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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26078 -:- 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 Nine—Best Served Cold (Part Two)
            “Mr. Potter, stay after class, please.”
            Minerva walked around the desk to approach Harry, who had promptly sat down and was looking at her with a patient expression, as if he would wait for years if she wanted him to. Minerva sighed a little as she stopped in front of him. She was the only one who saw even that much of an expression, she thought. The other professors had started to complain that Harry would just sit there and stare at them with empty eyes, or blank ones.
            “I want to talk to you about the difficulties you’re having Transfiguring one object into another,” Minerva said. “I know you can do well. I saw you do it last year. It seems odd to me that you’re having more problems with second-year than first-year work.”
            Harry blinked. Then he said, “I can’t sense the Wild in those objects, Professor McGonagall.”
            “But you couldn’t sense the Wild in the objects you Transfigured last year, either,” Minerva felt compelled to point out. She tried to ignore the uneasiness that swirled up her spine like a cold wind. She had kept an eye on Harry since the beginning of the year, and the fear had climbed.
            Which was ridiculous. Because Harry did nothing overtly wrong. The only professor he ever received detentions from was Severus, and Minerva had come to believe that that was based on things like Harry having the temerity to breathe in his presence. He didn’t sneak into the Restricted Section, he didn’t seem interested in Dark Arts, he didn’t bully other students, and he didn’t cheat on exams.
            The strangeness of it, Minerva thought, was that she was used to students who were going wrong in one of several specific ways. This time, it was only her intuition with nothing else to back it up. It was like trying to explain to someone else exactly what the scents she smelled in her Animagus form were like.
            “Yes, I did, Professor McGonagall,” said Harry, and blinked at her again. “They were always there.”
            Minerva studied him some more, but she didn’t think this was cheek. Harry spoke as if it was obvious, when, as far as Minerva knew, Wild had never appeared in any object-to-object Transfiguration. As she had told Harry a year ago, it happened only—if it happened at all—when one end of the Transfiguration was a living being. Human Transfiguration, always. Animal-into-animal or animal-into-object or object-into-animal, always. But not when one was changing a button into a discus, or a chair into a wall.
            “I want you to show me one of the Transfigurations you did last year,” Minerva said at last, and reached down for a sheet of parchment Mr. Smith had left behind. She folded it carefully into a small paper cat, the one of these she was best at. She put the paper cat on the desk in front of Harry. “Turn it into wood.”
            Harry drew his wand and stared at the cat for a second. Then he shook his head and looked up. “I’m sorry, Professor. I didn’t do one of these. I did an owl, though. Can I fold a paper owl?”
            “Yes,” said Minerva, and stepped back, watching intently as Harry’s fingers nipped and tucked the paper. No, he did nothing that she could detect there. Sometimes a child’s desire to impress a professor manifested as accidental magic that got in the way of their actual school performance.
            But there was none here. It was an ordinary paper owl that Harry put down on the desk and stepped away from.
            His body seemed to acquire a kind of stillness that Minerva had never seen in him before, even as quiet as he usually was. He aimed his wand at the owl and hissed out, “Commuto chartam lignum.”
            The paper trembled and rippled as the spell raced over it. Minerva stared hard, and replayed the memory of the incantation she’d just heard in her mind. There was nothing wrong with either his Word or his Wand technique.
            His Will, she couldn’t see, but she thought Harry didn’t lack determination.
            And no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see or sense any of the Wild.
            Harry opened his eyes. Minerva hadn’t seen them close, but she was struck by what she saw in them when they were open. There was a bottomless well of purpose there, as though Harry was going to do whatever was necessary no matter what. Minerva felt it like a dagger pressed against her throat.
            Yes, she could safely say there was nothing wrong with his Will.
            Minerva reached out a hand, as if she could help Harry with the weight that determination must put on his life. But by then, the spell had already struck the paper owl and splashed back. The owl swayed but remained in place.
            Harry blinked. “I should have been able to do that,” he said. “There was Wild there last time. There must have been.” He shrugged a little and turned back to Minerva. “Do you think I should practice, Professor?”
            Yes. I don’t know why you need to practice, but I know there is something wrong here.
