm or top-and-tail with me again, I don't care,"
For a moment I looked at the door – I knew I should leave, but couldn't be bothered walking over there, I was too tired to move anymore, so instead I smirked and whispered, "Pass me a pillow and keep your stinky feet out of my face,"
He chuckled softly as I drifted into the deep void of sleep.
"Get up, Vix," Somebody ordered.
"No!" I murmured into the pillow.
"You have to get up!" They nudged me and I swatted whoever it was away. I rolled over to get away from the intruder, but instead with a thud fell onto the cold floor.
"Dammit!" I cursed under by breath as four voices erupted into laughter, "Think this is funny do you?" I glared at them all, then realised, that I was lying on the floor of the boys dormitory, "…Oh,"
Lupin – being the kind one, unlike some people I know – offered me a hand up, which I took, too lazy to get up myself, "You should go get ready, breakfast starts in twenty-five minutes," He smirked.
Surveying the room, I could see that he was the only one in school uniform and ready – both Sirius and Peter were still in their pyjamas, while James was wearing the school shirt, along with a loose Gryffindor tie and PJ bottoms, crawling along the floor in search of his glasses, which I could see Sirius holding behind his back, supressing laughter.
"See ya' later," I yelled as I slammed their door behind me, but I don't think anyone but Lupin heard, since the other three were busy throwing James's glasses around as he chased blindly after them.
Rolling my eyes, I bounded down the stairs and up the girls ones. I opened my door and stepped inside – immediately, all four of them hushed into a silence. It was as if I were some kind of intruder.
"Oh, don't mind me, I'm just passing through," I smirked, walking prideful up to my four-poster. I refused to let them get to me.
"Where were you?" Asked one of them – Abigail, I think her name was.
I shrugged, "Hanging out with Padfoot and the others,"
"Of course," Lily said bitterly, "That's all you ever do," She'd made her negative views of my friends quite obvious since the start of term – of course, it didn't help that we pranked her relentlessly – but still, it seemed she'd turned every one of my dorm-mates against me. They acted as if I was a disease.
"Well, they're much better company than the present," I smiled slyly, morphing my eyes to replicate hers, then winking.
"Stop doing that, it's disturbing," Lily huffed, looking quite irritated, "Do you even have any friends who are girls?"
"Sure, there's Alice and Andromeda and…" I faltered, there really weren't any others. It was quite a sad list.
"As I thought," She smiled smugly and walked out the door with two of the others. Abigail sort of half-smiled, half-waved at me, then turned to leave.
I got changed quickly and collected my books for my first classes, then sent the remaining fifteen minutes standing in front of the mirror attempting to turn my hair blue. It wasn't going well.
By the end, I had a dull headache but managed to give myself turquoise highlights, which wasn't a bad job and didn't look half bad, so I decided to leave it.
I meet James, Sirius and Remus in the common room, apparently Peter had managed to lose his rat Thimble again, and was busy running around the castle looking for it.
Together we wandered towards Gryffindor table, and took our seats.
"Heard anything more from your folks yet, Padfoot?" James asked, over the past few weeks the other three had taken up my nickname for Sirius quite diligently, finding it weird and fascinatingly stupid.
"No, thank god," He looked so relieved.
I'd thought of sending an owl to my parents, but the wound was still too raw. I wanted to ask them why. Why they didn't tell me I was a metamorphmagus, or even a witch for that matter? Why they thought they needed to supress my abilities? Why they were so… so ashamed of me? But every time I tried to put my thoughts into words, I ended up screwing it up in a ball and throwing it away. I think I'd rather say it to their faces, confront them myself… or at least that's what I told myself.
"Well I have," Said the voice of Andi. She slipped into the spot next to me on the bench, looking across the table at her cousin, "I've been specifically told not to associate myself with you because you are 'a bastard blood-traitor who doesn't deserve to bear the name Black'," She stole a piece of toast from Sirius's plate, "I agree with the bastard part," She smirked, taking a bite.
