A/N: Thank you, thank you for the reviews! The chapter after this may be delayed a few days...I'm rewriting parts and having some trouble. Happy new year, all!

Chapter 19 - 2.9 or "Through a Looking Glass or Something"

Despite Lily's fear that the whole school would treat her like some sort of leper after her confrontation with James Potter in the corridor, people seemed to forget about it rather quickly. Indeed, by the day after the incident, nobody was treating her any differently – though both James and Sirius kept their distance in the weeks that followed – and things at Hogwarts almost returned to normal.

There was only one major difference: regardless of her stubborn resolve to patch things up with Severus, it seemed that their friendship could not weather this particular storm.

She had approached him after breakfast the morning following her discussion with Gin, but he had brushed her off, claiming he would be late to Transfiguration. She tried again that afternoon, hurrying after him in the corridor, but he slipped away through the chattering masses and did not appear in the Great Hall for dinner that night. He could not hide from her the following day, though, as they once again had a Potions lesson, and she spent the entirety of the hour whispering heated apologies to him over the smoke of their simmering cauldron. He grudgingly admitted that he forgave her, but in the weeks that followed, he remained sullen and distant, only speaking when necessary in Potions and doing his homework on his own instead of meeting her in the library.

Lily's patience and power to look past his stubbornness could only get them so far. Annoyed and frustrated by his inability to move past his own hurt ego, she eventually stopped trying to get him to come around and had started spending considerably more time with her other friends. If he was going to allow their friendship to disintegrate over his own tarnished pride, then she wasn't going to grovel for him, after all.

One blustery day in late March found Lily huddled up with a group of second-year girls in the courtyard during break, desperately trying to help Adin turn her hair back to its natural brown from the lurid green color it had just become. Adin had been attempting to curl her hair around her wand – a new trick she had just read about in Teen Witch that morning – and it now glowed as brightly as if she had just dunked her head in a vat of neon paint.

"What about this Hue-Alteration Charm?" suggested Ev Linney, a cheerful Hufflepuff, flipping through her Charms book. "Or did we try that one already?"

"No, we tried that one first, remember?" said Adin, staring at her reflection in the glass window with a horrified look on her face. "If we can't get this figured out in the next five minutes, I'm gong to Pomfrey. I don't care if I lose points for doing magic during break, there's no way I'm going to Herbology like this."

"It's not so bad," said Raeanne, tilting her head and gazing at Adin, as if the angle made much of a difference. "It's kind of hard-core. You look like one of those mad fans of Deathday Champagne."

"Deathday Champagne?" asked Lily curiously.

"You don't know Deathday?" said Raeanne, turning toward Lily with a shocked expression. "They're only one of the best wizarding bands this side of the Unforgivables!"

Lily shrugged and was about to remind Raeanne that she was a Muggle-born and, thus, didn't have much exposure to wizarding rock, when Adin let out a pitiful moan.

"It is so bad," she said, tearing her eyes away from her own reflection to peer around the courtyard, which was packed with fellow students. "Everybody's looking at me."

Lily peered around. A few people were sneaking curious glances at Adin, but for the most part, no one was paying them any attention. Her eyes lingered for a moment too long on the Gryffindor boys, who were huddled in the near corner of the courtyard, whispering hurriedly to one another. She vaguely wondered what they were up to before remembering that she was supposed to be ignoring their existence.

"Nobody's looking at you," Ev said kindly.

"Where's Mary?" Adin asked Raeanne. "She's the best of all of us at Charms, I bet she could put it right."

"She went to help Goomer finish up his Herbology essay during break," Raeanne told her. "Said they'd meet us in the greenhouse, though I'm not sure she'd be able to suss it out if Lily can't. Maybe Pomfrey is your best bet…"

Ev patted Adin's arm consolingly. "This sort of thing happens all the time. Pomfrey might not even take points…"

This did not seem to appease Adin, though, as she sank down onto one of the stone benches and looked up at Lily with a pleading expression. "Help me, Lily!"

"Okay, okay, give me a minute," Lily said, turning back to the copy of Teen Witch that had started the trouble in the first place. "The charm you tried to use was a simple convection charm, designed to heat your wand so that it would curl your hair…"

"Well that's all great," muttered Adin, losing her patience. "Now how do I get it back to normal?"

"OI! BALINI!" The girls all started and turned to look at Zelda Carmichael, a Slytherin with light, pouty features, who was now laughing malevolently from the next bench over. "That's a good look for you! LOADS better from your usual color, really."

"Sod off, Carmichael," Adin mumbled, going very red, as much of the courtyard had turned to look at her after the shout.

