Changing

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1975 July - December

Cedrella did her best to not be alarmed by the way the children spent most of the summer in close conversations that went silent whenever an adult came near. Whatever they were up to, it boded ill for their targets.

But for all it was alarming, it was also a blast from the past. She well-remembered her own school days, and how often Charlus, Harfang, and Septimus had been in similar conferences, usually with one or more of the Black Family girls in attendance. She had a feeling the children were doing exactly what the Elder Marauders had been doing in such conferences - with suitable variations, of course.

To everyone's surprise, in the last weeks of August, both James and Sirius managed to begin the process of actually transforming into their animagus forms. No one had been at all surprised that Sirius had an immense dog as his form. Cedrella considered it quite apropos that the dog was black, and more than slightly resembled the legendary Grim.

What had been a surprise was the fact that James' form was that of a large black stallion. Cedrella, along with everyone else, had been expecting something else. A wolf had been Cedrella's guess, and she knew that Septimus had been of a similar mind. James, Sirius, and Remus were so close that the two boys' animagus forms being similar just made sense.

But when Cedrella sat back and thought about it, she realized it fit shockingly well. In general, horses were symbols for power, grace, beauty, nobility, strength and freedom. All attributes James had to one extent or another. But it was the rest that made it really interesting. In the UK and Europe, horses were associated with war, and through war with power, victory, courage and honor. Again, either attributes James possessed or would need, considering the situation.

The fact that he was a black horse of a size to have been a warhorse in ages past just strengthened the connections to war, and would serve as an omen to the superstitious, as black horses were associated with death. Much as Grims were, and with which Sirius' form could be easily confused. Cedrella hadn't seen them in their forms yet of course, and wouldn't until at least Christmas, given they'd just started the transformation part of the process. They had, however, found pictures that resembled their forms. Sirius had picked out an Irish Wolfhound, and James had, after double checking sizes, pointed out a Friesian.

Lily, while not yet at the stage to begin working on transforming, had at least seen her form as well. It was, appropriately, a bear. Cedrella'd had that one pegged from the moment animagi had been mentioned to the children. Severus was the only one who had never mentioned seeing an animal form. Cedrella was completely convinced that he had, but was just keeping his mouth shut for reasons of his own. Cedrella had had a lot of fun trying to figure out what he might become. Unlike with the other children, there were any number of potential choices that would be good fits, one way or another. Coyote, fox, crow or owl for their association with intelligence, and in the cases of coyotes, foxes, and crows trickery and cunning. A snake of some description would also be apt for rather obvious reasons. Despite their association with Hufflepuff, a badger was also a contender, as they had associations with determination, tenacity, and protectiveness.

Part of the problem with Severus, at least where Cedrella was concerned, was that Severus was very private by nature and didn't generally display his thoughts and emotions for people to see. She was quite sure that Harfang and Callidora knew him at least a bit better than anyone else, if only by virtue of his living with them. Everyone else was left to guess.

The kids and their work towards the animagus transformation had been the summer's bright spot. The rest of the summer was not nearly so congenial.

Dumbledore had at least tried to lobby for leniency in the case of Lily and Severus' attackers, but he got overridden. With help from an unexpected source, to boot. Septimus had told Cedrella about Lord Doge's reaction to Septimus' explanation of what was going on in Hogwarts. It quickly became clear that Doge had had a word with at least a few other folks who had kids in Hogwarts. Evidently, he hadn't much liked what he'd heard, because he'd begun to make a point of requesting, rather pointedly, for Dumbledore to clarify his position, refusing to let Dumbledore engage in his usual tactic of meaningless doubletalk and rhetoric.

While it wasn't quite siding with their Alliance, it had tripped Dumbledore up more than once over the summer, in the hearing of other people. People who the Potters, Weasleys, and Longbottoms had then been able to try to convince that Dumbledore was not the beneficent, wise old man he liked to portray himself as with the evidence they'd gathered over the years.

It hadn't been enough to get any of them to walk away from Dumbledore - but more than one had joined Doge in asking pointed, uncomfortable questions and not accepting vague doublespeak as answers. The Alliance was willing to count that as a victory. They knew they would only manage to roust Dumbledore using baby steps.

On the other side of the conflict, Voldemort and his minions were ... well, they were basically throwing tantrums is what it amounted to. Which was rather disconcerting. They were still raiding - perhaps even more than before the wartime measures had become law. Given the results, Cedrella couldn't quite understand the logic Voldemort was operating under.

Every raid resulted in injured Death Eaters at best, and frequently dead or captured ones. Ten Death Eaters had already been chucked through the Veil, having been convicted of casting Unforgivables in eight cases, and of cold-blooded murder without the use of an Unforgivable in the other two. Another twenty were serving hard time for rape, torture, terrorist activities and sedition.

If things kept up at this rate, Voldemort would run out of followers within a year or two. Cedrella couldn't begin to understand why Voldemort was doing it. It made no sense. But then again, that could be the answer. That *he* wasn't making sense. That he was crazy in the worst sort of way.

Well, the sooner they put the poor bastard out of his misery, the better if that was the case. Actually, whether or not that was the case. He needed to go. Sooner rather than later.

Of course, Dumbledore had tried to intervene with the trials for the Death Eaters too, again counseling leniency. Cedrella couldn't figure out *his* angle, either. Yes, people who screwed up deserved second chances. She wasn't even going to argue with that. But they did not deserve those second chances at the cost of justice for their victims, nor at the potential cost of future victims. And some people were quite simply beyond any possibility of redemption and deserved no such consideration.

