Chapter Text
“Did you have something to say, Mr. Potter?”
Harry shook his head, his eyes fastened on his book. The Mandrake leaf stuck beneath his tongue made his mouth tingle a bit. He’d read that the effect would lessen as the month he had to have it in there went on, but it hadn’t so far.
“Nothing to say, hmmm?”
Not to you.
But Harry would get in trouble if he said that, and one of the goals of this Animagus training was not to get in trouble. So he shook his head again, his eyes on his desk, and his hands resting flat and open on the desk’s surface. It was important that Umbridge not see that she could make him white-knuckled or gripping things.
“Hmmm,” Umbridge repeated, but she sounded disappointed now. She went back to telling everyone to read Chapter Five of Slinkhard, and Harry went back to pretending to do it.
He could feel a few hard stares on his back. To him, they made no sense. Hermione and Ron had been upset when he yelled at Umbridge in class and got detention, and now they were upset that he wasn’t doing it.
But Harry had decided that he had a goal for this year, and that was becoming an Animagus. Other things would just have to wait.
*
“Why did you decide to stop opposing her, mate?”
“It wasn’t going to do any good,” Harry explained as carefully as he could, moving his tongue so that it didn’t dislodge the leaf beneath it. “All she did was give me detention. And it got other people upset about the points lost for Gryffindor and me missing Quidditch practice. I can’t make Umbridge believe that her lies are lies. So I stopped doing it.”
Ron and Hermione exchanged heavy looks. Then Hermione said softly, “And you haven’t thought about how your defiance might inspire other people?”
Harry would have sighed, except that really made the leaf tremble and threaten to come out of his mouth. He settled for shaking his head. “Hermione,” he muttered, flapping his hand at the other Gryffindors in the chairs and on the couches in the red-and-gold explosion of the common room, “half of them still think I’m mental. The others are too scared of the thought of Voldemort coming back to be inspired.”
“But you could do some good.”
“I thought you wanted me to stop.”
“Hey, mate, no reason to snap at her.”
Harry rolled his eyes and reorientated on Ron, who looked worried. “Fine. But you wanted me to stop provoking her, and now you don’t. What gives?”
“It’s just that—when you stopped, it made us worry that something was really wrong.” Hermione spoke in a small voice, watching him warily, as if she thought Harry would snap at her again if she raised it. “But it’s just because you want to avoid the points losses and the detentions?”
“Yeah. That’s all.”
Harry wasn’t going to tell anyone about his Animagus form until he completed the training. He wasn’t even going to tell Sirius about that. It would either be a wonderful surprise for everyone, or it would be a failure that no one except Harry needed to know about.
And in the meantime, it was his secret. A precious secret when he felt as if he didn’t have any others, with the Prophet digging into his life and Voldemort’s visions spinning through his mind.
*
“It’s just as well that Potter’s gone quiet, who knows what kind of nonsense he would have come up with next?”
That was Seamus, prattling down the table to Dean, but with his voice deliberately raised enough for Harry to hear. Harry could tell that Dean was a little uncomfortable. He ignored them both, eating slowly. Moving his tongue around enough to swallow or chew and still keep the leaf beneath it was hell some days.
“Are you going to come to Quidditch practice today, Harry? Or do you have a detention again?”
“I’m coming to Quidditch practice,” Harry told Angelina dully.
“Good.” But from the fiery glance Angelina gave him before she got up and strode away, she didn’t think it was good.
Harry half-shrugged and went on swallowing his pumpkin juice slowly. Ron and Hermione were both giving him concerned looks from across the table and whispering too softly for him to hear. He ignored them, too.
No one was happy with him no matter what he did, no matter what he said. So Harry had decided that he might as well be happy with himself.
*
Harry had shamelessly raided Snape’s stores for the ingredients he’d need for the Animagus potion. Snape thought the worst of him anyway and had already been convinced Harry was a thief last year, so why not make it true during this one?
Of course, Snape yelled at him during class and took points and called him a shameless liar. But what about that was any different? Harry used the Mandrake leaf as an excuse not to respond at first, and when it was out of his mouth and he was concentrating on the incantation that he had to say at sunrise and sunset, he chanted it in his head while Snape scolded him.
Ron and Hermione seemed worried about him. Seamus whispered more than ever. Neville gave Harry a cactus to cheer him up, which was actually pretty sweet.
Angelina was happy with him as long as he flew, and Dumbledore was avoiding his eyes, so really, Harry didn’t have that many relationships to worry about ruining. He sneaked off during sunrise and sunset to say the incantation, and he chanted it to himself in his head, and he traced the words on the back of his hand that said, I must not tell lies.
If he was quieter than he’d ever been, Ron and Hermione were probably the only ones who noticed. Everyone else just seemed grateful for it.
*
“We have to do something to make sure that we don’t get behind in Defense.”
Harry listened attentively to Hermione’s idea of a secret Defense club. It was a good idea, in a lot of ways. They could use more practice with practical spells, especially the OWL and NEWT students, and the younger ones should at least know things like how to disarm an opponent. Voldemort wasn’t going to leave them out of the war.
Then Hermione turned to him, in the middle of the common room, her eyes alight with reflections from the fire, and asked him to lead it.
Harry smiled. “No.”
There was a pause so long that some of the other people who usually ignored them were glancing towards them, and Fred and George had to defend themselves against accusations that they must have cast a Silencing Charm on those chairs.
Then Hermione whispered, “What?”
“It’s a good idea,” Harry said, and leaned over to pat her on the shoulder, hoping she could feel how final and heavy his touch was. “And I’m not the right person to lead it. Not when I’m already considered mental and a liar, and Umbridge is still watching me to see if I’ll be defiant. I’ll get a whole lot of other people in trouble. Or they won’t concentrate and study as much as they need to because they’ll get distracted by me. You should lead it.”
“I’m not a leader, Harry—”
“Oh, come on, Hermione, you’re the smartest student in our year. In the whole House, probably. And people know that you have lots of skills.”
Hermione flushed. It was only a few days ago that Professor Flitwick had demonstrated the Protean Charm simply because Hermione had asked, and Hermione had stunned everyone by immediately casting it.
“Well, I have some ideas for it,” Hermione said, in a mutter so soft that Harry could barely hear her over the crackling of the fire. “But I don’t know.”
“You’d be great at it,” Harry said, without knowing whether that was true. But he thought someone should lead it, and he equally thought that that person shouldn’t be him. “Just remember to take precautions against someone betraying the group.”
“Of course I will! I’m not an idiot.”
Harry leaned back with a shrug and then made an excuse to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom, he pointed his wand at his chest and recited the Animagus incantation again, while sunset glowed beyond the Tower.
He hoped he was close to the time when the potion would have matured. He still had to wait for a lightning storm, though. He was determined to leave the minute he saw one, even if it meant that he’d have to keep his Invisibility Cloak on him at all times to duck out of the school.
Or even out of class. What were they going to do, assign him to tear his hand open with a Blood Quill?
*
“Mr. Potter.”
“Professor?” Harry leaned back and lifted the ultimate in bland expressions to Umbridge’s stare. It was getting easier and easier. Honestly, it was hard to care about anything right now except the hope that a storm with lightning would approach soon.
“Stay after class.”
Dull interest moved in him. Was Umbridge going to try something else to give him detention, since her usual tricks weren’t working? But he didn’t allow it to show on his face. “Yes, professor.”
Ron and Hermione both pressed up close to him before they left and whispered warnings that Harry didn’t listen to. Nothing they said could make any difference as to what Umbridge would do, he knew that now. He waited while the door closed and Umbridge came over and peered into his face.
“I know you’re up to something,” she said suddenly. “Encouraging people to meet up in secret and resist the Ministry?”
“No, professor.”
“Then you should have no trouble telling me that you were lying about the return of a certain Dark wizard who is dead.”
Anger stirred in him, but it was dull, too. No matter what Harry said or did, he wouldn’t change the Ministry or Umbridge’s mind. He lifted his head and spoke softly. “Yes, professor, I was lying.”
Umbridge’s eyes widened. She’d probably expected him to yell that he’d been telling the truth. For a long moment, they stared at each other, and then Umbridge whipped out her wand and pointed it at him and yelled, “Crucio!”
The pain was worse because it was completely unexpected. Harry crumpled to the floor, screaming. It only lasted a few seconds, but those seconds were the equivalent of his bones tearing apart and his mind melting.
It ended.
Harry stumbled back to his feet, trembling. Umbridge panted, her face tight with exhilaration. “Lie to me again, Potter, and worse than that is waiting for you,” she said.
Harry looked at her. He thought of saying something. But he’d been tortured with the same curse in the graveyard, and he’d come back to the school and told people about it, and everyone either hadn’t believed him or wouldn’t speak up about it. He’d been dumped at the Dursleys’ for the summer and then accused of lying about Dementors, and what difference had speaking about his suffering made?
“I understand, professor.”
“Good. During the next class, you’re going to get up here and tell the truth to the other students.”
Harry didn’t want to do that, but since when did the world care about what he wanted? He nodded. “Yes, professor.”
“Get out of my sight.”
Harry turned and stumbled out of the classroom. He caught a glimpse of motion from the corner of his eye, and looked up to see one of the Slytherins standing there, staring at him with wide grey eyes that seemed filled with starlight.
Theodore Nott. That was his name.
Harry simply looked at him, too exhausted to counter the insults or the curses that he was sure Nott was going to fling at him.
In the end, all Nott did was turn and fade from sight down a secret passage in the wall. Harry stumbled back to the Gryffindor common room and endured the anxious questioning from Ron and Hermione that changed nothing at all.
Nothing would change, except himself. And that was all that mattered.
*
“And I was lying about Voldemort returning. There was an attempt to bring him back in the graveyard, but it was all a random Death Eater. Not Pettigrew, at all. He’s dead.”
Harry stared over the heads of the other students as he spoke. He knew he was satisfying exactly no one. Umbridge would have wanted him to act truly repentant and shamefaced. Ron and Hermione would have wanted him to refuse to do this at all, and stand there defiantly and tell Umbridge to sod off.
There was a strange, quiet triumph in him for doing something that would satisfy nobody. His Animagus training wouldn’t have, either. He would probably turn out to be a snake.
But at least he was doing things on his own terms, now. Not Umbridge’s terms, or Voldemort’s, or Dumbledore’s, or Snape’s, or the Order’s, or his friends’. He was just there, and they could take him or not.
His classmates stared at him with silent intensity, as if waiting for something more. So was Umbridge, her fingers curling around the edge of the desk and her wand tapping it as she glared at him.
But no one said anything, and Umbridge finally gave an irritated little jerk of her head, and said, “You may sit down, Mr. Potter.”
Harry nodded and sat. He felt eyes on the back of his neck, and he was a little curious about who was glaring at him from behind, since Ron and Hermione were both doing it while sitting at the same table. He managed to turn around while reaching into his bag for the Slinkhard book.
It was Nott again. And Harry had been wrong about the look being a glare. It was just an intense look, as if Nott wanted to get under Harry’s skin and scoop out the truth that lay in his heart.
Of course, Nott averted his eyes the minute that he realized Harry was staring back at him. Harry held in a chuckle and put the Slinkhard on the desk in front of him.
Nott was probably curious about what had made Harry reverse course on a “lie” he’d been insisting on so vehemently.
But as Umbridge would say, there was no need to talk.
*
“I can’t believe you did that, Harry!”
“Hey, I’m only doing what Professor McGonagall told me to do, Hermione,” Harry said, widening his eyes and making his voice as breathless and sticky-sweet as Umbridge’s own. It was unexpectedly fun. “Keeping my head down. In the end, what does it matter what she believes? The Ministry’s been calling me a liar for months. They’re not going to change their minds no matter what I do.”
“But what about the other students?”
“What about them? They think I’m a liar, too.”
Harry had raised his voice enough that he could be heard in most concerns of the common room, and he saw Seamus in particular glaring at him, sitting where he was whispering with Dean. Harry lifted a hand and gave him a little wave.
“But what about the others? The ones who could be convinced, the ones who might have believed you if you’d kept on telling the truth?”
“Either they will or they won’t, Hermione. If they can be convinced by the kind of performance I put on, they’re as shallow and stupid as Umbridge. You notice that she wasn’t particularly convinced, either.”
“Why did you do it, mate?” Ron broke in. He’d been steaming quietly since class, but he’d let Hermione make the actual argument. Now he was leaning forwards, staring at Harry as if he’d never seen him before. “After arguing against it for months?”
Harry looked at his friends and decided that he could tell them the truth. It wouldn’t matter one way or the other. “Umbridge cursed me with the Cruciatus on Friday.”
Hermione gasped, looking sick. Ron sat back and clutched the sides of his chair as if the “professor” had threatened him with the same thing. Harry just nodded.
“You can’t—we can’t let her get away with that!” Hermione had her hand over her mouth. “We have to tell someone!”
“Who?”
Hermione hesitated as if dismayed by the bluntness of Harry’s answer. “I mean—the professors, of course! We have to tell them what happened! It’s illegal! She could go to Azkaban for that!”
“Who are we going to tell?” Harry asked softly. “McGonagall already told me to keep my head down. Dumbledore won’t even look me in the eye. I think the other professors are going to be the same way—too scared to rebel against Umbridge, or thinking that she’ll go away if we keep our heads down.”
“We could tell Skeeter.” Hermione lowered her voice. “Have her write an article about it.”
“After all the ones about how I’m a liar? Even if she’d do it, who’s going to believe it?”
Hermione flopped back into her chair, looking furious and frustrated. Harry just nodded. He thought his friends had more difficulty accepting this because they weren’t used to what he was, that some things were just hopeless and wouldn’t change. It was a lesson Harry had learned living at the Dursleys’.
Of course, when he’d come to Hogwarts, he’d had the hope that things would change. But it had only been a hope, and it was gone now.
“This is why it’s so important for us to work on that Defense group.” At least Hermione was keeping her voice down. “So that—”
“So that Umbridge can torture me some more?”
“I didn’t mean that, Harry!”
Harry shook his head. “I just don’t see how this works out for me, Hermione. I’m the one who’s taking all the risks if I lead the Defense group and I go on mouthing off to Umbridge. Everyone else gets to sit back and just wait to see what happens, while believing whatever they want to believe about me.”
It was the longest thing he had said about Umbridge to his friends in weeks. Hermione fidgeted with her hands for a second, then looked up at him. “That’s not true,” she said softly. “We’re taking the risks, too, by starting the Defense group.”
“Then you can take them.”
“But we need you to share them!”
“No, you don’t,” Harry said, and stood. “For all you know, the group will even be more successful because I’m not there.”
He walked away, and ignored the low voices they used to call after him. The one good thing about this was that neither Ron nor Hermione could complain very loudly, because that would draw attention to them and reveal what they were doing. Harry went upstairs and sat on his bed, looking out the windows of Gryffindor Tower and waiting for the storm.
*
The day that there was going to be a lightning storm, Harry nearly missed it.
Ron and Hermione had started their group. They weren’t telling Harry where it was. Maybe they meant it as revenge, but Harry just thought it was a good thing. Umbridge still watched him more closely than anyone else, and what Harry didn’t know, he couldn’t betray.
People had started to come up to him in the corridors and ask whether he believed Voldemort was really back or not. Harry had started to ask them, “Well, what do you think?”, which at least made them go away and stop bothering him.
He was drifting through his days, waiting for Umbridge to unveil the next punishment or curse him again, waiting for his scar to burn and some twisted vision from Voldemort to come through, waiting for the other professors to assign him detention. Snape did it often, as “punishment for lying.” Harry had wondered idly which form of lying the professor meant, but he just had Harry write endless lines about respecting professors in those detentions and never talked to him, so Harry didn’t know.
It was easy to just drift along at what seemed to be the surface of a glassy, slow-moving river, and forget all about the storm.
But then Harry heard a crack of thunder during dinner, and he lifted his head with a sudden wild hope, his heart pounding.
“That’s the most I’ve seen you react in days,” Hermione said. She was sitting down the table from him, but she’d noticed at once, of course. Harry shot her a glare, wondering if she was watching him all the time. Hermione gave her head a little shake and looked away.
It turned out to be no trouble to slip off to the place where the Animagus potion was waiting. People still watched him, sure, but they no longer seemed to think he’d do something remarkable. Harry reached the deserted greenhouse where he’d hidden the potion without trouble.
All it took then was one more recitation of the incantation, the immediate swallowing of the potion—it tasted like Harry imagined blood from the vein would—and a step outside so that he would be safe if he changed into an elephant or something like that.
The lightning was leaping overhead, the thunderclaps reverberating so that they seemed to ring inside Harry’s head. He tilted his head back and looked up at them, biting his lips so that he wouldn’t whisper the incantation again. It was almost automatic after so many days doing it.
The world around him warped and wavered back and forth. Harry gasped and felt the heat beneath him, lifting him up. He lifted his arms and found that they were clad with brightly glowing yellow feathers.
A bird. I’m a bird?
Well, Harry supposed it was the most likely form after a snake, given his love of flying.
He was changing, too. Harry had wondered if it would be painful, but all the pain seemed to have been bled off and sluiced away from him like water. He was flapping, and he was leaving the ground, and he turned his head back and forth as he flew into the Forbidden Forest, amazed it was an ordinary forest and not the jungle he’d seen in the vision.
He swooped through the trees, testing the way that his wings let him brake and stop suddenly, and perched on a branch to test the strength of his feet. He turned his head and preened a wing, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. He flew to the ground and stared into a puddle, and although it was still raining and the surface was too ruffled to let him see his reflection, at least he knew he could land.
Finally, the storm passed. Harry stared into the puddle, adjusting his head with regard to the moonlight, until finally he saw himself.
He nearly fell over. He was a yellow bird, yes, but not just a bird.
A Fwooper.
Harry tilted his head back and opened his mouth. A few notes of twittering song broke out.
He remembered what he had read about Fwoopers and their songs in the Care of Magical Creatures books that Hagrid had used, and gave a long, chattering trill that faded into the blackness of the night.
He had a way to wake up now. A way to change the situation as well as himself.
He sang again, and then turned and flew back towards the school, feeling as renewed by the transformation as the world was by the storm.