He plucked the toast from her hand, "I am many things, but not an illegitimate child, thank you very much, Andromeda,"
"Ugh, call me Andi. Andromeda is such a stupid name, only my parents would give their daughter such a long and hideous title,"
The first time Andi had ventured over to the Gryffindor table to sit with us, almost every head in the Great Hall had turned. The Slytherin's looked outright betrayed and the Gryffindor's were too shocked to tell her to leave, but eventually everybody got used to it. Before the start of term, I guess I assumed she had friends over in Slytherin, but it didn't take me long to realise how out-cased she was in her own house – she either hung out with us, or some of her Ravenclaw friends from her own year.
But this didn't mean she didn't belong in Slytherin, actually, it was quite the contrary. Although she may not hold the same prejudices as the rest of her house, her ambition and sly manipulative ways of achieving her goals were most defiantly true to Slytherin qualities.
"Anyway, I have some good news... or well, it's good news for me, not so much you… or your house…" Andi grinned at us mischievously.
"You're the new Slytherin chaser," Remus stated quite plainly, not looking up from his copy of the Daily Prophet which he'd stolen from James.
"How is it you know everything?" I asked him seriously.
He smirked, "I'm observant,"
"Whatever Lupin," Andi rolled her eyes, "We're still going to thrash you next week,"
James looked furious, "Hell no!"
"Wana bet?" She taunted.
"Ten galleons that Gryffindor wins," James slammed his fist on the table.
"Deal,"
They shook on it, with hard serious looks on their faces. I had a bad feeling about this; Andi doesn't make deals unless she knows she's going to make a profit and I'm not sure James had that money.
"Well, I have to get to class, bye guys," Then she skipped off merrily.
"James, you just made a deal with the devil," Sirius shook his head.
The day started off with an un-eventful Herbology class, then a mind-numbingly dull class of History of Magic with Professor Binns. After the break it turned out to become more eventful with a double Potions with professor Slughorn, who told me to wash out my hair dye (not for the first time), so then I has to again remind him that every colour, is a natural colour to me.
But by the end of the day, I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was go up to my dorm and sleep (really shouldn't have gone to bed at midnight), but I still had my regular lessons with Professor McGonagall to attend to, which was why I was sitting in her office with purple tinted skin, bright blue eyes and uneven brown-green hair. We'd been training for over an hour, and I'd almost gone through my entire colour pallet.
"You're trying to do it all at once; work on changing pigment of smaller amounts of your hair, remember each strand is individual," She clasped her hands together, "Again,"
This time, I concentrated on a violent red, stating with the roots of my fringe and shifting warping its pigment all the way around my head. It was tiresome and took almost twenty minutes, but the end result proved successful.
McGonagall beamed, "That's much better, now I want you practising that every day, so by our next meeting you'll be able to change the colour of your hair within a quarter of the time,"
And I did practise – every single day – even during class I practised (all expect in Transfiguration, since she knew that if I were concentrating on morphing, then I couldn't possibly be concentrating on the set work, or so she thought).
Soon I could change my colours without the flicker of a thought, but by then, McGonagall had moved onto teaching me how to manipulate my shape and size. We started small, with me growing my fingernails out and evenly, and then we moved onto changing my hair length, then the style of my hair (curly, straight, bushy). Soon I found myself able to change my own age, then I learnt to do the same but wearing other people's faces (should have seen Lily's face when she was confronted by her 'secret twin') and finally, I perfected the art of creating and entirely new person, never seen before on the face of the earth.
It took time –months and months – pouring over anatomy books, studying the physiological structure of the human skeleton, seeing how the different parts of the body worked and functioned with each other. It was gruelling work, but in the end it proved to be a worthwhile endeavour.
So on the day when Professor McGonagall stated – quite calmly, might I add – that there was no need for me to visit her next week as there was nothing left for her to teach, I immediately sprinted back to the Gryffindor Common room… as a fox.