Yet Dumbledore seemed to think that anyone and everyone could be sweet-talked to the side of the 'good guys'. Just by letting them off lightly for, as Dumbledore liked to put it. 'making an ill-considered decision out of ignorance'. As with the situation at Hogwarts, he seemed to make no provision for actually guiding people to the 'right path', or making it so that choosing the 'wrong' path was exceedingly unpleasant.

At least he was consistent, which was more than could be said for Voldemort.

It wasn't until Hogwarts letters went out again that Dumbledore cottoned on to the fact that someone, somewhere, was doing something to protect the Death Eaters' most popular targets thus far: The Muggleborns and their families. And he figured it out because five or six owls couldn't find the recipients of their letters. Which led to an investigation of what the heck had happened, because all of the missing children had attended Hogwarts in years previous.

Dumbledore threw quite the fit when he couldn't find them either. He spent the better part of a week looking for them and sending owls every which way with copies of the Hogwarts letter. While he was haring around the country, the Hogwarts elves snuck the Alliance copies of the letters from some of the owls, so that the children could respond. Which had resulted in another tantrum from Dumbledore when they refused to reveal their whereabouts.

Because they couldn't. Cedrella was just glad the homes they were staying at were under Fidelius, and the addresses couldn't be forced out of the children by any means Dumbledore might come up with. She wouldn't put it past him to try. They already had plans in place to make sure none of the kids' things had tracking charms or the like when they came back over the holidays any for the summer.

She, Dorea, and Callidora all escorted the Muggleborn families to get their childrens' Hogwarts gear, taking them in multiple small groups so that the three women wouldn't get overwhelmed trying to protect ten to fifteen people (or more) if trouble started up in the Alley. Keeping each group to one parent and the Hogwarts child, and only having three families at a time meant they only had to keep an eye on six people at a time.

They still managed to 'catch' a few known troublemakers in their net, despite escorting the Muggleborns and their parents. Much to Cedrella's pleasure, the catch had included Abraxas. Knowing he was going to suffer for at least a week and probably as long as a month or two put her in a very, very good mood.

Anything that humiliated that white-haired, arrogant ponce was great news for Cedrella.

The months between the start of Hogwarts and Yule were almost depressingly quiet. Despite the raids and wrangling in the Wizengamot. Cedrella was going to *miss* having kids underfoot when the kids all got old enough to live in their own homes and weren't yet old enough to be parents themselves. It was bad enough during the school year as it was.

Cedrella was rather ... amused and disconcerted ... when Abraxas' illness lingered. By all rights, the cantankerous old bastard should have gone to a Healer to be treated for Dragon Pox, which would have alleviated the symptoms of the potion he'd been hit with even if he wasn't actually suffering from Dragon Pox. But the idiot seemed to have decided that getting sick and Healers were for lesser beings than a Malfoy, and was ignoring his poor health.

With, of course, the net result that he was making himself worse by insisting on carrying on as usual. If he kept this up, the idiot would end up killing himself. Not that it grieved Cedrella to think about that possibility, but she would have preferred if the idiot didn't die in quite so ignominious a fashion.

Come Yule, the Alliance had to intervene at Hogwarts, again. This time because Dumbledore refused to allow the muggleborn children that had been rescued by the Alliance - not that Dumbledore knew they were the source of the childrens' rescue, but he probably suspected - on the grounds of them not apparently having a place to stay that *he* could certify as safe.

She, Septimus, and the rest of the Alliance had a thing or three to say about that. Primarily that if those children weren't safe because Dumbledore couldn't certify their homes as such, then clearly, he had inspected the homes of all the other children. Because singling out those six was otherwise inappropriate in the extreme.

It had taken more than a little wrangling, but eventually Dumbledore caved. The Alliance then ensured the kids got on the train, and were met at the other end by Arcturus. Arcturus took them to his private home and made sure they weren't sporting tracking charms or the like. Which every last one of them was. Actually, multiple such charms. One each on the child themself, one on their trunk, and for those that had one, on their pet.

Arcturus had thrown a rather epic fit. He'd stormed to Hogwarts and proceeded to give Dumbledore quite a bollicking for his interference and illegal actions. Putting tracking charms on things or people that didn't belong to you was, after all, heavily frowned upon or outright illegal unless they were in imminent danger, and/or were acting as bait for the Aurors, in which case *Aurors* could place a tracking charms on a person or item not belonging to them. Again, Dumbledore had been forced into admitting malfeasance, however reluctantly and with many attempted caveats that Arcturus had not been in any mood to let him get away with.

Arturus had even let them see the memory of the whole thing in the Black Family pensieve. Cedrella wasn't sure who ended up laughing harder of the three men. Even she, her sister and her cousin had been laughing, if with somewhat more restraint than their husbands managed.

Cedrella had paid close attention to the whole thing. While she had learned quite a bit from Arcturus' father right alongside Arcturus himself, she had not learned everything that Arcturus' father had had to impart. That had had more to do with the previous Head's prejudices than her own reluctance.

Oh, he'd been more than happy to use Cedrella's sex against the other Heads, and have her eavesdrop on folks who thought she had no understanding of politics, but that had been about as far as his acceptance had gone. He'd not seen the need to teach Cedrella all the tricks a Head needed to know, because she was a woman and would have no need of such knowledge.

While Arcturus and Septimus would be able to pull things she could not by virtue of bearing the ring of the Head of House, and the additional power and authority that came with it, she could still pick up other tricks whenever the opportunity arose, and this had been a golden one.