            “Yes,” Minerva said aloud, and rose from her half-seat on the table. She would have liked to spend more time talking with Harry, but she had a training session with Mr. Longbottom coming up. Albus was concerned that the boy’s lack of Transfiguration skills might hinder him in future battles with You-Know-Who. Minerva had to admit there was something to that. The boy’s battle with the troll last year would have been much easier if he could have Transfigured something instead of simply hitting the troll with the club. Even that Charm had been hard for him. “Small objects only. Transform buttons into different kinds of buttons, rags into handkerchiefs, pieces of rope into pieces of string. Can you do that?”
            “Yes, Professor.” Harry didn’t seem disturbed. He gathered up his books and slipped out of the classroom.
            Minerva watched him go, the worry stirring to life in her again. From the way she had come to understand Harry, he should have been upset at the failure of his spell. He cared too much about success to simply accept such a failure.
            But instead, he had…gone on.
            Minerva couldn’t spare too much time worrying about it, though. She recognized Mr. Longbottom’s footsteps outside the door, and had to arrange her face in as calm and welcoming a smile as possible, so she wouldn’t frighten the poor boy further.
*
            “You never did talk to the Captain about getting on the Quidditch team,” Boot said, and flopped on Harry’s bed beside him, scowling at him.
            Harry, who had been petting Amicus while he studied a book of spells that would change the mice’s physical characteristics, turned and blinked in surprise. “Er, no, I didn’t,” he said finally. He was surprised Boot was bringing this up now, instead of the last argument they’d had.
(Boot thought Harry spent too much time studying. Harry had slipped the cover from a larger book of fairy tales over his smaller fifth-year Transfiguration one, a trick he’d pulled sometimes with the Dursleys when he’d stolen one of Dudley’s books. Boot had found out and been upset. Harry didn’t understand why he had even wanted to look).
“Don’t you want to be on the Quidditch team?”
            At least it seemed Boot was giving him time to explain. Harry rolled on his back and let Amicus climb up and set on his stomach, something he liked doing and couldn’t do a lot because Harry was usually sitting up while he studied. “No,” he said.
            “Why not?”
            Goldstein looked over at them curiously. He was involved in his Defense essay at the moment, but Harry knew from experience that he might come over and get involved in the conversation. He got bored of Defense essays quickly. At least this year, with this teacher, Harry couldn’t blame him.
            Harry tried to keep his voice low as he said, “Because I don’t really like Quidditch. I like flying, but that’s not the same thing. And I would rather spend my time studying than playing Quidditch.”
            Boot sat up and stared hard at Harry. Harry squinted back, and let Amicus nibble around his fingers.
            “I was right,” said Boot a second later, shaking his head. “There is something wrong with you.”
            Harry shut his eyes. He was trying to remind himself that this was Boot, not the Dursleys, and hear those words in a voice that wasn’t theirs. “What do you mean?”
            “Who wants to study instead of play Quidditch?”
            “Me.”
            “I didn’t mean that.” Boot bounced impatiently on Harry’s bed, making Harry glad that there was so much space under them. That was where his mice hid. “You’ve been here a year, Harry, but I can’t remember seeing you do anything but study. Well, and help me study.”
            “And go to meals,” Harry said. “And the bathroom, and class, and detention—”
            “That doesn’t count,” said Boot. “Everyone does that.” He scowled for a second. “You’re even different with detention. Everyone who’s worth anything knows that you don’t deserve the amount Snape gives you.”
            Harry shrugged, and said nothing. If the book he was reading could deliver on what it promised, he would get some revenge on Snape.
            “You worry me,” Boot said softly, and bent over to look into Harry’s eyes. Goldstein had gone back to his essay, so Harry lay still and let him do it. “I think the real question we need to ask is why you’re only interested in studying.”
            “No,” said Harry. “The real question we need to ask is why it worries you so much.”
            Boot sighed and flopped out so he was lying beside Harry. He scratched Amicus’s back. Amicus made no objection, but then, he was neutral to people Harry tolerated. “Because I think you ought to have a life?”
            “Why would playing Quidditch be a life?” Harry had to ask. “I mean, more than Gobstones or chess? If I was interested in them, would you be satisfied, or does it have to be Quidditch for you not to be worried?”
            He let his voice get sharp on the last words, because he was honestly pretty exasperated. Boot rolled over and looked at Harry thoughtfully. “Chess could be a start. Do you want to learn how to play chess?”
            “No.”
            “Then I’m still worried.”
            Harry sighed and looked away from Boot. “You don’t have to be,” he said, and his voice was still sharp. “I’m not going to do anything that would lose House points for Ravenclaw. Or get you in trouble. Or Anthony or Michael.”