"It really says a lot about you, doesn't it?" called Darlene Burke from next to Carmichael. "When it's an upgrade to look like a troll just used your head as a snotrag?"

Lily turned away from the Slytherin girls' peals of laughter and made to usher Adin out of the courtyard. "Come on, let's get out of here."

They had not taken one step though when the laughter behind her turned into loud shrieks and Lily whipped around to see both Burke and Carmichael clutching at their noses, from which flowing ringlets of nose hair were now pouring. Both Slytherin girls hurried toward the castle as every student in the courtyard turned toward them, laughing at the sight. By the time they had disappeared into the first-floor corridor, Lily could glimpse the nose hair growing past their chins, looking like deformed, spiraling beards. She laughed heartily at the sight and then looked around automatically toward the corner, where both James and Sirius were stowing their wands and smirking proudly.

"I know how to put your hair right, if you want," said a quiet voice from behind the girls. They all turned to find Severus standing nervously in the shadow of a nearby pillar, his eyes flickering back and forth between Adin and Lily, his fingers twiddling his wand.

Adin frowned and shifted away from him instinctively. "How do you know how to fix it?"

"I was watching when you did it," Severus said. He was uncomfortable, Lily could tell, and it did not take a lot of posturing to understand why. Lily could not remember Severus ever even talking to another girl at Hogwarts before and each of their group was now giving him her full attention.

He was gazing above all of their heads when he continued, "You twirled your wand clockwise instead of anti-clockwise, which affects the superficial properties of the intended target, and when that happens in conjunction with a thermal-based charm, the elements of –"

"Okay, okay!" interrupted Adin, who did not seem to have understood a thing Severus had said. She glanced hesitantly at Lily, who shrugged. Adin sighed and looked back at Severus, who was pale and twitchier than usual, and agreed as if against her better judgment. "All right, then, go on and change it back."

Severus gave his wand a funny little wiggle, murmured a spell Lily had never heard before, and Adin's hair immediately returned to its natural, shiny dark brown.

"Hey, thanks!" Adin said, admiring her reflection again in the window.

Severus ignored her and spoke directly to Lily. "Can we talk?"

"All right," she said, curious as to what this could be about. She said goodbye to her friends and followed Severus back into the castle, into the first-floor corridor, where he stopped next to a suit of armor and turned to look at her, nervous excitement flowing out of him.

"I've invented magic!" he said without preamble.

She stared at him blankly, not entirely understanding his meaning. "What?"

"I've invented magic…a new spell! I did it myself!"

She had not seen him this excited since right before they got to Hogwarts. His eager face shone as it had years ago, when he had first told her about the castle, basking in the park sunshine and in their own unfettered energy.

"Wait…what? You invented a spell? Why? How?"

The suit of armor next to them squeaked and creaked as it turned its neck to look down at them. Severus ignored it, a toothy smile splitting his face. "I was just experimenting, you know, like how we do in Potions, but this time in Charms. And I figured out how to adapt elements of a Sticking Charm – not a Permanent Sticking Charm, mind you, just a regular one – and a Silencing Charm…and then it took me a while to figure out the root incantation, and to adapt it a bit from the original Latin, you know…and then it was just the wand movements which I figured out with some trial and error…and the countercharm, of course, and I did it! I've invented a spell!"

He said this all very fast and it took a few minutes for her mind to catch up to his words. "Wow…wow Sev, that's really impressive. Can you show me?"

He looked around. The corridor was empty, as everyone was still in the courtyard for break. Turning back to her, he bit his lip, hesitating. "Well I can do it on you if you want. It won't hurt or anything…and I've been practicing loads on myself, the countercharm is really simple."

"Okay," she said, somewhat nervous.

He pointed his wand at her and said "Langlock!" Immediately, her tongue snapped to the roof of her mouth as if by a powerful magnet. She couldn't say a word. He grinned and muttered the countercharm.

"See?" he said. "I did that!"

Lily opened her mouth and moved her tongue around in exaggerated motions, having not liked the feeling of it glued to the roof of her mouth. Once she was satisfied that it was still working properly, she grinned at him. "It's brilliant, Sev, really."

"Thanks!" he said, beaming.

There was an awkward silence as she surveyed him and the smile faded from his face, his eyes shifting up to gaze at a spot above her head. When he spoke again, his tone had changed from excited to nervous.

"Would you maybe want to meet me in the library after dinner? To work on the essay for Slughorn?"

She raised her eyebrows at him, suddenly irritated. "You've seemed to be doing fine without me for the last month."

He had the good sense to look slightly abashed at her comment, but he still was not meeting her eye.

"I've been busy," he muttered. "And you've been getting on fine yourself. I never even see you 'round without a group of five friends about…"

Folding her arms across her chest, Lily leaned away from him. "We've been over this before. I'm not going to apologize for having other friends." When he stepped back and mimicked her arm-fold, she sighed. His stubbornness was too much for her, and the fact of the matter was, she had missed him. "I'll meet you in the library tonight if you're offering."

He smiled and finally looked back at her. "Great! You know I was thinking about that Hair-Raising potion…if we add the…"

She held up a hand to silence him and continued. "I'll meet you in the library tonight, but only if you promise to not bring up James Potter, Severus. I don't want to listen to you moaning about him anymore."

His mouth opened in shock for a moment before he bristled at the suggestion. "You're giving me rules now about what I can talk about?"

Students had begun trickling back into the corridor from the courtyard, which could only mean that morning break was almost over and Lily would almost certainly be late for Herbology if she didn't start moving toward the greenhouses.

"Yes," she said simply. "Because you go on and on about Potter and Black, and when I tried to do something to help you, you got furious at me. So if you don't want me to try to help, you can't complain. That's the rule."

He pondered this for a moment, his eyes darting around at the students hurrying past them, before giving a curt nod. "Okay. After dinner tonight, then?"

She grinned at him and started walking backward toward the castle doors, getting jostled by a few talkative Hufflepuffs as she went. "Absolutely. See you then!"

It had been six weeks since James and Sirius had been caught on the Quidditch pitch by Dumbledore; six weeks since James had accosted Snape in the corridor; six weeks filled with long detentions and sneaking off to add ingredients to the potion at just the right time, or to stir it three dozen times clockwise with a silver ladle, or to turn down the flame to just right when red sparks started spitting from the bubbling surface. It had been six very long weeks and now, finally, the potion would be ready for them to drink.

The evening found the four Gryffindor boys sitting comfortably around the simmering cauldron in the forth-floor secret passageway that led to Hogsmeade. The location had worked out remarkably well thus far – there was a very roomy alcove a little ways down the passageway that fit all of them easily, and even though they had spent all of their free time there for six whole weeks, they hadn't noticed a single other student sniffing around, leading them to believe that they were, in fact, the only people in the school who knew about this particular passage.

"No, that's not right," Sirius said, peering over James's shoulder. "The tapestry that blocks the hidden staircase is on the other side of the corridor, across from the classroom, not next to it."

James frowned, turned the parchment he had been working on upside down and tilted his head to examine it before nodding and scratching out the staircase he had just added. In an effort to ensure that the next phase of their plan – stealing the book they needed from McGonagall's office – would go off without a hitch, they had been sketching out a rough map of a few key corridors that would figure prominently.

"How's that?" James said, holding up the parchment so that both he and Sirius could inspect it.

Sirius examined it thoroughly. "Looks about right to me," he said, before leaning back against one of the large, squishy pillows they had littered the floor of the alcove with. "Now we'll just need to brush up on the Imperturbable Charm, get the rest of the supplies from owl-order, and we should be golden."

The cauldron, which had been set up in the middle of the alcove, began hissing loudly, causing all four boys to look up at it with excitement. The spitting potion was a deep blue and reflected the light of the burning torches that flickered along the passageway wall. Remus, who had been sitting cross-legged in the corner and working diligently on his latest History of Magic essay, glanced over at the charmed Animated Animagi book, which was lying open on the floor between him and Peter.

"Good," he said, his eyes scanning over the book. "It says it should hiss for about ten minutes and then become a lurid, neon yellow color and stop simmering altogether. After that, we extinguish the flame and it's finished."

James and Sirius grinned at each other, thrilled with their accomplishment, the first major step they had taken in their quest to become Animagi.

"And what if something's gone wrong?" said Peter, who was fiddling with his wand nervously. "What's going to happen to us?"

"It hasn't gone wrong!" James said, offended by the suggestion. "It's done exactly what the book says it's supposed to do."

"You can try it first, Peter," joked Sirius. "And if you start having convulsions or if you grow a great big horn out of your face or something, we'll come visit you in St. Mungo's every holiday, don't worry."

Peter's eyes flared wide. "Me? Why have I got to go first?"

"You don't." James rolled his eyes. "I'll go first. Read it again, Remus, just so we know what to expect."

Sirius sighed and leaned his head back against the stone wall in an exasperated sort of way, his leg bouncing up and down. "We've been over this five times. We take the potion and it gives us a vision or some rot like that…"

Ignoring Sirius, Remus set his essay aside and picked up the book. "The effects of the potion are consistent with every drinker, though the experience will vary depending on the drinker's eventual Animagus Form. The experience generally will last between two and five minutes after consumption, though there have been reports of it lasting up to twelve minutes. After ingesting the potion, the drinker will almost immediately enter into a trance-state, which will allow him to connect with his Form in its primal spirit, and – more importantly – will allow the Form to explore the intricacies of the drinker's most intimate nature."

Sirius sniggered. "Ooh, did you hear that, Pete? The intricacies of your most intimate nature. Hope you're wearing clean pants." Peter shot him an unappreciative hand gesture.

"That's all it says about the actual aftermath of taking the potion," Remus continued, as if there had been no interruption. "Then it goes on about next steps – connecting with your Form through controlling your mind and all that – and then it mentions the final spells that we assume will be in McGonagall's book." He finished and looked up at them all, biting his lip.

"Don't start again, Remus," James said, noticing the familiar guilty expression on his friend's face. "We're doing this. We've come this far, there's no turning back now."

"That's not true," countered Remus. "You can turn back now. We'll dump the potion and forget about this whole barmy idea…"

Sirius rocked his head back and forth against the wall and growled irritably. "No. We've been over this a million times, Moony. Will you give it a rest already? You think we're going to dump the potion down the bloody drain after weeks of sneaking up here ten times a day and at all hours of the night? We. Are. Doing. This. Stop trying to talk us out of it."

"And stop worrying so much," James said lightly. "You're starting to sound like Peter."

Peter's brow furrowed in indignation. "Hey!"

Remus sighed, resigned. "Fine. Then stop calling me Moony."

"No can do," Sirius said. "You're stuck with it now."

Remus scowled and turned back to his essay as they fell into an easy silence, awaiting the moment when the cauldron would cease its hissing. James reclined on his back and began tossing a ball of scrap parchment in the air, higher and higher until it hit the ceiling of the passageway with every throw. Peter inched closer to the cauldron, peering into its contents with a look of utmost trepidation on his face.

"You know what they say, Peter," said Sirius after a minute. "A watched cauldron never turns."

Peter frowned and slid backwards. "Really?"

"No one says that," said Remus, looking up from his essay.

Sirius grinned. "Sure they do."

"You're supposed to watch your cauldron," said Remus. "It's vital to being a good potion maker."

One of James's tosses went askew and the parchment landed next to Sirius, who plucked it up and tossed it at Remus's head. "Isn't Potions your worst subject, Moony?"

Without missing a beat, Remus chucked the parchment back at him. "Well I can't be any worse than you if you think you're not even supposed to watch the cauldron."

James, who did not seem to be listening to their conversation at all, rolled onto his side, frowning in concentration. "Are Evans and Snape back to being friends again, then?"

The other three stared at him.

"What are you talking about?" asked Sirius.

"Evans and Snape," James repeated, as if the non sequitur were completely natural. "They went off together during break this morning. I thought they weren't speaking anymore?"

Peter shifted, once again glancing at the hissing potion before asking, "Why do you care?"

"I don't," James shrugged nonchalantly. "It's only Evans gave me a right bollocking over Snape and then it seemed like they were on the outs and if she's friends with him again, well then she shouldn't still be cross with me."

None of the others found this line of reasoning to be particularly logical, but before any of them could respond, the loud hissing that had been emanating from the cauldron ceased abruptly. They all turned to stare at it before James pulled himself up and inched closer to the brim, eyeing the surface of the liquid, now a neon yellow. James grinned and muttered a spell toward the flames below the cauldron, which extinguished at once.

"Perfect," he said, still gazing at the potion with admiration. "I think we've done it!"

The all clustered around the cauldron together, peering into the liquid, the surface of which was smooth and still. Compared to some of the concoctions they brewed in Potions class, the scent of the fumes issuing from the potion was fairly fragrant. It smelled like a bouquet of daisies mingled with something vaguely fruity. Nobody spoke for a minute, all contemplating the step they were about to take, until James broke out of the reverie and clapped his hands once.

"No point in waiting," he said, digging through his bag for a flask. They all watched as he dipped the flask carefully into the glowing potion and raised it up to inspect the yellow liquid through the glass. Sirius was looking excited, bouncing on the balls of his feet; Remus was clearly worried, breathing heavily and staring at the flask as though it were filled with poison; Peter's eyes were moving from the flask to James, his mouth slightly open in anticipation.

"Cheers!" James said, not even hesitating before raising the glass to his lips and draining it of its contents. The taste was not quite as pleasant as the smell – it was as if he had taken a bite out of his mother's hydrangea bush.

A curious sensation overtook his body. His legs felt leaden as though he had suddenly tripled in weight and they couldn't support him anymore. The last conscious thought he had was that he ought to sit down on one of the large, squishy pillows that littered the alcove…his friends' faces swam before him…they looked worried…but the darkness was taking him over…

He opened his eyes but then winced and shut them again. His surroundings has changed. Everything was much, much brighter here than it had been just moments before, and he pried his eyes open into a narrow squint, trying to adjust to the light. It took several attempts…squint, shut, squint, shut…before the brightness seemed to dim to a sustainable level and he was able to observe his surroundings. There was a loud rustling and James looked around quickly, but the rustling appeared to be only the wind, which was blowing through a jade canopy of leaves above his head. He seemed to be in a sparse forest of some kind; there were trees all around him with sunlight beaming down between the branches in blinding, golden rays, illuminating the green leaves and the spears of grass as though a million wand lights were pointing down on him from above. The wind was gentle, and James could not understand why such a light breeze would sound so thunderous in his ears.

He looked down. He could not see his body or his feet, but he saw that he was standing…or perhaps floating…it was difficult to say. The fallen leaves beneath him were speckled by tall shoots of grass. He craned his neck to try and see his feet, but his head felt much heavier than normal and the movement propelled him off balance, causing him to stumble forward a bit. He froze, heart beating very fast.

He had four feet. He had felt them all when he stumbled.

There was a second – a very brief second – of panic before the excitement of this discovery set in. It was not every day that one awoke in a dream-like state to two extra appendages, after all. But his excitement, too, was short-lived and petered out quickly. He did not know what to do. He looked around again, trying to think clearly, but his thoughts were jumbled and he felt distinctly disconnected from his body. Tentatively, he lifted his front left foot and then brought it down again, noting the way the dead leaves felt against it, brittle at first and then cushioning as he pressed them into the ground. He then proceeded to do the same with his other three feet, relaxing a bit more once he confirmed that he was, in fact, standing on the ground and not floating above it.

Another loud noise sounded in the distance and he started, falling sideways a bit before regaining his footing. A bird landed on the branch of a nearby tree, watching him curiously, and James realized that it had been the bird's sudden movement that had startled him so. His hearing seemed to have intensified a hundred-fold from its normal register. He stood listening for a moment to the rustling of the leaves, the insects chirping a cacophony around him, the birds calling their mates from tree to tree – standard noises that for some reason sounded to him like a din, bouncing against his ears with remarkable force.

He took a tentative step forward, wobbling slightly and then steadying himself before taking another step. He felt taller than normal and rather uncoordinated, walking on four legs, having to move them in conjunction with one another while trying to balance his very heavy head on his shoulders. After several steps, he began to get a feel for it and was able to walk more quickly through the trees, listening closely to the sounds of the forest, noting the way the leaves flattened into the dirt below his feet.

He froze. There were voices ahead; he could hear them clearly and his first instinct was to turn and run but he did not, for he suddenly recognized one of the voices, though he had not heard it in several years. Creeping forward, he peered between a cluster of gnarled trees and into a large clearing, where a massive forest pond glittered in the sunlight. He would have gasped had he been able, and the shock of what he was witnessing made him once again stumble sideways into a tree.

He was looking at himself – his human self – laughing and swimming in the forest pond with his grandfather, who had been dead for two years. Sirius, Remus, and Peter were there too, playing and splashing one another, their happy shouts of laughter echoing through the trees. On the opposite shore of the pond were his parents – his father stretched out on his back, watching the swimmers with an easy, peaceful smile his face, and his mother lying perpendicular to him, her head resting against his stomach, reading a book in the sunlight.

James stared at the scene before him, the sound of his own heartbeat thumping away in his ears. How was this possible? How could he be here, four feet on the forest ground, watching himself swimming not twenty yards away? How could his grandfather look so lively and carefree, when James himself had been to his funeral, had seen his casket lowered into the cold ground so long ago?

He took a cautious step forward, trying to get to them, to make himself seen, but found that he was unable to get any closer. An invisible barrier was preventing him from moving forward, holding him hostage alone in the trees. He shook his heavy head in frustration and a strange, snorting noise emitted from his nose. None of the humans he was watching seemed to hear him, but then again, the snort hadn't been particularly loud. The purposeful call that he sounded next was a nasally, whining sort of cry, and though the sound shocked him enough to stumble again, the others made no indication that they had heard anything at all.

He didn't know how long he spent standing there, watching the group from his spot in the trees – time seemed to not exist in this strange realm – but after what could have been a few seconds or several minutes, he felt a sense of calmness settle over him. There was no need for him to approach them, or to get their attention. He understood that he was not meant to interact with himself, but only to observe. It was very peaceful, standing there in the forest, and he drank in the sight of his grandfather, who had always been so young at heart, splashing and frolicking with him and his friends. James sat back on his haunches, thinking that he could sit there and watch them all day without getting tired of it, when the world shifted and he fell sideways. This was not the awkward four-legged stumbles of before, though. The bright sunlight was dimming…the sounds of the forest and the voices were fading in and out like a poorly tuned wireless…the leaves and grass underfoot were becoming colder, harder…

He opened his eyes. The ceiling of the secret passageway stared back at him. It took him a few disoriented blinks to understand the he was now lying on his back on the stone floor, panting as if he had just run a great distance. The anxious faces of his three friends swam into focus above him and he blinked more quickly, trying to reconcile this image of them with the one he had just witnessed in the pond.

"James!" someone was saying. "James, are you all right? Talk to us."

His glasses had slipped down his face at some point and he straightened them before sitting up, swaying slightly as he got his bearings yet again.

"I'm big," he said. "My Form. It's big…and…I have four feet."

"It worked? Did you see yourself?" Sirius asked, looking very excited.

James thought for a moment, trying to hold onto the details of the experience, but they were starting to slip from him, like a dream that had been interrupted at a crucial moment. "No," he said, willing himself to remember what he had seen. "I didn't see myself…I couldn't. I couldn't angle my head enough to see my body. I was in a forest and you all were there, and my parents and grandpa were there too. And I watched us as we swam."

"You watched yourself, too?"

He nodded. "My human self. I was an animal and I was watching my human self, like through a looking glass or something."

"But you don't know what kind of animal you were?"

"No…it didn't…it was like it didn't seem important to know what kind of animal I was. Like I said, I felt big…tall…and my head felt really heavy so that it was hard to balance. And I definitely had four feet."

"Hm. So we know you're not a baboon or a toad or something," said Sirius before adding impatiently, "Okay, okay, I want to go now!"

They all watched as he, too, dipped the flask into the cauldron and scooped out a glassful of the yellow potion. He sat himself down on one of the cushions, raised the glass to them in a salute, and downed it in one.

Everything was dark and something smelled like meat. Like goose meat, he thought, not knowing how he knew this but immediately recognizing that it was correct. It smelled like the goose that Kreacher would prepare at Christmas. And carrots that had been simmering in the goose fat. And potatoes….potatoes with butter. And maybe something sweet too…treacle tart, perhaps. It smelled delicious.

He opened his eyes. He was sitting in the Hogwarts entrance hall, in the corner underneath the giant hourglasses that tallied the house points. It was dark, but not the normal darkness he was familiar with from wandering the castle at night – it was as though there was a screen over his eyes that had dimmed all the light around him, muting the colors. He looked up at the Gryffindor hourglass that loomed above him, which usually gleamed crimson with glittering rubies; he could see a red tint to the jewels, but they did not have their normal scarlet luster and appeared to him as almost a dark brown. The Slytherin emeralds, by contrast, had a strange yellow sheen to them.

Tearing his eyes away from this bizarre vision of the hourglasses, he surveyed the entrance hall. It was empty. The delicious smells seemed to be emanating from the Great Hall, where he could hear people talking and moving about. He stood up to investigate and discovered with a thrill that he, too, had four feet. He looked down. If he angled his head just right, he could see his front feet – paws – he had paws! They were huge and dark, though his affected eyesight made it difficult to determine the exact color. He took a cautious step forward and then started – something had brushed against his back legs…he wheeled around in surprise and fell over onto the stone floor, his heart beating very fast, but there was nothing behind him. Puzzled, he scrambled up once more, took another step and he realized with a jolt, when he felt it again, that he had a tail.

He pulled himself in a circle to try and see it, but it was very difficult to do so and after a moment of looping around himself, he stopped, distracted once more by a waft of scents from the Great Hall. The doors to the hall were open and there was light pouring through them, along with those delectable smells. He moved toward it instinctively, his mouth beginning to water.

The Great Hall was only half full, but the feast that spread across the long tables was so hearty that the wood seemed to be groaning under the weight of it. The Gryffindor table was overflowing with people, all chatting happily and enjoying the food. Sirius approached them. He recognized most of the faces – all of the Gryffindors who he had come to know since starting at Hogwarts – including, at the very end of the table in their usual seats, James, Remus, Peter, and himself. He trotted toward them, noting how much faster he could walk on four legs. The four boys were laughing loudly at something and as he watched them, a bubble of warmth and happiness settled itself in his chest and he felt his tail start to wag automatically.

