Chapter 109 — Learning to Stand Again

I took a moment before saying I was ready. The ordinary door remained behind me, offering a route to McGonagall and another wait if I chose it. Nothing in the room compelled me to stay. I made that choice, then drank the draught and placed the empty vial on the table’s near corner.

With brush and paper, I moved onto the mat. I indicated the intended direction, released the charged strip before my chest and spoke clearly: ‘Amato, Animo, Animato, Animagus.’ The paper caught, and I let the brush drop clear of the mat. For an instant the warmth resembled the daily preparation before it went through me.

My knees struck the padding. I heard myself cry out and tried to shape the breath into something I could control, but the distance between my shoulders and hands was suddenly wrong. The room tilted with me while muscles tightened in places I could not name. My jaw would not settle where it belonged.

I expected pain without understanding what that expectation required. Remembering the whole human shape at once became impossible amid smaller sensations, so I reached for one familiar thing and held it. My name was Oswald Mercer; I could remember my hands on a table, five fingers round a pencil and my face above the washbasin.

One detail led towards another while the body holding them became less familiar. Hermione’s voice reached me from the side, saying my name. I could not answer, but I recognised her, keeping that recognition beside the things I knew about myself.

Something dragged heavily at the base of my spine. Pressure against the mat spread through a broader contact than my hands should make, and my breath came in harsh bursts while a chair scraped nearby. I wanted to look at what was happening, but feared the sight would take the attention I still held on the work.

The pressure gathered again. For a moment I thought I would lose the thread entirely and clung to the smallest part remaining: I was the person doing this, and the changing body belonged to me. I needed to remain present to find my way back. Then the crushing sensation eased, leaving me shaking on four points of contact.

Breathing still happened through a mouth that did not fit what I expected. The room came into focus with smells of leather, paper, damp wool and something sharp from the medical case. A chair stood ahead at an unfamiliar height. When I lifted a hand, a broad, furred paw rose from the mat instead, and I set it down carefully.

Hermione stood beyond the clear space, holding the emergency parchment with its corner attached. Her eyes moved over me before she swallowed and said softly that I was a lion. I turned towards her voice, feeling a heavy fringe of hair move against my face. The transformation had worked, though I still had to return.

I wanted to tell her I remained myself. A long, wavering sound came out, surprising us both enough for her fingers to tighten on the message. Then she studied my face and asked whether that had been intended as a roar. I closed my mouth while considering how far the noise had fallen short of its ambition.

A more careful attempt produced something suited to a very large dog objecting to a closed door. Hermione made a strangled sound and covered her mouth. For a moment I thought it was fear, until her shoulders began shaking and she could no longer contain the laugh. I had hoped becoming a lion might command a minute of respectful silence, but had apparently spent it howling.

I stepped towards her. She moved back at once and asked me to stay where I was, bringing me to a stop before I considered the distance properly. The step carried me further than expected, and my paw occupied an alarming amount of mat. Knowing who stood behind my eyes did not make a large animal approaching in a closed room comfortable company.

I lowered myself slowly, learning which joints needed to bend. Something struck the mat behind me: my tail had become involved without waiting for my attention. Hermione let out a breath and thanked me, placing the message within reach before moving towards the mirror.

She used her wand to lift it carefully away from the wall and turn it towards me. A male lion looked back, moving when I did with an effect that knowing the explanation did little to soften. A broad head and dark mane sat above a heavy body resting awkwardly on the mat.

My forelegs looked too substantial to belong anywhere inside school robes. Flexing a paw brought curved claws into view; relaxing it withdrew them while Hermione remained sensibly beyond reach. I lifted my head and found pale blue eyes in the reflection, familiar in colour and strange in everything surrounding them.

A narrow ring of lighter fur circled one foreleg where my watch had been. I looked down, then back at the mirror, unable to find any sign of the watch face itself. Turning too quickly to inspect the mark made me spread my paws to balance. The lion acquired an expression of annoyance which set Hermione laughing again, more easily this time.

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‘I’m sorry. It’s just very clearly you,’ she said. I would not have chosen that as the first description of my new form, but after the last few minutes it was welcome. An attempted dignified acknowledgement supplied another reason to leave the voice alone. Hermione suggested exactly that before asking whether I understood her.

I nodded carefully. Another nod answered whether I knew who I was, despite the distracting clarity of rain in her robes and the sound of her next breath. My thoughts remained mine while my body supplied information in an unfamiliar order. I wanted to explain this, opened my mouth, then remembered what the previous attempts achieved.

Hermione told me to come back first; the descriptions could wait. I studied the mirror and tried recalling my human form, but the lion continued looking at me. A second, harder attempt accomplished little beyond making my tail lash the floor. Cold fear pushed through the excitement as wanting to become human grew more urgent than my previous ambition.

She stopped smiling. ‘Slowly. Remember the shape you’re returning to,’ she said. I closed my eyes and found my hands on a desk again, the pressure of a thumb against a pencil and my height beside the common-room mantelpiece. My head belonged above shoulders which carried no mane, and weeks of rehearsal had left those details available beneath the unfamiliar sensations.

On the third attempt, something shifted. I held to it as my balance changed and the floor moved further from my face. Pressure ran through shoulders and limbs, unpleasant but briefer than the outward change. Following the familiar shape helped more than fighting each sensation, until I opened my eyes kneeling on the mat with two human hands before me.

I counted my fingers without intending to. My own voice sounded excellent when I expressed relief, and Hermione crouched a short distance away to tell me not to stand yet. I had been about to do exactly that, so I stayed while she asked about pain, dizziness and movement.

I checked my hands and arms, then the watch restored to my wrist. My clothes had returned too, crumpled from the floor, while the pouch remained on the table and the brush lay clear of the mat. I told her I was very tired and aching, but nothing felt stuck. She gave me water and waited while I drank.

The medical supplies and emergency message remained unused. I was grateful for both as I rested, then moved into a chair under my own power once the effort seemed manageable. Hermione sat opposite with her notebook and asked what I remembered before the details blurred.

Describing the change without calling everything pain or wrongness took work. Her precise questions helped me supply better answers, keeping the experience from becoming a single account of how brave I had been. I was frightened and nearly lost concentration; I also held it long enough to complete the change. Both belonged in the notes.

I described the smells, sounds and surprising reach of my paws. Some things arrived very clearly without my knowing which deserved attention, so calling the senses better at everything would have been misleading. Hermione recorded the distinction before asking about the voice, which I would have preferred to cover briefly.

She considered it a distinctive observation. I admitted that was unfortunately true, then looked at the mirror showing a tired boy with flattened hair and a growing grin. Saying a lion aloud felt almost as good as the first moment of recognition. Hermione smiled back, leaving me eager to stand properly on those paws and try producing a less embarrassing sound.

I began rising. My legs protested enough to return me to the chair, and I decided the next attempt could wait. Hermione approved the discovery while I wrote that no ordinary spell had been tested in animal form. Being a lion had taught me neither to speak an incantation through its mouth nor to handle my brush and release a strip.

The successful change established no method for those other tasks. I also recorded the three attempts at returning, unwilling to show anyone notes claiming greater control than I had managed. Before I could reconsider another entry, Hermione set down her quill and mentioned what we would tell McGonagall.

My grin faded. I knew that conversation remained, along with registration, which she raised next. I wanted privacy while I was still learning how to walk in the form, let alone displaying its identifying marks. Hermione reminded me that wanting something did not settle what I was required to do, and I acknowledged it without becoming more eager.

I could imagine explaining to McGonagall that I understood her condition and deliberately ignored it. Success would make the account no more comfortable. I told Hermione I would not ask her to claim it had been her idea, and she made clear she would not do so. That certainty was unsurprising after the conversation which brought us here.

Once I could stand without protest from my legs, we packed. The empty vial went into its protective case and the unused final strip back into its fold. The one carrying the spell had been spent. Hermione kept the medical supplies and intact emergency message, with the blood still sealed and the horn wrapped in her bag.

I collected the brush, pouch and ordinary playing card. Cheese would not be needed, I observed, though Hermione suggested adding voice lessons to our provisions. I put the card away before she could amend it and followed her outside, where the corridor sounded startlingly ordinary after the room behind us vanished.

I checked my watch, wondering whether the match had finished. I wanted to find Harry and Ron, hear about their afternoon and then tell Luna what I promised to come back and describe. For several steps the remembered lion crowded out most other thoughts. Then Hermione asked whether I wanted to take the stairs slowly, and I admitted I did.