            He thought that would satisfy Boot, but for some reason, it only made him sit up with an arrested expression on his face. “That,” he said quietly. “You really think—you think that’s the only reason I’m concerned about you?”
            “What else could it be?” Harry asked, baffled. It wasn’t like Boot knew how bad his life with the Dursleys was, or how much Harry wanted his parents back.
            Boot said, “You—” and stopped. He stared at Harry with the weirdest expression on his face, and then he turned away and walked over to his bed. He shut the curtains behind him without a glance at Harry.
            “You messed up, mate.”
            That was Corner, who so rarely said something like that Harry turned around. “Why?” he asked, so exasperated by now that it hurt a little. “I only told him the truth.”
            Corner gave him one more solemn look, and then curled up with his own Charms essay. Goldstein had drawn his curtains, too.
            Harry shook his head and pulled his own curtains shut. Amicus squeaked at him and rubbed his nose against Harry’s cheek.
            “Humans are strange,” Harry told him earnestly, before paying more attention to his book. Making mice thirsty was probably exactly what he needed.
*
            Harry slipped quietly out of Ravenclaw Tower. He had grown more and more used to doing that over the last few months, and now, it was even easier. Since the monster from the Chamber of Secrets, whatever it was, had paralyzed Filch’s cat, most of the students went everywhere in groups or huddled together in their common rooms as much as possible. No one was outside to see where Harry went.
            That must be at least partially because Boot isn’t talking to me as much.
            Harry sighed a little. Part of him regretted that. Boot was acting as though they’d had a major fight, like the ones Harry and Dudley used to have, snapping at Harry all the time and slapping his books down on the table in every class except Transfiguration and Potions, because neither Professor McGonagall nor Snape would have tolerated that. And the other Ravenclaws were sort of drifting away from Harry, too.
            But not as much as they are from Longbottom.
            Harry shook his head as he moved quietly towards the dungeons. The poor boy. Everyone thought he was the Heir of Slytherin, simply because he’d talked to a snake at the Dueling Club. Harry admired him for being a Parselmouth. It would sure be a useful gift, to be able to speak directly to animals instead of having to work around them with spells the way Harry did.
            And Harry thought animals were better than people, anyway.
            But as sorry as Harry felt for Longbottom, he couldn’t help him. He had his own quest. Longbottom’s quest was to destroy the Evil Lord Dudders. Harry hoped he would.
            Harry reached the dungeons without running into anyone, and stopped in a small alcove to empty his pockets of mice. They scurried in front of him, keeping to the shadows, darting back to squeak in a specific pattern if anyone was up ahead. But Harry only had to hide once, and he finished the journey in front of Snape’s quarters.
            Or, more specifically, the closed door of Snape’s private supply of potions.
            It had taken some spying through mice and on his own to find out that it existed, and where the door was. Harry had known that Snape kept finished potions, of course. But they might all have been in his office, or his quarters, or in the hospital wing. Harry hadn’t known for sure there was a separate door in the dungeon walls until he sent Amicus to actually check.
            Harry knelt down and cast a wary look at Snape’s quarters. He knew Snape wasn’t there, because he was supervising a detention for Ron Weasley and Longbottom. Still, there might have been a spying portrait or detection spells that would find him.
            Nothing scraped. Nothing shrieked. Harry finally turned back to the dungeon door and turned out one more pocket. These were specially altered mice, Transfigured a fortnight ago and filled with the spells in the book Harry had been reading. They had sleek black fur and shining eyes.
            They sat in front of Harry, on their haunches, and twitched at him.
            “You know where you’re going,” Harry whispered. He knew they did, and they didn’t really understand his words as such anyway, but it helped him deal with the pounding surge of excitement rising in him. “Go get him.” He tapped his wand on the mice and cast the final spell, the one he couldn’t have used before now, unless he wanted the mice to try drinking everything in sight. “Bibilus.”
            The mice glowed for a moment with soft brown light. A second later, they were flowing under the door into the private cupboard.
            Harry smiled and closed his eyes. He’d also spied a little on Madam Pomfrey, and made sure that the potions here weren’t ones she needed in the infirmary. But it didn’t seem so. Apparently Snape brought the vast majority of things like Skele-Gro and Boil Cure Potions to her right away, and it was only his own private stores of whatever he brewed that went here.
