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Chapter 42

Harry watched as Madam Pomfrey came running into the ward, wand in hand, looking for the disturbance. He tried to tell the medi-witch what he knew, but he was still in his animagus form and couldn't say anything. Luckily, Madam Pomfrey had other ways to find out information and wasted no time levitating Hermione (who, Harry noticed, now had her feline traits again) onto a bed and beginning to run her diagnostic spells. She wasn't telling Harry what she was learning, but as far as she was concerned he was just a bird that had alerted her to a student needing help, not someone to whom explanations should be given.

Harry tried to focus and return to his human form. However, his worry for Hermione was flooding his brain and he just couldn't focus enough, so he just had to sit there and watch as spell after spell was cast on Hermione, completely unable to understand the glowing auras and flashes of light the majority of the spells created.

After some time Professor McGonagall came bursting into the hospital wing, Dobby running a little behind her. "Poppy, I was told Miss Granger was here, what's wrong with her, is she ok?" The Transfiguration Professor demanded in an uncharacteristic run on sentence.

"I have no idea, the girl is suffering from magical exhaustion but I can't find a cause. It's like the girl just decided to burn through all her magic," Madam Pomfrey explained and Harry felt a little of the stress leave him; while magical exhaustion wasn't good, it was only life threatening in older people who relied on their magic to keep them alive.

"She was trying to become an animagus today, could that be it?" Professor McGonagall asked worriedly.

"It could if her core wasn't strong enough to handle the transformation." The nurse shot Professor McGonagall a look as she said that.

"The girl was casting a corporeal Patronus last year. She is more than strong enough," Professor McGonagall defended herself from the unspoken accusation. "What of Mr. Potter? He was with Miss Granger today." At this Harry let out what he could only describe as a screech. Some birds could mimic human speech, but the peregrine falcon wasn't one of them, so the screech was the best he could do. Professor McGonagall was startled but then turned to look at him. "Mr Potter?" She asked, and Harry nodded. "Have you been able to change back?" This time he shook his head. The professor looked slightly worried and hit Harry with a spell. Suddenly, he was surrounded in a glowing blue light and then was painfully forced back into his human form. Professor McGonagall looked relieved for all of about two seconds before she turned her head away blushing, and Harry remembered he was completely naked. The other woman was a medical professional and just summoned a hospital gown from a cupboard for Harry to put on before asking him to explain what had happened.

Harry slipped on the loose robe (that was designed to grant a healer the access they needed more than for the protection of modesty, but he took what he could get) and told the two women about how they had taken their potions and assumed their animagus forms, before returning to the tent where they started trying to turn back. He described how when Hermione had turned back she looked completely normal and no longer had the cat ears and tail she had had since Christmas second year, but then after about twenty minutes she had collapsed and her ears and tail had apparently grown in again. He purposely left out that he had Apparated directly into the school ignoring the wards.

The two women latched on to the part about Hermione losing her cat features and started to speculate, and Madam Pomfrey ran more tests on Hermione. While they were doing that, Harry pulled the curtain around one of the empty beds and called Dobby. The little elf popped in next to him, looking nervous and wringing his hands together. "Is Mistress Grangy going to be ok?"

"I don't know for sure yet, but I think so," Harry said, as much to reassure himself as Dobby. "Dobby, I need your help."

"Anything, Master Harry Potter sir."

"I need you to go back to the tent, collect all of mine and Hermione's things, and bring them to me. Then I need you to go tell Fleur what happened, and then pack up Professor McGonagall's tent and put it in Professor McGonagall's office. Can you do that?" Harry asked.

"Yes, that's no problem for Dobby." And he popped away as soon as he answered.

Harry felt a little guilty sending Dobby for his clothes before telling Fleur, but if he was right Fleur would come running as soon as she heard, and it would be easier to deal with if he had clothes on. A little over a minute later, Dobby popped back for a moment and put Harry's clothes in a nearly folded pile on the bed, with two wands and their hosters next to them, before popping away again. Harry didn't waste any time in getting dressed; if Fleur was in the Beauxbatons carriage, then she would be here in a matter of minutes. He didn't even bother with his boots or holster, just pocketing the two wands and opening the curtain, hoping he could get some answers on whether Hermione would be okay.

Before he could get any answers, the door to the hospital wing flew open and not one but two French girls came rushing into the room. Fleur and Alison both rushed over to the group standing around Hermione's bed and started asking questions at the same time. "What happened?" from Alison and "Will Mione be okay?" from Fleur. Both girls sounded worried.

Harry quickly recapped what he knew and they turned to the nurse to finish filling them all in. Madam Pomfrey hesitated for a few moments until Harry told her that both he and Fleur were betrothed to Hermione and Alison was Hermione's cousin. Not strictly true as far as the relationship between Hermione and Alison was concerned, but he knew Hermione enough to know that she would prefer what he said.

"Well, it appears that when Miss Granger gained her animagus form, instead of giving her a second pattern in her magical core as it normally does, it modified the existing secondary pattern to suit its needs and granted her the ability to choose her form," Madam Pomfrey explained. "However, due to the accident where she gained her second pattern, her patterns are tangled together. I think that when Miss Granger returned to her human form, she unconsciously thought of herself as a normal fully human girl. The animagus transformation did as it was supposed to and transfigured her into the form she selected, her human pattern.

"However due to the tangled patterns, Miss Granger needs to expend energy to hold that form, as her magic needs to hold back the cat pattern. Miss Granger simply expended too much magic holding on to a form without any cat features. She will be fully recovered in a couple of days, and a little practice returning to her default form, the one with cat ears and a tail, should prevent this from happening again. And Miss Granger should be able to turn fully human for short periods of time when she needs to, making her life a little easier in the muggle world," Madam Pomfrey finished.

Both Alison and Fleur frowned a little at some of Madam Pomfrey's choices of words, mostly the ones that implied that Hermione wasn't human anymore, but none of them thought it was worth getting into it with the school healer over the matter. Hermione was left to rest and the three of them sat around her bed and started to wait for the girl to wake up.

-ϟϟϟ-

Hermione woke up groggy and confused. The last thing she could remember was getting her animagus form, and then she was normal again when she turned back. That had to have been a dream, she tried to wag her tail a little and felt the fluffy appendage brush against her leg. She opened her eyes and found not the red with gold trim curtains of her four poster bed that she expected, but instead the pale blue curtains of the hospital wing. Alison was sitting next to her bed reading a thick book.

Before Hermione could say anything, Alison noticed she was awake. "Morning sleepy head. How do you feel?" she asked, a forced cheer in her voice.

"Like I haven't slept for a week. What happened?" Hermione asked, but suddenly thought of a much more important question. "Where are Harry and Fleur?" If she was in the hospital wing then surely they would be here with her.

"Well, they are either in bed or…" She checked her watch. "Getting lunch. Harry and Fleur sat by your bed all night but your nurse refused to let me wait here as well, so we switched out this morning so they could get a few hours in bed and grab lunch. They will be here soon." Hermione felt the little bubble of anxiety pop and she was able to relax a little.

"As to what happened, magical exhaustion. When you transformed back you suppressed your ears and tail. According to your nurse and the professor who is your Head of House, your patterns are mixed up. It's why they couldn't fully reverse the Polyjuice effects, but because of the Animagus transformation you gained the ability to push the feline pattern aside. Actually, a better analogy would be lifting it off your pattern, but to do it you need to stand there holding it. Eventually you ran out of magic and returned to your new normal," Alison explained.

Hermione really wasn't sure how she felt about this. Being normal again was something she had given up on, it was impossible so she had just moved on. She took comfort in the fact that it could have been a lot worse: she was healthy, physically and magically strong, and she hadn't come out of her accident looking like some kind of monster. In fact, thanks to Harry and Fleur she could even accept that her ears and tail were actually cute. But to suddenly have a chance at a normal body again…how was she supposed to feel about this?

"Do you want to talk about it?" Alison asked, interrupting Hermione's thoughts. "Harry mentioned how happy you were to be your old self again. I thought you were OK with the ears and tail?" The two girls ended up spending about half an hour just talking about how Hermione felt. During this time Madam Pomfrey stopped by and cast a bunch of diagnostic spells, and while the spells showed no additional problems there was still very little the school nurse could do to help. The best cure for overworking your magic is, and probably always will be, bed rest and a healthy diet. During the conversation, Hermione realised that she had never truly embraced her cat features, instead just accepting what she couldn't fight, but she also realised that she couldn't risk magical exhaustion just to hide her cat ears and tail the whole time.

Harry and Fleur turned up a little over half an hour after she had woken up. Harry did his best to distract her from the fact that she was stuck in the hospital wing, first joking that this time he was the one holding on to her wand while she couldn't use it. Later on, after the conversation died out, Harry pulled out The Northern Lights, the latest Philip Pullman novel, and started to read it to her. Alison, who was reading a book on magical healing in preparation for the career she wanted once she finished at Beauxbatons, excused herself as she couldn't read her own book while Harry read out loud. Fleur, however, stayed and took a spot cuddled alongside Hermione to listen to Harry, while he sat in one of the chairs that they had moved from the empty beds to surround the bed. Despite how Hermione had gotten here, she rather enjoyed listening to Harry read to them while cuddling up to Fleur.

She was let out of the hospital wing that evening, but Madam Pomfrey forbade her from doing magic for another forty-eight hours after that. However, magic was the last thing on Hermione's mind as she dragged Harry and Fleur to the Room of Requirement. Once they were inside and seated comfortably, she spoke up. "OK Harry, spill it."

Harry felt a little put on the spot being singled out like that. "Spill what?" He had an idea what she was asking but wanted to be sure.

"How did we get to the hospital wing? You danced around that part of the story when we were there," Hermione said.

She wasn't abusing him, Harry knew, but she could have phrased it better. He sighed before answering. "Well I can definitely confirm that I have the Potter line gift. I Apparated us both directly into the hospital wing, right through the Hogwarts wards."

Fleur jumped in. "But you were in your Animagus form at ze time. Ze falcon form, correct?" Fleur's English slipped a bit in her surprise. "Apparating while in your Animagus form is supposed to be impossible."

Harry shrugged. "But it's not really Apparition, is it? It's similar in what it does, but it's older family magic. My guess is that it's more like how the elves can pop around ignoring wards." The family grimoire had been rather light on the how's, and it hadn't mentioned animagus at all.

"This has the potential to be really useful. It's a pity that this talent has to be something you are born with. I would have loved to learn how to Apparate in my cat form." Hermione seemed a little disappointed, but quickly they fell back into planning for the final task of the tournament. They planned and chatted for so long, it was well after curfew when they noticed the time, so the three of them slept in the Room of Requirement together.

-ϟϟϟ-

The weekend after the storm, Professor McGonagall took the three betrothed teammates to the Ministry of Magic. Officially, only Harry and Hermione needed to go, but Fleur was there for moral support. At least, that's what Fleur had told them, but it was also true that the last time she had let them go off without her, Hermione had ended up in the hospital wing. After having their wands registered at the front desk, they made their way through the crowd of ministry workers and visitors to the lifts that they needed to access the floor for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. As they walked, Harry mused that he was visiting the Ministry of Magic quite a lot recently.

They found a lift going down and the four of them squeezed in with a couple of people in the red robes of Aurors. Both of the Aurors greeted Professor McGonagall warmly and the adults chatted away as they waited for their floor. Harry thought both of the aurors looked younger than Sirius and Remus, so Professor McGonagall would have been their teacher and maybe even their Head of House at Hogwarts. On the DMLE floor, they ran into Tonks, or more accurately Tonks fell into their path as she tripped over her own shadow. "Hey cuz. Have a nice trip?" Harry snarked at his clumsy friend.

Tonks looked up ready to retort but smiled instead when she saw who it was. "Harry! Hermione! Professor, and Fleur right? What are you doing here? Aren't you all supposed to be in school?" Tonks asked as she got back to her feet.

Hermione's excitement bubbled up and she answered Tonks before Harry could say anything. "Harry and I are here to register as Animagi," she said happily. As much as the transformation had thrown up a couple of issues for the girl, she was still really proud of what they had accomplished so far.

"Animagi? Really? Can you transform on your own yet?"

"Nope. We have completed the ritual and taken the potion so we have our forms, but actually turning into our forms is proving to be tricky. I can transform my arms into wings and cover my body in feathers, but I can't do the full transformation yet," Harry explained. He and Hermione had practiced a little when Professor McGonagall had the time to supervise them. Luckily, she only had to be there to help if they couldn't undo a change, so as long as she brought a stack of essays to mark with her, finding the time had been harder for the Triwizard champions who had to spend time preparing for the third task.

