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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
- 7
- 8
- 9
Thank you again for all the reviews!
This is the first of a small series of transition chapters, covering the time from Harry’s first year to his fifth.
Chapter Eight—Best Served Cold (Part One)
            “I never knew you could carve like that.” Boot sounded choked-up, for some reason. Harry lowered his book and turned to him, trying to look like he understood what Boot was talking about. “Thank you.”
            Then Harry saw the wooden owl Boot balanced on his palm. It was the Transfigured paper owl Harry had made and sent to him for Christmas. Harry hadn’t thought it took much effort, and surely Boot would sense that. After all, Harry had been reading so much about animals that drawing and folding pictures of them was easy.
            “You’re welcome,” said Harry, and because Boot kept looking at him and seemed to expect something, he put a smile on his face. “Thanks for the sweets you got me.”
            Boot lunged at him suddenly. Harry almost raised his wand, but Boot just grabbed him around the waist and hugged him wildly. Harry stared over his head and patted his back and hoped Boot would let him go soon.
            He did, although not soon enough to prevent Harry from feeling like he should shake himself and check to make sure that he still had all his skin—or Boot had all his brain cells. “You really do care,” said Boot, and smiled at Harry. “You really are my friend.”
            Harry didn’t see any reason to say he wasn’t. After all, Boot had got that gift for him, and the way he worried about Harry seemed to say he was concerned about him, for some reason. So he shrugged and said, “You’re welcome. I am.”
            “Good,” said Boot, and spent the rest of the evening talking to him about several charms he didn’t understand. Harry tried to help as best as he could. He really wasn’t as good at Charms as Transfiguration, though. He just didn’t spend that much time studying it, and whenever he’d mastered the charm Flitwick was showing them this week, he would repeat Latin names to himself and read a book about animals under the desk anyway.
            Boot did look a little startled when Amicus launched himself from the bed to Harry’s shoulder and sat there grooming his fur, but then he smiled. “You’re making friends with someone else, too.”
            “Yes,” Harry said, and the way he touched Amicus seemed to say something else to Boot, too, because his smile got wider.
            Harry thought that people were strange.
*
            The next time Harry managed to produce an animal with an incantation, it was a mouse. Amicus waddled up to it—really, he was getting too fat with all the food Harry gave him—and touched his nose to the mouse’s whiskers, then squeaked his approval.
            Harry relaxed. He hadn’t realized how much he’d waited for that approval until Amicus actually gave it.
            For months, Harry had been studying a book that he’d found on the border of the Restricted Section in the library, one that seemed to have been left there by mistake. It didn’t have any illegal spells in it. Professor McGonagall had taught Harry some signs for recognizing illegal spells—anything that talked about pain, for one thing, and anything that talked about body fluids collected from other people—and this book had nothing like that. It was just about shaping Transfigured animals to your desires.
            Harry could do what he’d wanted with some of the spells in here. He could change rags and bits of wood and thorns and other things he collected into mice. He could make them all loyal to him, and even faster than normal mice, if he had the patience to hold still and enchant them one by one.
            And sneakier. And smarter.
            Harry looked down at the mouse, who had come up beside Amicus and sat there watching Harry with small, bright eyes. Harry nodded gravely back to him.
            He was going to have an army of mice. And they would increase on their own, if he made them carefully. Transfigured animals, Harry had discovered in his reading, couldn’t usually have babies. They weren’t made carefully enough; people didn’t imagine wombs and genitalia and all the rest of the things Harry was finding in his careful reading.
            And he could do lots of things with an army of mice, besides learn more about Transfiguration. Harry did know that he wanted revenge, on the Dursleys and other people. He’d been careful not to do or think much about it, though, because it would get in the way if he couldn’t do anything about it, and his goal of healing his parents was always going to be more important.
            If he had an army of mice, though…
            Harry smiled, and Amicus sat up on his haunches. The mouse followed a second later, glancing sideways as if it wanted to learn how by imitating Amicus.
*
            “I hope you don’t think things are going to be any different just because you have Dudley’s old bedroom, boy.”
            Things are going to be a lot different, Harry thought. He could feel Amicus in his pocket, and his trunk was packed full of mice shrunken enough that they could fit through a keyhole. But he only nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” when Uncle Vernon glared at him through the car mirror.
            Uncle Vernon grumbled and swore and talked to himself some more. But Harry got what he wanted: his wand and trunk and Amicus and a few of his Transfiguration books into his bedroom. Uncle Vernon would have taken the trunk to lock in the cupboard, but Harry had already prepared for that. He’d Transfigured a bit of dust into a wasp on the train, and when he set it free of his pocket near the door, Aunt Petunia—who hated them—was so hysterical that Harry sneaked his things right past her.
            Best of all, the Dursleys didn’t know that Harry couldn’t do magic during the holidays. So by the time Uncle Vernon did figure out that Harry had his wand, he was too nervous to take it away from him.
            Harry sat down on Dudley’s old bed and looked around. Last summer, he’d only seen the broken toys and wondered what it would be like if they were whole and he could play with them. Now, he saw the room as full of things he could Transfigure. And he smiled.
            Amicus popped out of his pocket and sat on his knee. Harry stroked his fur and tapped his fat belly.
            “You’re going to lose some of that, running around,” he told him.
*
            “No breakfast.”
            The Dursleys said that. But bacon disappeared from their kitchen and appeared on Harry’s bed, carried by a rat who had got good at popping in and out under Harry’s door.
            “No lunch!”
            Aunt Petunia said that, wagging her frying pan back and forth as if trying to frighten Harry into compliance. But tiny mice bolted into the kitchen and came back with lettuce that Aunt Petunia had put out for sandwiches and then forgotten about because she was leaning out the window to watch a neighbor, and the end pieces of the bread that none of the Dursleys wanted and didn’t care to pay attention to, and slices of tomato that Dudley rejected when his mum tried to put him on a diet. Harry had a nice sandwich, looking out the window and murmuring Latin names for plants to himself.
            “No dinner!”
Uncle Vernon bellowed that at him when he started getting suspicious about the disappearing food, but he also knew that Harry had been locked in his bedroom all day, so he couldn’t blame him. But Amicus showed himself, once, to frighten Aunt Petunia, who ran screaming hysterically out of the kitchen, and most of the steak disappeared upstairs. Harry had eaten it in three bites, and given what remained to Amicus and the mice, and then they had all disappeared into the trunk and into the small shadows that rodents found to hide in, so by the time Uncle Vernon came storming upstairs, Harry was lying on the bed staring listlessly at the ceiling.
They tried putting Harry on one can of cold soup a day. Mice had already escaped into a neighbor’s garden and triumphantly carried off strawberries growing there, and others had gone across the street and found an apple tree that Amicus had climbed. Harry had to teach him how to yank on stems, but once he understood that, there was a merry fall of apples into the garden and a steady stream of them coming back to Harry through the window. The bars the Dursleys had put on the window wouldn’t have let Harry climb out between them, but they were more than wide enough to admit fruit.
Harry gave most of his soup to Amicus, who liked it better than he did, the fat little thing.
It was amazing, the places mice and rats could go, and other than the times that Amicus appeared to scare the piss out of Aunt Petunia, no one ever noticed them. Harry thought of something Professor McGonagall had told him about animals, and why so many wizards found Transfiguring objects into them hard to master:
“Most people don’t pay much attention to animals, Mr. Potter, other than their own pets. Even we, who live closer to them than Muggles do, don’t know as much as we once would have, in the days when horses pulled our carriages and dogs hunted our rats and hawks hunted prey for us. We keep magical creatures at a distance except in specialized contexts like a few classes and potions shops. And chopping up an animal for the apothecary is hardly the best way to learn about it. We have exiled animals from our world.”
            Harry noticed them, though. He had animals fetching his food and watching him while he taught them things. He showed them how to break stems, what certain plants and leaves looked like—there were useful Potions ingredients even in a Muggle garden—and what fallen feathers looked like. Harry thought he might be able to trim some of the feathers and make his own quills. Even if he couldn’t, then he would learn a lot about birds from looking at them and touching them and tracing their shapes.
            He wanted to make a bird soon.
            People said mice and rats were dirty. It was why Aunt Petunia ordered the exterminators to come in (Harry had already taught Amicus and the mice not to eat anything except what he gave them, so the exterminator’s poison didn’t affect them). Harry wondered, sometimes, what Boot or Goldstein would say, if they knew Harry was eating food that rats and mice had carried. He didn’t think Corner would care so much, because he had a rat.
            But the Dursleys thought Harry was dirty, too, and a freak, and an animal. Sometimes Uncle Vernon even called Harry a rat when he was in a particularly bad mood.
            Harry just thought the food tasted delicious, and although he didn’t eat as well as he did in Hogwarts—except when he broke out some of the food he had smuggled back from Hogwarts—he ate a lot better than he ever had when he lived with the Dursleys.
            His birthday was a surprise. But otherwise, that summer was going a lot like Harry had envisioned it, living with his animals and learning more about the theory of Transfiguration than he thought some third-years knew. He was quietly pleased with his life.
*
            “You know I can do nothing until either the boy or his guardians complain, Minerva. I am sorry, but that is the way it is.”
            Minerva sat wearily back in her office chair and played Albus’s final sentence over and over in her head. Writing letters hadn’t got fast enough results for her. She had finally gone to Albus and told him directly her fears—and the extent of her small knowledge—about Harry’s living situation at the Dursleys.
            Albus had listened, and Minerva had known he wasn’t dismissive. In fact, his eyes had clouded and he’d bowed his head. He blamed himself, in part, for the condition of Lily and James. If he hadn’t told them to go in hiding, he thought, You-Know-Who wouldn’t have targeted the Potters.
            Minerva had nothing to say about that. She had never known exactly why the Potters had been targeted, or why Albus had told them to go into hiding, or why Pettigrew had betrayed them, except that he had been a Death Eater. She knew only what she should know, and she wasn’t one of Albus’s closest confidantes in the Order of the Phoenix, even if she was in Hogwarts itself. Severus was closer, among other people.
            Frank and Alice Longbottom had been closer still.
            But Albus had shaken his head slowly at the end and said, “The Wizengamot did a detailed search for Potter relatives, Minerva. There were none who were not either dead or doddering. Or—” He shivered a little. “I suspect that you would not have wished for his Black relatives by marriage to gain custody of the boy.”
            “No,” said Minerva unwillingly. Most of the Blacks had been dead, too, or married to Death Eaters. Walburga Black had died only seven years ago, but she had been insane long before the end, from the stories Sirius had told Minerva of his mother.
            “So. The Dursleys were the best choice, the only one that had any close blood in common with the boy.” Albus sighed. “I could have intervened, I suppose, if I had known that the Dursleys might be so unsuitable, and pushed to have one of the distant Longbottom or Weasley relatives considered. But their blood is more distant than the Wizengamot found acceptable at the time, and now—you know what would happen if I tried to raise the issue.”
            “Yes,” Minerva snapped. One of the things she had learned that most annoyed her, when she was trying to do research on laws that might have helped Harry, was the horrible consequences of a badly-worded law that had been passed two decades ago. Any “blood past the second degree” needed to meet special considerations of age and suitability for raising a child. The Wizengamot had interpreted that to mean “blood past the second year,” because the handwriting of the person who had transcribed the law really was that bad. Albus could only have avoided a protracted legal battle with the Wizengamot by acting within the first two years after the attack to have Harry placed with someone other than the Dursleys.
            “It’s one of the things that I always meant to change, when I had time.” Albus’s voice was wistful. “In the meantime, Minerva, you could do a lot worse than you’re doing. The boy needs a champion like you.”
            “Yes,” Minerva repeated, unwilling again.
