Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent

After the morning run, he was actually starting to feel like his life was back on track again. He showered in the prefects’ bathroom (ignoring Malfoy in the bath this time, and for once, Malfoy ignored him), then he dressed and ate breakfast. While he ate, he looked furtively around the Great Hall, but by now, people seemed to have gotten used to his new haircut, and he felt able to eat in relative peace and quiet.

Next to him, Ron said, through a mouthful of porridge, “You ready, Harry?”

Harry frowned. Now what? “Ready?”

“For Snape. I’ve heard he’s brutal to fifth years. O.W.L. preparation and all that. We’ve got him first thing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

Harry groaned; he’d forgotten that Potions was first thing after breakfast. “And I thought it was bad to have Double Potions last thing on Friday, before being able to begin the weekend...”

“Yeah, it always seemed to take forever to end. Well, now we get to begin our classes every week with the lovely visage of Severus Snape...”

“Careful, Weasley,” came a drawling voice behind them. “Prefects are supposed to report insubordination to the professors. Aren’t you taking notes, Potter and Granger?”

“We’ll let you do that, Malfoy,” came Hermione’s indignant reply. “And if that’s really what you want us to do, I can take very detailed notes on every time you badmouth Hagrid, who is also a teacher, remember.”

“In name only,” came Malfoy’s reply. Harry and Ron rose together at this insult to Hagrid’s teaching ability--although they secretly agreed, they were Hagrid’s friends. They tolerated the way he ran Care of Magical Creatures out of staunch loyalty, but neither of them would have minded if Hagrid had suddenly become obsessed with kittens and puppies.

“Harry! Ron!” came Hermione’s dangerous voice, as though she were prepared to announce that she was taking points from Gryffindor for their behavior. Harry picked up his bulging bag.

“Don’t worry, Hermione,” he told her. “We should be getting down to the dungeons, anyway. And he’ll get his when we play Slytherin at Quidditch.” He smiled at Ron, who nodded in agreement. Then Harry turned to go, catching Ginny’s eye and winking at her, making her turn as red as her hair and look down at her plate.

Harry’s first Potions class as a fifth-year was a complete disaster. Everything he’d been reading about during the summer seemed to have left his head, and Snape made a joke that the Slytherins (the males anyway) greatly appreciated, about whether some of Harry’s brains had been snipped off along with his hair. Harry had to remind himself of the ludicrous image of Snape in safari clothes standing in his front hall just to keep from getting angry enough to put a hex on him. And Hermione had said he’d reamed out Viktor Krum for not taking better care of her...Oh, well. Anyone who didn’t like Viktor Krum couldn’t be all bad, he had to keep reminding himself. On the other hand, he had noticed, but had not mentioned to Ron and Hermione, that Snape hadn’t been at the staff table during a single one of the meals they’d had since arriving back at school Friday night. Where had he been? Harry wondered.

When they were leaving the dungeon to go to Charms, Harry said, “I’ve made a decision.” This sounded very official, so Hermione and Ron stopped and listened with puzzled looks on their faces. “I refuse to let that man humiliate me in class one more time. I am going to practically live in the Potions dungeon if that’s what I have to do to get full marks in Potions on the O.W.L.s.”

Hermione smiled and nodded. “Good for you, Harry! I mean to do a lot of extra work myself to prepare.”

Ron made a face. “That’s all right for you two. I’m never going to beat Percy and Bill each getting twelve O.W.L.s, so there’s not much point in trying. And I could probably beat Fred’s and George’s pitiful showing with what I know now, so I’ve decided not to put too much pressure on myself. It’s just not worth the insanity.”

Hermione scowled at him. “You have no ambition, Ronald Weasley. You should be ashamed of yourself! Fat lot of good it’s done Percy, even being Head Boy, when he couldn’t recognize that his own boss was under the Imperious Curse and he was being sent instructions by a dark wizard! You know as well as I do that Percy’s just a sycophant, and that you’re worth a dozen of him!” Hermione’s face was flushed, and she stomped up the steps ahead of them, leaving Harry and Ron to stand looking after her with their jaws on the floor.

“What was--” Ron began. But Harry shook his head.

“Don’t ask. You wouldn’t believe the things that have been coming out of her mouth lately...”

Ron looked as though he thought this was some kind of double-entendre (which maybe it was, thought Harry). “Like what?” he wanted to know.

“I already said: don’t ask.” And Harry followed Hermione up the steps leading out of the dungeon, a puzzled Ron following closely behind.

Professor Flitwick was delighted to see the fifth-year Gryffindors; he was usually pretty jovial, and seldom looked irritated, even when Neville Longbottom had repeatedly sent the tiny wizard sailing across the classroom while learning Banishing Charms. He outlined for them a long list of charms they would be learning, plus reviewing all of the work they’d done the previous four years, for it would all be on the O.W.L.s. Five years of work, thought Harry. It was a lot to be tested on all at once.

It was a relief to relax at the Gryffindor table and eat lunch, but it seemed to end all too soon, and then they were off to Transfiguration with Professor McGonagall. They knew they could count on her being very stern about the upcoming tests, and she did not disappoint them. Stalking around the class, warning them of what they would have to remember from this and the previous four years, Neville looked practically in tears, and even Hermione looked nervous and unsure of herself, and she’d been the top Transfiguration student from the first day of their first year.

When class was over, Harry opted to stay behind. “Can I talk to you a bit, Professor?”

She looked a bit less stern now that class was over; after all, she was his head of house, and had selected him to be a prefect. She had also been glad to hear that he was now the captain of the house Quidditch team. “Yes, Potter?”

“I was wondering--when did you become an Animagus? Were you still in school?”

She nodded. “As a matter of fact, I was in my sixth year. I was tutored by the headmaster himself--although he was not the headmaster, yet. He was our Transfiguration teacher. Why?”

“Well, I was wondering--I was considering whether to try to become an Animagus myself, someday.” Was he? He wondered. Or was it that hearing young Will Flitwick talking about it got his mind working?

“Were you, Potter?” McGonagall’s eyes flickered with interest. “Fascinating. I would have thought perhaps Miss Granger would be interested, but you---?”

“Well, I don’t remember whether Professor Dumbledore said you knew this or not--and it’s not like he can get in trouble now--but, were you aware that my father was an unregistered Animagus?”

She pursed her lips. “Yes. I know about that. And I know why. And although he was obviously very talented at it, that doesn’t make it right...”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted her, before he got an encore of the performance Hermione had told him about, her explaining to Rita Skeeter the reasons for Animagi to be properly registered. “That’s why I’m coming to you. I want to do everything right. I want to find out--how soon I could start learning. Do I have to wait for sixth year? Or seventh? Do I have to be of age?”

“Although it is usually recommended that a student have a little more magical education than you currently possess, I admit this is you we are talking about, and you managed to win the Triwizard Tournament as a fourth-year...” she looked at him thoughtfully. “And, I suppose that with your father’s history, you may turn out to be a natural, plus you do have a compelling reason for wanting to cultivate this particular skill,” she added, without saying Voldemort. Harry could tell she was thinking it. She regarded him silently for another minute.

“Very well,” she finally said. “I will discuss it with the headmaster. I will let you know what he decides. You’d better go; Professor Moody won’t appreciate you being late for class.”

“Yes, Professor. Thank you,” he said, nodding at her. She almost cracked a smile and looked at him with an affection in her eyes she had not meant to show but could not disguise.

He ran through the corridors, light-hearted; he hadn’t even known before he’d asked her that that was what he was going to say, it was as if it had come up out of his subconscious and burst upon his lips, an idea that was fully born. But no, he thought. That’s not true. I’ve really been thinking it for more than a year, ever since I conjured that Patronus that looked like my dad as a stag. Ever since then, I’ve wondered whether I could do the same thing.

He quickly reached the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. This would be his first class with the real Mad Eye Moody. The other fifth-year Gryffindors were still standing in the corridor, for some reason. They seemed nervous about entering. After all, during the entire previous year, they’d been taught by a dark wizard in disguise and had not suspected a thing. Dumbledore had not suspected a thing until the man they had all thought was Moody had taken Harry to his office after he returned to Hogwarts with Cedric Diggory’s body, going on about Voldemort being back, having his body back, Wormtail resurrecting him, the Death Eaters being called to him....

Harry peeked around the doorway into the classroom. Moody had his back to them, sitting at the teacher’s desk, his hands folded, seemingly staring into space. Then he growled, “Are you all going to come in or am I going to lecture to an empty classroom?” Harry realized he’d probably seen them through the back of his skull with that eerie magical eye, and then Harry remembered that the eye could not only see through many, many solid objects, but also through invisibility cloaks.

They filed in then and took their seats, taking out textbooks they had on the Dark Arts and parchment and quills and ink bottles. Moody seemed to be examining the empty desktop in front of him and did not look up at them--at least, with his normal eye. There was no preamble.

“Many of you,” he growled--he always seemed to growl--” may be under the impression that you know me because you think I taught you last year. WRONG!

“You may or may not know that that was an impostor, whose real name was Barty Crouch, Jr. Most people in the world thought he had been dead for the last thirteen years, but his father and his house elf knew better. His father--who was killed by his own son--thought he could oversee his imprisonment better than the dementors at Azkaban, kept him under the Imperious Curse, made him hide under an Invisibility Cloak. But it didn’t work, DID IT?”

Every student in the class jumped in his or her seat. Moody finally looked up from the bare desktop. Harry realized he was probably reading notes for the lecture in the top drawer of the desk, which he was now able to follow with his magical eye. One by one his normal eye lit on each student.

“Can anyone tell me WHY it didn’t work?”

Hermione and Harry and Ron raised their hands, joined timidly by Neville.

“Longbottom!” Moody cried.

Neville swallowed. “Because you can learn to overcome the Imperious Curse, with practice.”

“EXACTLY!” Moody now positively bellowed. Harry, Ron and Hermione lowered their hands again. Lavender and Parvati moved their chairs back from their desks several inches. Although they all had had their quills poised over their parchment, ready to take notes, no one had as yet written a word.

“So--if the Imperious Curse can be overcome with practice, why put it on someone to begin with, why use it to control someone? Why do it at all?”

Was he kidding? Harry thought. He was asking them why someone would use one of the three curses that were guaranteed to give a person a life sentence in Azkaban? Silence reigned in the room.

“Come on!” Moody bellowed. “Why do it? Why control someone, making them torture and kill Muggles, why do it? Why do dark wizards do it? WHY?”

They all looked at him, and at each other. Finally, Neville timidly raised his hand again.

“Longbottom!”

Neville looked like it was taking every ounce of bravery he possessed to answer. “Because they can.”

“BECAUSE THEY CAN!” Moody cried, smiling. He looked extremely unnatural, smiling. It passed mercifully quickly. “Because they can!” he repeated at a lower volume. “Ten points for Gryffindor!” Neville tried not to look pleased, and failed. He looked sideways at Hermione, who smiled at him. He averted his eyes quickly, looking terrified again.

“Is that a good reason?” he demanded of them. No one answered again. He waited what he felt was a reasonable amount of time, then said, “NO! There IS no good reason! Because you can! Any one of you could fly on your broomstick around Buckingham Palace and scare the living daylights out of the queen, but does that mean you should? NO! I could turn each and every one of you into newts, but does that mean that I should?” This time he did not answer his own question. Silence. He smiled again. “Well. That all depends on how you do on your assignments.” He was still smiling; the students all looked at each other with alarm. “JOKE!” he shouted suddenly, giving a brief cackle.

Harry started to laugh, then caught himself. Ron was looking like his cheeks hurt from stifling a smile. Hermione frowned at them. Moody strode over to Harry and Ron. “Go ahead! Laugh! It’s all right, Potter and Weasley. You too, Granger. I’ve heard about you three; you’ve seen more than your fair share of evil close up. It’s not just boggarts can’t stand laughter! You have to be able to look evil in the eye sometimes and laugh!”

Suddenly he was abruptly sober. “But some things are NOT funny. Take Muggles; who do you feel is more powerful, wizards or Muggles?”

Seamus Finnigan raised his hand and Moody nodded at him. “Wizards,” he said confidently. Moody walked around his desk, nodding and rubbing his chin, then turned on Seamus and bellowed, “WRONG, Finnigan! You come from a wizarding family, don’t you?” Seamus nodded. “Thomas! Granger! Potter! You grew up in the Muggle world, didn’t you?” The three of them nodded. “Name me some things Muggles have done over the centuries to torture each other and make each other miserable!”

Harry knew that Dean Thomas’ family had come to England from Jamaica about thirty years earlier; presumably, sometime before that--probably hundreds of years before--they had come from Africa.

“Slavery,” Dean said evenly.

“Oppressing women,” Hermione said, not without indignation.

“War,” Harry ventured.

“Nuclear war,” Hermione added.

“Drugs.”

“Automatic weapons.”

“Chemical weapons.”

“Concentration camps.”

“Ghettoes.”

“Apartheid.”

“Ethnic cleansing.”

“The Cold War.”

“Genocide.”

“Yes,” Moody said. “Genocide. Killing an entire race. Or what passes for race on this planet. In truth, there is one race: the human race. The genetic variations between people of different ethnic groups across the world are negligible. Even those of us who are born with some magic in us aren’t appreciably different from those who aren’t. It’s just another characteristic like hair or eye color, right or left handed.

“But no matter what atrocities dark wizards have visited on this world, I am here to tell you that none of them--NONE--have even approached the number of casualties that were suffered by those who were at Agincourt--and I’m talking about the French, who experienced REAL losses. And THAT was hundreds of years ago. There has never been a wizarding equivalent of Waterloo, of the American Civil War, of the Boer War, of World War I or II, of Vietnam or any of the conflicts in the Middle East, or Northern Ireland. All of the goblin rebellions combined didn’t have the carnage experienced by the Anzacs who went over the top at Gallipolli. Worse than decimation. Losing only ten percent of the men would have been a vast improvement. Do you know how many humans have died in these conflicts, and more?”

No response. Moody paced back and forth for a couple of minutes, staring at the floor. Then he erupted into questions again. “Just because Muggles can blow up the entire planet, does that mean that they should? Just because they have antibiotics to fight disease now, does that mean they should use them for everything? It turns out they shouldn’t--strains of diseases that are resistant to all known antibiotics have mutated and are proliferating around the world.

“JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD.”

They all jumped in their seats. Moody stumped up the aisle between the desks, his wooden leg very loud, looking at each of them as though he were surprised they hadn’t all flunked out of school by now. “What,” he finally went on, “have you learned in your last four years in Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

“Grindylows.”

“Boggarts.”

“Hinkypunks.”

“NO!” he barked. “You haven’t learned ANYTHING! What you need to learn now--before you sit for your O.W.L.s--is that fighting the Dark Arts does not mean fighting the darkness OUTSIDE of you, it means fighting the darkness INSIDE you!”

He went back to his desk and stood beside it, surveying them all with his magical eye. “What is the purpose of the Cruciatus Curse?” he said softly.

Hermione immediately raised her hand. “To hurt someone, of course.”

“WRONG!” He had turned the volume back up. Ron and Harry looked at her, alarmed. Hermione wasn’t accustomed to this kind of reaction from a teacher. She sank down in her chair somewhat cowed, and Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if she didn’t say another word in Defense Against the Dark Arts all year.

Neville timidly raised his hand and Moody nodded at him. “To break someone and make them do what you want them to do.”

“To control someone,” Moody said, nodding, speaking in a normal (for him) conversational voice, as though he hadn’t just shouted at Hermione loud enough to wake the dead. “In some ways, it is not as sure as the Imperious Curse, but in some ways it’s better. A person who is really concentrating, who has an extremely strong sense of self, can withstand the Imperious Curse. But the same person may cave in seconds of experiencing the Cruciatus Curse. Most people would turn around and put the same curse on another person in a heartbeat if they were promised that they would not have to feel that pain again. THAT’S THE DARKNESS INSIDE YOU.”

Hermione turned and looked at Neville, giving him a little smile to show that she was impressed. Neville blushed deeply and looked down at his blank parchment.

“I’ll wager,” Moody went on, “that none of you has ever experienced the Cruciatus Curse. First you feel--”

But Harry had slowly raised his hand. Moody stopped and stared at him. “Really, Potter? Was the person caught?”

“No, sir.”

“Does the Ministry know about this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well? I’m out of the loop these days.”

“Voldemort.”

A couple of people had gasped, but the rest of the class was otherwise silent when Harry said the name. Moody nodded at Harry. “Good. You said it. Say it again.”

“Voldemort.”

“Again.”

“Voldemort. Voldemort. Voldemort!”

Moody walked around the room, his wooden leg clunking, his normal eye looking at the ceiling. “How many times?”

“Twice.”

“What happened?”

“Well, first he did it just to show the Death Eaters that I wasn’t more powerful than him. I couldn’t do anything; he had tied me to a gravestone. Then he gave me back my wand and we dueled.” All of the other students besides Ron and Hermione gasped. “First he told me to bow to death, to bow to him, but I wouldn’t do it. Somehow he made me bend in the middle anyway. And then before I could do anything else, he put the Cruciatus Curse on me the second time. Then he wanted me to beg him not to do it again.”

“Did you?”

“No. So he tried to make me with the Imperious Curse.”

“Did it work?”

“I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

“And--”

“He tried to curse me again. But--I ran. I hid behind a gravestone.” Harry’s voice shook, telling about his cowardice.

“And then?”

“And then I stood to face him and I used the disarming charm at the same moment he used the killing curse. But somehow--the spells collided and canceled each other out. Then, something weird happened...he got distracted and I was able to get back to the cup--” and Cedric’s body, he thought, but he didn’t want to say it. “It was the Portkey that had taken me there. It brought me back here to Hogwarts.” Somehow, Harry had not wanted to tell about his wand and Voldemort’s wand being brothers, about the dome of golden light and the sound of phoenix song, about the Priori Incantem and the shades of the people Voldemort had killed--including his parents and Cedric Diggory--interceding for him, making it possible for him to get away.

All of the other students were silent with shock. “You were lucky,” Moody told him, then turned to the rest of the class. “Odd as it sounds, when Voldemort feels he has a worthy opponent, he likes to give him a sporting chance. That said, I only know of two wizards who have dueled with Voldemort and lived to tell about it. Potter here is one. The other one you are accustomed to calling--Headmaster.

“Others have been less fortunate. Those who have been tortured by Death Eaters using the Cruciatus Curse, for instance. You see, the Death Eaters had orders, and they knew what would happen to them if they did not follow orders, if they did not succeed. In some ways, they were even more ruthless than Voldemort himself--HE didn’t feel threatened by anyone. Each Death Eater has probably felt the Cruciatus Curse at least once in his life--because I know that Voldemort always wanted them to be mindful of what would happen to anyone who displeased him. Do a good job--and you would never have to experience it again. Slip up--and you took your chances. That’s why the Death Eaters were--and are--so unrelentingly cruel. Self-preservation. THE EVIL INSIDE.”

Lavender Brown timidly raised her hand and he nodded at her. “How is self-preservation evil?”

“By itself, it’s not evil. It’s what people do to achieve it that often turns out to be evil. If they feel that anything is worth doing to achieve it. Anything...”

Neville was staring down at his desk with a strange expression on his face. Moody noticed and came over to him, leaning over slightly. “Have you been to see them lately, Longbottom?” he asked gently. Neville nodded, still not looking up. “I’ve been to see them myself from time to time. Do they recognize you?” Neville shook his head. “Ah, well. They were really put through the ringer--finest Aurors I ever knew, your parents.”

The rest of the class, except for Harry, was looking at Neville in amazement. Neville looked up now and met Harry’s gaze; Harry nodded grimly, to let Neville know he’d already known.

“Your parents had more pain coursing through them than I’ve ever heard tell. Of course it fried their brains. Because what you all may not know is that YOU CAN beat the Cruciatus Curse. It takes an even stronger mind than to fight the Imperious Curse, but the reason it can be beaten is that it’s just pain. JUST PAIN. And pain is ALL IN YOUR MIND.”

The fifth-year Gryffindors all had very perplexed looks on their faces. “Now,” he went on, “that sounds like I think it’s not real, I know. Let me explain.” He stomped his wooden leg on the floor. “See this? I won’t tell you how I lost my leg; you’re not ready for that, trust me. Do you know why I regularly still experience pain in a leg I no longer have?”

Hermione looked around furtively before raising her hand slowly. “Phantom Limb Syndrome,” she said shakily.

“Exactly!” Moody responded, making her give a quiet sigh of relief. “But what does that mean?”

Hermione took a breath and went on. “Your brain is still receiving signals from the leg--”

“Is the pain real? No! It’s all in my head! Every time you bark your shin on a chair or put your hand in a flame, your body sends a message to your brain to feel pain. Interrupt the communication between the body and brain--no pain.”

Hermione had apparently forgotten about being worried about being snapped at. “But pain serves a purpose--it protects us--”

“Yes, when it is a PHYSICAL pain, something you have come into contact with. But the Cruciatus Curse--” He looked at Neville. “--does not serve any purpose but to destroy the mind by overwhelming it with pain. Do it enough--and insanity is the result. Usually, it doesn’t happen that way, usually--the victims crumble and give in, agree to do just about anything. But sometimes, sometimes--” He walked over to Neville and clapped his hand on his shoulder. “--you find someone so principled that he or she is willing to endure the suffering rather than inflict it on someone else. That’s why the destruction of the mind of such a person is so tragic.” Neville was crying now, tears running silently down his face. Moody took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to him without comment. The rest of the class was quiet and shocked.

“Now--you’re not ready yet to learn to disconnect your brain from your body in order to beat the Cruciatus Curse--but you will be, before you’re in sixth year. Unless--you just can’t do it. It’s not easy. Not everyone can do it. And although I want you to learn this, and we will work on it quite a lot this year, we won’t begin until after Christmas break.”

He walked back to his desk and leaned heavily on it, looking at each of them in turn with his normal eye. “Until then--we will analyze the nature of darkness. What makes a person turn dark? What makes another person decide not to? When is that crucial moment? Have you all got your copies of the Sweetbriar Publishing Anthology of Muggle Literature?”

Hermione and Harry nodded and leaned down to get the books from their bags; Neville and Seamus also had it. Ron raised his hand.

“Please--it was on the reading list for fifth years, but I thought it was only needed for Muggle Studies--”

“No. It’s for this class. Those who don’t have it had better write home for it. While you wait, there are copies in the school library you can borrow. Your assignment is to read one of the Shakespeare plays in the anthology--Lear, Hamlet, Othello or MacBeth (ignore the witch stereotypes)--and write me an essay--I won’t tell you how long. Make it as long as it needs to be--about a character or characters who succumb to the darkness, and why, and someone--could be more than one person--who doesn’t, and why. The essay is due in a month, and then you will each read your work to the class. On Wednesday you must each tell me what play you are doing. Also, read The Lottery and be prepared to discuss it. DON’T pick The Tempest for your Shakespeare--that’s more complex--you’ll all be reading that one and writing a long parchment about it at the end of term. DISMISSED!”

And he clumped out the door without looking at any of them. The fifth year Gryffindors all looked at each other. Harry checked his watch. “There’s still more than an hour left in the class...” he said lamely, as though it were his job as a prefect to point out something a teacher had done wrong. Hermione shrugged.

“Well, then we should go and start reading one of the plays, or at least decide which one to read. Let’s go back to the common room.”

But as it was the end of the day, and dinner wouldn’t be served for three more hours, the rest of the class had already decided that it was free time; they were going back to the common room too, but Seamus and Dean were discussing playing Exploding Snap, and Lavender and Parvati were planning to do Tarot readings for each other. Neville was very quiet, packing his bag and standing up slowly.

Harry remembered the way, a year earlier, Neville had clutched the desk spasmodically when the fake Moody, who was really Barty Crouch, Jr., had demonstrated the Cruciatus Curse on an enlarged spider. Hermione had screamed for Crouch to stop, seeing how distressed Neville was. Afterward, he had taken Neville up to his office for tea and given him a book. Harry wondered now whether Crouch was just trying to do a very convincing job of being Moody, or whether he was genuinely sorry for having effectively orphaned Neville, as much as Voldemort had orphaned Harry.

He also remembered being in Dumbledore’s Pensieve, seeing the trial of Barty Crouch, Jr. and the three other people who had tortured the Longbottoms; he remembered Crouch, a mere nineteen years old, screaming, “Father! I didn’t do it!” as Barty Crouch, Sr. had his son sent away to Azkaban and Mrs. Crouch collapsed in grief. When he’d seen it, Harry had assumed that it was the elder Crouch who was in the wrong; now he knew that he had had the measure of his son, who was merely a very good actor. Well, they’d all seen during the previous year what a good actor he was.

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at each other and at Neville. Harry took a deep breath and spoke first. “I found out by accident, Neville. Dumbledore didn’t want me to say anything; he said you’d say something when you were ready...”

“Moody shouldn’t have done that, then,” Hermione said indignantly. “It wasn’t his place to--”

“No,” Neville said suddenly, sharply. He looked at the three of them with glistening eyes. “I’m glad everyone knows. I’m glad....excuse me. I have to go decide which play to read.” He calmly picked up his bag and left. The three of them stood looking at each other awkwardly, then Ron said, “Why didn’t you say anything, Harry?”

“You heard him,” Hermione said. “Dumbledore didn’t want him to.”

“He can speak for himself, Hermione.”

“Don’t you snap at me, Ronald Weasley! You need to go to the library and find a copy of the Anthology of Muggle Literature!”

She shouldered her bag and left without looking at either of them. Ron looked at Harry, perplexed. “Who’s snapping? I seem to be getting called Ronald a lot lately. First that scene after Potions, now this. What’s her problem?”

Harry also stared after her, then turned back to Ron. “Oh, you know her. Probably still shell-shocked because Moody yelled at her.”

Ron grimaced. “Yeah. She’s so perfect...” he said in a mocking tone.

Harry felt like hitting him; it was a great effort not to. “I’m going to the common room. See you later.”

“Okay. What play you going to read?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Hamlet. That’s supposed to be good, right?”

“I’m leaning toward Othello. He strangles his wife--I can identify, just now,” he said, looking at the doorway where Hermione had disappeared. Harry shuddered. Hermione thought Ron was immature, Harry remembered, but it was possible that he was also just plain dangerous. Harry looked at his friend, wondering what was going through his mind.

“Well,” he said finally, unable to comment on the wife-strangling statement. “See you.”

While he was eating dinner, Alicia Spinnet tapped him on the shoulder and said, “When you’re done, Professor McGonagall wants to see you.” Harry looked up at the staff table. Professor McGonagall was drinking from her goblet and not looking at him. He glanced at Dumbledore, who met his eye and nodded with a slight smile at the corners of his mouth before putting his fork into it. Harry took that as a good sign. Maybe they’ll let me start next year after the O.W.L.s, he thought. Or maybe they’ll make it contingent on the O.W.L.s, in which case I had really better work hard to get good marks...

When he was done, he stood, explained to Ron and Hermione that he had to see McGonagall, and walked toward the staff table without letting Hermione finish asking why. Both Dumbledore and McGonagall had risen and were heading toward the anteroom where he’d attended the prefects’ meeting the previous evening, the same anteroom where he had gone to wait with the other champions after his name had come out of the Goblet of Fire.

He closed the door after himself and walked over to the large fireplace where Dumbledore and McGonagall were standing, waiting for him. Their faces were in shadow with the fire behind them, but what expressions Harry could see looked very serious. Dumbledore spoke first.

“Somewhat against Professor McGonagall’s better judgment, I have recommended that not only should you receive Animagus training from her, but that it should commence immediately. You have a mortal enemy who is targeting your friends and their families, and trying to build his power and his supporters in the wizarding world. You have a number of excellent skills, and a strong mind Harry, and I feel that adding this skill to your arsenal will make you even more of a formidable opponent for Voldemort.”

McGonagall looked at him evenly. “It will not be easy, Potter. It may even not be possible for you. But we need to know that sooner than later.”

“I know it can take a while--it took my dad three years--”

She brushed this off. “That is because he was not properly supervised. If you have the aptitude for it, you could do it in six months.”

“Six months!” Harry was floored; he had not expected that.

“Or less. A year at most. If you are suited to it. We will begin immediately.”

“I know. The headmaster said--”

“No. You don’t understand,” Dumbledore said to him. “Right this minute.”

Harry looked back and forth between the two of them. “Right now?”

McGonagall stepped forward. “First, tell me, Potter, have you ever done magic without a wand?”

“Without a wand? Of course not.”

“Think, Potter. There’s a kind of magic you do without a wand every time you play Quidditch...”

“You mean flying a broomstick?”

“Do you think a Muggle can fly a Firebolt? There’s no magic in the person for it to respond to.”

“I’d never thought about it...”

“Can you think about any other times you’ve done magic without a wand?”

“Well--does speaking to snakes count?”

She considered this. “That’s more like an innate ability that you have no control over. Think of when you were younger, before you knew you were a wizard.”

Having just thought of talking to snakes, Harry’s mind immediately went to the time he had inadvertently released the boa constrictor he’d been talking to in the zoo; he had somehow made the glass disappear that was holding the snake prisoner. He told them about this.

“That’s closer, Potter, but let me ask you this: have you ever altered your body magically in any way, without using potions, magical plants or a wand? Just your will?”

Harry ran his hand through his hair, thinking, then did it again and stopped with his hand half-way through and pulled his hand out of his hair and stared at it. “Yes,” he realized. “You wouldn’t know it now,” he said, “but when I was younger I hated to get my hair cut. Every time my aunt and uncle cut my hair, I was so angry, I just spent the night in my cupboard under the stairs seething--and when I got up in the morning, it was always just the same as it had been, as though it had never been cut.”

Dumbledore and McGonagall smiled and nodded. “Excellent!” she said. “That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for, that indicates that you might have a knack for this. It takes a special kind of concentration and control over and awareness of one’s body to accomplish the Animagus transformation.”

“Do you need me for anything else, Minerva?” Dumbledore asked her.

“No, Headmaster.”

“Then I have some letters to write. Good night. Good luck, Harry!”

“Thank you, Professor,” he said a little nervously. Dumbledore made long strides across the room and left.

Harry turned back to Professor McGonagall. “So because I didn’t like haircuts I might be able to become an Animagus?”

“It’s not as simple as it sounds, Potter,” she said, and then without warning, she disappeared and in her stead was a dignified, aloof-looking cat with marks around its eyes that looked rather like Professor McGonagall’s square-shaped eyeglasses. It seemed that Harry blinked, and she was human again. “An Animagus can change back and forth in a second--in less than a second. Let’s practice something. You’ll do this repeatedly until you have complete control, and then we’ll move on to something else. First, hold up your hands in front of your eyes, palms out, like this.” Harry imitated her. “Look at your fingernails,” she instructed him. “Stare at them, notice how each one looks, think about how they feel going into your skin. Look at them for as long as it takes to become an expert on them.”

Harry stared at his fingernails, wondering vaguely what this had to do with becoming an Animagus. He didn’t speak. This went on for ten minutes.

“Now,” McGonagall said at last, “close your eyes. Can you still picture them?”

“Yes.”

“Keep your eyes closed. Think about your fingernails the way they are now. Now think about what they would look if they were longer, and then want them to be longer, will them to grow...”

Harry thought about having longer fingernails, wondering if perhaps they should have measured them first, so they’d be able to tell whether there was a difference of any kind; suddenly, he felt a pain in his fingers and a sensation of the bones in his hands becoming liquid...

“Aaaah!” he screamed in alarm. He looked at his hands; the last joint on each finger was elongating slowly, so that his fingers were now an inch longer each, now two inches, now three...while his fingernails at the end of the stretched fingers looked exactly the same.

“Finite Incantatem!” McGonagall said quickly, tapping Harry’s hands with her wand. His hands stopped growing and then shrank back to normal.

“Concentrate, Potter, concentrate. You need to focus more. Spend more time contemplating your fingernails.” Harry could think of plenty of times when teachers had told students--not usually him, true--to stop contemplating their fingernails, but this was the first time he’d ever heard a teacher tell a student to do more of it.

He did as she said, losing track of time; he forgot to blink for a time, and then was forced to do quite a lot of blinking; then when it seemed he’d been holding his hands in front of him and staring at them forever, he decided to close his eyes and think grow.

He didn’t feel anything. Then he opened his eyes and looked into the smiling face of Professor McGonagall, who was looking at his now eight-inch long fingernails. He felt like laughing, but her face became serious again.

“Now, Potter,” she said, “make them normal again.”

He looked up at her and suddenly panicked. Uh, oh, he thought. I knew there was a catch. But he held up his hands before his eyes again and contemplated his fingernails once more. He felt like he was getting double vision by the time he closed his eyes and thought about his nails being normal. When he opened his eyes again--his hands looked as they had when he had entered the room.

“Excellent, Potter!” McGonagall praised him, something rare for her. “That’s enough for tonight, I think. We’ll practice that every night after dinner, in here, until you build up your speed. You should go back up to Gryffindor Tower now. I have a meeting. Good night!”

Suddenly, he heard Sandy hissing under his robes, saying, “A cat will meet with a beetle.”

Harry stopped and turned, “Professor,” he said, “by the way, speaking of Animagi and all--what exactly is Rita Skeeter doing these days?”

McGonagall looked shaken, as though he had read her mind about what she was about to do. “Why--I can’t discuss that with you, Potter. The fewer people who know about that, the better.”

He’d thought he’d gotten one over on her. Oh well... “Good night, Professor.”

“Good night. Oh, and Potter? Have you given any thought to what animal you’ll be choosing? You’ll need to do a great deal of research on your animal of choice, learn everything you possibly can about it.”

“Er, no. I’ll start thinking about it. Good night.”

He passed out into the Great Hall again, checking his watch--he’d been contemplating his fingernails for an hour-and-a-half, apparently--and went back up to the Gryffindor common room. As he entered, Colin Creevey put a camera in his face and took his picture with a blinding flash. Harry threw up his hand before his face, too late, groaning, “Colin--” Great, he thought. Colin was doing the whole Harry Potter Fan Club thing again.

“He’s been taking pictures constantly,” Lee Jordan explained from one of the tables; he was writing out pithy comments for the first Quidditch match.

“I’ve got a penfriend at a wizarding school in America, and I’m sending him pictures of all my house mates. But I’m also giving copies to whoever wants them. I got a good one of George and Angelina I’m giving them.”

Ron and Seamus and Dean were ignoring Colin when he took their picture, sitting at a table with copies of the Anthology of Muggle Literature open before them, but they were actually playing Exploding Snap. At another table, some first years were being told horror stories by some second years about the castle ghosts. Hermione and Parvati and Lavender were sitting by the fire discussing the witches in MacBeth, and Ginny was sitting cross-legged in a corner reading a potions text. In another corner, George sat in an armchair talking to Fred, who was on the floor, while Angelina sat draped across George’s lap also casually talking to Fred. They seemed so natural and easy with each other, Harry thought. They made a good couple. When Colin took their picture again, they ignored him.

Harry sat on the floor next to Ginny, looking around the room, feeling pleased with himself, then wondering what animal he would become. A stag like his father? No, that wasn’t right somehow. Think, think...

“What are you thinking, Harry?” Ginny’s voice came suddenly. He jerked his head up, having forgotten about her.

“Oh, something for Transfiguration...” he said lamely, but truthfully. “What animals do you like? If you could--become one--what would you choose?”

“You mean like an Animagus? Oh, I don’t know--” her face lit up suddenly. “There are so many good ones. A bird, maybe, like a hawk or an eagle. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to fly like that? Or perhaps a horse; running with four legs looks so wonderful. Why, what would you choose?”

Then he looked up and the first thing that met his eye was the lion above the fireplace opening, on the keystone. “What about a lion?” he said, turning to look at her.

She regarded him shrewdly. “You mean like the Gryffindor lion? With a mane and everything? That’d be really beautiful...” she trailed off, looking at him. Their eyes were locked somehow. Suddenly a bright flash went off out of the corner of Harry’s eye, and he realized Colin had taken their picture. He turned away from Ginny and rose.

“Well,” he said abruptly. “I have revision to do. Bye,” he said heading for the stairs. On the way, he noticed Hermione looking at him oddly. When he reached the fifth-year dorm room, only Neville was there.

“Oh,” he said stiffly, “Hello, Harry.”

“What are you reading, Neville?”

“King Lear.”

Harry nodded, not wanting to have a more protracted conversation with Neville at this point. He sat down and got out some parchment and a quill and ink, writing down, Hawk, Eagle, Horse, Lion. He looked at the list. Surely he could think of more possibilities that that. He pictured Ginny’s face when she’d talked about flying--but then, he kept coming back to the lion...

He lay back on the covers, trying to picture his father as a stag, and him running beside him as a lion...but a lion would hunt down and kill a stag...He shook his head. No; as far as he knew, he’d still be intelligent enough to be able to control his animal instincts and avoid hunting like a real lion, or hawk, or eagle...The horse was the only animal on his list that was more prey than predator, he realized. He needed to consider this choice very carefully. He changed for bed and closed his curtains, lying back in the darkness, picturing his fingernails...