"I'm a little better, but that's because I'm a cat and already have the ears and a tail. I can do my arms and legs and my eyes. It's weird doing my eyes, though, cats can't see reds and it throws off all the colours," Hermione told Tonks.

"Wings?" Tonks asked Harry.

"He is a peregrine falcon," Fleur supplied

"Oh this I have to see. Mind if I come with?" Tonks asked, and both Harry and Hermione agreed.

Tonks led them through the DMLE and eventually knocked on an office labelled "Licensing." They were called in and found themselves in an office with a wizard and two witches. There were stacks of parchment work on shelves behind the office workers, and if Harry had to guess each stack had to do with a different license that someone could get from the Ministry.

Without looking up at the group, in almost a bored tone, the wizard asked, "Hello, what license or licenses are you interested in, and are you applying or renewing?"

Professor McGonagall answered, "We need two applications for Animagus licenses. These two have completed the preparations and have just started working on mastering their transformation."

The Wizard looked up at who Professor McGonagall indicated and jerked in surprise when he saw Harry, and Harry watched the man's eyes flick up to his scar. It had been a while since anyone had gawked at him like this, but he knew what was coming. "Well I never, Harry Potter here in my office to get an Animagus license. That's some achievement Mr Potter." Harry shook the man's hand and soon found himself having to shake the hands of the two witches as well.

Eventually they got around to filling out the paperwork. There were a lot of questions that Harry thought were rather unimportant, such as when and where they had taken the potion. There were also questions they could really answer yet, as they wanted details about their animal forms that they didn't know. However, it turned out they had a solution for Animagi who couldn't transform yet. The wizard led them through a long corridor of rooms that looked like they weren't used very often and through a door that said Animagus testing on it. Inside was a large white room with a runic array carved into the floor. Harry tried to work out what exactly the array did but the wizard told them very quickly that any Animagus who stepped inside would be forced into their animal form. Hermione decided to go first and the wizard (who hadn't given them his name) filled out the rest of her paperwork: height, weight, length, colouring, tail length, fur length, fur pattern. The list was exhaustive, but it made sense as the Ministry didn't want people using their Animagus forms to commit crimes, which was a real problem a few hundred years ago.

When Hermione was finished, it was Harry's turn to go through the same exacting process. While he did that, Hermione busied herself by jumping straight into Fleur's arms, and the French girl got caught up in scratching Hermione behind her ears and stroking her. Judging by the purring, Hermione was enjoying herself plenty, even more so when Tonks came over and started petting Hermione as well. They soon finished up and were issued their licenses. The Animagus license was one that didn't need renewing every few years, but they would need to send a letter updating them when they were able to complete the transformation at will so that the Ministry could update their records.

After their registration as Animagi with the Ministry, the final task felt a lot closer. They were now measuring the time they had left until midsummer's day and the final task in weeks. All the champions who were not sitting their NEWT exams this year were cutting classes to train. The students who were due to take their NEWT's would be sitting their exams in September in their respective Ministries to give them time to catch up on missed work, but the work was too much to skip entirely. Alison, in particular, was showing signs of how stressful she was finding it when she snapped at Hermione one morning for making too much noise at the breakfast table, when Hermione dropped her fork onto her plate while Alison was trying to read a book on healing techniques. Harry was glad that he, Hermione, and Fleur were all exempt from their exams this year, he couldn't imagine what Hermione would be like if she had to study for her exams as well as prepare for the final task.

Time was flying by, and between classes, Triwizard preparations, and the occasional Animagus training session, the night before the first task quickly came upon the three of them. They decided to sleep in the Room of Requirement together, once again with a dreamless sleep potion to make sure they got plenty of rest. They figured they would need it more than ever before.

A/N

Sorry this chapter is a little short, there just wasn't enough to fill the time before the third task and I want to start the day of the task in a new chapter. But book two is officially in its final stretch. I think only four or five more chapters until I start book three. I'm looking forward to the next book. It will probably be the least canon-like I have ever written.

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Hope you are all still enjoying this fic.