            Snape thought a single room where he could keep an eye on it was more secure than one in the classroom or one in his quarters, which apparently had tempted students to try and break in on a regular basis several years ago, when he did keep them there. Harry had found out that convenient little fact from Iverson, who still talked as much as ever.
            “A single stone door,” Iverson had whispered, leaning across the table, “with powerful magic on it that people can feel, stops a lot more students than a single door he can’t charm that way. Professor Snape has to be available to students all the time, you see, since he’s a Head of House. That means he can’t arm the door to his quarters that strongly, because someone might have to knock in an emergency when they need him. So students who wanted to steal potions would try to break in in the middle of night and disturb his sleep. So Professor Snape did this, and…”
            Harry stood up. It would be stupid to linger here too long. He turned and moved back up out of the dungeons, mice scampering along and before him.
*
            Severus stood in the doorway of his private storage cupboard and stared in silence.
            He had opened the door and stepped on a cork. Then another. Then yet another.
            All the corks that sealed his potions were lying on the floor. They had been neatly wrenched out of the necks of his flasks, vials, and in some cases, for the larger potions, bottles.
            Severus took in the extent of that disaster—because it was a disaster simply to uncork some of the potions without the proper precautions, as the scorched and blasted walls showed—in silence. Then he looked up.
            In the vial or flask or bottle of each potion that hadn’t immediately had a bad reaction on contact with the air floated the body of a mouse. Each one was bloated with liquid. They had apparently plunged into the potions and drunk as much as they could before they died.
            Of course, their bodies had further contaminated the potions. Fully three-quarters of Severus’s private supply was useless now. The only potions that had survived were the ones in steel containers, which the mice hadn’t been able to chew through or tip over, and the few that didn’t have wooden corks.
            Severus stepped back and looked at the corks on the floor. Yes, when he bent down, he could see the small toothmarks on them. He supposed it was possible for mice to pull them out. There was simply no mouse who had ever wanted to.
            He was balanced on a delicate pinnacle of rage. He had felt the spells quiver some time ago, but he had been involved in supervising a detention at the time, and had ignored the sensation. Students did sometimes still challenge the spells he’d implanted in the stone door. They were welcome to try.
            In fact, he’d left the detention in a good mood, looking forwards to finding someone imprisoned in webbing that tied them to the door. Now he knew it had been the more volatile potions exploding. The spells he had put on the door had held up against them.
            But the work that had been here, the lost months and months of work…
            Severus carefully shut the door behind him, so no one outside could hear what he did, just as no one had heard the potions exploding. Then he snarled a promise of vengeance.
            “Whoever you are, I will find you and I will destroy you.”
*
            “There’s something weird about that Potter boy, though. Really.”
            Blaise Zabini dropped his head into his arms. “Shut up about Potter, Draco. Please. He’s nothing special. Half-Mudblood, parents who won’t ever be coming out of the Janus Thickey ward, doesn’t do well in Potions so he can’t challenge you, doesn’t play Quidditch like you do, doesn’t matter. Just be quiet about him.”
            “Look at it this way,” said Theodore Nott, on the other side of the table, glancing up from his dinner. His hair looked unwashed, as usual, Draco thought with a sneer, and unlike Professor Snape, he didn’t have a professional reason for it. “As long as he’s obsessing over Potter, he’s not obsessing over the Heir of Slytherin.”
            Draco ignored Theo entirely, staring across the Great Hall at the Ravenclaw table. He and Potter were two students who had signed up to stay during the Christmas holiday. Draco knew that Potter would go to hospital to see his parents. There was no other reason he would remain. He didn’t have family wanting to spoil him, so there was no reason to go home.
            It was so strange. Sometimes Draco thought he understood Potter. He wouldn’t want to go home if he’d been raised by idiot Muggles, either. But he and Potter were so different otherwise that then Draco would be uncertain, unsure if he could really trust his senses around Potter.
            It drove Draco mental.
            Potter stood and made his way to the Hall’s door a few minutes later. He had a rat on his shoulder, and he seemed to be talking to it as he walked. Draco rolled his eyes. Then he smirked as he noticed none of the other Ravenclaws running after Potter, the way they would have last year. That just proved even Potter’s own Housemates thought he was weird.
            Maybe he is really mental, maybe he got it from dear old Mum and Dad. Maybe that explains everything, and I can stop being paranoid that Potter is hiding something.
            But Draco shook his head a little. Everyone had said Potter was brilliant in Transfiguration last year—although this year, that didn’t seem to be the case—and someone mental couldn’t be good at the art that required the highest concentration of Construction. Potter had some other secret. Or he was mental in some way that wasn’t obvious.
            Draco was going to find out what it was. His irritating friends would leave during the holiday, and he would have lots of time alone. He wasn’t making any progress in his search for the Heir of Slytherin, so he might as well look into Potter.
*
            Harry sighed and sat back against the wall of his dungeon workshop. He always practiced his object-into-object Transfigurations for half an hour before he began his animal ones, because he had promised Professor McGonagall. But he wasn’t getting better at them.
            He knew, he knew he had sensed Wild last year when he Transfigured those objects for his parents’ gifts and his Housemates’ gifts. In fact, he had felt it again when he did it this year, creating a small wooden rose for his mother and a wooden Quaffle for his father. For a moment, he had felt the Wild flickering around him, like a crystal wind, and the paper objects had smoothly changed.
            But when he tried again, later, on a button, nothing happened.
            Harry didn’t know what the difference was, and it bothered him a little. He didn’t want to disappoint Professor McGonagall.
            It was only a little, though. Far more important was getting his animal Transfiguration right for the next time he went to Privet Drive.
            Harry turned and faced the heap of rags he had carefully gathered together, along with needles, small stones that would heat when he cast a Warming Charm on them, velvet, and more small stones for the muscles. They didn’t look like the paper animals he had learned to create, but on the other hand, they represented what he would need to create a living animal in a different way. Rags for a general body. Needles for claws. Glowing stones for glowing eyes. Velvet for fur. Muscles to leap and spring and hunt.
            Harry closed his eyes. The spell reared up inside him, his Will. Then he twisted his wand through the incantation, flourish after flourish, as if he was trying to draw a four-petaled rose in the air, and the words rolled out of him. Wand and Word had to be perfect, and Harry still muttered Latin to himself and practiced wand movements during detentions with Snape, and, lately, any class with Lockhart.
            “Commuto abundantiam felim.”
            The words struck out from him, accompanied by a thrill of Wild. Harry opened his eyes and watched in growing excitement as the magic wreathed around the rags, and they began to turn darker. There was a white patch on the animal’s chest, and the glowing stones became a pair of eyes near the floor. As Harry watched, the beast’s head rose, and the eyes blinked, while more fur sleeted over the body and it became real.
            There was a cat there, when he was done. A cat with green eyes and black fur like the kitten Uncle Vernon had killed.
            Harry bent down. The cat toddled towards him on shaky legs for a second. Amicus had already retreated to hide in Harry’s pocket.
            Then the cat leaped and locked its claws on Harry’s face, biting his neck savagely.
            Harry cried out and fell back, utterly stunned. The cat snapped and surged around him, trying to bite him and leap over his head at the same time.
            Then it squealed. Amicus had risen out of Harry’s pocket and bitten its tail.
            Harry whipped around and tossed the cat from him. It landed in a corner and shook itself furiously, before hissing at him again. Harry expected it to run away, looking for an exit, but instead it acted like it would charge him in a second.
            “Finite Incantatem.”
            Harry knew his Wand and Word work were perfect, but it still took him a minute to get the necessary Will, and the cat had closed the distance between them by then. Harry almost got a bite on his hand before his magic struck the cat and it dissolved, back into the rags and needles and other things he had made it from. The stones clacked and rocked as they settled back on the ground.
            Harry sighed as he sat down and stroked Amicus’s back in thanks. So much could have gone wrong. He would need to think through the theories and decide which was the likeliest.
            He’d been envisioning a kitten, but he’d tried to turn the rags into an adult cat instead. It could have been a failure of his imagination.
            Cats weren’t social creatures, while rats and mice were. Perhaps his magic couldn’t make a cat loyal to him in the same way.
            He’d been focused on revenge, instead of creating something that would help him survive or ultimately help his parents, the way the mice and Amicus did. Maybe that meant he had to think of the cat mostly as something to help him survive or help his parents.
            But he had to admit, if it was that one, it would be harder. He had wanted a cat because he wanted another pet.
            Harry smiled down at Amicus while Amicus nuzzled his hand anxiously. “Yeah,” Harry muttered when the felt the blood slide down his face. He would have to heal his wounds, or someone would wonder why he’d vanished down into the dungeons looking healthy and come back up with a scratched face. There were a few more Ravenclaws staying for the holiday this time. Harry thought they wanted to research the Chamber of Secrets and the Heir of Slytherin.
            He would have to look up a few healing charms before he could do that, though. For now, Harry pulled the hood of his cloak up to shield them and started for the door.
            He opened the door of the workroom and immediately paused. There was someone, or something, off to the side. Watching him.
            Harry didn’t want to alert the watcher that he knew they were there. He stepped out into the corridor and whistled innocently. Then he strolled a few steps away, and heard steps behind him.
            The whistle summoned one of his mice. They scampered past the person, who let out a shriek of horror and disgust.
            Harry smiled, spun around, and launched Amicus from his shoulder. Amicus leaped into the shadows, leaped up again, and then twisted. Harry could only see his tail for a second, flickering at the edge of the torchlight, but then Malfoy staggered into view, batting at Amicus, who had a tight grip on his earlobe.
            Harry stood there and laughed until Malfoy grabbed Amicus, at which point he walked up to Malfoy and jammed his wand into his throat. Malfoy froze, staring at him.
            “I don’t think so,” Harry said. “Hurt my friend, and I’m going to make sure you suffer.” He held out his arm, and Amicus ran up his fingers and back onto his shoulder. Then Harry turned back to consider Malfoy.
            He knew a couple of ways of making sure that unwanted observers would suffer, but unfortunately, they were beyond his power. The safest would be the Memory Charm, but Harry had never studied how to cast it.
            “My father will hear about this!”
            Then again, sometimes Malfoy had good ideas, and maybe Harry should just adopt his tactics.
            “No, he won’t,” Harry whispered. “Because you still have to sleep in the dungeons, right? The dungeons that I’ve shown I can get into.” He traced his wand gently around Malfoy’s throat, aware that Malfoy had stopped exclaiming and shouting and was watching him with sheer, horrified fascination. “The dungeons I can walk in and out of and not have any trouble with. And I have a rat, Malfoy. A rat who can creep under doors.” He was whispering now, leaning towards Malfoy, and Malfoy was swaying a little. “A rat who can climb your bed. A rat who can bite you other places than your earlobe.”
            “Potter…”
            What Malfoy was about to say could not possibly have been interesting, so Harry ignored him and went on. He found Malfoy’s jugular and traced his wand over it. “Do you know how quickly biting through this can cause you to die?” he asked. “I’ve studied it. Your blood just pours out. The rat that bites through your jugular would come quietly. It would come into the bedroom, and then it would leave again, and no one would ever know what had happened.”
            “Potter…”
            This time, Malfoy sounded sufficiently frightened. Harry moved a step back and smiled at him. “Or you could keep quiet,” he said. “About something you don’t have much to say about, anyway. I came out of a classroom no one uses. My pet rat attacked you for screaming. What is it going to be, Malfoy? You keep quiet and go to Madam Pomfrey about your earlobe, or you explain—what little you have to say, and then you die?”
            Malfoy’s eyes were as large as Longbottom’s got when he was struggling with a Potions essay in the library. Harry watched him, and watched, and saw the moment when Malfoy surrendered to his fear. He squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered.
            “I’ll do what you say and keep quiet.”
            “Good.” Harry patted Malfoy on the cheek and stuck Amicus in his pocket. Then he ambled away.
            He knew Malfoy was cowering at his back. And he knew he had made an enemy who could prove dangerous. Dudley always was, the times that Harry managed to hide or make him look stupid. Uncle Vernon had always been looking for some way to get back at Harry, last summer, for threatening him. Harry had had to shore up the fear, again and again.
            He would just have to do the same with Malfoy, at least until he could competently Obliviate him.
            But even if the worst happened, and Malfoy told someone, and Harry got—well, he wasn’t entirely sure what could happen to him, other than detentions. He didn’t think he would get expelled, unless everything was left up to Snape. Then it was possible.
            But Harry knew how to study on his own, now. He was doing more studying on his own than studying for classes, another reason he had started to fall behind on the more everyday kinds of Transfiguration in McGonagall’s class. Harry was sorry to see the way she frowned at him.
            Being sorry wasn’t going to heal his parents, though. Which meant, in the end, it wasn’t worth much.
*
     Kain: Unfortunately, Harry not caring about friendship kind of backfired on him here. But he still just…doesn’t care, which means it’s up to Boot now.
Yes, Harry is taking the step into using his animals for more things.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning