CHAPTER TEN
The storm is sudden and unexpected and arrives in the middle of Transfiguration.
Nathaniel, never one for subtlety, kicks him under the desk and the mouse he was trying to transfigure goes flying across the room. He retrieves it quickly, muttering a fluent line of curses under his breath.
"What?" he hisses, sitting back down.
"The storm," Nathaniel hisses back, "shouldn't we -"
"We can't ditch Transfiguration. Do you have a death wish?"
"What if it passes? What if -"
From about two tables away, Professor McGonagall clears her throat. They both fall silent, cheeks burning, and continue to work on their mice.
An hour later, the bell peels and they gather their bags to leave. Outside, the storm still rages.
"Come on," Nathaniel says, rushing him out of the classroom, "we've gotta find Professor Karim."
"He's gonna be in a staff meeting," says Arianna, popping up next to them and grinning at Nathaniel's startled yelp, "they've got them every Wednesday."
"Where do you even -"
"That's good," Icarus says, "I'm hungry."
"Me too," adds a voice which sounds eerily like Sergei.
Icarus glances over his shoulder to find their other two roommates following them. Douglas shrugs. Nathaniel shoves his hands in his pockets, swearing, and stomps off.
"What's the matter with him?" Arianna asks as they watch him vanish into the crowd.
"Vot isn't?" Sergei says, gray eyes twinkling with amusement.
They find him in the Great Hall, picking at a bowl of minestrone and watching the enchanted sky mournfully. The seats around are bare. Waiting.
Icarus eats quickly, like a boy starved, shoveling down two bowls of soup and a plate of bread.
And as he turns to reassure Nathaniel, there's a tap on his shoulder.
"Are you two busy?" Professor Karim asks.
Nathaniel shoots up from his seat so quickly he trips over his own robes. Icarus, trying to bite back laughter, follows the two of them out of the Hall and into a narrow corridor that leads to the castles eastern exit.
They head straight for the forest when they step out from below the safety of the stone walls and get absolutely soaked before they're even halfway there.
But once they're beneath the trees and the rain's let up a little, Professor Karim shifts, turning into the golden, long-horned antelope they'd both gotten so used to seeing. He bounces over to them, loops around, then disappears in the direction of the clearing they'd found only a couple of days before.
"This is totally illegal," Nathaniel says.
"Super," Icarus agrees.
"It could go so wrong. We could turn into half-fish people."
"...I doubt we'll turn into mermaids, Nate."
"No – like people, but with fish heads. We could drown. On land."
"You're panicking," Icarus says softly, "do you not want to do this?"
He can't really make out Nathaniel's expression through the shadows of the trees, but he watches as he takes in a deep breath and releases.
"We've been working on this for months," he says, "what sort of person would I be to back out now?"
"Not a fish one."
Nathaniel shoves him, laughing, and steps out from the trees into the clearing.
On the other side, the antelope looks up from grazing on a patch of grass and tilts its head. They hang their bags on a thick branch and strip their cloaks. At the same time, they aim their wands at their hearts.
At the same time, they recite the incantation.
And at the same time, they swallow the blood-red potion.
The statistics of it working the first time are remarkably low, so when nothing happens, Icarus isn't really surprised. But then a burning starts, deep in his stomach, and shoots through his body so fast his brain doesn't catch onto what's happening until he's already on the ground, panting, ripping apart in agony.
In a matter of seconds, it's over.
He blinks the rain from his eyes and tries to sit up. His muscles twist and burn and feel all...wrong.
Next to him, there's a funny little chittering sound and his scrambled mind recognizes vaguely that Nathaniel had also taken the potion and it was very possible it could've gone wrong and then -
A bright red fox bursts into his field of view, yapping excitedly and tripping over its own legs.
There's a shuffling sound behind him and he's being pushed, guided up onto four unsteady paws and the gazelle - Professor Karim – huffs in amusement. He twists, catches the sight of a long black tail and almost falls over.
Whatever he is, it's about double the size of Nathaniel, and slim and feline.
Relief hits him.
It worked.
It fucking worked.
...
He'd never been grateful for exam season.
But after Icarus bursts into his office one random evening and turns into a massive black cat, he finds himself looking forward to it with an unusual amount of anticipation.
Mostly because it'd distract the idiot from any further life-threatening experiments.
The amount of time he spends in the dungeon increases, slowly, until the only sign of warmth and growing things are those he finds in the late evening, long after dinner and an endless litany of staff meetings.
It's on one of those evenings, while he's strolling through a blossoming courtyard and trying to remember what being a living being is like, that Dumbledore's patronus appears to summon him to the office.
He takes the long way up.
And when he pushes the door open, he's not entirely surprised to find he's the only one that's been summoned.
"Albus," he murmurs, taking the seat across from him, "you wanted to see me?"
"Severus," Dumbledore says, blue eyes on the parchment in front of him, "we received the list of students arriving in September."
He blinks.
"A lot of these are names you'll recognize, I'm sure," the other man continues, before turning it around so he can read, too.
He skims through it, eyes catching on names he'd heard regularly over the past decade.
"...Why show me this?"
"I didn't want you to be caught...unaware," Dumbledore says.
"So you, what, called an intervention? They haven't even arrived yet," he pushes back his chair and stands, "stop wasting my time. I'm busy."
He's almost at the door when Dumbledore's voice carries over to him, one last time.
"He has her eyes."
"It seems you've forgotten," he says, trying to hide the tremor in his voice, "that I have a child of my own to care for."