"Okay, ready?" Hermione asked, holding her thin wand aggressively.
"Sure…" Lia apprehensively agreed as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
A few moments passed, where only a few white hairs emerged from Lia's forehead and her teeth slightly pointed, but nothing close to a full figured wolf came about.
"Damn it! Damn it, damn it!" Lia stomped her left foot and stood from the dusty ground.
"Maybe you're doing it wrong?" Hermione suggested while lowering her wand.
"I don't even know what it is I am doing!" Lia exasperated, throwing herself into the rickety dining room chair.
From around the corner, Lia's airy patronus came bustling to her knees, and gently offered it's head for a petting. As Lia's hand sunk into the cloud-like energy and her fingernails grew and her knuckles shortened.
"Lia try again…." Hermione urged.
The girl lowered herself to the floor, and allowed for the bright airy wolf to raise itself into her chest, where the transformation process began. Snowy white fur grew through her skin, and her body shortened into a rather large sized wolf.
"Ah yes, well you've done it!" Hermione jumped, nervously holding her wand at the blue-eyed dog.
Lia began to whimper just as a wolf would and Hermione realized that they hadn't quite planned what was going to happen after Lia successfully transformed. Ron and Harry had gathered at this point, where Lia began to whine excessively the moment Harry had emerged from the bedroom.
"Oh good girl…" Ron joked as he reached for Lia's wolf head, where shining white teeth snapped at his fingers.
Harry's eyes connected with hers as he realized that there was a sheer panic in her demeanor, one that he was all too familiar with.
"Concentrate Lia…." Harry calmly spoke to her.
The wolf's eyelids met, and slowly her pointy white ears shrank into springy silver curls, and Lia's entire body came back into proportion as a pale blue air drained from her abdomen.
"Lia…?" Hermione slowly approached her friend as she laid face down on their wooden kitchen floor.
"That was wicked…" She chuckled, as she pushed her hands against the ground.
"What a sight." Harry jokingly admitted, watching his fiancé pull white hairs from her mouth.
"I'll have to practice that few more times before I feel comfortable enough switching into a wolf to scare a first year for missing their assignments." Lia giggled.
Only a few days remained before Lia and Hermione would be packing up for Hogwarts and Ron and Harry would be filling their new offices with memories to keep them sane. Harry would be studying from handbooks that McGonagall prepared herself to finally complete his seventh year the first half of his day. The second half would be hands on training with Remus Lupin preparing for doing more solo work investigating cases of Dark Magic.
"So how will this work?" Ron asked while preparing an omelet in a steaming frying pan.
"Depending on the work load, Hermione and I will definitely be home for the weekends. I will attempt to apparate home every single night that I possibly can, as long as they don't make me a House Head…. Then I would have to stay there and come home on the weekends."
"You know, it's not something you really think about. How professors had lives outside of Hogwarts….. Now it's a bit more obvious why most of them were single…" Harry bitterly muttered.
"Well, that's not me." Lia fired back.
"I'm just making a point." Harry stated, stirring his black coffee rather violently.
"Point noted….. anyway… I am going to take some of my things up with me tomorrow. There's a required staff meeting, which should take most of the day. Harry, I might need your help with some of my lab tools. It's extra fragile, especially since some of it is still brewing."
"Some of those potions have a few more months right? And the one for Neville is extra important." Harry asked, gesturing through the rustic frosted windows allowing for sight into the three seasons room.
"Nerverele?" Ron said with a mouthful of steaming eggs in his mouth.
"She's been working on this brew for months now. Some kind of potion for reversal effects from malicious spells." Harry explained.
"So?" Ron asked, still shaking the morning grogginess from his brain.
"So, when Harry and I visited some of our classmates who were sent to St. Mungos after the Battle, we saw the Longbottoms. Neville deserves his parents back, and Alice and Frank don't deserve to live like that. The endless supplies at Hogwarts will help me with the finishing of the brewing, and I am hopeful."
"Everyone deserves to have parents, and if there's hope, we should be obliged to help them." Harry stoically explained.
"I'll help you guys too, if that means everything will be safe getting to Hogwarts." Ron gleefully agreed.
"Awesome, we will leave bright and early then."
"I'm only going to take a few things for my dorm, since I'm planning on staying here every night. So the trip should be fast." Lia smiled.
Ron and Harry spent the rest of the morning sharing ideas of how they were going to decorate their desks, while Lia dragged Hermione outside to help her tidy her garden.
"I have a feeling this year at Hogwarts is going to be very strange, Lia. I am just so anxious about it. " Hermione nervously admitted as she neatly stacked and restacked a pile of brown twigs.
"Hermione, I guarantee that after one term McGonagall is going to graduate you. You have nothing to worry about."
"It's not that. It's that I'm all alone. Literally everyone is gone. Ginny should have been here with me, but she's now playing Quidditch. Luna is off gallivanting the world with her wild naturalist group. You'll be there, but you're going to be so busy teaching….." She sighed.
"Hermione, I'll be teaching barely even half the days. McGonagall said there's going to be special exceptions this year since we're all revamping Hogwarts together. I guarantee you and I will be inseparable. Don't sweat it just yet. "
Hermione listened, but only could take to heart barely an ounce of what Lia was saying. She was the only one in their friends group who decided to not start her career path and actually return to Hogwarts as a student. The unknown scared Hermione more than any exam she could every dread in her lifetime.
Harry felt strange kissing his fiancé off for her first day of school as she wore an awfully long and thick Professor robe standing next to Hermione who was dressed fully in her Gryffindor robe. Harry couldn't help but already feel like a fool, dressed in a fancy button up shirt, as well as a thin tie with a sleek briefcase ready to start his day. Ron dressed more casually, which neither of them knew the official dress code of the ministry, but were assured to find out soon enough.
Ron and Hermione hesitated behind Harry while he escorted Lia from the front cobblestone threshold. It was still rather dark inside of the cottage, but tears were leaving her porcelain face. Once the door was shut, Harry lunged for a kiss, but nearly knocked his glasses off as he slammed into her large emerald pointed hat, which had leaves and flowers growing from it.
"Ouch!" Harry laughed, still leaning in for the kiss.
"Sorry! I've been working on it all summer. There's no way I wouldn't be making an entrance today." She smiled.
"You would either way." Harry gleamed, poking her on the chest where her wolfpaw necklace hung.
"I'm going to stay in the dorms tonight, love. I know some first years have trouble adjusting and I wouldn't be able to sleep peacefully tonight knowing some Gryffindor students were having a rough go." She admitted.
"So you're officially a Gryffindor advisor?" Harry inquired.
"Yeah! That's what the meeting was all about. We were being assigned our House duties. McGonagall is letting Hagrid back in as the Care for Magical Creatures teacher and he's taking House Head position. Slughorn is retaking Slytherin, Flitwick is still Ravenclaw, and Madame Pomfrey is taking Sprout's spot since she'll actually be teaching this new term. Miverva thought since students began hurting themselves so often, it wouldn't hurt to add in a healing course. "
"That's probably for the best." Harry chuckled.
"The meeting was strange. After the four House heads were chosen, it was almost like they were picking for an athletic team. Each Head would suggest who they wanted on their house staff and you could accept or decline. Obviously when Hargrid pulled for me, I jumped at the chance. Although being a Slytherin advisor wouldn't have been a bad idea."
"Slytherin?"Harry wondered.
"Yeah. A big part of our duty as professors this upcoming term is starting to integrate houses and have less of a rivalry. Of course there is going to be the House cup, but we want to start breaking the walls of house segregation."
"There are going to be a lot of changes at Hogwarts this year. After what you and your friends were put through, we want to make sure that students have more resources and feel safe."
"With a Dark Lord on the loose, no one was safe. Dumbledore did his best to protect us." Harry angrily stated.
"I'm not saying that he didn't. I'm saying with experience and hindsight this new staff approach might help from students feeling alone or hopeless. And Merlin forbid anything like that nature ever happens again, Kingsley wants Hogwarts to have better plans working closely with the Ministry. 'Not an Umbridge situation' he was adamant on saying, but he's thinking of actually having a full time auror staff working inside of Hogwarts at all times!" Lia excitedly exasperated.
"We will see." Harry mumbled.
"Change is okay, Harry Potter. Moving on is okay too. Maybe it's something you should work on, as well." Lia took a few steps from the stoop.
"Tell Hermione she can get ready for the sorting ceremony in my office once she gets herself together. Good luck today. I love you, Harry." She said right before she gestured a kiss from the tips of her fingers and apparated away.