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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Eleven—The Way of the Wolf
            “It’s going to be different around here this summer, boy. If you think for one minute that I’m going to let you—”
            “I never thought you’d just let me, no,” Harry said, as he stepped through the front door of the Dursleys’ house with Cross on his shoulder. “That’s why I just have the plan to take what I want. Ultimately more painless for everyone, even if you don’t believe me.” He gave Vernon a sharp smile.
            But Vernon’s eyes were fastened on the kitten. Harry had been a little worried he wouldn’t remember the one he’d killed, which would mean Harry had wasted some time making Cross look the way he did. From the color Vernon’s face was turning, though, he remembered exactly.
            “Get that thing out of here,” Vernon said, his voice so weak Cross could meow louder than it.
            “No,” said Harry. He stroked Cross’s side, and Cross stood up and meowed the way Harry had been just thinking of. “I’m going to step back, and Cross is going to jump at you, I think. His claws are pretty sharp. I think maybe he could take out an eye with just one scratch. I know he could rip open a nostril—”
            There was a complicated movement from off to the side, and Amicus jumped up on Harry’s other shoulder, already in position to strike if he had to. Dudley didn’t try to punch Harry, though. He got in between Vernon and Harry.
            “Don’t h-hurt my d-dad.”
            Dudley was blubbering, and his eyes were almost shut, and he made stupid little jabs with his fists in the air that wouldn’t have hurt Harry even if they were coming anywhere near him. But Harry had to pause and look at him with some respect anyway. He’d never thought Dudley capable of doing anything like this. It was as if Draco Malfoy had suddenly acquired some bravery.
            “I won’t if he leaves me alone,” said Harry. Dudley probably thought he would attack instead of talking, because he didn’t stop jabbing for a second. Then he dropped his hands and stared at Harry. “That means,” Harry said softly, and met Vernon’s eyes over Dudley’s shoulder, “that he stays out of my way. He doesn’t threaten me. He doesn’t starve me. He doesn’t assign me chores.”
            Vernon tried to bluster one last time. “If you think you’re going to laze around instead of earning your keep, boy, you need to think again!”
            Cross crouched on Harry’s shoulder and wriggled his little butt the way he would if he was jumping on a mouse. Harry nodded and smiled, and then Cross almost sailed off his shoulder towards Vernon.
            Only almost, though. Harry had practiced this with Cross before they left Hogwarts, and Cross’s claws were caught in the shoulder of Harry’s jumper. Vernon had covered his face with his hands and was yelling with all his might.
            “All right, all right, I’ll leave you alone!”
            “Good,” said Harry softly. He eased Cross back into his first position and glanced at Dudley. “And maybe you ought to ask your dad why he’s so scared of a little black kitten with green eyes. It might be interesting to find out.”
            Dudley just stood there, bewildered. Harry took his trunk and his wand and Amicus and Cross and the collection of mice in his pockets upstairs. He smiled as he went.
            He thought this was going to be a very good summer.
*
            It was.
            Harry had his army of mice to bring him food, and Amicus and Cross to keep him company. And Cross lay on his stomach and purred, and Harry petted him, and felt for the first time as if the wound ripped open in him when Vernon had killed his kitten was being soothed.
            The Dursleys left him alone, and didn’t even look at him, other than Dudley, who kept giving Harry confused glances when he thought Harry wasn’t looking. Whenever Harry looked back, gently and steadily, Dudley would turn pale and waddle away.
            Harry couldn’t practice his magic with a wand, but he could practice his Latin, and his wand movements with a stick, and his theory. He read more and more about the Wild, and he read Muggle books about the brain.
            He ran into a problem when he did that, though. Most of the Muggle books agreed that drastic personality changes could happen when you damaged your brain, but they didn’t know how to change them back. There were studies and experiments and therapy, but not enough healing.
            Harry thought about that as he lay in his bedroom on hot summer days with the window wide open—the bars were gone—and no locks on the door and watched Cross sleeping in the sunlight.
            I don’t want my parents not to be themselves. I don’t want them to be shadows I made up, or slaves.
            Harry read, and read. The application of charms for healing the brain had been tried, and had failed. Most Mind-Healers concentrated on people who had Memory Charms on them they wanted to break, traumatic memories they wanted to deal with, or people with some specific disease, like the aftermath of the Imperius Curse. They shrugged and left the mad patients alone in the Janus Thickey Ward.
            Harry tapped his feet on the bed, and watched the shadows pass across it, and read more about Transfiguration.
            If anyone had ever tried Transfiguration for healing the brain, Harry couldn’t find a mention of it. Most wizards didn’t seem to assume that the minds of mad people had suffered a physical wound. It was all mental and spiritual and magical.
            There was physical Healing magic, but that was only for regular Healers, not Mind-Healers. Harry couldn’t find anything in his books, or the ones he ordered by owl—his uncle staring at him, but not daring to protest—that indicated the disciplines had ever been combined.
            So the problem with what I want to do, Harry decided as he lay there stroking Amicus while Cross went out hunting grasshoppers and the like, is that no one’s ever done it before and most of the research I would need doesn’t exist.
            As the days turned on and he read more, Harry knew he had to decide whether the risk was going to be enough to deter him.
            And his mind turned more and more to the experiments detailed in the book from the Restricted Section. The experiments that Professor McGonagall would be horrified if she knew about. Although Harry knew that without really knowing why. Professor McGonagall turned things into animals and then back all the time. If you created a living being from an object, did you have to treat it kindly? Did Transfiguring it back into a desk or rags or whatever count as treating it kindly?
            Sure, Harry treated Cross and Amicus and most of his mice kindly. But he’d also created the mice that had drowned themselves in Snape’s potions.
            In the last days of the summer, Harry made his decision. He would take the risk. If he went wrong and caused permanent damage to himself, well, that was just too bad. What else did he have in the world, except his parents? Who would love him, except his parents?
            Why else do I exist, except for them?
*
            “Harry…Potter.”
            Harry blinked. The new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was strange, he thought. He’d reportedly paused on Neville Longbottom’s name, which was usual for everybody, but he also stopped and stared at Harry when he said his name, and that was unusual.
            Terry frowned at Harry. Harry lifted a shoulder. He supposed everybody was entitled to be strange in one way, and Professor Lupin was reportedly nice and taught important lessons. Harry thought he might make more of an effort at Defense this year.
            When Professor Lupin showed them the boggart, he had Michael go first. Harry winced as he watched Michael walk to the front of the line. He was so timid; the boggart might easily disorient him. Supposedly Longbottom had been able to manage his just fine, and he was timid too, but then, Longbottom had received specialized training.
            The door of the wardrobe flew open, and a writhing shape flew out. Harry squinted. For an instant, it seemed that the boggart couldn’t decide what form it wanted to change into. Harry watched in interest. It looked a bit like the cat that he’d made before Cross. Perhaps boggarts might be fun to Transfigure.
            Then the shape finally formed itself into Michael’s rat, lying on the floor, dead. Michael gave a great gasping cry and backed away from it.
            Lupin bent down next to Michael and whispered something; Harry could only make out the word of the incantation he’d already showed them. Michael aimed his wand and stuttered. The rat shape didn’t change.
            The second time, with Lupin leaning on his wand arm and guiding him, Michael said, “Riddikulus!” correctly.
            The dead rat turned into a circus of rats playing ball, walking tightropes, and running around wheels. Michael smiled, and Professor Lupin smiled back at him and motioned him out of the wall. Padma, who was next in line, started to step forwards.
            But Professor Lupin said, “I think we need Mr. Potter up here.”
            Harry blinked again, and ignored Terry’s glance. He didn’t have any information to share with him. Maybe Lupin had heard that Harry hadn’t done well in the class last year and wanted to test him now.
            Harry had to admit he was curious to see what his boggart would be, too. He suspected, but he wasn’t sure, and it was useful knowledge to have about himself.
            The boggart danced in front of him when he approached it, and Harry stopped and let it have some room to recover itself. The circus of rats still writhed and lashed their tails for a second until they faded, and then what appeared—
            Harry stepped back before he could stop himself. His parents stood in front of him, and they didn’t look the way they did in St. Mungo’s. They looked the way they did in his dreams, whole and healthy and healed.
            Except they were sneering at him.
            “I didn’t know my sister had that much sense,” said Mum, shaking her head so her lovely red hair fell down and touched her shoulders. “She said you were a freak, and she was right.” Her voice cut Harry like a diamond. She sniffed and glanced at Dad. “Wouldn’t you have thought Petunia would be wrong, dear?”