            Albus had always been sensitive to her moods. “Is something wrong? Do you think the boy in imminent danger of death or serious wounding from his relatives?”
            Minerva hesitated, wishing she could tell him what she feared, if she even had the right to be afraid.
            Harry was intelligent. He was fitting in better with his House, Filius had told her in confidence, than he had at first. Filius had been worried about him when he was first Sorted. He had thought Harry was arrogant, and then he had thought he was shy, and then he had thought he was damaged. But he seemed reassured as Harry spent more time with his yearmates and asked older Ravenclaws about research and books and sections in the library.
            Minerva didn’t see Harry as often as Filius did. She saw him only in one class. They’d had a few private talks, not many, including the one at Christmas. Minerva found Harry brilliant, not simply intelligent.
            But only when it came to Transfiguration. Filius said that he did well in Charms, but not as brilliantly as his Patil girl. (Minerva, who had found herself having to prod her Patil girl through several detentions for not completing homework, could only envy him). Minerva had seen for herself that Harry had marks in Potions below the Malfoy boy and Miss Granger, who was Minerva’s pride and joy in her own House. Harry was apparently good at flying, but didn’t spend much time at it. He was average in History, average in Astronomy, average in Defense Against the Dark Arts—although there, Minerva was more inclined to blame Quirinus’s teaching.
            He was as normal as anyone could expect when he’d been brought up by abusive Muggles. Maybe more. If he asked Minerva questions that she thought fifth-year students would find challenging, well, many students had a pet obsession or hobby. Harry probably knew no more about Transfiguration than Ron Weasley did about Quidditch.
            But still, the feeling remained. Harry was so self-possessed, so quiet. Minerva had the strange feeling that he merely went through the motions, that school wasn’t for him, despite the amount he was evidently learning. He was always looking towards something else, getting ready for something else.
            If only I knew what it was.
            “Minerva?”
            And Albus was still waiting on her, and how long had she kept him sitting there? Minerva shook her head. “I’m sorry, Albus. I was just trying to think of whether there were any open signs of the abuse that Harry would be willing to talk about, and I don’t think so.”
            “Then we can do nothing until he does complain.”
            “I could write to Remus Lupin again,” Minerva offered.
            “Do you think he’s likely to say something different from what he did the first time?”
            “No,” Minerva admitted stiffly. She remembered Remus as someone with a kind of gentle strength, which he’d used to survive being a werewolf. But she had to wonder now how much of his strength had been his friends. With two dead, one a traitor, and two of them confined to St. Mungo’s for the rest of their lives, he seemed to have surrendered to weakness. His letter had explained, in twenty rambling paragraphs, how hard he found life and how it would be no life for Harry.
            “Then it would be useless.” Albus shook his head. “Continue trying, Minerva, if you would. I know you said Mr. Potter trusts you. He might tell you things that he wouldn’t tell anyone else. In the meantime, I have a message from Neville’s grandmother. She said that Neville is refusing the training again.”
            Minerva nodded, her chest aching. She had done what she could during the year to bring Neville’s self-confidence to new heights, but it hadn’t been enough. She thought that Neville answered with greater ease in her class, and he was doing Transfiguration spells better than before.
            That didn’t make up for the way he trembled and turned pale in every other class except Herbology.
            “I wish our times did not demand the pain of such young ones,” Albus whispered, and then the Floo closed.
            Minerva turned around with a more determined expression. If she could not give Harry immediate physical safety, she would give him mental safety. She could at least distract him and make his summer more interesting than it would have been otherwise.
*
            “BOY!”
            Harry turned his head, surprised. He’d spent most of the day in his bedroom, and then when Uncle Vernon came home, he’d sent Harry out to work in the garden so he would “stop lazing around.” Harry had been out there since, pulling weeds and watering flowers and trimming back the rosebushes. He didn’t know what Uncle Vernon could have found to make him so upset.
            Amicus popped his head out of Harry’s pocket. Harry shoved him back down and hurried into the house.
            “Yes, Uncle Vernon?” he asked, and then saw the row of owls on the windowsill.
            They had all cooperated to carry large books, it looked like. The titles were somewhat hidden by the owls’ wings and the way they were sitting, which twisted the books, but Harry could tell they were Transfiguration texts from the partial words he could see.
            He couldn’t hide his smile.
            “You KNEW about this!” Uncle Vernon bellowed. He was spluttering so hard that spittle flecked Harry’s face. “You knew—you and your owls—I am going to hurt you—”
            He’d threatened that before. Harry knew that most of the time, the threats didn’t mean much. Uncle Vernon would just bluster and not actually do anything to him.
            But Harry thought he might take the books away. The way he’d taken the black kitten away that Harry had had once.
            Harry drew his wand.
            Uncle Vernon choked on air when he saw it. Then he backed away, shaking his hands in front of him and trying to say something. Aunt Petunia, who’d come into the drawing room to see what was going on, ended up cowering back. Harry didn’t see Dudley around.
            Harry didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say anything. He took a step forwards, his eyes locked on Uncle Vernon’s.
            “You can’t—boy, put that down—” Uncle Vernon was trying to speak in a friendly tone, Harry thought, but he’d been too angry for too long. A second later, he was back to being angry. “Put that down this instant!” he shouted, into Harry’s face again.
            Harry lowered his wand. But this time, he held up his left hand and unsheathed his claws.
            It had taken him months to work out the right way to do the claws, to make sure they weren’t obvious and they wouldn’t bother him with using his hand in an ordinary way if he had to. But probably because the Dursleys barely looked at him anyway, they hadn’t noticed.
            Now Harry had the claws unsheathed. They were hooked and black, more like an eagle’s claws now than a tiger’s. Harry had done some reading about birds at school before he had to leave for the summer. He knew an eagle could crush someone’s hand if they struck hard enough.
            He might not have an eagle’s strength because he had only changed his fingernails and not his entire hand, but wouldn’t it be fun to find out?
            Harry was moving forwards. He could feel Amicus stirring in his pocket, but he would stay out of sight. He had his claws. Under his big, baggy clothes, covering him all over, were enormous flaps of loose skin. They would absorb some of the energy like cloth if Dudley punched him, or even if Uncle Vernon beat him. Harry had tried for stone-hard skin, but he’d only managed a little patch, near his elbow, and then he couldn’t turn it back. He thought the pouches were better.
            He had his wand. And he had his rage.
            “Please…”
            Harry stopped. He knew that he couldn’t just back down now, though, or Uncle Vernon would get angry and take it out on him later. So Harry said, and made his voice remote, “You’ll let me keep the books and take them upstairs. And you won’t touch the owls.”
            “Yes. Yes.”
            “You won’t touch me or my things.”
            “Yes. Yes.”
            Harry watched Uncle Vernon a little while. Then he said, “Good,” and lowered his hand, and sheathed the claws again. He turned away and walked over to gather the books for the owls. Some of them hooted in confusion and tried to look at his left hand. Harry shooed them gently off and took the books upstairs.
            Once he was in the safety of his room, he found the note from Professor McGonagall, explaining why she’d sent them.
            Harry sat there a while, thinking about that. Then he closed his eyes and sat there for a long time, stroking Amicus, and letting the mice gather around him.
*
            Minerva opened the note from Harry with some trepidation. It would make sense if Harry, independent little being that he was, just refused her gifts, even though she had timed them to arrive on his birthday.
            The note simply said, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
            Over and over again.
            Minerva lowered it slowly, and breathed out through her mouth. It was strange, yes. But she could feel the depth of the sincerity radiating from the paper.
            The only thing I can do is teach him and try to help him. I can’t predict what he’s going to become. He might never become anything as bad as what I fear.
            And even if he does…
            Minerva squared her shoulders. She liked to think that she had pulled a few students from the madness or the darkness that might have consumed them after the first war. She could do it with another.
            He loves Transfiguration. That proves that he isn’t only interested in Dark Arts or casting Dark spells. I’ll reach him through that.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning