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To know your Animagus form, you must know yourself. Know and accept your own unique personality; accept your strengths, your weaknesses, your fears; only then, will you know your true form.
From An Auror's Guide to the Animagus Transformation, volume 1 of 8
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Rubbish, Harry thought, remembering his Auror handbook's section on the Animagus transformation. He knew himself well enough, as well as anyone could truly know themselves, and he still hadn't completed his Animagus transformation. At first, over half a year ago, he'd thought finding his Animagus form would be awesome—he'd feel closer to his father, he could use his form for spying on his friends and criminals, he could be an awesome animal (a lion, maybe?)—but then he'd found out how much work he'd have to put into it and almost dropped the Auror training elective. The average time one spent becoming an Animagus was five years, and some people didn't even have the ability to transform.
The hard part wasn't transforming into his animal (where did he get the idea he'd get to choose his animal, anyway? He only wished it were true); it was finding his animal nature. His animal nature reflected his human nature the way a demented mirror might reflect Harry's body. It only showed his animal through hours of self-finding and mediation, and Harry was impatient enough to finally quit training by his seventh month of training.
Sitting on a yoga mat twice a day in a damp, odd-smelling room, and hearing what he thought were Weasley's Wizard Wheezes ice mice scurrying about the room was doing nothing for his Animagus transformation or his relationship with Ginny, whom he had been neglecting for too long. Their last date had been almost a month ago, Harry remembered with a wince. Opening his eyes, he noticed Hermione was also standing up. Motioning to her, he shrunk his mat, stuffed it in his robe pocket, and waited outside the door for Hermione. She came out a little while later, and he held out his shrunken mat to her.
"Hey, mind dropping this off in your office?"
Hermione held out her hand before he even finished speaking, so common was the conversation. "You could always leave it in the mat cupboard like the rest of us," she grumbled without any real heat.
"You wouldn't believe what happened the last time I did that," Harry said, pushing the up button on the elevator. When it stopped, he waited for Hermione to get her lunch from her office, absently leaning on the back wall of the elevator. Hermione's office was one level up from floor 36, the Ministry's training rooms, which included Harry's mediation room and various Auror fitness rooms. It was also a source of argument at every Auror department meeting, since Apparition was forbidden in the Ministry and the regular Auror floor was floor 19.
"Looking hot, Potter," Auror McCarthy said, walking into the elevator. "Picking up law-witches?"
Harry rolled his eyes. McCarthy knew full well Harry was in a relationship with Ginny, but he never stopped teasing Harry about the flocks of witches that would adore a date with Harry. "How's your transformation?" he asked instead.
McCarthy pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket and turned it over to let Harry see. Harry whistled in shock. "Crap, I've got to catch up." The photo was of a black and white owl fluttering about in McCarthy's flat.
"It only took me a year to do it," McCarthy said, putting the photo back in his pocket. "A waste of effort, that's what it was. I'm an owl of all things. A great big one—"
Harry grinned. "Great for surveillance, mate."
McCarthy scowled and was about to retort when Hermione reentered the elevator. They rose to floor 8 making idle conversation, and parted ways at the employee food court. Hermione sat down at their usual table, where Ron already sat, and Harry bought lunch before going over to them. He dawdled a little while, not wanting to intrude on their couple time, and sat down when Hermione and Ron separated from a kiss.
"McCarthy did it," he said without preamble, stabbing his potatoes. "I think I just don't have a form. Lots of people don't. I read Dumbledore didn't."
"Maybe he did, and just didn't want people to know about it?" Hermione said thoughtfully. "Practically no one registers as an Animagus."
"Or it's just impossible," Ron tried. He had dropped the class after a month, saying it was a waste of time.
Harry nodded enthusiastically and Hermione rolled her eyes, saying, "It takes effort. All you need to do is work hard and you'll get it. Not on your first try though, of course."
Harry's cheeks reddened and he grumbled inaudibly, trying not to remember his embarrassing disappointment after his first mediation session. He was used to learning Auror-related material quickly, and finding himself average at Animagus training hit his ego hard. "How was I supposed to I fail at it?" He leaned closer to Hermione with a wounded look on his face. "You could help me…"
"We're out of school. I can help you with your homework no longer," she said, haughtily but with twitching lips. Hermione already knew her form, and had started transforming. She refused to tell Harry and Ron what it was until she could do the full transformation.
"I think I'm not cut out for this," Harry said seriously. "It's just not working! What kind of animal has a mile-wide heroic streak, too much luck, plus protectiveness and a thing for speed? And before you say it, Ron, I refuse to be an owl."
Ron grinned. "You said it this time, not me. Can I use you to send mail sometime?"
Harry put his hands over his head and his head on the table. "No. I'm just sick and tired of getting absolutely no results."
"Ron, leave Harry alone. Just because he's emotionally impaired doesn't mean you can make him your pet," Hermione said with a wide smile, poking Harry. "Eat, you. I'm going to find Ginny. She said she'd wait for me in the atrium after her appointment with Kingsley."
"Say hello to her from me," Harry said.
Hermione kissed Ron on the cheek and left.
Harry and Ron ate in silence for a while. Harry allowed himself to wallow in self-pity for a few more moments. He had gotten nowhere with his transformation in the past months, and was probably far behind his father in skill. Also, even if he did transform someday, he would have to register his form with the Ministry, which he wasn't too keen on. After Dumbledore's lack of punishing rule-breakers and a year on the run from the authorities, Auror training felt rigid and stifling.
"Mate," Ron said, leaning in and lowering his voice. "I talked to George and Lee about your, ah, problem. They've come up with something to help you."
"You told them about this? Ron..."
"They're both, ah, you knows. Secretly. They did it with their own method."
"How? What's their method?"
Ron shook his head. "Not here. Meet me after work at the joke shop. And whatever you do, don't tip off Ginny or Hermione."
"Ah," Harry said, nodding. "It's one of those methods."
After an unproductive three hours of paperwork and two hours of searching for a Wizarding thief, Harry Apparated to the Leaky Cauldron and made his way through Diagon Alley.
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes (the name had been changed to a singular half a year ago after the joint efforts of the Weasley's and a therapist finally convinced George to move on a little) looked no different than usual: bright, colorful, and vaguely offensive. The target of the week was Conrad Crispus, a Wizengamot member lobbying to pass a law of obligatory house elf breeding, as the population of house elves was reputedly half as large as the population before the first war. Harry half wondered if Hermione had put George up to the idea, since George didn't care one way or the other about house elf freedom. A caricature of a man who looked vaguely similar to Crispus with large house elf ears was practically jumping off the page to alert passersby of George's new line of pranks compatible with house elf magic.
Harry thought it was a doomed attempt on Hermione's part on bringing out house elves' individuality and an example of George's inability to say no to assertive women.
He entered through the unlocked door and went straight to the back room, waving to Demezella and going up the stairs to George's flat. The flat itself was physically big for the area, but had been magically expanded to fit more rooms. The non-magically enhanced areas served for potions work. Harry assumed they'd been magically blocked and silenced as well.
"George? Ron?" he called. When no one answered, he tried the potions room and was unsurprised to see a goggle-wearing and orange goo-covered George talking to Ron. What did surprise him was an obviously moody and glowering Hermione to the side. "Hey, guys, Hermione," he said, nodding.
Hermione's lips pursed even more tightly until they were almost covered with white. "Harry."
Harry gulped, glancing at a sheepish Ron. "We were going to tell you..."
"That you're going to be ingesting a dangerous potion made from illegal ingredients?" she said, too sweetly, throwing a glare at George.
George held up his hands in surrender. "I apologize, Auror Granger. Here, have a chocolate." He threw it off to the side when Hermione didn't take it.
"And you—" Hermione spun around to glare at Ron. "You, a Junior Auror, you should know better than this! Why, you could have your license taken away for just being in the same room as illegal Gromacuton venom."
"Oi, I'll have you know we only have four drops of venom in the shop. That's a perfectly acceptable quantity and completely legal."
"Completely legal if you're an Unspeakable, maybe..."
As Ron and Hermione argued, Harry turned to George. "So is the potion safe? What does it do?"
George handed him a glass flask about the size of Harry's fist. "Of course it's safe. Lee an' I've been working on it for months. We're applying for a ministry license to sell it, but that's another story. Gulp it down and presto, you're forced into your inner animal!"
Harry peered at him with unveiled suspicion. "And there's no side effects?"
"Some minor pain, a bit of discomfort, and it'll take you a lot longer to get used to your form than if you do it naturally, but you should be fine."
"Sounds good. Do I need to get undressed or..."
George grinned. "No need to feel shy, Harry. All of us've been you before, remember?"
"I'd rather not," Harry muttered. "Do you have a room I can use? One with a lock?"
Five minutes later, Harry was standing buck naked in the middle of the guest bedroom, valiantly convincing himself that he wasn't going to turn permanently purple if he took George's potion.
"Bottoms up," Harry muttered, gulping the potion down.
His first thought was that it wasn't as bad as Polyjuice Potion. His second thought and any further thoughts were drowned out by the all-encompassing pain rushing through his body. Every inch of his skin, every cell in his body, every organ and tissue felt like it was melting down. He was supposed to transform, but he couldn't, he shouldn't, it just wasn't working! And the pain got worse even as he dry heaved onto the floor, because he couldn't rid himself of the potion and he couldn't transform and Merlin everything hurt.
And then it didn't.
Harry didn't hurt. But Harry wasn't Harry, not really, not anymore. When he opened his eyes, he saw in shades of black, white, and gray. When he moved his arms, he wasn't moving arms, but wings.
His first thought was that Merlin, Ron was never going to stop laughing because Harry was an owl.
His second thought wasn't really a thought, but the realization that he didn't have owl wings. They were similar in the vaguest sense possible, as in, both enabled flight, but they were scrawny and tiny and he could barely see them. What he could clearly see was a large, thin beak in front of his face. Harry began to turn his head closer to examine his wings, bringing his outrageously large beak with him, but his concentration wavered and his wings stopped flapping. He dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
Ow, he thought, trying to start up the automatic wing movement that he'd had going, and slowly he was in the air again. He didn't know if he somehow damaged his head in with the fall, or if he had blue feathers somewhere on his body, but he kept seeing something blue in the corners of his eyes. This fact wouldn't worry him as much as he did if he didn't see everything else in monochrome.
Slowly, he circled the room once, becoming used to seeing everything in grayscale and using his small wings. His stomach rumbled and Harry cursed his embarrassment since it had led to him closing the door. He needed food, now. The window, however, was conveniently open and he flew through it and into the open window to the right.
It was George's bedroom, so he flew through the open door and into George's brewing room.
Hermione and George were now arguing while Ron was missing from the room. Harry tried to make a chirping sound, but no sound came out, so he perched on George's convenient and rather broad shoulder. Hermione's expression was best described as gobsmacked.
"Harry?" she breathed, reaching out to touch him, but stopping midway. Harry was glad; his body felt weird, and even the slightest touch could probably knock him off balance.
Harry lifted a wing in a poor wave. And then Hermione was yelling again.
"You didn't say this was going to happen! He's— he's—"
"There's nothing wrong with him! He's a Golden Snidget, it's normal, from the drawings I've seen in books, anyway, since they're long extinct, for them to be a bit, ah..." he looked at Harry again. "Well, portly. Completely natural, has nothing to do with our potion." Addressing Harry again, he said, "Can you turn back?"
Deciding to wonder what the hell a Golden Snidget was later, Harry tried to imagine himself human again, as the textbooks said, but his body just refused to shift. He looked at George helplessly.
"Try thinking of moving your human body. It helped for me."
Harry focused on the image of his human muscles while he was running, and felt a brief flitter of something, but he didn't transform. He gave George a bird-glare. He should've known that ingesting something made by one of the Weasley twins had its side effects.
"Are you alright Harry?" Hermione asked. This time, she did rub his body, and Harry tried not to fly away. Her touch felt strange, and he really wanted her to stop.
The door opened and Ron came in. "Hey, done with the call, woa! Is that Harry?"
Harry used the opportunity to race for George's kitchen and bite into a grape in his fruit bowl. The selection was meager, but Harry would forgive him for the offense because the grapes were delicious. In fact, they were the best food he'd ever tasted. After he finished the eight grapes in the bowl, he looked thoughtfully at the apple and pear, but something told him he wouldn't like them. Then he turned around to face the staring George, Hermione, and Ron behind him. What? Harry grumbled. Can't a bloke eat some good fruit?
Feeling better, he flew to Fred's former bedroom and transformed back into his human shape, visually checking his body for deformities. He looked normal, so he relaxed and redressed. A few minutes later, he came back to the kitchen, where George had made tea. Harry took a cup with thanks and scratched his head. "So...something tells me that wasn't normal."
George shrugged. "Depends on the way you look at it. There's no reason you can't transform into a magical creature. What's the logic of wizards transforming into magic-less animals, anyways?"
Harry noticed the fascinated look Hermione gave George. Shaking his head, he handed her a notebook and a biro. She immediately took to writing notes, muttering, "Mmm, so where does our magic go then? Are we still magical and unable to use it? Does it dissolve? Disappear?" She looked to George. "Any other little tidbits you know?"
He scratched his chin. "There was a theory ages ago, that the reason we turn into magicless animals is because we have Muggles in our ancestry. I know some purebloods were said to have magical forms, a unicorn and a mermaid, but the theory's very flawed. There's also the one where we turn into the blood of the animals in our ancestry—"
"That's rubbish, how could we possibly have animals in our blood?"
George shrugged. "I read the Quibbler."
Ron coughed. "You read the Quibbler because you fancy Luna."
"That too. But there are some good ideas..." At Hermione's raised eyebrow, he amended, "once every year or two. And Luna's hot," he ended with a grin.
Later, after they'd each finished two cups of tea, Harry pulled George aside.
"Was it supposed to hurt a lot? The transformation," Harry asked, rubbing his aching shoulders.
"No... Maybe it was because you're a magical animal? I'm sorry, in any case."
Harry grinned and clapped his shoulder. "No problem, mate. I'm used to doing strange things. Comes with the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice territory."
.
The next weekend he had off, Harry spent an hour in Britain's Great Wizarding Library searching for information on the Golden Snidget. To his chagrin, there was surprisingly little. According to the library database, there was only one book which had a section on them: Newt Scamander's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. There were also a few mentions of them in Quidditch books, where it was said that Snidgets were used as Snitches in the early days of Quidditch, but the practice was outlawed in 1247.
Harry found a copy of the book in his old school trunk and was disappointed even more when he found the section on Snidgets was barely a hundred words. There wasn't even a picture.
The Golden Snidget was species of bird that died out sometime in the Middle Ages. From the books of the Hogwarts Founders, we know the Snidget was completely round, with a very long, thin beak and glistening, jewel-like red eyes, and a fast flier that could change direction with uncanny speed and skill, owing to the rotational joints of its wings.
The Golden Snidget's feathers and eyes were so highly prized that it was hunted to extinction by wizards, in addition to many Snidgets being killed by Quidditch players. The Golden Snitch soon replaced the Snidget in the game, but by that time it was too late. The Scamander Foundation offers a one hundred Galleon prize to anyone who has proof of a living Snidget.
Harry considered shocking Luna's boyfriend with his form, but thought better of it. He needed a few more weeks of becoming comfortable with his body to do that. Later that day, he transformed once again and flew a few laps around his room, getting used to his wings. He could soar down, peak up, and glide like a Snitch, and he realized where the Snitch's maneuvers came from. But the Snitch could also fly backwards for a short time, so Harry tried rotating his wings the other direction. He encountered difficulty, but it seemed like his wings could rotate backwards; they just weren't used to doing it yet. Harry gave them another push and felt them do a full rotation backwards.
Then he dropped to the ground again. As he was seven feet up this time, it hurt quite a bit and he transformed back into his human form, which could bear pain better. His arms felt like they were on fire, and his legs felt woozy, so Harry hobbled over to the kitchen and made himself an omelet. He gobbled it down without tasting it and fell into an exhausted heap on his couch.
He woke up hours later, sore and in a bad mood, almost falling over his blanket to get some coffee. While drinking, he walked to the window. For some reason, he had thought he would wake up in the morning, since he'd fallen asleep around seven, but judging by the light darkness, it was nine o'clock at the latest.
A banging on his door broke him out of his thoughts. Harry opened the door to a red-faced, angry Ron and a worried Hermione.
"Harry!" she said, wrapping her arms around him. "We were so worried! Where have you been?"
"Sorry guys, I've been sleeping all day. I tried moving my wings backwards, and it pretty much knocked me out for the day." He waved them into his living room, coming back with a cup of tea for them.
"You skipped the investigation on the Parkinsons because you were working on your transformation? How could you—" Ron stopped, trying to find his voice. "We've been working on this case for months! I thought you were injured; when you didn't answer my knock on your door this morning, and you weren't at the office on the day of a major investigation, we assumed the worst!" By the end of his speech, he was yelling, and Hermione looked even less calm.
She glared at Harry and said, "As an Auror, you have a duty to the Ministry to be there when they need you! Your entire team searched the Parkinsons' house without you! I looked through the entire ministry for you. And you were sleeping?"
Harry almost dropped his teacup in surprise. "Guys, it's a Saturday! The Parkinsons case was last month, and they didn't even have any Dark artifacts. The bust failed."
"How'd you know?" Ron asked. "You weren't there!"
"How I knew? I was there! What's wrong with you guys?"
Hermione's brow furrowed. She walked to Harry's kitchen and took a newspaper from where he dropped the current Daily Prophet. She put it on Harry's lap. "Read the date," she said, gently feeling his forehead for a fever. She and Ron exchanged a look.
"I'm not going mad," Harry said, "and it's not September 22nd. It's October 31st. This is an old newspaper."
"No, Harry, it isn't," she said. "Have you been feeling okay?"
Harry kneaded his temples. "Yes. I feel bloody terrific." He looked up to their concerned faces. "This isn't a joke, is it?"
They shook their heads.
"Bloody hell," Harry muttered. "I think I've gone back in time."