Categories > Books > Harry Potter > An American Wizard in Hogwarts
Time Flies Like an Arrow. Fruit Flies Like a Banana
1 reviewSometimes I wonder/ What I'm a-gonna do/ Lord there ain't no cure/ For the Summertime Blues/
4Original
Disclaimer: If you find yourself the subject of a prophecy, be sure to write down the details.
Chapter 11: Time Flies Like an Arrow. Fruit Flies Like aBanana.
For the rest of the school year, any spare time students may have enjoyed previously was spent working on Defense Against the Dark Arts homework. This caused an increase in tension between Harry and the younger students from the other houses. The older students tended to ignore him, though whether it was because they were too busy or because they were more mature it was impossible to tell.
Shortly after Easter, Matt was quietly given an award for special services to the school. Dumbledore awarded Gryffindor 100 points at that time, but they were gone by the end of the week.
Gryffindor had won the Quidditch cup, due in no small part to Harry's skill at the seeker position. Unfortunately they finished a not so close second in the House cup, behind Slytherin.
The morning of the train ride back to London, an eclectic group of songs woke the residents of Hogwarts. It all started with "Reveille" . . . at 5:03 a.m. At 6:00 Harry, Hermione and Matt played "La Marseilles," followed shortly by "School's Out" by Alice Cooper, "Summertime Blues" as performed by The Who, "Youth Gone Wild" by Skid Row,"Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and "Jessica" by The Allman Brother's Band (or as Hermione referred to the song, the ultimate expression of freedom in musical form).
As they were walking to breakfast, Hermione pondered aloud, "I wonder who it was that played'Reveille' this morning."
Harry looked at her as if she'd grown an extra head. "And she's supposed to be the smart one," he muttered to Matt. To Hermione he said, "Do you know what 'Reveille' is used for?"
"Isn't it used as awake up call?" she asked.
Harry nodded, "In the military."
"And your home," Matt commented to Harry.
Hermione's eyes flashed with recognition. "Now you're getting it!" Harry said. "I would've thought that the enchantments necessary to broadcast it to the entire school would have been a dead give away."
"Oh, shut up. I didn't sleep well last night," Hermione hissed irritably.
"Bad dreams?" Matt questioned.
"Strange is how Iwould describe them," Hermione said. Her vision flicked to Harry as she said this.
Harry yawned for what Matt counted as the fourteenth time since waking, not counting any that might have happened while they were in the showers, though he estimated that at the frequency that they came it was at least four. "What about you Harry, how'd you sleep?"
"Poorly."
"Weird dreams?" Matt asked on a hunch.
Harry stole a quick glance at Hermione and said, "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
"So, how much of amess did you make of your sheets?" Matt asked his friend, though in his mind he was connecting the dots.
"It wasn't like that! Geez, you can be a real pain when you've had more sleep than the rest of us, you know that?" Matt understood 'the rest of us' to refer to just Hermione and Harry.
"So can you, y'know,"Matt mumbled as they neared the Great Hall. The truth was, Matt had probably slept worse than either of them. Shortly after midnight he had woken to the sound of a conversation, though the voices had been muffled, as if through a door. He'd heard enough to know that the voices were those of Harry and Hermione. It had happened once before, shortly after returning to Hogwarts after New Years. A few days later he had gotten the chance to speak to the headmaster. When he asked Professor Dumbledore about it, the headmaster had told him that he was apparently catching the edge of a subconscious telepathic exchange. The reason Matt was hearing what was said was because he was so attuned to both of them, or so Dumbledore theorized. Less was known about subconscious telepathic exchanges than there was about soul readers.
As they entered the Great Hall, Matt stopped talking altogether. Sometimes he felt comfortable enough to talk to his friends with so many other people around, but today he had a lot on his mind. Many people in school--mostly those upperclassmen in other houses--thought he was a mute who had mastered the art of nonverbal spell casting before he ever came to Hogwarts. Still others thought he was some sort of idiot savant, like Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie Rain Man.
As Matt ate breakfast, he looked around the Great Hall, only half paying attention to what Harry and Hermione were talking about. He always did, unless he was in an especially good mood. He watched Percy Weasley look straight at him, his lip curling in disgust--as he always did when he looked at Matt--as he entered the hall. At first he had thought it was related to the incident where Percy had ended up with a mohawk, considering what had happened the morning that he had first noticed it--it was the day before Christmas break, and Percy had just shaved his scalp. The final straw had been when he tried one last time to get rid of the mohawk and ended up with vertical stripes of varying width in his hair. They were a rather vile shade of chartreuse.
Lately, however, Matt had noticed that same look of disgust--really just the faintest hint of a sneer combined with the tightening of his facial muscles suggesting narrowing eyes--whenever Percy looked at several other students. Matt was not sure why he favored those particular students with such looks, but he did know that he didn't like it. He sighed and turned back to his eggs wishing for what seemed like the hundredth time that month that he could get an actual biscuit.
------
The scarlet train was speeding through the Scottish countryside. Or maybe it was English countryside. Hell, Harry thought, we could be in Wales and I would never know the difference.
He was lost in thought today. Matt had actually said more since they got on the train than he had. He was half paying attention to the conversation--a discussion about plans for summer--while staring out the window. He wondered what he was going to tell his friends Stateside about what he had been doing during the last year. Who am I kidding? Matt is my only friend in America. It wasn't that he didn't like the people his age--/Okay, so maybe I /dohate my peers back home. It didn't start out like that, but when he started first grade, and saw everyone picking on Matt, he came to his friend's defense. He was branded an outcast by both the first and second grade classes that day, and it only spread from there.
He was drawn from his thoughts by a new sound--a harsh, yet vaguely familiar voice. Luna appeared to be in a trance, speaking in a hoarse croak. She said,
The Darkness is coming.
A Dark so deep that Light alone will not triumph.
The Darkness is coming.
Hastening the arrival of the Gray Lord and the Forces of Twilight.
The Darkness is coming.
The Light has faltered, and Dusk is upon us.
The Darkness is coming.
"Holy shit!" Matt murmured as Luna collapsed into a coughing fit.
"Eloquent as usual," Hermione muttered.
Harry was pondering the meaning as Ron said, "I think she just made a Prophecy. Sounded kinda ominous if you ask me."
Luna nodded, saying,"I know what you mean. This doesn't bode well for the heliopaths in their centuries old war against the wraiths. Though I'm not sure what that bit about the Gray Lord and the Forces of Twilight was." Her voice still contained a hint of a croak.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "I read that most seers don't know when they make prophecies, much less the contents of them," she said, ignoring Luna's interpretation.
Neville piped up, "It happens sometimes. Kind of like lucid dreams."
"How do you know so much about it?" Harry asked conversationally.
"I have a cousin in Vancouver who's a seer. He sometimes remembers what he prophesizes. He doesn't always remember--his wife says he predicted the earthquake in San Francisco a few years ago while they were," he paused here, apparently searching for the best way to say the next part, "/being intimate/, didn't even miss a beat, though he apparently finished in the middle of the prophesy. He doesn't remember athing."
"TMI, Neville, /TMI/," Harry responded.
"What does /that/mean?" Neville asked.
"Too much information," Harry answered.
"Oh. I wasn't sure."
At this point the door to the compartment opened, revealing the trio of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. Before Malfoy could say anything, Matt loudly drawled in an exaggerated southern twang, "Look what we got here, boys. It's the fairy prince and his loyal fairy bodyguards."
"You won't be laughing when my father has you expelled, you filthy mudbl--ahhh!" he took off and ran, screaming like a schoolgirl, as Matt jumped up.
"Maybe he's learning," Hermione sad.
"Naaaah," Harry replied. "He'll keep coming back for more, you watch it. He's never gonna stop."
The rest of the train ride passed without incident. When they reached platform 9 3/4, they said their goodbyes and met up with Harry's dad. Hermione's mom was waiting for them on the other side of the barrier.
As soon as they reached the car--a brand new Jaguar XJ--Harry told his dad about the prophecy. After he finished his story, his father said, "Normally, I'd treat any lucid seer--a seer who remembers their prophecies--with suspicion, but given the content of this one, I think it might be real."
"Why do you not trust them? And if you don't trust them, why do you say this prophecy might be real?" Hermione asked.
Harry's dad turned around in his seat and said, "I usually don't trust them because they could easily be making it up. This one might be real, because it references an obscure prophecy made by Nostradamus, one not in muggle, or magical, histories. Not many people know about it, but when I started at the FBI, I was able to gain access to a copy of it. He mentions a Darkness--that's with a capital 'd'--a Darkness that will be defeated by the Gray Lord and the Forces of Twilight. There have been at least three other prophecies--not counting today's--that mentioned the Gray Lord or the Forces of Twilight."
"I wonder what they say?" Hermione pondered aloud.
"I might be able to get transcripts, but I don't see what can be gained from them," he shrugged. "I don't even understand why you'd be interested in them in the first place."
"Luna's prophecy made it sound like whatever is going to happen will happen soon," Hermione said. "Personally I'd like to know what to expect."
She paused, apparently deep in thought. "What I don't get is why a prophecy by Nostradamus would be left out of muggle history, and why the Wizarding World would ignore it--especially given that many of his visions have thus far proven accurate."
"Well, for one, many people in the magical community disregard his prophecies because all evidence point to him being a muggle. Many others ignore them because he was a lucid seer. There's even debate about whether or not he was the one that made it, as it's the only prophecy attributed to him that's not written in aquatrain. The only reason his so-called 'undisclosed' prophecy kept on record is because of the other three other prophecies referring to the Gray Lord." He shrugged, "It's been brought up every time any dark wizard with afollowing pops up. Most people nowadays think it's just a load of bull--"
"Watch you language!" Candace Granger snapped from the driver's seat.
"--crap. But the point is, it's become just another conspiracy theory, the kind people like Xenophilius Lovegood obsess over. But after what you've told me, I think it might be real.
"God help us if it is."
------
The day after they got home, Harry, Matt, and Hermione--who was staying only until the fifth of July--met up in the Potter's basement late that afternoon for their first lesson in becoming animagi.
"First and foremost," James began, "you have to be in excellent physical condition, at least for the first change. You three shouldn't have a problem with that, but we're going to start with some exercises anyway. I'll be teaching you the basics of tai chi, which will help you to control the flow of magic through your body, much the same as the shaolin monks control their chi. And no, Hermione, magic and chi are not the same thing. Don't ask me what the difference is, as I'm not exactly sure myself, but there is one. All I know is the focusing magic in different parts of your body allows for different feats than focusing your chi.
"We'll start with the most basic of basics, and later I'll show you how to apply these methods to the magic inside of you. Hermione, I'll send you a book that should help you," he said.
"But first, ademonstration of what these lessons will allow you to do," he turned to Sirius, motioning for him to begin.
"Let me first state that with magic, tai chi is more of a visual aid than anything else," he said, then held up hands that ended in rather wicked looking claws, then his face elongated into a vaguely canine muzzle--more like a boxer than a"grim"--and with a tangible burst of magic, he was suddenly a dog-man standing before them in a kilt. "Once you understand that," the half man-half dog growled, "anything is possible."
"There is one more neat trick I'd like to show you," James said, holding up a fistby his face, as if to shake it at them all, then snapping his arm straight and opening his fist, in fingers curled to resemble claws, drawing a gasp from Hermione.
It wasn't the motion that startled them. Rather, it was the ball of purple flame hovering less than half an inch above James's hand. He held it like that for a few seconds then clenched his fist, extinguishing the flame. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he said, "There's not much practical use to that, other than the fact that it is one of the few tricks that impresses even wizards. Also, it's really, /really/difficult to ignite such a fire, much less maintain one."
Sirius returned to human form. "Also," he said,"you can only affect objects within your aura, though it is easiest with direct, skin-to-skin, contact."
James took over "There are various ways to enact the first change. Some by wandwork, some by meditation, and some by sheer force of will. We'll be teaching the latter two, as the first one requires skills currently beyond you ability. I will warn you, that this will challenge you in ways that you've never been challenged before. And furthermore, upon your first change, your mind will be little more than bestial instinct. So we have this, " he waved his wand, and a cage large enough for asmall horse--really a cell or stable--appeared in one corner.
"You know, this would be so much easier if two of you weren't turning into vicious predators," Sirius said.
James turned to Matt. "Step into the cell."
"What?" Matt choked. He didn't know if it was some kind of joke, or if he was serious.
"I've got a feeling you may be ready to at least attempt it today. Harry told me about the incident with the Malfoy kid on the train in January. It shows you have some aptitude for focusing your magic," James said.
Matt shrugged. "I guess I'll give it a try," he said as he stepped into the cage.
"Now, every one who becomes animagus must first take a potion to reveal what form they'll take, which you've already done," James said. "The purposes of this are twofold. One, it tells you what you will become, and two; it leaves an impression of the animal you are to become. This impression is often referred to as your 'beast.' It contains many of your basest, most violent, instincts, and in most circumstances this allows an animagus to maintain his or her composure much better than they normally would. However, in situations invoking the fight or flight reflex, the beast rises up, and can sometimes take over. You will gradually gain better control over it, and in a year or two it won't be aproblem."
"Okay...but what does this have to do with changing forms?" Matt asked.
"I was just getting to that. I want to picture the environment you saw when you took the potion--the smell of the air, any sounds you may have heard aside from your animal form," James said.
"Okay, I've got it," Matt said a minute later. He could already feel the beast rising, feel the sensation of fur tickling the inside of his ribcage.
"Before we go any further, I must warn you: once you change, you will be stuck in the form until you are exhausted and pass out. Once you have slept, you will be able to regain control enough to shift back," he paused, waiting for Matt to respond. All he got was a slight nod. "I would recommend that you wait until you've fully regained control before you shift back. That way you don't have to worry about possibility of automatically shifting back to your animal form the instant you return to human form.
"Do you still have the image in your head?" James asked.
Matt nodded.
"Good. You may be able to feel your beast responding to the image. Now focus you magic inward, towards your beast, let your magic and your beast become one, then push it outward," James said. "To revert, pull your magic inward until you're completely human again, and slowly relax."
Matt did as he was told. As his power contracted on his beast, he felt its mind spark to life. He felt his magic and beast become one, and he pushed outward. It was like trying to drag a limb upstream. Slowly, very slowly, he could feel the hair on his arms thicken and grow longer, as the hair on his head retracted towards his scalp. His ears moved up the side of his skull and gained musculature they'd never had before. His whoop of triumph became a strangled cry as the pain hit, bowing his spine. His last conscious thought was, I hope they locked the cage, and then he knew no more.
------
Hermione fainted, and Harry wanted to look away, as his best friend screamed in agony, his body almost unrecognizable. The door to the basement flew open, and Lily Potter came barreling down the steps, wand out, followed closely by Cynthia Black.
By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the screams of agony were replaced by the screaming of a full-grown cougar. James dad yelled over the din, "Everything's under control down here."
"Are you sure?" Lily asked, eyeing the cougar as it caught it's breath and began slamming itself against the bars as hard as it could.
"Positive. So how is Andrew?" he asked, referring to Harry's baby brother, born almost three weeks ago.
"He's doing fine, but the screaming woke him up," Lily said.
"Oh, right. Sorry," Sirius said as he cast a silencing spell on Matt.
Shortly after the two women went back upstairs, Hermione came to. As she watched the majestic cat pace the cage, occasionally slamming itself against the bars, she asked, "Is he going to be alright?"
"Yeah, when he shifts back he'll be healed. One of the advantages to being an animagus is the ability to heal almost anything, provided you have enough strength to shift."
An hour after he shifted into a cougar, Matt passed out. Two hours after that, he regained consciousness. Almost half an hour later, he shifted back. This time, instead of the obviously painful transition of earlier, it was smooth, almost graceful.
He spent the next minute mouthing swear words, a pained look on his face. It wasn't until he started flailing his arms wildly that they remembered the silencing charm
"--oes it hurt like that every time?" he was saying as the silencing charm was lifted.
"No, it only hurts the first time," James said.
"Will I be more in control next time I shift?" Matt asked.
"Yes, you'll be able to maintain control next time. The first change is when your conscious mind makes peace with your beast."
"One more thing. Every animagus has at least one physical trait or ability of their animal form carry over to their human form," Sirius said. "Prongs can run faster than any normal human, I have an enhanced sense of smell, and Professor McGonagall has that hyper-intense stare. So be careful around any known sources of strong smells or loud noises."
Matt and Hermione said their goodbyes and headed to the Robertson house, James said he'd get the forms for registering as an Animagus to him soon.
"You know, your animagus form had blue-green eyes, just like you," Hermione said as they crossed the drainage culvert running through the fields situated between the Robertson and Potter houses.
"Doesn't surprise me," Matt said. "From what I've read, it's rather rare for animagus forms to have eye color different from the person's normal eye color."
Hermione must have shown her surprise, because he turned to her, and she experienced the familiar, yet still uncomfortable, sensation of having Matt gaze into her soul, though she knew he only meant to look her in the eyes. "You're not the only one who reads a lot, you know."
They walked a little further in silence. "I just realized that I can't hear your footsteps," Hermione said.
"So?" Matt said.
"So? You're wearing steel-toed boots, and we're walking on a gravel road! Your footsteps should be deafening!" she exclaimed.
"Hmm. I guess you're right. Must be something I've learned from my beast." At that, he looked around, and shifted into a cougar and ran the rest of the way home.
"Show off," Hermione muttered into the night.
------
The days passed; Hermione left on the fifth of July; by mid-August Matt had managed to change his vocal chords alone, though the effect was made less dramatic by his human mouth. Other than that, the best he could do was make his fingernails slightly pointed, and that was done with a nail clipper. Harry had made no progress at all, beyond touching his beast through meditation.
So it was that on the seventeenth of August, Harry and Matt were to be found, creeping through the nearby woods. They had discovered agroup of teenagers getting drunk on the banks of the creek running through said woods, and were currently waiting for the perfect moment to execute their hastily laid out plan.
As they watched, one girl, so drunk she could barely remain upright, staggered away from the group muttering, in heavily slurred speech, "I...I...I gotsh to go and, and, an'...an', an' ta-take a pissh. Yesh, I gotsh to take a pissh."
"So go already!" another, obviously more sober, teen shouted at her.
As the girl staggered off into the undergrowth, Matt shifted into his animagus form and stalked after her. He found her, squatting in a stand of poison oak, pants around her knees. He padded up to her silently, until he was standing next to her. He then proceeded to rub his furry cheek against her hip while purring loudly.
"Aww, kitty," the highly inebriated teen slurred, somewhere between an excited squeal and acontented sigh, as she stroked his spine, and Matt was no longer sure he could stop purring even if he wanted to.
The drunk girl, deciding she was done, grabbed a few leaves from the small tree she was squatting over, thoroughly wiped herself off between her legs, and staggered back to her friends, apparently oblivious to her jean shorts now wrapped around her left ankle. "C'mo' kitty," she slurred at Matt, motioning for the shrub on her other side to follow her.
"We-e migh' have sho-shomeshing for you i' th' c-coo-cooler," she stuttered.
As they approached the circle of drunken teen revelers Matt noticed that his 'guide' wasn't the only one missing article's of clothing, though the missing clothing of choice was definitely pants. There was one heavyset girl near the center of the group that appeared to be topless, though. Matt did his best not to look to closely at her.
"Hey, he-hey look eve-everybo-body! I found an ador-ado-adorab-cute stray kitty!" she hiccupped.
The sober teen that shouted at her earlier--sober being a relative turn--blinked at Matt for almost five seconds, before saying in a calm, soothing voice, "Slowly, Holly, get away from that thing."
"W-w-why?" she slurred.
"Because that's no'kitty.' That's a fuckin'cougar," the boy responded, now well and truly sober. /Fear will do that to you/, Matt mused to himself.
The girl--Holly--looked down at Matt as if seeing him for the first time. He saw fear blossom on her face. He opened his massive feline jaws wide as he let out the unmistakable, blood-curdling scream of a mountain lion. At that same instant she shrieked and ran. Matt pounced, catching her pants with his claws, tripping her. She leapt up, not seeming to notice the loss of her jean shorts and underwear.
Had anyone bothered to look back they would have seen him shaking them the way a terrier might shake a rat.
------
Harry and Matt were still laughing about it when they exited the woods. After they were sure the teens were gone, they had gathered up the forgotten clothes and Matt had run each article up a different tree, as high as he dared to go. Two quick-thinking--if not terribly bright--boys had grabbed the cooler in the mad dash to escape the mountain lion.
Matt walked with Harry all the way to the Potter house, even though it meant that he would have to backtrack to get home. He didn't think his mother would find the story very funny, and if he went home grinning like he was, his mother would worm the story out of him anyway. At least James Potter would appreciate the story.
As expected, they were intercepted as soon as they entered the house. Lily Potter took one look at their faces, and yelled, "James, your son and his friend have been up to some major mischief. You might want to talk to him." Despite the exasperated tone in her voice, Matt knew she would wait just out of view in the kitchen, listening intently to the antics.
James Potter and his best friend Sirius Black listened patiently to the story, laughing uproariously through most of it, especially the part where the drunk girl was squatting in the poison oak and using it as toilet paper, at which point Sirius commented,"She's gonna be walking funny for a while." Matt could have sworn he heard a sharp intake of breath from the direction of the kitchen at that point in the narrative.
After they finished their story, Matt returned home, where he finished packing for the flight to England the next day. It turned out that Malfoy had not succeeded in getting Matt expelled, and in fact, according to aletter of apology included with his Hogwarts letter, Lucius Malfoy was down to his last strike as far as the Hogwarts board of governors was concerned.
As Matt drifted off to sleep that night, He wondered what the next year had in store for him.
------
A/N: The whole 'beast' deal was inspired by the /Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter/series of novels. I highly recommend them, if you haven't already read them. They've got everything--blood, guts, gore, magic, humor, sex, romance, lycanthropes, and, of course, vampires.
It may be a while before Iget the next chapter up as I have four more prophecies to write.
The idea for how to write the change came to me midday a few days ago, and I had to get it down before Icompletely forgot.
The mentioned prophecy was by Nostradamus because the radio station I've been listening to was really pushing the new Judas Priest album about the life of Nostradamus at the time Iwas writing it. It was originally just going to be an ancient prophecy nearly lost to the sands of time.
Matt changed before Harry, not because he's more powerful, but because he just has a different set of natural talents. In terms of potency, Harry is at least half again as powerful as Matt, with Hermione coming somewhere in between.
Finally,
Questions? Comments? Plotholes? Just type them up in a review and I'll try to get back to you. Please try to be constructive with your reviews, though, if you do review.
Chapter 11: Time Flies Like an Arrow. Fruit Flies Like aBanana.
For the rest of the school year, any spare time students may have enjoyed previously was spent working on Defense Against the Dark Arts homework. This caused an increase in tension between Harry and the younger students from the other houses. The older students tended to ignore him, though whether it was because they were too busy or because they were more mature it was impossible to tell.
Shortly after Easter, Matt was quietly given an award for special services to the school. Dumbledore awarded Gryffindor 100 points at that time, but they were gone by the end of the week.
Gryffindor had won the Quidditch cup, due in no small part to Harry's skill at the seeker position. Unfortunately they finished a not so close second in the House cup, behind Slytherin.
The morning of the train ride back to London, an eclectic group of songs woke the residents of Hogwarts. It all started with "Reveille" . . . at 5:03 a.m. At 6:00 Harry, Hermione and Matt played "La Marseilles," followed shortly by "School's Out" by Alice Cooper, "Summertime Blues" as performed by The Who, "Youth Gone Wild" by Skid Row,"Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and "Jessica" by The Allman Brother's Band (or as Hermione referred to the song, the ultimate expression of freedom in musical form).
As they were walking to breakfast, Hermione pondered aloud, "I wonder who it was that played'Reveille' this morning."
Harry looked at her as if she'd grown an extra head. "And she's supposed to be the smart one," he muttered to Matt. To Hermione he said, "Do you know what 'Reveille' is used for?"
"Isn't it used as awake up call?" she asked.
Harry nodded, "In the military."
"And your home," Matt commented to Harry.
Hermione's eyes flashed with recognition. "Now you're getting it!" Harry said. "I would've thought that the enchantments necessary to broadcast it to the entire school would have been a dead give away."
"Oh, shut up. I didn't sleep well last night," Hermione hissed irritably.
"Bad dreams?" Matt questioned.
"Strange is how Iwould describe them," Hermione said. Her vision flicked to Harry as she said this.
Harry yawned for what Matt counted as the fourteenth time since waking, not counting any that might have happened while they were in the showers, though he estimated that at the frequency that they came it was at least four. "What about you Harry, how'd you sleep?"
"Poorly."
"Weird dreams?" Matt asked on a hunch.
Harry stole a quick glance at Hermione and said, "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
"So, how much of amess did you make of your sheets?" Matt asked his friend, though in his mind he was connecting the dots.
"It wasn't like that! Geez, you can be a real pain when you've had more sleep than the rest of us, you know that?" Matt understood 'the rest of us' to refer to just Hermione and Harry.
"So can you, y'know,"Matt mumbled as they neared the Great Hall. The truth was, Matt had probably slept worse than either of them. Shortly after midnight he had woken to the sound of a conversation, though the voices had been muffled, as if through a door. He'd heard enough to know that the voices were those of Harry and Hermione. It had happened once before, shortly after returning to Hogwarts after New Years. A few days later he had gotten the chance to speak to the headmaster. When he asked Professor Dumbledore about it, the headmaster had told him that he was apparently catching the edge of a subconscious telepathic exchange. The reason Matt was hearing what was said was because he was so attuned to both of them, or so Dumbledore theorized. Less was known about subconscious telepathic exchanges than there was about soul readers.
As they entered the Great Hall, Matt stopped talking altogether. Sometimes he felt comfortable enough to talk to his friends with so many other people around, but today he had a lot on his mind. Many people in school--mostly those upperclassmen in other houses--thought he was a mute who had mastered the art of nonverbal spell casting before he ever came to Hogwarts. Still others thought he was some sort of idiot savant, like Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie Rain Man.
As Matt ate breakfast, he looked around the Great Hall, only half paying attention to what Harry and Hermione were talking about. He always did, unless he was in an especially good mood. He watched Percy Weasley look straight at him, his lip curling in disgust--as he always did when he looked at Matt--as he entered the hall. At first he had thought it was related to the incident where Percy had ended up with a mohawk, considering what had happened the morning that he had first noticed it--it was the day before Christmas break, and Percy had just shaved his scalp. The final straw had been when he tried one last time to get rid of the mohawk and ended up with vertical stripes of varying width in his hair. They were a rather vile shade of chartreuse.
Lately, however, Matt had noticed that same look of disgust--really just the faintest hint of a sneer combined with the tightening of his facial muscles suggesting narrowing eyes--whenever Percy looked at several other students. Matt was not sure why he favored those particular students with such looks, but he did know that he didn't like it. He sighed and turned back to his eggs wishing for what seemed like the hundredth time that month that he could get an actual biscuit.
------
The scarlet train was speeding through the Scottish countryside. Or maybe it was English countryside. Hell, Harry thought, we could be in Wales and I would never know the difference.
He was lost in thought today. Matt had actually said more since they got on the train than he had. He was half paying attention to the conversation--a discussion about plans for summer--while staring out the window. He wondered what he was going to tell his friends Stateside about what he had been doing during the last year. Who am I kidding? Matt is my only friend in America. It wasn't that he didn't like the people his age--/Okay, so maybe I /dohate my peers back home. It didn't start out like that, but when he started first grade, and saw everyone picking on Matt, he came to his friend's defense. He was branded an outcast by both the first and second grade classes that day, and it only spread from there.
He was drawn from his thoughts by a new sound--a harsh, yet vaguely familiar voice. Luna appeared to be in a trance, speaking in a hoarse croak. She said,
The Darkness is coming.
A Dark so deep that Light alone will not triumph.
The Darkness is coming.
Hastening the arrival of the Gray Lord and the Forces of Twilight.
The Darkness is coming.
The Light has faltered, and Dusk is upon us.
The Darkness is coming.
"Holy shit!" Matt murmured as Luna collapsed into a coughing fit.
"Eloquent as usual," Hermione muttered.
Harry was pondering the meaning as Ron said, "I think she just made a Prophecy. Sounded kinda ominous if you ask me."
Luna nodded, saying,"I know what you mean. This doesn't bode well for the heliopaths in their centuries old war against the wraiths. Though I'm not sure what that bit about the Gray Lord and the Forces of Twilight was." Her voice still contained a hint of a croak.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "I read that most seers don't know when they make prophecies, much less the contents of them," she said, ignoring Luna's interpretation.
Neville piped up, "It happens sometimes. Kind of like lucid dreams."
"How do you know so much about it?" Harry asked conversationally.
"I have a cousin in Vancouver who's a seer. He sometimes remembers what he prophesizes. He doesn't always remember--his wife says he predicted the earthquake in San Francisco a few years ago while they were," he paused here, apparently searching for the best way to say the next part, "/being intimate/, didn't even miss a beat, though he apparently finished in the middle of the prophesy. He doesn't remember athing."
"TMI, Neville, /TMI/," Harry responded.
"What does /that/mean?" Neville asked.
"Too much information," Harry answered.
"Oh. I wasn't sure."
At this point the door to the compartment opened, revealing the trio of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. Before Malfoy could say anything, Matt loudly drawled in an exaggerated southern twang, "Look what we got here, boys. It's the fairy prince and his loyal fairy bodyguards."
"You won't be laughing when my father has you expelled, you filthy mudbl--ahhh!" he took off and ran, screaming like a schoolgirl, as Matt jumped up.
"Maybe he's learning," Hermione sad.
"Naaaah," Harry replied. "He'll keep coming back for more, you watch it. He's never gonna stop."
The rest of the train ride passed without incident. When they reached platform 9 3/4, they said their goodbyes and met up with Harry's dad. Hermione's mom was waiting for them on the other side of the barrier.
As soon as they reached the car--a brand new Jaguar XJ--Harry told his dad about the prophecy. After he finished his story, his father said, "Normally, I'd treat any lucid seer--a seer who remembers their prophecies--with suspicion, but given the content of this one, I think it might be real."
"Why do you not trust them? And if you don't trust them, why do you say this prophecy might be real?" Hermione asked.
Harry's dad turned around in his seat and said, "I usually don't trust them because they could easily be making it up. This one might be real, because it references an obscure prophecy made by Nostradamus, one not in muggle, or magical, histories. Not many people know about it, but when I started at the FBI, I was able to gain access to a copy of it. He mentions a Darkness--that's with a capital 'd'--a Darkness that will be defeated by the Gray Lord and the Forces of Twilight. There have been at least three other prophecies--not counting today's--that mentioned the Gray Lord or the Forces of Twilight."
"I wonder what they say?" Hermione pondered aloud.
"I might be able to get transcripts, but I don't see what can be gained from them," he shrugged. "I don't even understand why you'd be interested in them in the first place."
"Luna's prophecy made it sound like whatever is going to happen will happen soon," Hermione said. "Personally I'd like to know what to expect."
She paused, apparently deep in thought. "What I don't get is why a prophecy by Nostradamus would be left out of muggle history, and why the Wizarding World would ignore it--especially given that many of his visions have thus far proven accurate."
"Well, for one, many people in the magical community disregard his prophecies because all evidence point to him being a muggle. Many others ignore them because he was a lucid seer. There's even debate about whether or not he was the one that made it, as it's the only prophecy attributed to him that's not written in aquatrain. The only reason his so-called 'undisclosed' prophecy kept on record is because of the other three other prophecies referring to the Gray Lord." He shrugged, "It's been brought up every time any dark wizard with afollowing pops up. Most people nowadays think it's just a load of bull--"
"Watch you language!" Candace Granger snapped from the driver's seat.
"--crap. But the point is, it's become just another conspiracy theory, the kind people like Xenophilius Lovegood obsess over. But after what you've told me, I think it might be real.
"God help us if it is."
------
The day after they got home, Harry, Matt, and Hermione--who was staying only until the fifth of July--met up in the Potter's basement late that afternoon for their first lesson in becoming animagi.
"First and foremost," James began, "you have to be in excellent physical condition, at least for the first change. You three shouldn't have a problem with that, but we're going to start with some exercises anyway. I'll be teaching you the basics of tai chi, which will help you to control the flow of magic through your body, much the same as the shaolin monks control their chi. And no, Hermione, magic and chi are not the same thing. Don't ask me what the difference is, as I'm not exactly sure myself, but there is one. All I know is the focusing magic in different parts of your body allows for different feats than focusing your chi.
"We'll start with the most basic of basics, and later I'll show you how to apply these methods to the magic inside of you. Hermione, I'll send you a book that should help you," he said.
"But first, ademonstration of what these lessons will allow you to do," he turned to Sirius, motioning for him to begin.
"Let me first state that with magic, tai chi is more of a visual aid than anything else," he said, then held up hands that ended in rather wicked looking claws, then his face elongated into a vaguely canine muzzle--more like a boxer than a"grim"--and with a tangible burst of magic, he was suddenly a dog-man standing before them in a kilt. "Once you understand that," the half man-half dog growled, "anything is possible."
"There is one more neat trick I'd like to show you," James said, holding up a fistby his face, as if to shake it at them all, then snapping his arm straight and opening his fist, in fingers curled to resemble claws, drawing a gasp from Hermione.
It wasn't the motion that startled them. Rather, it was the ball of purple flame hovering less than half an inch above James's hand. He held it like that for a few seconds then clenched his fist, extinguishing the flame. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he said, "There's not much practical use to that, other than the fact that it is one of the few tricks that impresses even wizards. Also, it's really, /really/difficult to ignite such a fire, much less maintain one."
Sirius returned to human form. "Also," he said,"you can only affect objects within your aura, though it is easiest with direct, skin-to-skin, contact."
James took over "There are various ways to enact the first change. Some by wandwork, some by meditation, and some by sheer force of will. We'll be teaching the latter two, as the first one requires skills currently beyond you ability. I will warn you, that this will challenge you in ways that you've never been challenged before. And furthermore, upon your first change, your mind will be little more than bestial instinct. So we have this, " he waved his wand, and a cage large enough for asmall horse--really a cell or stable--appeared in one corner.
"You know, this would be so much easier if two of you weren't turning into vicious predators," Sirius said.
James turned to Matt. "Step into the cell."
"What?" Matt choked. He didn't know if it was some kind of joke, or if he was serious.
"I've got a feeling you may be ready to at least attempt it today. Harry told me about the incident with the Malfoy kid on the train in January. It shows you have some aptitude for focusing your magic," James said.
Matt shrugged. "I guess I'll give it a try," he said as he stepped into the cage.
"Now, every one who becomes animagus must first take a potion to reveal what form they'll take, which you've already done," James said. "The purposes of this are twofold. One, it tells you what you will become, and two; it leaves an impression of the animal you are to become. This impression is often referred to as your 'beast.' It contains many of your basest, most violent, instincts, and in most circumstances this allows an animagus to maintain his or her composure much better than they normally would. However, in situations invoking the fight or flight reflex, the beast rises up, and can sometimes take over. You will gradually gain better control over it, and in a year or two it won't be aproblem."
"Okay...but what does this have to do with changing forms?" Matt asked.
"I was just getting to that. I want to picture the environment you saw when you took the potion--the smell of the air, any sounds you may have heard aside from your animal form," James said.
"Okay, I've got it," Matt said a minute later. He could already feel the beast rising, feel the sensation of fur tickling the inside of his ribcage.
"Before we go any further, I must warn you: once you change, you will be stuck in the form until you are exhausted and pass out. Once you have slept, you will be able to regain control enough to shift back," he paused, waiting for Matt to respond. All he got was a slight nod. "I would recommend that you wait until you've fully regained control before you shift back. That way you don't have to worry about possibility of automatically shifting back to your animal form the instant you return to human form.
"Do you still have the image in your head?" James asked.
Matt nodded.
"Good. You may be able to feel your beast responding to the image. Now focus you magic inward, towards your beast, let your magic and your beast become one, then push it outward," James said. "To revert, pull your magic inward until you're completely human again, and slowly relax."
Matt did as he was told. As his power contracted on his beast, he felt its mind spark to life. He felt his magic and beast become one, and he pushed outward. It was like trying to drag a limb upstream. Slowly, very slowly, he could feel the hair on his arms thicken and grow longer, as the hair on his head retracted towards his scalp. His ears moved up the side of his skull and gained musculature they'd never had before. His whoop of triumph became a strangled cry as the pain hit, bowing his spine. His last conscious thought was, I hope they locked the cage, and then he knew no more.
------
Hermione fainted, and Harry wanted to look away, as his best friend screamed in agony, his body almost unrecognizable. The door to the basement flew open, and Lily Potter came barreling down the steps, wand out, followed closely by Cynthia Black.
By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, the screams of agony were replaced by the screaming of a full-grown cougar. James dad yelled over the din, "Everything's under control down here."
"Are you sure?" Lily asked, eyeing the cougar as it caught it's breath and began slamming itself against the bars as hard as it could.
"Positive. So how is Andrew?" he asked, referring to Harry's baby brother, born almost three weeks ago.
"He's doing fine, but the screaming woke him up," Lily said.
"Oh, right. Sorry," Sirius said as he cast a silencing spell on Matt.
Shortly after the two women went back upstairs, Hermione came to. As she watched the majestic cat pace the cage, occasionally slamming itself against the bars, she asked, "Is he going to be alright?"
"Yeah, when he shifts back he'll be healed. One of the advantages to being an animagus is the ability to heal almost anything, provided you have enough strength to shift."
An hour after he shifted into a cougar, Matt passed out. Two hours after that, he regained consciousness. Almost half an hour later, he shifted back. This time, instead of the obviously painful transition of earlier, it was smooth, almost graceful.
He spent the next minute mouthing swear words, a pained look on his face. It wasn't until he started flailing his arms wildly that they remembered the silencing charm
"--oes it hurt like that every time?" he was saying as the silencing charm was lifted.
"No, it only hurts the first time," James said.
"Will I be more in control next time I shift?" Matt asked.
"Yes, you'll be able to maintain control next time. The first change is when your conscious mind makes peace with your beast."
"One more thing. Every animagus has at least one physical trait or ability of their animal form carry over to their human form," Sirius said. "Prongs can run faster than any normal human, I have an enhanced sense of smell, and Professor McGonagall has that hyper-intense stare. So be careful around any known sources of strong smells or loud noises."
Matt and Hermione said their goodbyes and headed to the Robertson house, James said he'd get the forms for registering as an Animagus to him soon.
"You know, your animagus form had blue-green eyes, just like you," Hermione said as they crossed the drainage culvert running through the fields situated between the Robertson and Potter houses.
"Doesn't surprise me," Matt said. "From what I've read, it's rather rare for animagus forms to have eye color different from the person's normal eye color."
Hermione must have shown her surprise, because he turned to her, and she experienced the familiar, yet still uncomfortable, sensation of having Matt gaze into her soul, though she knew he only meant to look her in the eyes. "You're not the only one who reads a lot, you know."
They walked a little further in silence. "I just realized that I can't hear your footsteps," Hermione said.
"So?" Matt said.
"So? You're wearing steel-toed boots, and we're walking on a gravel road! Your footsteps should be deafening!" she exclaimed.
"Hmm. I guess you're right. Must be something I've learned from my beast." At that, he looked around, and shifted into a cougar and ran the rest of the way home.
"Show off," Hermione muttered into the night.
------
The days passed; Hermione left on the fifth of July; by mid-August Matt had managed to change his vocal chords alone, though the effect was made less dramatic by his human mouth. Other than that, the best he could do was make his fingernails slightly pointed, and that was done with a nail clipper. Harry had made no progress at all, beyond touching his beast through meditation.
So it was that on the seventeenth of August, Harry and Matt were to be found, creeping through the nearby woods. They had discovered agroup of teenagers getting drunk on the banks of the creek running through said woods, and were currently waiting for the perfect moment to execute their hastily laid out plan.
As they watched, one girl, so drunk she could barely remain upright, staggered away from the group muttering, in heavily slurred speech, "I...I...I gotsh to go and, and, an'...an', an' ta-take a pissh. Yesh, I gotsh to take a pissh."
"So go already!" another, obviously more sober, teen shouted at her.
As the girl staggered off into the undergrowth, Matt shifted into his animagus form and stalked after her. He found her, squatting in a stand of poison oak, pants around her knees. He padded up to her silently, until he was standing next to her. He then proceeded to rub his furry cheek against her hip while purring loudly.
"Aww, kitty," the highly inebriated teen slurred, somewhere between an excited squeal and acontented sigh, as she stroked his spine, and Matt was no longer sure he could stop purring even if he wanted to.
The drunk girl, deciding she was done, grabbed a few leaves from the small tree she was squatting over, thoroughly wiped herself off between her legs, and staggered back to her friends, apparently oblivious to her jean shorts now wrapped around her left ankle. "C'mo' kitty," she slurred at Matt, motioning for the shrub on her other side to follow her.
"We-e migh' have sho-shomeshing for you i' th' c-coo-cooler," she stuttered.
As they approached the circle of drunken teen revelers Matt noticed that his 'guide' wasn't the only one missing article's of clothing, though the missing clothing of choice was definitely pants. There was one heavyset girl near the center of the group that appeared to be topless, though. Matt did his best not to look to closely at her.
"Hey, he-hey look eve-everybo-body! I found an ador-ado-adorab-cute stray kitty!" she hiccupped.
The sober teen that shouted at her earlier--sober being a relative turn--blinked at Matt for almost five seconds, before saying in a calm, soothing voice, "Slowly, Holly, get away from that thing."
"W-w-why?" she slurred.
"Because that's no'kitty.' That's a fuckin'cougar," the boy responded, now well and truly sober. /Fear will do that to you/, Matt mused to himself.
The girl--Holly--looked down at Matt as if seeing him for the first time. He saw fear blossom on her face. He opened his massive feline jaws wide as he let out the unmistakable, blood-curdling scream of a mountain lion. At that same instant she shrieked and ran. Matt pounced, catching her pants with his claws, tripping her. She leapt up, not seeming to notice the loss of her jean shorts and underwear.
Had anyone bothered to look back they would have seen him shaking them the way a terrier might shake a rat.
------
Harry and Matt were still laughing about it when they exited the woods. After they were sure the teens were gone, they had gathered up the forgotten clothes and Matt had run each article up a different tree, as high as he dared to go. Two quick-thinking--if not terribly bright--boys had grabbed the cooler in the mad dash to escape the mountain lion.
Matt walked with Harry all the way to the Potter house, even though it meant that he would have to backtrack to get home. He didn't think his mother would find the story very funny, and if he went home grinning like he was, his mother would worm the story out of him anyway. At least James Potter would appreciate the story.
As expected, they were intercepted as soon as they entered the house. Lily Potter took one look at their faces, and yelled, "James, your son and his friend have been up to some major mischief. You might want to talk to him." Despite the exasperated tone in her voice, Matt knew she would wait just out of view in the kitchen, listening intently to the antics.
James Potter and his best friend Sirius Black listened patiently to the story, laughing uproariously through most of it, especially the part where the drunk girl was squatting in the poison oak and using it as toilet paper, at which point Sirius commented,"She's gonna be walking funny for a while." Matt could have sworn he heard a sharp intake of breath from the direction of the kitchen at that point in the narrative.
After they finished their story, Matt returned home, where he finished packing for the flight to England the next day. It turned out that Malfoy had not succeeded in getting Matt expelled, and in fact, according to aletter of apology included with his Hogwarts letter, Lucius Malfoy was down to his last strike as far as the Hogwarts board of governors was concerned.
As Matt drifted off to sleep that night, He wondered what the next year had in store for him.
------
A/N: The whole 'beast' deal was inspired by the /Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter/series of novels. I highly recommend them, if you haven't already read them. They've got everything--blood, guts, gore, magic, humor, sex, romance, lycanthropes, and, of course, vampires.
It may be a while before Iget the next chapter up as I have four more prophecies to write.
The idea for how to write the change came to me midday a few days ago, and I had to get it down before Icompletely forgot.
The mentioned prophecy was by Nostradamus because the radio station I've been listening to was really pushing the new Judas Priest album about the life of Nostradamus at the time Iwas writing it. It was originally just going to be an ancient prophecy nearly lost to the sands of time.
Matt changed before Harry, not because he's more powerful, but because he just has a different set of natural talents. In terms of potency, Harry is at least half again as powerful as Matt, with Hermione coming somewhere in between.
Finally,
Questions? Comments? Plotholes? Just type them up in a review and I'll try to get back to you. Please try to be constructive with your reviews, though, if you do review.
Sign up to rate and review this story