He looked around. The Head table was full of teachers, all talking and eating merrily. The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables were completely void of students, though they were still piled with plates upon plates of overflowing food. His eyes fell on the Slytherin table and he immediately backed away from it, a low, unbidden growl emerging from his throat.

Seated at the Slytherin table were generation after generation of Blacks, every family member he had ever known or seen a portrait of – his mother and father, glaring at him from either side of Regulus; his aunts and uncles and cousins sitting straight-backed and haughty; his grandparents and great-grandparents and even his great-great-grandfather, whom he recognized from a portrait that hung in a spare bedroom at Grimmauld Place. They all sat silently, not carousing like the other occupants of the Great Hall, not touching the magnificent feast set before them, but stoically staring straight at Sirius. He stared back for a few moments, that strange growl still rumbling from his chest. He didn't want them here…they shouldn't be here…he didn't want them ruining this for him. He turned away from them, feeling the swish of his tail against his hind legs, and ducked low to sit beneath the Gryffindor table, next to the slightly scuffed shoes he recognized as James's.

A sense of peace overcame him when he sat down, his head brushing the underside of the table. Laughter was all around him – his own laughter and James and Remus and Peter's too. The delicious smells that had originally enticed him into the hall had now become a comfort rather than a seduction, and he tried to distinguish them all separately from one another: roasted chicken, beef stew, garlic parsnips, butterbeer, turkey gravy. The scents and laughter and chatter converged to form a thick blanket, smothering any thoughts of the Slytherin table in the back of his mind.

He peered up between the legs at the Head table. Dumbledore seemed to be looking at him. The old man raised a goblet toward him like a toast, smiling warmly. As if given permission, Sirius looked again at the Slytherin table and, with a shock, noticed that his family had all disappeared, leaving the Slytherin table as empty as the others. Calmness rolled over him and he curled up on the ground, his tail wrapping around his body…the sounds and smells fading away from him as the darkness crept in…

Sirius opened his eyes and sat up, running a hand over his face, feeling exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

"Well?" said James eagerly. "What are you?"

"I…I don't know exactly," he said, scooting back on the stone floor to lean against the wall, trying to remember exactly what he had just experienced. "I had a tail!"

"Wow!" Peter breathed, as if he had never heard of something as remarkable as a tail before. "You couldn't see your body either then?"

Sirius shook his head. "No, it was like James said, I couldn't really angle my head to see much of my body, and it didn't really occur to me to try harder. But I definitely had a tail and I definitely had big paws. They were dark colored…and furry I think. And I felt huge."

"Were you in a forest too?" James asked, the light from the bright yellow potion reflecting oddly off the lenses of his glasses.

"No, I was here at Hogwarts. I was in the Great Hall. It was full of people…and I saw myself just like you did, James. We were at the Gryffindor table…there was a feast."

He did not mention that his family had been there too, feeling that he'd rather keep that part private.

"What do you think you are?" Remus asked. "Furry paws and a tail…maybe you're a dog!"

Sirius considered this. "Maybe. But I felt huge…much bigger than a dog. At one point I walked underneath the Gryffindor table and I had to crouch down a lot. Maybe I'm a panther! Or a bear!"

"Bears don't have tails," said James.

"Oh yeah…"

"Can I go now?" said Peter anxiously. They nodded and watched as he dipped the flask one more time into the smooth surface of the potion and drank it, lying back onto the pillows, waiting for what he knew was coming…

Peter opened his eyes but could not see a thing. His body felt strange and compact and somehow more controlled than usual. He tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness, but there was nothing to see, everything was black. He stepped forward and then froze, terrified. He could feel four legs and four feet and his stomach felt unusually close to the floor, which was hard and cold. Where was he? How was he supposed to know what to do when he couldn't see anything at all? Panic was setting in, his heart thumping against his ribs almost painfully. He tried to calm himself, but he inadvertently let out a loud squeak of terror that only seemed to frighten him even more. Think, he told himself. Think. What would James and Sirius do right now?

He took a deep breath and stepped forward again into the darkness. Nothing seemed to happen. Slowly, he took a few more steps forward and eventually a small sliver of light appeared ahead of him, which he scurried toward. As he approached it, the light grew bigger and bigger and Peter realized it must be some sort of doorway, or else some sort of opening to wherever he was. When he neared it, he slowed his pace and peered into it cautiously.

He was looking up at his parents' kitchen. He appeared to be very close to the floor and realized with a jolt that the dark place where he had awoken had actually been underneath the stove. Blinking into the brightness, he stuck his nose into the fresh air and sniffed. It smelled like his mother's lamb stew…one of his favorites.

There was something on the floor in front of him, toward the middle of the room, underneath the kitchen table. Peter crept toward it. It appeared to be a morsel of some kind…a piece of bread or biscuit that had fallen from the table and had been left, forgotten on the floor. He wanted to get to it desperately, instinctively. He wanted to taste it, though he wasn't even sure if he would be able to in this strange state…

An enormous black leather boot stepped down in front of him and he squealed, scampering back into the shadows under the stove. Heart racing, he looked up at the owner of the foot and realized with another shock that it belonged to his father, who had entered the room and settled down at the kitchen table, where Peter already sat in human form. His father was wearing his navy blue work robes, the same robes Peter had seen him in every day growing up, emblazoned on the breast with "MM," though Peter could never remember if this stood for "Magical Maintenance" or "Ministry of Magic." This must have meant that his father had just returned home for the evening, and Peter felt the eerily familiar spike of joy at the idea of all three of them reunited at the end of a long day.

From his spot in the shadows, he watched hungrily as the scene unfolded in front of him – his mother appeared in his line of vision, ladling stew into their bowls and then taking a seat next to the human Peter, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. His father was smiling at him warmly and Peter appeared to be showing them something – sheets of parchment from what he could discern from the low angle he held. Both of his parents were beaming at him with pride. Despite the cold hardness of the floor underneath his belly, Peter felt a surge of warmth in response to the scene he was witnessing. He was home. His parents were there to care for him. He was safe.

And then the floor seemed to go lopsided and Peter stumbled and slid into the foot of the stove, scrunching up his eyes in terror…

"Are you okay, Peter?"

He opened his eyes once more and was back in the secret passageway, surrounded by the eager faces of Sirius, James, and Remus.

"Y…yes," he stammered, sitting up shakily. "That's it?"

"You weren't out for very long," said Remus. "Only a minute or two. What did you see?"

"I was small. Really small. And I had four legs too, I think, but I couldn't see them…I couldn't see anything on my body."

"How small?" asked Sirius, exchanging a look with James. "Like a cricket or something?"

Peter bristled at the suggestion. "No! Bigger than a cricket. I don't know exactly. I was in my parents' house…in their kitchen. And I was underneath the stove there and my dad almost stepped on me at one point. I'd say I was about the size of his foot maybe?"

James was the only one of them on his feet and he paced back and forth the width of the passageway, excitement flooding out of him.

"This is brilliant," he said, shaking his hands as though trying to dry them. "What do we know? We know that I'm big, and Sirius is big, and Peter is small. We know that we all have four feet, so none of us is an ape or a bird…"

"Or a fish…" said Sirius.

"Right, none of us is a fish…"

"Or a snake…"

"Thank Merlin."

"We know that Sirius has furry paws and a tail," said Remus.

"And that I have a big head or something," said James.

Sirius laughed. "Bigger than normal? I didn't know that was possible."

James stopped pacing to aim a kick at Sirius's leg.

"Do you want to try it, Remus?" Peter asked. "To see what you would be if you became an Animagus?"

"No," said Remus quietly. "No, I have no interest."

"C'mon, it was…trippy! It was fun!" said James.

Remus shook his head, resolute. "No. I get enough of turning into an animal once a month, I don't need to try it out now for fun."

"Oh all right," conceded James. "What do we do now, then?"

Remus had picked up the book again and was scanning it with a furrowed brow. "I don't think there's any reason we would need to keep the rest of the potion. It says it will expire after an hour and if you take it again you'll just have the same experience as before. I think it'd be best if we clean it up, get rid of the evidence just in case…"

Grumbling about the fact that it had taken them months of work to brew the potion in the first place, Sirius transferred the remaining potion into a sealed bottle to be disposed of once they returned to Gryffindor Tower. Remus picked up the cauldron and then looked around the alcove at the pillows that still covered the floor.

"Er, maybe we should leave those here. We're going to need somewhere private for you all to practice transforming, after all."

"Good thinking," said James, pulling his Invisibility Cloak out of his bag and shaking the wrinkles out. "And we've made loads of progress…now we just have to do that thing where you control your mind or whatever, and then the spells that we'll get out of McGonagall's book, and we'll be all set!"

Sirius grinned, slung his bag over his shoulder, and went to stand next to James, waiting to be covered with the cloak. "With any luck, Moony," he said, ignoring Remus's irritated sigh at the nickname, "we'll be right there with you at the next full moon."