            Dad nodded, and Harry found it harder to meet his eyes because he was looking through glasses that resembled Harry’s almost exactly. “About our son? Of course. But he really is a freak. That magic he’s using, the fact that he doesn’t have any real friends…”
            Mum said something else, but Harry couldn’t hear it. He heard his breathing instead, through a heated rushing in his lungs that hurt. He reached out with one hand, not sure what he was reaching for, only knowing that Amicus and Cross couldn’t save him from this.
            Professor Lupin’s voice suddenly appeared in his ear. He sounded shaken himself, but maybe that was only because boggarts weren’t supposed to talk. “Remember the incantation, Harry! This isn’t real. The boggart preys on your fear. It can be understood and defeated. Think of something funny about this and say ‘Riddikulus.’ I know you can.”
            Harry opened his eyes. It was hard to think of anything funny about this. This had been something he secretly worried about all the time when he was a child, even when he thought his parents were dead. If he ever met them, they would just agree with the Dursleys and laugh at him.
            But, he remembered, his real parents were lying in St. Mungo’s, and they were relying on Harry to save them. They wouldn’t approve at all if he was defeated by such a shallow, pathetic image when he needed to be strong.
            Harry aimed his wand. He found an image at the back of his mind, one he had imagined when he was far younger, and snapped, “Riddikulus!”
            Colored smoke flew all around the boggarts. When it cleared away, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were standing there in awkward wizard robes, with masks of his mum’s and dad’s faces dangling from around their necks. They backed up as Harry glared triumphantly at them, and then huddled on the floor away from him.
            Professor Lupin cleared his throat. Harry turned to him. He thought the professor looked a little pale, but he gave Harry an encouraging smile anyway. “Very good, Harry. Five points to—Ravenclaw. Now, if you’ll move out of the way and let Mr. Boot have a turn?”
            Harry did, and watched Terry walk forwards while calming down his breathing. Terry’s boggart turned out to be an ordinary giant worm with sharp teeth, and while Terry screamed and turned it into a small worm squashed by a giant boot, Harry could calm the ringing in his ears and convince himself he wasn’t going to faint.
            And notice Professor Lupin’s faint, curious looks that kept coming back to him whenever someone wasn’t actually defeating a boggart.
*
            Minerva knocked briskly on Remus’s door. When she had found out who Albus’s choice of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor to tutor Longbottom was that year, she had been first shocked and then pleased. It would be easier for Remus to run away from her in letters than it would be face-to-face.
            Remus opened his door. He looked haggard and pale, but he’d just had time to settle into the demanding routine of the school year. Minerva was sure that she’d looked far worse her first year here. “Yes, Minerva?” he asked, and smiled.
            “I wanted to talk with you about Harry.” Minerva smiled and stood there immovably. Unless Remus was actually sick, then she would wait until he invited her in.
            Remus stiffened, in a way that Minerva couldn’t mistake. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Well—won’t you come in?”
            “Thank you,” said Minerva, and eased in, looking around. These had last been Quirrell’s rooms, and Minerva couldn’t imagine that Remus would have left up either the garlic or any signs of the man’s secret allegiance to You-Know-Who.
            Nor had he. Remus had Transfigured most of the walls into bookshelves, and made a few alcoves that held cages of Dark creatures. He also had a shelf that seemed to be full of varieties of teas and nothing else. Minerva smelled cinnamon as she watched him fiddle with a kettle.
            “Your first lesson was inspiring,” Minerva told him as she leaned against the huge chair in the middle of the floor. Remus kept his back to her, hands moving in a finicky way over the tea. “My Gryffindors could hardly stop talking about it, even in Transfiguration.”
            Remus turned to her and smiled, the first sincere smile Minerva thought she had seen from him in years. “Thank you.”
            “And how did your first session with Mr. Longbottom go?” Minerva knew Albus had invited Remus to tutor Longbottom at least partially because of his expertise with Dark creatures and the fear that You-Know-Who might use vampires or werewolves in his assaults. But she hadn’t heard a whisper about how well Remus had actually managed to teach the boy.
            “I can’t believe he’s Frank’s son.”
            Minerva smiled a little. “Yes, Neville is his own person. But that doesn’t mean he’s hopeless.”
            “His lack of confidence is going to cost him more than anything else.” Remus turned to her with a frown and a full teacup. Minerva accepted it, as well as the chair he motioned her to in the next second. “I don’t understand how he can have gone through all that special training and still be most afraid of Severus. If he doesn’t fear You-Know-Who most of all or failing the wizarding world, do we have a hope?”
            “Because Severus is a danger he sees on a daily basis, while the most impact You-Know-Who has yet had on his world is taking away his parents.” Minerva sipped a bit of her tea and smiled. Remus did know how to brew it.
            And she had the perfect segue to Harry. “I am glad that Neville was able to grow up with his grandmother, at least,” Minerva added, crossing her legs. “Although I don’t think she did much for his self-confidence, either. But another boy grew up with relatives who treat him badly.”
            Remus looked at her and then away. “You mean Harry.”
            “Yes.”
            Remus shuddered. “His boggart was horrible. James and Lily calling him a freak and saying his aunt was right about him.”
            Of course it would be. Minerva closed her eyes and struggled to speak around the stone in her breast. “Then you see how that indicates he should be taken away from his relatives. Muggles who call a wizarding child a freak merely for having magic shouldn’t be trusted with a wizarding child.”
            “Albus told me there was no other alternative. And the Wizengamot looked very thoroughly into James’s relatives. I do remember that.”
            “There was an alternative.”
            Remus cracked the cup with the force of his squeeze. He started, and Minerva cast the charm that dried the spilled tea, and then Reparo on the cup. If she let Remus get up and start cleaning, he was likely to evade the issue she was trying to bring home to him altogether.
            “So,” said Minerva, when she had waited a few minutes for Remus to say something and to refill his cup. He had done the second thing, but not the first, and he sat with his head turned away from her, as if she had asked him to do something shameful. “I think I know now why you didn’t want to care for Harry.”
            “I wanted it,” Remus whispered dully. “I wanted it with every fiber of my being. But it would have meant—it would have meant admitting that I was a werewolf in public.” He turned around. “That’s already something I can’t do if I want to keep this job.”
            It was Minerva’s turn to start. “I assumed that the Board of Governors must know.”
            “No. Albus presented them with my school records, which never showed it, and the records from the education I had in Defense in France, which never mentioned it, either, because no one there knew.”
            Minerva closed her eyes. She hated to push against this old student, one of the few people who still remembered Lily and James as they should have been, and Sirius Black laughing with the wind in his hair. But she had no choice. “If you adopted Harry, you would have enough support from his Potter vaults to raise him. You wouldn’t have to keep a job among prejudiced people who would sack you for something like that.”
            “I prefer working and living on my own. And—” Remus’s voice turned ragged. “I don’t think I would be so good for Harry.”
            “If his own relatives called him those names—”
            “Minerva.” Remus waited until she was looking at him, which took longer than Minerva would have liked. She’d had to conquer the traitorous tears that stung her lashes. “The Harry I saw today in class is like no one I thought he could become. I would never have known he was the child of James and Lily if it wasn’t for his looks.”
            Minerva took a long moment to speak. She had to be sure the words were right. “Blaming an abused child for what he’s become to survive is something I thought beneath you, Remus.”
            Remus shook his head. “There’s something cold in him, Minerva. I’ve already heard the ranting from Severus about how Harry doesn’t try in any class except Transfiguration. I assumed you must have noticed.”
            “He is very lonely. He cares more for theory than almost anything else. And about his parents most of all.”
            “That’s not it. There’s still something—the way he walked forwards to the boggart, he didn’t look frightened or tense or even curious. He was so detached. And he didn’t respond to me as a person, either. The others did, all peering at me and muttering about whether I would be better or worse than Lockhart. Not Harry.”
            “He’s very self-possessed,” Minerva began.
            Remus interrupted her again. “All right, I didn’t want to bring this up, but—Minerva, he smells wrong.”
            Minerva sat up at once. “As though he has some illness? As though someone has been hurting him?” Remus had once brought her a story of smelling blood on another student in his year who had turned out to be abused, although at the time Minerva hadn’t known he was a werewolf and Remus had claimed that he’d accidentally ingested a potion that sharpened his senses.
            “No,” said Remus. “Parts of him don’t smell human. And he stinks like someone who’s been around the Dark Arts, but not the same. As if he was using poisoned Potions ingredients.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Minerva. I can’t explain it better than that.”
            “So you won’t try to take him from the Dursleys,” said Minerva heavily. In the end, that mattered more than the smells, although Minerva would be talking to Harry about those.
            “No.” Remus sipped at his tea again. He sounded composed, and terribly sad. “I would have given anything when he was a child. But now—I don’t think I would be good for him, Minerva. I’m not strong enough to raise a child who’s been dabbling in the Dark Arts without prejudice. I go Dark myself once a month, and I’m afraid of what would happen if I lost control around Harry. I don’t even know if I’ll have a regular supply of Wolfsbane over the summers. Severus refused to brew it until I actually set foot in the school. I didn’t have it during July or August.”
            “Severus Snape,” said Minerva precisely, “is a partial, prejudiced, ignorant man.”
            Remus’s tired smile still had the potential to transform his face. “He is. But—Minerva, I know you think I’m a coward, and I’m sorry. But I don’t like the smells around Harry, and I’m prone to reacting the wrong way to people who smell wrong. Sometimes it’s justified, the way it was when I smelled Darkness on a wizard who later tried to murder people in the village I was staying in. But it wouldn’t be with Harry. But I might still do something that would make him worse off than he is now.”
            “You don’t trust yourself,” Minerva finished.
            “Yes,” said Remus, and drained his cup.
*
            Harry closed his eyes and curved up and up and up on his broom, up into the region of the air where his nostrils stung and his eyes ached. Then he turned and fell back into the trees, into the embrace of the Forbidden Forest.
            The book from the Restricted Section had made it clear that he would need certain stones for his experiments. Not just the collection of pebbles he’d used to make Cross and his other cat. They would have to be bigger than pebbles, for one thing, and they needed to have veins of quartz or other highly reflective material. Maybe flakes of mica.
            Harry had searched diligently around the school, and found nothing. It was time to take his search further afield, into the wildest place he knew.
            He landed in the center of a small clearing with rocks scattered all around, and distributed mice from his pockets. They arranged themselves at the edges of the clearing, ready to squeak a warning if they sensed anything dangerous. Then Harry busied himself looking for the right stones.
            He was examining a grey rock the size of his fist with glittering specks in it when a hoofbeat sounded and a mouse squeaked from the left side of the clearing at the same time.
            Harry turned, crouched slightly with his wand in hand. His claws were ready to shoot out if he needed them. Harry kept his hands Transfigured at all times now, since he had figured out the best way to create claws that wouldn’t get in the way of his ordinary activities. It was just easier that way, in case a sudden confrontation happened.
            The centaur that paused in front of his mouse stood with one hoof upraised, nocked bow and arrow trained on him. Harry waited. He had got used to walking with the extra muscles in his legs by now, and since he’d so cowed the Dursleys, he hadn’t actually needed to use them during the summer. He might now.
            “What are you doing in a place marked by the stars?” the centaur asked. He had a chestnut coat and a long tail that swayed slowly back and forth. Harry had no idea what that meant.
            He didn’t know what the centaur’s words meant, either. He shook his head. “Looking for objects to Transfigure.”
            The centaur waited again, this time as if he was consulting with someone in the back of his head. Then he said, “That is not an acceptable answer.” His raised hoof quivered and came down on the ground.
            Later, Harry realized he was probably only going to come closer, not shoot. But he was paranoid enough not to care, and his enormous leap, using the muscles that graced his legs and gave them some of a kangaroo’s power, brought him soaring out of the path of the arrow.
            He landed on the other side of the clearing and whirled around. The centaur had stopped. The arrow remained pointing at the place Harry had been before. Nor did the centaur move it as the mice flowed over to Harry in a small tidal wave.
            “What are you?” the centaur asked in a musing tone. “Not part goblin. You would not stand so tall. You would be marked by the dust if you were part fairy. None of the other heritages I know fit in, either.”
            “I’m partially Transfigured.”
            The centaur lowered the bow finally. “It is not many humans who expect to adopt parts of an animal heritage when they become masters of Transfiguration,” he said.
            “I suppose I’m an unusual human.” Harry didn’t mind that. It was hardly the worst thing he had been called.
            The centaur considered him some more. Then he said, “I am Corwin. I am guardian of this part of the forest, and I have been watching the stars for nearly a century. They did not predict that one such as you would come.”
            Harry shrugged, not caring about that. He had chosen to take Care of Magical Creatures for the obvious reasons, and Ancient Runes because he thought it might let him understand more about designing the spells he would eventually need to. He knew nothing about Divination, and his Astronomy classes hadn’t talked about the way you could use stars to predict anything.
            “You smell strange,” said Corwin, and pawed the ground with the hoof he’d raised before. “What are you doing?”
            Harry thought about it a second. There was still that bow, and he thought Corwin could probably gallop more quickly through the forest than Harry could leap. He also hadn’t even known there were centaurs living in the Forbidden Forest as more than a rumor. If anyone would keep Harry’s secret to themselves, it was them.
            “I’m looking for ways to practice Transfiguration on human brains so I can heal my parents. They have brain damage from the Cruciatus.”
            Corwin stared at him. Harry looked back, and he was a little amused. It was the first time he had ever said it aloud to anyone besides Amicus and Cross, and neither of them was with him now, because neither of them liked flying.
            “Do you know,” said Corwin, and then let the words drift on the breeze. After a moment, he said, “You do know. You know how dangerous it is. I can see that in your eyes.”
            “Yes.”
            “You will do it anyway.”
            “Yes.”
            “Why?”
            “Because what matters are my parents, and restoring them to health. Not me.”
            Corwin took a step back. Harry thought he might trot into the forest, and welcomed that. This was a little amusing, but he needed to get on with finding the stones he needed. He had a study session with Terry at three, and Terry was one of those annoying people who would always notice when Harry was late, although he would make all the excuses in the world if he was late.
            “You should reconsider,” said Corwin, his voice a distant, deep boom, like muffled thunder. “Whether you wish to pursue such a dangerous course.”
            Harry shook his head. “I’ve already thought of every argument someone might bring up against it. There’s nothing I want except this.”
            Corwin studied him some more. At least he hadn’t aimed the bow again. But Harry wondered what in the world could interest a centaur in him. Was it just that he hadn’t seen someone who wanted to Transfigure his parents’ brains before?
            “You walk in the light of the blood-red dancer,” said Corwin. “But your rage is directed against fate, and life.” He shifted his weight so that his back was facing the forest he’d come out of. “It would be well for you if you had more concrete enemies.”
            Harry raised his eyebrows. “Is the blood-red dancer Mars?” Professor Sinistra had said something last year about how planets were sometimes called dancers.
            “Yes. Find another enemy.” Corwin sounded as grave as Harry thought Professor McGonagall would, if she ever found out about this. “Someone you can defeat. You need the defeat before you can advance.”
            And that sounded like the sort of typical riddles that Harry knew were associated with centaurs. He smiled, said, “Thanks for the advice,” and crouched down to study the stone flecked with mica again.
            “I know what you do, Harry Potter. And it will corrupt your soul.”
            Harry shrugged. “I don’t think there’s much of my soul left to corrupt, Corwin. But thank you for the concern.”
            The centaur didn’t speak again. By the time Harry chose three suitable stones and stood up, he was gone. Harry almost left without looking where he’d stood, either. But a gleam of light caught on something that didn’t look simply like a hoofprint, and Harry strolled over to see it.
            It was a hoofprint, after all, the first of a series of them that made an abstract design on the ground. Harry studied it. It took him a few seconds, because of the angle and the odd material it was made of and the poor light, but eventually he recognized one of the elementary runes he’d started learning a month ago.
            Wynn. It meant “joy.”
            Harry blinked. Then he shrugged again. Maybe Corwin was trying to protect himself from whatever Darkness he thought lay on Harry’s path by writing the rune. Or maybe he thought that centaurs led joyful lives and Harry wouldn’t have one.
            Whatever it was, Harry didn’t need to concern himself with it. He mounted his borrowed school broom, and did have one brief moment of heart-stopping joy, before he flew back to the Quidditch pitch and put the broom away in the supply shed.
            Terry was watching the Ravenclaw team practice on the edge of the pitch; he ran up to Harry at once, beaming. “Did you change your mind about trying out for the team?” he demanded.
            Harry shook his head and smiled at his friend. “No. I was busy looking for spell components.”
            Terry rolled his eyes. “You’re the most exasperating person I know, Harry,” he said, but he sounded fond instead of upset the way he would have last year. “Come on.” And he dragged Harry into the school, and up to their study session, which easily enabled Harry to banish thoughts of centaurs and runes and even the experiments he wanted to do from the front of his mind.
*
            He had gone through every mind in the school, including those of the first-years who had entered a month ago and were extremely unlikely to be involved in any misdeed to do with his potions, unless they were the younger brother or sister of a conspirator.
            And still Severus did not know who his enemy was. Still no one had spoken up and claimed the credit to identify themselves.
            That surprised Severus most of all. He had thought any Gryffindor, like the Weasley twins, who had come up with such a clever prank would be unable to resist bragging. A Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff might have been quieter, but they would still have whispered to friends, who would whisper to others. Little stayed secret in Hogwarts for long.
            Severus did have a choice, though, one that would not have been open to him last year. He knew that Minerva had given the Granger chit a Time-Turner, of all the outrageous gifts. He could not borrow it himself to go back to the time of the attack, because Time-Turners would not operate over such a long span as ten months, but if he could use some of the sand from its hourglass, he could brew a Retrocognition Potion that would enable him to see who had done it.
            And in return for borrowing the Time-Turner for the hour or so it would take him to collect sand without damaging it, he would agree to keep quiet about what Minerva had done.
*
            Harry smiled as he watched the Slytherin common room door open. It had been easy enough to locate it, for all that the Slytherins believed they were so secretive. They still had to train and trust people like Crabbe and Goyle.
            Malfoy came out, adjusted his heavy robes, and strutted towards the Great Hall. It was Halloween, and of course he decided he should wear dress robes to the feast, Harry thought as he trailed along behind him. Malfoy was ridiculous. At least his ridiculousness had worked in Harry’s favor this time, by making sure that he had lagged behind the rest of his Housemates.
            Harry moved softly behind him. They got around a corner, and the stairs leading up to the entrance hall came into sight. Malfoy moved a little faster, with a disdainful glance and sniff at the shadows around him, as if he couldn’t imagine what would threaten the Great Draco Malfoy.
            But he had still glanced around.
            Harry stepped to the side and let one of his claws rasp on the wall, harshly enough to draw Malfoy’s attention. He turned around and went white. Harry wished suddenly that he’d thought about having Amicus sit on his shoulder. It would have made Malfoy’s expression the perfect terrified one.
            He didn’t want to waste time, though, and so he didn’t call Amicus out of his pocket. He simply aimed his wand and murmured, “Obliviate.” His study of Memory Charms had advanced to the point where he could comfortably cast it, finally.
            From the rumors floating around near the end of last year, Harry now thought he could have asked Lockhart for help. He hadn’t known then, though.
            The Memory Charm struck Malfoy dead-on, and Malfoy swayed and stood there with blank eyes for a second. Harry put his wand away and approached. When he thought he was close enough, he stared at Malfoy and said, “You don’t remember anything about the location of my workroom or what you saw when I came out. You were in bed asleep that evening. And you slept late tonight, too.”
            “I…slept late,” Malfoy murmured, swaying a little more. Harry nodded and patted him on the shoulder, keeping his claws retracted.
            “You did,” Harry confirmed, and then he turned and slipped down the corridors towards his workroom, more than pleased with himself. In seconds, he was at the door of his workroom and stepping inside.
            He put down the stones with flecks of mica and studied them for a second. Then he nodded and opened up the book from the Restricted Section. Cross was already asleep in a corner of the room, but he came awake and purred at Harry as he sauntered over. Harry petted his head absently as he studied the book.
            He had the stones. He would need particular leaves, too, including ones from plants that probably didn’t grow in the Forbidden Forest. Harry bit the corner of his lip, thinking. He’d never paid much attention to Herbology, but he knew Longbottom was a genius at it.
            And even though Harry wouldn’t really say he and Longbottom were friends, they were people who knew each other. He didn’t think Longbottom would mind helping him get these leaves, including some mandrake ones.
            After the leaves would come other ingredients, ones that might actually take him all year to gather. Amber with a creature imprisoned inside—and it had to be a spider, not any other type of creature. Pure marble carved for a statue’s head but not actually used. A broken black rose.
            He might not be completing his experiment this year after all.
            Harry stood still, and ignored Cross’s worried purrs, as his emotions broke across him. The first was relief. As if part of him didn’t want to do this experiment, had never wanted to do it. And that was strange.
            He knew what he had to do. He’d accepted it. That meant he was committed to going ahead no matter what.
            After all, even if he Transfigured his own brain, that was only one. How else was he going to know what spells worked if he didn’t also Transfigure some objects into a human being?
*
Kain: Thanks. Writing this story is also emotionally trying for me at times.
Chester: Thanks. That’s certainly what Minerva and Remus think is happening, although whether Harry would use traditional Dark Arts like the Cruciatus is up in the air. I hope this chapter at least shows how he could get to the Dark Arts through Transfiguration.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning