Harry breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the door behind him. After a moment, he opened his eyes, and looked around the chamber. Where once it had held a giant, three-headed dog, now it was empty, aside from several stacks of chairs and desks.

He moved into the empty space and examined the floor. "Where is it?" he muttered, scuffing his shoes on the apparently solid floor. Taking a moment, he tucked his Firebolt, the racing broom his godfather had given him, under his arm while he checked the Marauder's map. Convinced that he was alone, he pulled out his wand and directed it at the floor where he remembered the trapdoor having been.

"Finite Incantatem," he intoned. To his delight, the floor wavered, and the trapdoor appeared. "Must not have bothered with anything strong since no-one should know it is even there."

Reaching down, he grabbed the metal ring and pulled the trapdoor up. Casting a simple lumos spell, he directed the wand's light into the hole and grinned. Though it did look like a considerable drop, there was no sign of the Devil's Snare that had met them the first time they had dared the trapdoor, beneath the slavering jaws of Fluffy.

Incanting a quick spell to slow his fall, he dropped into the hole. Flexing his knees, he absorbed the limited impact, and then closed the trapdoor behind him with a spell. Unfortunately, he was not skilled enough yet to restore the illusion that had concealed the trapdoor, but then, he wasn't really worried about anyone looking for him.

He simply wanted to ensure that no-one accidentally came across him, considering the illegality of what he was about to do, not to mention the reaction of Progressor McGonagall if she found out that he was trying to accomplish the Animagus transformation after she had explicitly forbidden it.

So what if his visualization of his form had only caught the bat-like wings, and not, at least in her opinion, enough detail to fully identify his species? He did not exactly think a bat was a great thing to be, but this was not just some whim. He did not want to face Voldemort again with no way to get away, and there was no way he was going to give up the chance to fly under his own power. Nothing in his life was as fulfilling as flying on his broom, and he could only imagine how wonderful it would be to fly with his own wings. And finally, he would be able to stay with Lupin, to be with him in his extremity as his father had once done. It was the least he could do, having caused Sirius, the last of Lupin's loyal animagus companions, to vanish into the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. Besides, if Peter Pettigrew, spineless worm that he was, could manage it, surely he could. He had more than reason enough, in his opinion.

Darkness fell as he extinguished his wand, a pitch blackness that enveloped him. He closed his eyes, and opened them again, and could not see any difference. Leaning over, he set his broom on the ground.

Welcoming the dark, he focused on the wings he had so briefly glimpsed. He concentrated on their long, black sweep, on the flexible, leathery skin that would bear him aloft, as he mentally chanted the spells that would guide his change.

He was not supposed to know them, but the Professor had allowed them to read an Animagus text while preparing to find their inner animal, and he had quietly skipped ahead, and memorized the actual transformative spells. He had not, of course, even contemplated at that point the possibility that he might fail to do what his father had done, or that Professor McGonagall might refuse to allow him to continue, but he had not been averse to the idea of doing a little extra practice on his own.

He felt a pain on his back, and quickly shed his cloak and shirt. The pain multipled four-fold, then four-fold again, approaching the pain of his scar when Voldemort was near, as he frantically skimmed out of his other clothes, holding his wand in his teeth. Curses directed at himself for forgetting to disrobe before starting marred his inward chant, and he gasped as the pain jumped to Cruciatus levels. He could feel his back warping, the skin stretching as if someone had driven barbed hooks into his back and was pulling his skin away from his flesh.

Able to hold it in no longer, he screamed in agony as the pain swept over him completely, exploding in an instant to cover his entire body as his surroundings seemed to be pressing in on him, crushing him from every side.

A fierce, piercing pain erupted at the base of his back, and he screeched in surprise. The pain of his back, and the crushing sensation he had been vaguely prepared for, as he knew that he would shrink dramatically in becoming a bat, and growing his wings, but did bats have tails? Why did his spine hurt so terribly?

The pain grew still stronger, and darkness took him as the pain finally overcame him. He dropped to the ground unconscious, still convulsing as his body warped and changed. A single fleeting thought wafted through his mind before it shut down completely. "McGonagall was right."

---

"Idiot," Harry muttered to himself, as he groggily pulled himself up from the floor, looking around at darkness so complete that he momentarily feared blindness, before he remembered. He had neglected to do anything about providing the room with lighting or a mirror for after his transformation. Of course, he had not expected such a complete transformation the first time. Wasn't it supposed to take a long time to get it to work?

Wait a minute. Why did he understand what he just said? Was this like Parseltongue? Was he going to hear himself speak even when he was really emitting inaudibly high-pitched whistles? His voice had sounded normal to him, if maybe a bit high.

He flexed his hand, paw, or whatever it now was, and ran it down his face. His skin tingled where his fingers had passed, and he swayed as he fought to keep his balance. He felt top-heavy, though it was not as biased towards the back as he had expected, and he could feel something moving behind him.

He dropped his hand and squeaked in startlement as it brushed something on the way down that sent a jolt of heat through him. What was that?

"Too much," he whimpered, as his mind tried to deal with the shifting weight on his chest, the movement behind him, the fire racing through him, and the almost frightening intensity of the movement of the air on his skin.

Scrambling for sanity, he focused desperately on the chant and focus exercises to reverse his transformation, picturing himself as he knew he was in his mind.

He could feel something changing, his wings seeming to almost slide into his body, as a wave of pleasure swept through him, bringing tears to his eyes. But something was not right. He did not feel like he was expanding, or changing size at all. A stuttering, bumpy sensation swept over his rear and he wondered if the unexpected tail was gone now.

Finally all the changes stopped, but Harry was worried. He still had not felt himself get any bigger. He flexed his hand. It felt like a hand, but then, it had when he was transformed, too. His wand had still not reappeared and Harry felt a sudden blaze of fear. "Accio wand!" he cried out, holding his hand out desperately, but nothing happened.

"Come on," he cajoled, trying to psyche himself up, to convince himself that he could do this. "Wandless magic can't be that hard. You did it before. You blew up Aunt Marge. You lit your wand when the Dementors attacked on Privet Drive and you weren't holding it then. Come on . . . Lumos!"

A light burst from his fingers and he gasped in relief. He looked at his clothes and grinned when he realized they did not look huge, nor were they at the same level as his eyes. He must just have not felt the pain of changing size the second time, that was all.

He grinned as he looked at his hand, where the light was shining from, then he frowned, turning it this way and that. Last time it was still his wand that had lit, not his hand, and besides his hand wasn't always this slender and well . . . delicate-looking, was it?

His eyes drifted further down, and he shrieked in surprise, then clapped his hand over his mouth in shock at the high pitch of the cry. There were two mounds of flesh on his chest . . . breasts. He had breasts! Honest-to-goodness female breasts! The Animagus transformation was not supposed to do anything like this, he was sure.

He leaned over a bit, peering past his new chest at his pelvis, and sucked in a pained breath. He saw nothing but a triangle of black curls. With a fearful whimper, he brought his hand down, and brushed it through the curls. It had to be there, right? The touch to his lower hair sent a shuddering burst of pleasure through him, and his legs suddenly felt weak. They folded beneath him, and he found himself sitting on his discarded cloak.

A mirror, he needed a mirror, he had to see for himself what had happened. Before he could jump up and start searching, a hazy reflection appeared in front of him, firming quickly until it seemed to snap into solidity, a full-length dressing mirror appearing out of nowhere, framed in gold and standing on four gold-plated lion's paws.

What it reflected completely pulled his mind away from where the mirror had come from. Looking back at him was a puzzled but beautiful naked girl with wavy black hair and green eyes that seemed unusually bright.

His hand was still tangled in his nether curls, and after the jolt that went through him when he shifted it, he was afraid to move it, much less just pull away, but he could not help wondering what he had looked like in his Animagus form. What could it have been to leave him looking like this?

Focusing on his wings again, he felt changes start before he even began the chant. His hair gleamed in the light as his skin took on a dusky red hue, as if he was blushing strongly over his entire body. Midnight-black wings peeked out over his shoulders, sliding out of his back, painlessly this time. The bumpy sensation on his rear came again, and a red tail, tipped by a black wedge-shaped point, passed briefly through his view.

His mouth gaped in surprise, and he noticed his eye-teeth and canines were longer and sharply pointed, and his incisors now came to a sharp point as well. He did not notice that his glasses were missing, and had been in his other form as well.

Bracing himself for the pleasure, he pulled his still glowing hand away from his curls even as his hand felt a sudden dampness. He sobbed at the intense pleasure and pain as the claws he had not noticed before slid across his inner thigh, and the curly hairs caught against each other around his fingers and pulled against his sensitive flesh.

He brought his hand up to touch his smooth face, and a new, powerful scent caught his nose. Before he knew what he was doing, his fingers were in his mouth, his tongue laving them as he sucked off the faint traces of moisture. He moaned involuntarily, his eyes closing, and felt a new surge of wetness down there.

A shiver passed through him and he felt a sudden tightness on his chest. He forced his eyes open, staring at the mirror, not noticing his hand drifting downward as he stared at his breasts. Where they had looked smooth, now they looked shiny, and his nipples were crinkled and hard, standing out from breasts that themselves felt harder then they had been. He groaned as his involuntarily questing hand slid through his curls to the source of the dampness and swirled about, setting off sparks in his mind.

As his other hand rose up and slid deadly claws gently around his sensitive left breast, he wondered if Professor McGonagall could possibly have had anything like this in mind when she had warned about instinctive behavior following the transformations, and the need to learn to control it.

His talon slid across his left nipple, sending a shock through him as it seemed to harden still further. His fingers slipped around it and tugged, and Harry sobbed, falling back to lie on his cloak. His right hand came up for a moment as he avidly sucked off his juices, then it went right back down, sliding along the curious folds of flesh he had down there now. It glided between them, parting them smoothly, and Harry felt a surge of new heat as his fingers found his inner lips, stroking them and then sliding between them to swirl around the opening he found there.

He lifted his hips when a pain made itself felt on his spine, and felt his tail flip around to lie down between his legs. As his hips dropped back to the cloak, his tail came up to rub sensuously across his inner thigh. His eyes fixed on it in the mirror.

"So beautiful," he murmured, pinching his nipple tightly and tugging on it. He was not sure whether he was referring to his appearance in the mirror, or the feelings that were overcoming him.

His left hand swapped places with his right, as he rubbed his juices on his neglected right nipple before sucking them off of his fingers. His right hand took up the proper treatment of his right breast, even as his left ring finger slid inside him. A sobbing cry escaped again as his now moistened finger found his clitoris, and rubbed the soft hood, exciting his center still further, as it hardened and lengthened, peeking out of his folds.

His hand moved instinctively, finger sliding back in to fill his emptiness while the heel of his hand pressed rythmically against his mound, stimulating his clitoris. His moans and cries grew and filled the room, joined by the wet squelching of his hand in his cunt. He sobbed and gasped, twisting his nipple as he rode his hand hard, and ever faster.

Finally he shuddered and screamed as he came, eructing a surprising volume of ejaculate several inches out, soaking his hand and thighs. With languid pleasure interspersed with gasps as occasional aftershocks hit, Harry consumed the fluid that covered his hands, then scraped his thighs and consumed that as well.

Sitting up with some effort, Harry laughed bitterly when he saw himself in the mirror, his breasts reddened from his glossy black claws, his nether hair moist and matted, his lips shiny, his eyes dilated as wide as he had ever seen them, tears running down his dusky cheeks.

"I guess there's no question as to what I am," he said, his voice quivering. "A succubus. A freak, just like the Dursleys said." His tears flowed faster, and he sniffled. "They nearly abandoned me just because I could speak Parseltongue," he stated quietly, thinking of his friends now. "They'll drop me like a hot rock if they find out I turned into a Dark creature. A demoness. Especially after I got them all hurt in the Ministry." He lifted his bangs and stared at the now red-on-red scar that still marred his forehead. "Not like I could pass myself off as someone else, either. Damn scar."

With a heavy sigh, he once more focused on his normal appearance. His view of the mirror was occasionally obscured by a teardrop spreading over his eye before he blinked it away, but he could see enough to know that though his wings and tail were gone, and his skin once more had a human tone, he was also still undeniably female. "And smaller than I was," he groaned as he listened to his voice. At least his voice was husky, roughened, only a little higher than it had been, like a sexy whisper in the dark rather than high and clear like most of the other girls he knew. Granted, it had reached much higher when he had cried out upon seeing his new breasts.

With faltering hope, he mentally chanted the phrases that should lead him back to himself, but nothing changed. He tried again, saying them aloud this time, with no result. "What am I going to do?"

"Hermione would know what to do," he told himself, blushing as he pointed his hand at the damp spot on his cloak and murmured, "Scourgify." His mind's eye saw her, sitting over her books, her bushy hair shaking as she turned her head back and forth, paging through in search of answers to one of the many problems they had faced over the years. She would know, or be able to find out something about what had happened to him, but could he tell her?

Shaking his head, he looked up, and gave a high-pitched yelp. "'Mione! How?!?" After the initial startlement, he realized that he had not in fact seen his friend, but rather his own reflection in the mirror. "Oh my god, I look just like Hermione," he said, staring at his now bushy brown hair. "Eep, I sound just like her, too!" He touched his cheek, then turned his head, blushing furiously, but not before he noticed the scar visible on his forehead. It felt wrong to be looking at a naked copy of his best friend, and doubly so when her image bore the scar of Voldemort's curse. He never wanted to think of her hurt by anyone. He focused on his own image again. Finally he glanced back at the mirror, and sighed in relief when he saw himself . . . or rather, herself, again.

"What just happened?"

Shaking off the disturbing images that ran through his head, he quickly got dressed. If he changed again, involuntarily, at least he would not be looking at one of his friends naked.

Looking himself over in the mirror, he was somewhat surprised to realize that he did not look all that different. His robes hung a bit looser, as he was now both smaller and shorter than his already small frame had been. The swell of his hips were fairly well-hidden by the loose robes, but the front was visibly lifted by his new breasts, which tingled as they were rubbed by the rough fabric. They were especially visible when he shifted to look at his side profile.

Realizing that his new female-Harry form must be an ability of the succubus, and nothing to do with changing back from his animagus shape, given that he had also turned into Hermione, he focused on the mirror. He grinned as his breasts visibly shrank, then winced as a dull ache spread through his chest.

"What's wrong?" he muttered. "It didn't hurt when I turned into Hermione."

As soon as he stopped concentrating, his breasts swelled back out, the sensation of the fabric rubbing across his nipples causing his knees to buckle. He caught the floor with his hands as his legs gave out.

Glaring at the mirror, he focused on the youngest Weasley in one of her own tempers. Immediately his hair lightened to a gleaming red, his face shifting, and it was a scarred Ginny scowling at the mirror. He felt no pain. He deliberately turned his mind away from Ginny, and thought about the OWL's.

There was no change when he looked back into the mirror. He was still facing Ginny Weasley's likeness. Heaving a sigh, and ignoring the protest of his nipples at his chest's resulting movement, he returned to his Harry form.

"This sucks," he whined, once more trying to shrink his breasts down enough that his robes would hide them. It was easily done, but again it came with a painful ache that left him struggling against nausea. He gave up, his eyes crossing as his nipples were yet again abraded by the hard cloth. "I have got to get a bra," he complained, and then a moment later, "I can't believe I just said that."

Trying something that he hoped would be easier, he focused on getting his hair back to its usual short length. Thankfully, that went much more smoothly, his locks seeming to flow back into his head, leaving him with a short thatch of typically unruly hair.

He tried to square his face out a bit more, to get more of a male look. He succeeded, but his face ached, and he could tell that once more he would have to hold his concentration to maintain the illusion.

"Oh, man, how am I gonna get through even one day of classes? I won't be able to concentrate on anything! And what if something distracts me? And even worse, I've lost my wand!" He felt a wave of panic hit him when he realized that he had already lost his concentration and his more masculine face, without even needing any external distractions.

Harry thought frantically, trying to come up with some way to get the teachers to change him back without revealing what he had become. He felt certain that he would lose all respect in their eyes when they learned that his inner being was a demon. Oh, they probably would not go so far as to kick him out; but they would probably have even fewer qualms about locking him up somewhere until he could do his part against Voldemort, then getting rid of him once that was done.

"I've got no choice," Harry muttered, staring at the closed trapdoor above him. "I'll probably die the next time I face Voldemort, anyway. There'll be no Priori Incantatem thing to save me this time, with my wand gone, but even that is better than dying after being locked in a cupboard for another ten years."

The thought of losing his wand hurt more than he thought it would, but it couldn't be helped. He attempted to summon his wand once more, with no success.

He lifted his glowing right hand and looked around the room. There was no sign of his wand, nor anything else that he had left behind, other than the mirror, and his broom. He pointed his hand at the mirror, intending to banish it, but it wavered and faded from view before he got the chance. "Okay, that was weird," he muttered, "guess it fits the theme. I wonder if this is really a Room of Requirement type thing?"

"Well, now what?" he pondered. He could no longer pass as Harry Potter, and while he could mimic a different female likeness, his scar would still give him away. Leaving Hogwarts did not seem like a good option, as it would put him in Voldemort's path unprotected, nor did leaving the Order with no clue what had happened to him, since that would probably cause them to search for their weapon slash savior all over, putting themselves unnecessarily in harm's way. But at the same time, he could not put himself back in their hands, only to be locked away somewhere. He would go mad if they did that to him, and probably turn into another Voldemort.

After all, if his transformation said anything, it was that Dumbledore was not altogether right about choices being everything. Clearly, there was something in him that was inherently Dark.

"I've got to find someplace in the castle to hide, where the ghosts and portraits can't give me away. I'd stay here, but they'll think to look here eventually. And the only place the ghosts don't go . . ."

Harry shuddered, looking at the floor, but he could see the sense of it. The only other parseltongue in this time was Voldemort, and there was no way they would let him into the castle, so the one place that only Harry could get to in the castle was the Chamber of Secrets.

He wondered if Dumbledore would be able to get there somehow. Fawkes had lifted them out of the Chamber, but Riddle and Slytherin had to have some other means to exit the Chamber, which probably meant there was another entrance hidden somewhere.

Harry wondered once more just how real Dumbledore's apparent omniscience truly was. If there was a second entrance, would Dumbledore know about it? Would Dumbledore have some secret means of opening the main entrance, in spite of not speaking parseltongue?

Finally Harry decided it did not matter. He simply had to bet that Dumbledore did not know everything, or it was already over, and he would soon be buried in some closet somewhere to await the final confrontation with Voldemort.

He summoned his broomstick and mounted it, rising shakily into the air. The broom lurched and he barely kept it from sprinting forward. As it was, he lost his position under the door, coming to a stop a mere metre from the stone wall. Harry quickly dropped back to the ground, his brow shining with perspiration as he shook with the nearness of disaster.

"What the hell just happened?" Harry wondered, staring at his broom. Flying on a broom had felt natural ever since the first time he had ridden one, facing off against Malfoy to retrieve Neville's Rememberall, but this time, he had felt as shaky and uncertain as Neville himself had looked when his broom took off with him, just before it dropped him to the ground, breaking his wrist.

Looking down at his broom brought his new 'assets' into sharp relief, backlighted by the glow from his lowered hand, and he realized what his problem was. He was in a wholly new body, one he had not yet learned and become comfortable with. His balance had changed, and he did not yet have enough experience to compensate.

"Bloody hell," Harry groaned. "Ron's going to kill me if we lose the Quidditch Tournament because of this, even if he could get past the whole demon bit!"

Harry stared up at the door high above him. How was he to get out, now? He thought of his animagus form's wings, but he knew that he did not have enough room here to be able to learn to fly using them, assuming they were even capable of true flight, much less making his first attempt.

It took his mind several moments to realize that the way the door seemed to be growing in his vision was not merely an artifact of his concentration. He looked down and blanched. He was floating upward, held up by nothing, his broom was merely hanging limply, and he had no wings! Almost the instant he realized that there was no reason he should not be falling, he was. He screamed involuntarily, and felt a sudden pain in his back and rear, and a sharp jerk against his shoulderblades, as he reverted to his full animagus form in his terror. Now instead of falling, he was sweeping with disturbing speed towards a stone wall that looked to be in no mood to get out of his way.

A moment later, Harry discovered that in fact his seemingly natural talent for flight had not vanished with his change of form, but rather had been redirected, for, with perfect instinct, he banked, shifting his wings into the turn and stabilizing the motion with his tail, in a coordinated use of limbs he had not had but an hour before, and had had no time to learn to use.

After several more swooping turns, Harry managed to gain sufficient conscious control of his flight to make for the doorway in the ceiling, though he had little clue what he would do when he got there. His broom was capable of hovering, and he had intended to use it as a support while he pushed the door open. He rather doubted that the large wings he now possessed would be any good at hovering, much less giving enough lift to push up the heavy trapdoor.

He grabbed at the wood of the door to stop his momentum, his clawed hands digging instinctively into the wood. His shoes scrabbled uselessly against the wood for the briefest instant, as he realized with a start that he was fully clothed, before the force of his momentum brought his legs and torso down, leaving him hanging from his embedded claws. His fingers ached from the twisting of his claws. Harry had a moment to wonder about the state of his shirt and robe, given that his wings had clearly managed to escape their confines, before the wood around his talons gave way, and he dropped yet again.

His wings snapped wide, and he circled the room again, before finally dropping to the floor to reconsider his plans. He saw his broom several feet away, and realized that he had dropped it when he grabbed at the trapdoor. "Glad I didn't make it out," he muttered, summoning his broom back and checking it for scratches. "Ron'd never let me live it down, leaving my broom in a place like this."

Frustrated, he concentrated once more on abandoning his winged form, and felt his wings and tail sliding back into his flesh. He shivered at the feel, then set his broom down and doffed his cloak to look at the damage. Much to his confusion, there did not seem to be any rips or tears in the cloak at all, and when he pulled off his shirt in disbelief, it too was whole and undamaged.

As he put his shirt back on, he pondered this new mystery. Somehow, his wings had been sufficiently free to allow flight, yet they had not damaged the shirt and cloak that had unquestionably been between them and free air. He had not felt any sort of constriction on his wings when they burst forth, but now that he thought about it, he had felt no such constriction when he first began to change. He had discarded his clothes because he had intended to do so, and forgotten, and because the pain reminded him, but the pain remained, and even intensified after he removed his clothes, so it had not been a pain caused by them.

He stared at his cloak for a moment, then, focusing on not wanting to damage his cloak, but intent on putting his arm through it, he held it up and slid his hand towards it. He felt nothing, not even a tingle, as his slender fingers blithely ignored the cloak's presence, continuing on through as if he were a ghost, even though the cloak was being held up by his other hand. He curled his hand back, and to his further shock, he was able to feel the far side of the cloak with his fingers, even as his wrist was passing immaterially through it.

Shivering in confusion and uncertainty, Harry pulled his hand abruptly back through the cloak and swung the cloak around his shoulders. He picked up the broom, and looked at it for a moment. "Okay," he stated. "I can pass through things. That's great, definitely, if I can take stuff with me. If I can't, this will be about as pointless an ability as being able to talk to snakes when all it does is make everyone see me as a dangerous freak."

As he walked to the wall nearest the hallway entrance in the currently inaccessible room above him, Harry pictured himself trying to go through a wall and ending up naked on the other side, in Professor McGonagall's class, and the expression that would be on her face. No, this would definitely not be a much used ability if he could not at least bring his clothes through things with him.

He was somewhat surprised, actually, that he could pass through things without taking on the full winged and tailed form. That implied once again that his reverse animagus spell was in reality doing nothing of the kind, and that some other facility, similar to his ability to look like Ginny or Hermione, was responsible for his female Harry Potter appearance.

Taking a deep breath, crossing his fingers, and saying a quick prayer to whomever might be listening, pointless as that seemed for someone so clearly condemned by the Light, Harry focused on being completely immaterial, along with everything he carried, picturing himself passing unhindered through walls like Peeves or Nearly Headless Nick, then reached out with his broom, as if to tap the wall.

He crowed with delight as the tip of his Firebolt passed through the wall and came out again, soundlessly. Feeling momentarily euphoric, in spite of the problems he knew he still faced, Harry strode forward, passing through the wall, and into the hallway beyond. He stopped as soon as he entered the hall, then took two steps back. This confirmed for him the puzzling but gratifying oddity he had noticed on passing through.

He had expected to see utter blackness while passing through the wall. After all, there was no light there to reach his eyes, within the depths of the stones. Instead, he had seen merely a darker, dimmed view of the hall he had then entered. He stepped back again, and again, until he was once more in the chamber below Fluffy's one-time home.

Murmuring "Nox," he extinguished his hand, sending the room into utter blackness, the very sort of blackness he had expected to see, then, without moving forward at all, he tried . . . well, more like wished, really, to see through the wall as he had while his face was within the stone.

To his immediate gratification, the blackness eased, and he could once more see the hallway beyond. "This is so cool!" he gloated. At least his problems had come with a few perks. Delighted at the ghostly vision, and the ability to pass immaterially through walls, Harry wondered if there were any other similarities between a succubus and a ghost. Could he become invisible? He was not sure how to test that, just yet, since using a mirror might just confirm that he could prevent mirrors from reflecting his image.

There was one potential similarity he definitely could test, however. Focusing on what he thought it might feel like, and particularly remembering how he had found himself unexpectedly in the air only a few minutes before, Harry tried to float like a ghost.

Sure enough, the hallway, the only thing visible in the otherwise nearly tangible blackness, drifted downward in his vision. This success lead to a moment of contemplation. Harry at first thought that this indicated that it would be very easy for him to get into the Chamber of Secrets . . . he did not see how it could be otherwise, since he could simply pass through all the levels between this room and the Chamber.

Yet if that were true, why then did none of the ghosts tell the teachers or the Headmaster where the Chamber was, or how to get there? Professor McGonagall had indicated that the Chamber had been searched for meticulously, multiple times. Harry had at first believed that it had been reasonable for it to be missed, requiring a Parseltongue password as it did, but that did not make sense unless there was something else there that either prevented the ghosts from noticing it, or prevented them from speaking of it.

Unlike a certain bushy-haired friend of his, this curious little mystery did not occupy Harry's thoughts for long, nor did it inspire any form of research or intention to gather clues to solve it. Rather, he put it from his mind, dismissing it as simply obvious that Slytherin had in fact done something to solve the ghost issue when he first created the Chamber.

It really did not matter to him, once he had conceived of at least a possible answer. Now he only had to get there unseen, and then figure out what the devil he was supposed to do! Not to worry about that just yet, though. One problem at a time, after all.

The solution came to him after only a moment's puzzling. Rather than pass through the open halls where he could be seen, he could make his way through the entire route keeping within the thick stone walls of Hogwarts, where neither ghost nor portrait nor wandering student or teacher would be likely to see him.

Concentrating on being both immaterial and invisible, just in case it helped, Harry renewed his grip on his broom and holding it carefully to ensure that it did not sweep out into the hallway or the rooms on the other side, he entered the wall again, and began moving along it.

As he walked, he noted that he could hear sounds from either side, particularly when he passed an unsleeping portrait, in spite of being hidden in the wall, but he paid no attention to this. His attention was focused on the path he needed to take, and not allowing any part of himself, his clothing, or his broom to exit a wall.

In this fashion he made his way through the halls to the bathroom where Moaning Myrtle made her home. To his surprise, she seemed to sense him. "Why isn't she sleeping?" he wondered, but he paid no attention to her querulous demand that whoever it was that had come to disturb her show themselves. He passed beneath her, hidden in the paving stones of the floor, and found the hidden tunnel, and drifted down it.

The Chamber Of Secrets

Light fled as he drifted further down the tunnel that led to the Chamber, and he promptly cast a new Lumos spell, the light from his hand nearly blinding him after the constant dimness. Once his eyes had readjusted, he continued his slow descent, much more controlled and much less frightening than the abrupt and precipitous fall that had awaited him the first time he entered the Chamber.

Soon he found himself floating through a cave-in, the same rockfall that had separated him from Ron and the self-obliviated Lockhart on his first trek down this passage. He passed the discarded skin of the basilisk, still present, and looking at it, he realized that if it had survived so long, relatively unscathed, there must be many more elsewhere in these caverns. After all, did not snakes shed annually? At least, he thought they did, and the basilisk had certainly seemed to be a very large snake, to his eyes.

He was somewhat perturbed at the pangs of hunger he felt when looking at the discarded skin, and passed quickly by it.

Reaching the snake covered metal door, he hissed at it to open, unwilling to test if it might be enspelled against ghosts and other such incorporeal beings. Passing through the opened portal, he saw the remarkably well-preserved corpse of the basilisk, and was immediately struck by an incredible thirst.

Once more he felt his tail, wings, and talons burst forth, but this time, he could also feel his teeth sliding out, a very odd sensation. Though consciously he felt a vague repulsion at his actions, his thirst was too strong to fight, and his instincts too overwhelming, and he flew swiftly down the hall and swooped down on the carcass.

He sunk his fangs cleanly between the scales just behind the head of the great beast, at a point that he felt was right, though he did not know how he knew this. Sucking furiously, he drew up a viscous, hot liquid, and inwardly he marveled that the basilisk's blood should still be fluid, much less hot. He did not pause to wonder, however, but continued swallowing thirstily, feeling a burning heat spread from his center outward.

Finally sated, he leaned back just slightly, and pressed his hand against the fresh wound, which sealed beneath his hand. Uncomfortable trying to think about what he had just done, Harry allowed the post-meal lethargy to overtake him, and he collapsed next to the carcass and curled up against its heat, folding his wings about himself. He was soon slumbering.

Harry was startled awake by a sudden surge of panic. He sat up, barely noticing the warm basilisk that had served as his pillow, focused on this feeling of panic. There was something curiously disassociated about it, as he felt the panic, and yet his heart was not racing, nor was his breath short.

As he focused on it, the feeling became clearer, and with it came an odd sort of flavor. After a moment, he realized that he knew the flavor, and could identify it as 'Hermione,' though he would swear he had never tasted her. She was panicking, he realized, over Harry's absence from their first morning class. Ron had informed her, apparently, that Harry had not been in his bed when he got up, nor had either one seen him that morning. She had expected to see him when they got to breakfast, or at least first class, and was desperately afraid that he was injured somewhere, or in the hands of Death Eaters.

Without understanding exactly how or what he was doing, Harry reached out and surrounded Hermione with his essence, soothing and comforting her. He felt her surprised realization that he was fine and unharmed, but unable to be present, and beneath that, he felt a rising curiousity, dampened only partially by his calming aura.

She would doubtless be heading for the library to look up long-distance connections, or to Dumbledore to see what he knew, as soon as her schedule gave her the opportunity.

He pulled away, as he tried to restore his focus and clear his head from the grogginess associated with an unexpected awakening. One of the first points to rise to the level of conscious thought was that this was the first night he had slept without nightmares or painful visions, and slept the whole night through, in ages. He cast another Lumos spell, shielding his eyes with his off hand against the brightness, before his eyes adjusted.

A moment later, he remembered what had happened to him the night before, and where he was, and worse still, what he had done just before falling asleep. That probably explained, he decided, the rather bitter metallic aftertaste in his mouth.

Not bothering with a spell, Harry produced a glass of water as he had the mirror the night before, and quaffed it, glorying in the cool deliciousness of the refreshing liquid. He then proceeded to stare at the glass, realizing with a bit of glee, that he had produced a mirror the night before and attributed it to an odd property of the room, that the chamber he had been in was in some way akin to a Room of Requirement. After all, that would have explained how it could have been so easily set up to have the layered challenges, and then be a single empty chamber again the next time he entered it.

Clearly, however, that was not the case. Harry confirmed this by producing, again without words or gestures, or even much in the way of effort, a plate of his favorite breafast foods, and a glass of pumpkin juice, resting incongruously on the worked stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets, not four feet from a giant snake.

Ignoring the snake for the moment, Harry sat and ate, feeling pleased both at his apparent new ability, which of all that he had recently gained, he felt was perhaps the best, and at the fact that he did not find the food at all distasteful, which quelled any possible concern he might have had about being forced to drink blood from now on.

All the tribulations associated with his foolish attempt at an Animagus transformation seemed to pale in the face of never having to worry about being starved again. Even if he never finished his magical education, what of it? They could not snap his wand; he did not even have it anymore!

Vanishing the remnants of his wonderfully filling breakfast with as little effort as he had summoned it, he turned his attention to the basilisk.

Glad that he was not taken again by an uncontrollable thirst, and beyond grateful that this irresistable urge had taken him when this snake was the target, and not one of the other students, he walked up to the snake and, leaning against it, he pressed his ear to its scales.

Slow, and deep, and unquestionably present, he heard the beat of its heart. Faintly, behind all of the physical senses present, Harry could still feel Hermione, and in his startlement at hearing a heartbeat, and unconsciously feeling her presence, he asked her, "Hermione, how can a snake's heart beat so long after it died?"

"It's obviously not dead, Harry. It's probably hibernating, or in a coma or something. Why are you asking about snak . . . HARRY!?? Where are you? How? Harry?" Her voice started out irritated, a quickly snapped answer as often came if she was interrupted with a question while studying, then a more moderate tone as her curiousity was piqued, then a sudden vehemence as she realized she was speaking to someone that was clearly not present, followed by an almost timid question, practically squeaked out.

Even more faintly, as if heard from a great distance, Harry heard the voice of his persistent tormentor, Professor Snape. "Miss Granger! Ten points from Gryffindor. Now stop blathering about your precious Potter! He is not present, and if you continue such clearly delusional ravings, I shall send you to Madam Pomfrey and . . ." His voice dropped, becoming almost teasing, "I'll make certain she understands you are to have no intellectual stimulation whatsoever. No studying, no reading. After all, we wouldn't want to disturb such a delicate young mind, now would we?" He practically hissed the last phrase, seeming to take delight in his facility for knowing exactly what threats would most terrify his pupils.

"Yes, Professor Snape, I'm sorry," Hermione said, as Harry stood stock-still, his hand on the basilisk's hide, his jaw somewhere around his ankles as he listened to a conversation that he should have had no way to hear.

"Harry," Hermione hissed, practically in his ear, in his opinion, though when he glanced about, he could not see her, "I know I heard you. Where are you?" Her voice sounded curiously flat.

"Shh, Hermione. I didn't mean to get you in trouble."

"I thought so." Hermione's voice was practically smug, "I wouldn't worry about that Harry. I haven't said anything since I apologized to Snape."

"Don't meet his eyes!" Harry warned, suddenly wary of Snape learning that Hermione was in fact connected to him, though he too dropped the vocal component of the conversation, realizing the meaning of Hermione's implication. Apparently, one of the powers a succubus of Harry's sort had was telepathy, or something like it. "Remember, he's a master of Legilimency, and I bet he doesn't have to bludgeon his way in like he did to me. He can probably slip through unnoticed."

"I'll contact you when class is out," Hermione said sternly. "Then you can explain where you are, and why you weren't in class."

"Yes, Hermione," Harry responded meekly.

He waited another few moments, but Hermione's presence faded slowly from his awareness, and she said nothing more to him. Returning his attention to the basilisk, he wondered if Hermione was right. Had he in fact not killed the serpent, but merely scrambled its brain, when he jabbed the sword of Gryffindor through the roof of its mouth?

But how had it survived then, for a little over three years now, with no food or movement? He did not think it could be merely sleeping or hibernating. He felt certain that having its skin pierced and its blood sucked out would have roused it were that the case.

He hissed a few commands at it in parseltongue, but it did not noticeably react. Deciding to ignore the basilisk for the moment, he turned away and began to walk among the stone pillars, examining their carven and engraved images of snakes. "Slytherin must have had a carving spell or something," he murmured, ducking down to slip into one of the innumerable winding and intersecting tunnels that opened out into the primary chamber. Even the walls of these were of cleanly cut stone, polished rather than rough-hewn.

"Either that, or a lot of servants or house-elves. Probably house-elves, since no-one ever seems to have revealed his secrets. That or he just killed them all."

He glanced down the three paths out of an intersection he had just entered, noting that there were curious symbols, runes probably, he guessed, carved into the eight walls that met here. They meant nothing to him, and he wondered if they were part of a spell, or if they were more like signposts, telling where each path led.

"I need to learn whatever spell the Marauders used to make the Map," Harry commented idly, taking the left path on a whim. He wandered down it as it curved gently to the right, then meandered back to the left before hitting another intersection, this one seemingly at an angle from perpendicular. Again he took the left path, vaguely remembering something about always turning the same way to get through a maze in reference to the Third Task of the TriWizard Tournament.

Irritated at the reminder, he sped up, then, annoyed further at the mixed up echoes that resulted from his shoes splashing in the muck, he lifted gently from the ground and sped forward, his arms and legs hanging down as though he were a marionnette being carried by a loose hand.

After a boring time of seeing nothing but ever more passages, Harry focused on his sense of smell, and allowed it to lead him back to the main chamber. He was vaguely repulsed when he realized, upon reaching the chamber, that it was the smell of blood, not the snake as a whole, that he had followed, but the feeling quickly passed. It really didn't matter, anyway.

Harry drifted across the wide pool that stood before the massive face of the Hogwart's founder. "Only person in history with a bigger ego than Malfoy and Riddle combined," Harry muttered, then with a sigh, he echoed Riddle's words, which left a bad taste in his mouth. Slytherin was definitely not his choice for the "Greatest of the Hogwarts Four," but he did not want to test the face for any anti-ghost or poltergeist-defense spells it might have. Best to just use the password.

Harry drifted up through the opening, feeling a little disturbed at willingly entering what seemed to be a mouth, but ignoring it in favor of his curiousity. To his disgust, what he found seemed little more than the serpent's actual lair. No hidden rooms, no great secret, just another discarded snake-skin, and yet another collection of bones, though unexpectedly small, to go along with those outside the chamber.

"Alright, Harry," he heard suddenly, as Hermione's presence flowed back into full force around him. "I'm alone, in the Room of Requirement. Now, where are you?" Hermione asked, sternly.

"First, you have to promise me, Hermione, promise me on . . . on . . ." Harry faltered, at a loss for a promise dire enough to give him surety.

"Promise what, Harry?" Hermione's voice had dropped, had become almost . . . almost tender.

"You have to promise you won't tell anyone! Not Ron, not Dumbledore, not your diary, no-one! Not even Ginny!"

"Harry?" Hermione sounded worried, even a little frightened at his vehemence. "Harry, what's wrong? What's happened?"

"Promise me!" Harry insisted, feeling a tight knot in his chest. He had not expected to be able to talk to Hermione like this, and he had known that he dare not risk allowing her to see him. Ron maybe, he was a bit blind to some things, and might overlook Harry's changes at first, but not Hermione. She had been the one to notice the door beneath Fluffy's feet when all that the rest of them had seen were his three slavering maws, she would be sure to notice his changes. The chance to get her advice without risking her eagle eye, nor putting Hedwig in danger of being followed or tracked, was an unexpected one, and the thought that it might so swiftly be lost to him, or turned into a tool to keep him under the Order's thumb, was a chilling one.

"All right, Harry," Hermione agreed, speaking firmly, her sincerity coming through clearly, "I, Hermione Granger, swear to you, Harry Potter, on my magic and my knowledge, that I will willingly reveal nothing you say or show me that I did not already know, until you give me leave, to any party, living, dead, or unliving." She sighed when she finished, and Harry felt a rush of magic as she fell silent. Trust Hermione, he thought, to know the words to some binding promise. He could feel that some form of magic now held her vow, and he suspected that the things she had sworn by might be in jeopardy were she to break it.

"I'm in the Chamber of Secrets."

"Oh, Harry, why on earth? Are . . . are you all right? Are you hurt?"

Harry quickly interrupted before Hermione could work herself into a panic again. "Hermione! Hermione, I am perfectly safe. The basilisk is still alive, oddly enough, that's what I asked you about this morning, but it is still where it fell when I stabbed it, so I must have put it in a coma, like you said. As for why . . . I did something last night, Hermione. I know I shouldn't have, now, but it's too late. It's already done."

"Harry? Harry, you didn't try the Animagus transformation, did you?" There was a deep horror in Hermione's voice.

Harry grinned sadly. She always was quick to put the clues together. "Got it in one, Hermione."

"Oh, Merlin, Harry, this is horrible! Didn't you read about the dangers?"

"I thought if my dad could do it . . . or, what's more, if that worm, Pettigrew, could do it . . ." He sighed, and he heard Hermione sob. His heart clenched in sympathy.

"But, but he had help! And . . . oh, Harry. They can't change you back, can they? An incomplete or unguided transformation, especially if the wizard doesn't know what he is becoming thoroughly, if it succeeds at all, has a horrible chance of trapping the wizard. There's a very short window for the reversal, only a few hours! Please tell me you only just tried it?" Hermione sobbed again, and Harry knew that she knew the answer to her question already.

"It wouldn't matter, Hermione. It was a complete transformation, and it was last night. I lost control, just like Professor McGonagall said might happen."

"And it took too long . . ." Hermione finished for him. Harry grimaced. Well, no, it actually had . . . 'come,' pretty quickly. It had been his own foolishness, and his determination that no-one could know what his form really was, that had apparently doomed him.

"You can't change back?" Hermione asked, barely whispering. Again, Harry had the feeling she already knew the answer to her question. He was right, for she did not even wait for him to respond. "What did you become? You mentioned the wings . . . was it a bat, like we thought?"

"No, Hermione, it was not a bat," Harry sighed.

"Then what?"

"I . . . I can't tell you." Harry said, wincing prematurely. She was not going to take that well, he knew.

"What?!" she screeched, "Why not? Don't you understand, Harry? If you couldn't turn back normally, and no-one was there to cast a reversal charm on you, the only way to get back is to understand the form so thoroughly that you know it inside and out, every ability, every inch, and then you can perform the full Reverse Animagus transformation. I . . . I can help you, Harry," she pleaded, her voice choked with emotion.

"I can't," Harry insisted, feeling a bit choked up himself. "I just can't. You'd hate me."

"I won't!" Hermione insisted, audibly taken aback. "Even if you turned into the image of Voldemort himself, I couldn't hate you. I won't hate you, Harry! I'm your friend!"

"I . . . I know you are, Hermione. I, I just can't, right now. Give me some time. Maybe then I can tell you."

Hermione was silent for a moment, as if absorbing his words, then finally she assented. "If that's how you feel Harry. But I promise, no matter what it is, I won't hate you. Even if it's a winged Blast-Ended Skrewt!" she promised fervently, making them both laugh.

"Harry?" Hermione asked again, after several moments of silence. "You . . . you didn't . . . hurt anyone, did you? When you lost control?"

"No! No, I promise, Hermione. I was alone, in a sealed room. When I came back to myself, I was still there. I am absolutely positive that I didn't even touch anyone else."

"And you said you were unhurt," Hermione noted, her voice calm again. "So all we have to deal with is your uncontrolled transformation. Do you . . . do you think your transformation puts you in greater danger? Particularly since you can't defend yourself magically? Shouldn't you be somewhere you can be protected while you learn?"

"No, no, in fact, Hermione, I think I'm probably safer now than I was before. I . . . I probably shouldn't admit this." Harry sighed deeply, pained at the realization that once more he was the oddity, the freak, and he was going to have to admit it to Hermione to convince her that he was not in danger. "I became something magical, Hermione."

Harry laughed when he heard Hermione's squeal of shock and excitement, but he interrupted her sudden spate of questions. "I'm not a defenceless animal. I can still cast magic, and in fact, some of it is coming even easier." He chuckled. "I can do conjuring like you wouldn't believe. I'm not sure if my wand is hidden in me somehow, or if I just lost track of it, or destroyed it accidentally, and my magic is something built in, but I can cast just as well as if I had a wand, but it's better, because I can't be disarmed!"

"Magical? Harry, that's wonderful! But . . . what kind of magical being could you possibly become with bat-like wings and . . . Harry? Do you think I'm still mad at you about the Ministry? Because I'm not. If you became a thestral, that's nothing to be ashamed of, and I won't hate you for it."

Harry laughed softly. "Sorry, Hermione, but that's not the right guess. And no, I was pretty sure you had forgiven me for my foolishness, even before I had managed to forgive myself. Interesting guess, though."

"Oh," Hermione responded, a bit disappointed. "Well, I hope you decide to tell me soon. If you're a magical beast, that only makes it more imperative that I do some research. After all, you have to become familiar with all your abilities, and that includes innate magic, or external magical effects, such as being visible only to those who have seen death. If you were a thestral and didn't know about them, how would you ever figure out the logic of who could and could not see you? You need my help, Harry, and I promise I won't let you down."

Harry did not know what to say to that, but Hermione seemed to have guessed that, as her presence faded. "Just think about it," she said, faintly, and was gone.

Testing The Boundaries

His conversation with Hermione had left Harry feeling torn. He had remembered Pettigrew's forced transformation and hoped that something similar could be done to him, if he could ever figure out a way to get someone to cast it on him without his having to reveal what he was first. Having that hope stolen left him downhearted and confused about what to do next.

At the same time, Hermione's reassurances of her friendship, even in the face of something as unappealing as turning into a thestral, a nightmarish winged horse visible only to those who have seen death, had left him feeling warm and happy, in spite of her insistence that he would eventually agree to tell her.

In truth, he was less worried about Hermione than about Ron and the other Gryffindors. Hermione was logical, and she would understand the need to at least support him until his appointed job was done. All he really had to worry about with her, was her respect for those in authority. His tale, which she had eventually wormed out of him, of Dumbledore's admissions of weakness and failure in his office the day that Harry had trashed it, had made her think twice, and it had actually not been as impossible as he had feared to obtain her promise to tell no one. The others had all abandoned him in the past, at one time or another.

But he could not waste time thinking on that now. He had his own mission now, a pair of them, one granted by prophecy, the other by Hermione. He had to train and grow stronger until he could defeat Voldemort and then finish off the rest of his Death Eaters, to make the world safe for Muggle-borns, like Hermione. And he had to explore the limits of his new form until he knew it inside and out, and everything it could do. He had understood that clearly from Hermione's words, that he would have to change himself back, and he could only do it when he had learned his Animagi form completely.

Thinking back to his words to Hermione, he realized that part of it had not been true. So far, he had only tested simple lighting and summoning spells without his wand. For all he knew, though they certainly did not seem hard or draining, he might find harder spells simply impossible, or they might leave him weak and helpless.

It needn't be much, and he did not want to damage the hall lest he bring about another rockfall, but he did need to know if he could cast heavier spells. As for that, the choice of spell was easy. He had learned in his third year to cast a spell that his teacher, Remus Lupin, had told him many wizards and witches never managed to cast.

Focusing on the memory of his reunion this past summer with Ron and Hermione, and their reassurances that they were still his friends, in spite of everything that had happened, he held out his hand and cast, "Expecto Patronum!"

To his great relief, the expected silver light streamed from his hand, forming into the image of a great stag. It was only then that Harry realized that the Patronus attacked dark creatures, and what was he right now if not a dark creature?

He shivered when the stag looked about and, seeing no enemies, trotted over to him. But it did nothing to harm him, merely rubbing its head against his shoulder, and then licking his hand, though both motions did bring its great rack of antlers worrisomely close. That had never bothered Harry before, but he had never had to fear that he might be his own spell's target before, either. After a few moments, it wavered and vanished, leaving him alone once more.

He looked around the hall, and decided that he needed to make a comfortable place for himself. This hall, with its great pillars, and that massive stone face, not to mention an apparently comatose basilisk, seemed far from ideal, but so far, the only other room he had encountered was the small chamber behind the face of the statue, where the basilisk had made its lair.

It was not exactly his first choice, so finding a more suitable place would be his first goal. Unfortunately, his earlier experience in wandering the tunnels down here confirmed that he would never manage to find his way without a map, and he had no experience in making them.

Going to the library meant exposing himself to undesirable risk, at the moment, though if he was willing to wait, he supposed he could convince Hermione to research for him. However, he did not really have to wait.

He was supposed to be exploring his powers anyway, and the communication he had experienced with Hermione had certainly never happened before, so it was probably a result of his transformation. If he could duplicate the effect with the last of the true Marauders, he was sure that Moony could be convinced to help him. He figured it was possible that the Marauder's Map had actually been made by James and Sirius alone, but he doubted it. He had the feeling that Remus had played the same role in that group as Hermione did in the Gryffindor Trio, as some called Ron, Hermione, and himself.

So Harry sat down, resting his back against the bulk of the warm basilisk, and focused on his memory of his professor, the constant barely there sense of wildness about the seemingly calm and placid man, his soothing voice as he instructed Harry on the casting of a Patronus, the emotion when he had greeted Sirius in the Shrieking Shack.

"Professor?" Harry asked softly.

"Harry?! What the . . ." Remus' voice was cut off by a watery glub and then a startled sputtering. "Bleh, soapy water. Harry, where are you? Accio Invisibility Cloak! Harry?"

"Sorry, Professor. I didn't mean to startle you. I'm not really there right now."

He could hear Remus' panicked breathing slow substantially as he spoke and the werewolf realized that his ears were not hearing any of the sounds of another person, nor could he smell his best friend's son.

"I've told you to call me Remus, Harry. What'd you do? Find the spell that powers those mirrors James and . . . James made?"

"Something like that. Listen, Remus, I need to know how to make a map, like the one you guys made. Can you help me?"

"The Marauder's Map? What happened? Did you lose it? It won't be easy to recreate," Remus warned him, slowly recovering from the shock of suddenly hearing the disembodied voice of his best friend's son in his bathing chambers.

"No," Harry explained, "I need to map an area that is not covered by the map."

"Hmmm . . . That could be a bit difficult, you know," Remus temporized, trying to identify just what it was that felt off about this communication with Harry. Finally he realized that though he was hearing Harry perfectly clearly, Harry's voice did not have the slight echo that came from speaking in the small enclosed room, while his own responses did.

"The Map itself would not have been possible, at least not in its fullness, if it had not been of Hogwarts. That castle is more than a bit alive, you see. Surely you realize that the passwords the Map reveals would have changed over the years? But no minor spell can ferret out that sort of magic, or they would be useless. No, it is Hogwarts itself that informs the Map, and I think the only reason it goes along with it is that in some small way we amused it."

Remus could feel Harry's nod, somehow. "Yeah, I've felt that amusement," Harry said dryly, "every time it moved the bloody stairs when I was in a hurry."

"But not when it really mattered," Remus countered, and Harry agreed.

"True. It never really got in the way when I had to get to Dumbledore, and I'm certain that it led us to the third floor corridor where Fluffy was, not to mention guided me to the Mirror of Erised. But don't you know any mapping spells that would work on a different place? I don't believe you could have hit on that trick on the first try."

As Harry spoke to the last surviving Marauder--Peter Pettigrew still lived, but in Harry's eyes he had ceased to be a Marauder the instant he turned to Voldemort--he was exploring the strange connection between them.

It definitely lacked the strength and intensity of his connection to Hermione, who had reached him without his active participation, though that had been only a brief burst of emotion. Yet there was another, deeper difference, as well. Something about Remus resonated with Harry, though it was weak and insubstantial, like a thought he could not quite grasp.

As Remus gave in and explained the most effective of the failed techniques, Harry probed and prodded the connection, trying to find the source of the resonance. When he found it, they both knew it instantly.

Their discussion was cut short, as Harry was drawn into Remus' mind. In the distance he could feel Remus' conscious mind casting about, searching for him, calling for him, but he had no focus to spare for it, for he was instantly in a fight for his life against a massive wolf-spirit.

The Dark Creature in Remus was unfettered. Here in Remus' mind, unweakened by a slow wasting illness brought on by the waxing moon, not maddened by a painful and damaging transformation, nor bound by the power of wolfbane, this was the werewolf at its peak.

Harry barely avoided the first cruel lunge, narrowly dodging flashing teeth, but though his new form might be built for pleasure, it was not incapable of dealing out its own share of pain. A sharp downward beat of his wings, snapping out and then down, propelled him out of range of the next attack, even as raw magical power rising about him shook the dark forest of the depths of Remus' mind.

His wings pumped strongly, lifting him up and out of range of the wolf's leaps, then he leaned forward and began circling the angry beast. Waiting for the wolf's next leap, Harry released a mild cutting curse, to test the beast's reflexes, and to see if he would have to deal with werewolf healing in this mental realm.

The wolf twisted in mid-air but was unable to completely avoid the curse, which opened a long, shallow slice on the wolf's side. The wolf's howl of pain was deafening, but somehow Harry was still able to hear Remus himself cry out in pain.

"Merlin!" Harry swore, having failed to anticipate that his attack might be transmitted to the wolf's host. He crossed his fingers, hoping that Lupin's wound would be as minor as that of the wolf.

For a moment, Harry considered fleeing Lupin's mind, but he quickly rejected the idea. Certainly if every form of attack on the wolf affected Remus equally, he would have to disengage. Nevertheless, he owed it to Remus to try, for it was obvious that the wolf represented Remus' lycanthropy, and if he could destroy or remove it without killing the last true Marauder, he had the feeling that Remus would be a werewolf no longer. After causing Lupin's best friend's death, Harry felt it was his duty to take this opportunity.

The nerve-wracking part for Harry was the question of what would happen if that wolf managed to bite him. Could the infection be passed on without actual physical contact? Could a succubus even be infected by a werewolf? What would be the consequences if he did get infected?

Still, he had no choice. Lifting higher, further from the wolf's lunges, Harry took stock of himself. He had so far avoided injury, but perhaps he could come up with a way of avoiding it completely? He needed something to protect himself, something that would withstand the claws and teeth of the werewolf, while allowing him to subdue it without causing physical damage.

Harry felt a sudden magical surge, as if his magic had flowed out of his body for a moment, before returning in a flood of power that dwarfed the outflow. With barely any conception of what was happening to him, Harry suddenly found his body reacting instinctively, enveloping the werewolf in a crushing embrace.

Desperately, Harry reached out to Remus, focusing on the feeling of his magic flowing, and the idea that Remus must survive, even as his mental form effortlessly consumed the wolf, unaffected by its teeth and claws.

---

Hermione sat up with a start, and looked wildly around the room she shared with the other sixth-year Gryffindor girls. She was sweating, and breathing heavily, as though awakened from a nightmare, but she could remember nothing of the dream.

Her thoughts turned instantly to Harry, and his dreams of the previous year, and the memory of her earlier conversation came flooding back, overriding the mindless panic of her awakening. "Harry?" she called out in her mind, hoping that he was listening, hoping that he could hear her. There was no reply.

At the same time, across the world, thirteen stones gained a steady glow in their heart. Thirteen organizations, each formed at the same time, each independent of their respective governments, began to execute plans held since their beginnings.

In London, England, in the bowels of the Ministry, the change in the stone triggered a ward that awakened the head of the department, the head of the Unspeakables, Algernon Croaker. It took him a minute to identify the ward that had awakened him, and what it was telling him, but when he did, he groaned. "What a time to have a Minister like Cornelius. Well, there's nothing for it, best prepare, even if he is guaranteed to botch it. I never imagined we would be the ones on the wrong side of that prophecy, but knowing Fudge and Dumbledore . . ."

---

"By Lilith's Black Heart, wake up, Mahalia!"

"Uhh . . . what do you want now, Idra? Is it not enough that we are the last, that we must hide, unable to even feed for fear of drawing His eye, must we now give up all hope of rest as well?"

"Mahalia, shut up! Stop grousing, and wake up. Can you not feel it? Either your plan worked, or one of the Aeld has awakened!"

"My plan?" Mahalia stirred, and finally sat up, rustling her wings to shake off the leaves. "What are you . . . Baal's Bronze Balls, Idra, how can that power be from my plan? Besides, even if my plan succeeded, you know we have to wait at least a hundred years for the whelp to mature before it will be any good to us . . ." She yawned, exposing a mouthful of fangs and a long forked tongue, and stretched, her coppery skin glinting as a sunbeam crossed her flat stomach.

"But I felt no gate opening, and it's coming from the right place, that hidden castle where you found them the first time, and besides, it feels like you."

Mahalia twisted to look at her brood-sister, sitting, pouting, one fang peeking out of her mouth, pressed against her full lower lip. Like Mahalia, Idra wore a simple halter and a loincloth covering a sleek form. Both of them were at less than their peak, as their ability to feed had been severely restricted since they had gone into hiding, and limited even more so when they accidentally attracted the attention of a hunter team.

She turned her attention away from her companion, and to the power-signature she could feel in the distance. To her surprise, Idra was right, it did seem to be coming from the wizard's school where she had found her mortal playthings.

Worse yet, it did feel vaguely familiar, as she would have expected of her get, but vastly more powerful and much older. How could this be? Was it some relative of hers, sent by Him to bring them back? If so, it seemed a strange thing that they would choose to appear in a school for those who might have some chance at restraining them.

Of course, she reconsidered, one of that strength, such strength as she had never felt in one of her kin since the Aeld left the Underrealm, would have little to fear.

Yet, what if it was her Lily's child? She was torn between investigating, and fleeing.

---

Harry slowly returned to consciousness, his body aching horribly, and his head pounding. He shifted, trying to relieve an uncomfortable pressure on his tail, when he heard a dry hiss. He froze, realizing that he was in his succubus form, given the feeling in his tail, and that there was something or someone else in the room with him. He listened intently, but the sound was not repeated.

Carefully, he cracked his eyelids open, allowing a sliver of darkness to enter. "Sure, Harry, just peer around and see who's making the noise . . . doesn't help much when it's bloody pitch black," Harry mentally castigated himself.

Closing his eyes again, he took stock of his surroundings. He was lying on something warm and yielding, and there was a weight on his tail, but none on his body. There had still been no recurrence of the unexpected hiss, so Harry dared a twitch of his fingers against his support. The feel was smooth but yielding, and interspersed with ridges. "I'm lying on the Basilisk? How the heck did I get up here?"

Harry tried again to move his tail, and again he heard a hissing. He stilled and the noise stopped. He moved his tail sharply, which felt strange, as if he had only managed to twitch a little bit of it, like he had kinked it or something, and was rewarded with a higher pitched scraping noise.

Deciding that he was the source of the noise, and therefore alone, he cast Lumos, then waited for the red of his eyelids to fade from blinding to merely aching, and slowly opened his eyes. The light did nothing good for his headache, but at least he could see. The first thought that crossed his mind was amazement at how much the basilisk seemed to have shrunk. He could see a loop of its coil--an oddity in itself since the snake had not been coiled up when he rested against it--just beneath his head, and judging by the way it fell away to either side, he would say it was no wider around than his torso.

He turned his head to look up at the room, and was startled to realize that it too seemed to have shrunk. He tried to pull a leg beneath him to rise, but to his dismay, he could feel no reaction. His head snapped down to look at his legs, and he felt as though a giant hand had reached inside him and crushed his heart, lungs, and stomach.

He had no legs. He had no feet. He had an absolute hell of a tail. His abdomen seemed to merge seamlessly into a tail as wide around as he was, and both tail and abdomen were red and scaled. He lifted his hands in front of his face, and to his horror, they too were covered in scales.

After several minutes of thrashing about in a frenzy, he managed to get the hang of moving this new tail and managed to lift his torso into the air. Now able to look fully about him, he realized that the room had not shrunk, nor had the basilisk. He had grown. The basilisk was gone, somehow absorbed by his animagus form, resulting in a strange new shape. He stretched out, looking over his new mass, and decided he had to be at least fifty feet long. He could easily rear up and touch the ceiling, and his wings stretched out amazingly wide.

He glanced down again and sighed unhappily. His mental image of himself was taking a real beating. It was hard to keep thinking of yourself as a boy when you sported breasts that massive. Their relative increase in mass had exacerbated their tendency to pull him off balance when he moved too quickly. Even worse, his clothes had survived his wings coming out the first time, but they had been ripped to shreds by his massive increase in size. Only his shoes and pants remained unharmed, though of course, he could wear neither. His cloak was not torn itself, but the clasp had been pulled loose.

"Well, here goes nothing," he stated. His voice sounded unnaturally loud and deep in his ears, but he ignored the change. Pointing his hand at his cloak, he cast "Reparo!"

It was not until the light had flashed from his hand, and the clasp restored to his cloak, that he realized he had not even considered the possibility that his unexpected transformation might have affected his magic.

Aside from covering him with scales, stealing his legs, and increasing his overall proportions, not to mention one bloody huge tail, had he obtained anything else from the basilisk? Would his eyes kill if someone saw them? Was his bite now among the world's more deadly poisons?

More to the point, if he conjured another mirror to check out his eyes for any visible changes, did he risk killing or petrifying himself? An even worse thought occurred to him a moment later. Would he, like the basilisk, now be killed by hearing a rooster's crow?

A moment later, Harry shook off the fear for his own life. Basilisks were not vulnerable to their own gaze, so he doubted he would be either. That did not, of course, protect anyone else. He also doubted that he could truly be slain by a cock's crow, as that would invalidate the prophecy.

Experience gave him a way to test his gaze without great risk, as well. In his second year, when Riddle was releasing the basilisk, a ghost had fallen victim, and been basically unharmed, but not unaffected. If he could get his hands on a ghost without risking seeing anyone living, then he could find out what the consequences of his vision would be.

Unfortunately, guaranteeing that there were no living things in his range, when he could not use his eyes, would not be an easy thing. Not to mention that he would have to figure this new form out well enough to be able to propel himself up that tube to Myrtle's bathroom. That was assuming that he could get past the rockfall.

Then again, if he could still turn intangible, that might not be so difficult as it seemed. A moment of focus confirmed this easier answer, as Harry's form wavered, and his shifting coils slipped beneath the surface of the floor.

Harry made it back through the tunnels and half-way up the twisting pipe to Myrtle's bathroom, when he stopped. What would happen if his eyes did paralyze a ghost? Granted it would likely do the ghost no permanent harm, and could be easily remedied, but what would be the Ministry's response to a new 'attack' from Slytherin's Monster?

Not only would Dumbledore likely be removed again, but worse, the Minister might well throw Hagrid back in Azkaban. Harry descended once more, his relief shattered. If even such a safe test might have unacceptable consequences for his friends, would he ever be able to see them again?

Even if he managed to somehow return to a semi-human form--at this point even the form of a girl seemed a vast improvement--he had no way to be certain that his eyes held no danger.

"Harry!"

Harry snapped his eyes shut, cringing away from the sound of Hermione's voice, afraid that she had somehow managed to get into the Chamber, afraid that he was about to find out if his eyes could kill, at the cost of one of his best friend's life.

A moment later, as Hermione's sharp voice sounded again in his ears, he realized that he was hearing her the same way he had previously, in his mind. "Harry, answer me! I can feel that you are there now. Where were you?!"

"I'm here, Hermione," he responded, instantly grateful that his mental voice had not changed with his size, leaving no indications of what had happened to him that Hermione should be able to pick up.

"Harry, what happened down there? What was that?"

Or not. Apparently she could tell. "What do you mean, Hermione? Nothing happened."

"You can't mean to tell me that you didn't feel that magical pulse, Harry? It passed through all of Hogwarts! It woke me up out of a sound sleep . . . it didn't wake the other girls, but when we got up this morning, we found a posting on the inside of the Fat Lady's portrait, we've been confined to the dorms while the professors search Hogwarts for the cause! I've been so worried, I tried to contact you when I woke up, but you weren't there, and I was so afraid . . ."

"It's alright, Hermione," Harry interrupted her, as she had gotten steadily faster and more shrill, and he had the distinct sense that she was about to burst into tears. "I'm . . . I'm fine. Yes, alright, something happened, but I can't tell you about it, not yet. It won't; it can't happen again, Hermione, definitely a one-time thing," he tried to reassure her, suppressing a laugh at his own statement. Had to be a one-time thing, right? After all, there weren't any other basilisks here for him to absorb.

Remus! Harry's heart fell through to his feet. He had awakened, and completely failed to think of Remus. He did not even know if the Marauder was still alive after what he had done . . . he was unclear on just what he had done anyway, though he was pretty sure he remembered eating the wolf . . . swallowing it whole. He felt bile rising in his throat, and forced it back down. "I've got to go, Hermione. I'm fine, you're fine, but I've got to check on something."

"Harry, you can't just . . ."

Harry pulled his mind away from Hermione, and focused once more on the smell and feel of Remus. For several long minutes he could feel despair rising in his throat. Finally he decided that he had to change his method, he could not think of anything about Remus that was tied to the wolf if he had destroyed it. That had to be the problem, it simply had to be.

With his stomach twisting in knots, and feeling horribly afraid that he had just killed his last link to his parents, he reached out again, focusing solely on his memories of Remus teaching him, of his patient manner, his quiet diction, carefully avoiding any thought of the wolf.

Great tears sprang into his eyes when the sense of Remus suddenly surrounded him. Too choked up to say anything, he just basked in the feel of the man. The wildness about his feel had gone, and he simply felt tired, sore, but alive.

Unexpected Arrivals

Finally withdrawing from feeling Remus' presence, Harry refocused on his surroundings. Looking down at his scaly hands, he remembered how he had managed to shift from his demoness form to a female Harry form. Did he still possess that capability?

He almost dared not try, not sure what he would feel, what he would do, if he had lost that last link to his humanity. He pushed past his fear, and focused once more, chanting the words that should have reversed his animagus transformation, and picturing himself as he was.

He felt his wings retracting, his fangs widening and flattening in his mouth, an odd itching on his head. His heart fell, however, as he realized that he did not feel any shrinking sensation, nor did he feel the stutter of his tail receding, and the columns around him remained oddly smaller than his memory said they should be.

Looking down at himself, he realized that he was apparently still half-basilisk, though his scales were now green. What about his teeth? Had he not felt them flattening? He once more conjured a mirror, though what had been a full height mirror for him but a short while ago, now served him as a hand-mirror.

He bared his teeth, and saw that what he now had was a mixture of a normal human dentition, combined with a pair of hollow fangs, that though they initially lay back against the roof of his mouth, as he opened his jaws wider, sprang forward. He noticed as well that his tongue had turned a dark blue, gleaming oddly in the reflected light, a strange shade against the ruddy pink of the rest of his mouth, and it had forked in the front.

He studied his face in dismay, as he realized that even here, his skin had become green scales. He was grateful, after recovering from his displeasure at his new appearance, that his nose, though green and scaly, was still present, and still human in shape. He did not know what he would have felt, how he would have dealt with it, had he looked into a face with a mere two slits for nostrils, such as Voldemort possessed.

Still, he was not ready to give in. Abandoning his chant, Harry closed his eyes, and focused even harder on just the image of his female form as it had been. He felt something, suddenly. It was as though he was pressing against a metal band, that was bending and creaking, trying to hold him in. Summoning all his will, he threw himself against it, forcing it outward, pressing it to bend, until finally he felt a great snap, and his mind, enlarged as it was, shattered and fell into pieces.

Opening his eyes in confusion, his head whipped back and forth. There were twenty of him, twenty normal sized female Harry's whipping their heads back and forth, looking at each other, all nude. One of them looked down at herself, and suddenly her skin darkened, and reddened, as wings burst forth from her back, and a tail from her enticing rear, and horns from her head.

This was the first time he had seen his transformation from so many angles, so it took him a minute to realize what was different. For the most part, he realized, as he came together, surrounding his demoness self, who whimpered softly, as hands began to caress her, to touch her hair, and feel her wings and her skin, she was the same, but eventually he realized the difference was that she had horns, large, curved, and looking wickedly sharp.

Demoness-Harry collapsed to the ground as her knees gave way, but she was caught by dozens of hands, and gently lowered. Harry was in a frenzy now, as her human forms were unwittingly exposed to an untrained succubus' allure, even as their own slightly more muted allure washed over the demoness.

Hands were everywhere caressing her, sliding over firm smooth flesh, fondling her newly magnificent horns, still sensitive despite their size, playing in her hair, rubbing the skin of her wings, cupping her firm breasts, tugging at swiftly stiffening nipples. Tongues pressed against heated flesh, human in form but stretching to inhuman length in response to their wielder's desire, piercing her mouth, her nether lips, laving the wicked point at the tip of her tail with heated moisture. Fingernails scraped lightly across sensitive skin, eliciting wriggles and gasps and cries.

Heated desire brought about a flurry of experimentation that Harry might otherwise have been weeks before trying, or perhaps never thought of at all. Some Harry's joined the first in returning to succubus form, to gain more sensation. Another found that she could return to her half-basilisk form without absorbing the others, or regaining that immense mass, becoming a human-sized half-snake, and wrapping heated coils around another Harry, squeezing her gently, while kissing her passionately.

One splintered piece of her mind remembered her intense gratitude at finding Lupin unharmed, and remembered that Hermione had been the one to remind them to check. In its fragmented state, it did not remember that there was much they did not want Hermione to know, and when it checked, it discovered that in her dismay, Hermione had fled the dorms, against the rules as everyone was still in lock-down whilst the professors futilely searched the school, and crept to the Room of Requirement, and was sobbing quietly there to herself, anxious with fear for her best friend.

Desiring to express the gratitude they all felt, that Harry became Hermione in form, and without even understanding what he did or how, reached out and drew Hermione in to himself, to experience what his body, now Hermione's, experienced.

As soon as Hermione's form appeared, the others descended on her, all feeling that intense gratitude, and the need to express it.

Hermione felt a mental embrace, the feeling of Harry surrounding her, and was about to try to speak to him, when she felt suddenly as if she was falling, with Harry wrapped all about her, and then she landed.

She had no time to think, no time to realize that she was suddenly naked, before she felt heated mouths on her skin, felt a warm mouth wrapped around her nipple, suckling gently, while warm fingers teased her other breast, and felt someone licking her labia, laving first one side, then the other, then slipping between.

She gasped and in that moment, a mouth met hers, and she looked into brilliant green eyes. Of course, in truth, this was not her body, though it was her form, and she was not going physically from zero to sixty, for that Harry's body had already been heated and intensely horny. Mentally, she might as well have gone from zero to a thousand, as she was plunged into a sea of hormones, and felt the strength of nineteen succubi's allure.

Her own body lay where it had been, where she had been lying on the couch, trying to read through her tears, trying to get her mind off her missing friend. Though her mind was not present, her body continued autonomic function, continued breathing and living.

In spite of her over-heated, over-aroused, and overwhelmed state, Hermione saw those green eyes, saw the lust and passion and love in them, and screamed into his mouth, "Harry!," as she reached up and grabbed him, pulling him firmly to her, displacing the mouth on her breast as she sucked hard, pulling his tongue into her mouth, pressing fiercely as she tried to convey her passion, her love for him, her best friend, betimes her savior. Never had she thought herself unworthy of him, but never either had she thought he would look on her with passion in his eyes, not on her, the bushy-haired one, the bookworm, books and cleverness and buckteeth. But now he was kissing her, and everything felt so good, so wonderful, and she was never going to let him go.

She felt an explosion in her mind, as her body succumbed to the mass assault, and her brain, though temporarily not her own, nor even hers alone, as Harry was still in the body with her, experiencing all as she was, feeling her love for him in a way never experienced in that world before, joined her body in a paroxysm of ecstatic joy.

She cried out as Harry pulled away. Her shocked eyes had barely a moment to realize that the intensely green-eyed, black-haired creature drawing away from her was undeniably Harry, and yet powerfully feminine, before her lips were claimed again from the other side, and this too was Harry, but now the intense green eyes were set in a glistening red-skinned face, and curling up through her hair were these wicked black horns, and over her back, were those wings? This Harry's tongue invaded her mouth, and she felt an intense surge of heat pass through her, making her nipples and clit ache, as Harry's tongue wrapped around her own, squeezing and tugging.

A moment later that Harry was gone, to her breast by the feel of the suckling and the warm, moist something that was wrapped around the base of her breast, squeezing lightly, while her mouth was stolen by a new Harry, with green scales and a cute, tiny pair of points on the tip of her green nose, while her tongue was tormented and tickled by this Harry's split tongue.

She tried to engage her mind, to figure out how there could be so many Harry's, and how they could be so different, and why they were all so female, and why they still turned her on so badly, and what his animagus form could possibly be, when she suddenly felt an embrace, inside, not on her skin, but on her very mind, as another Harry wrapped himself around her, and whispered in her metaphorical ear to let it go for now, to just feel and let him thank her, let him show her how grateful he/they were, for her steadfastness, for her support, for her reminding him of what was important.

She melted, and all thought fled, as she gave herself over to pleasure. She would never have pictured herself as a selfish lover, but she could not get a single moment to bring her thoughts together enough to try to reciprocate, there were too many hands rubbing her, too many lips kissing her, too many tongues tasting her, too many to resist.

Though she desperately wanted to know what was happening with Harry, she could find no opportunity. When Harry's stamina finally wore thin, and the onslaught slowed, her spirit was the first thing he lost hold of, and she found herself back in her body in the Room of Requirement, unmolested, untouched, her mind free of the endorphins that had gripped her mind in a fog so very recently. She wanted to know, but she was not going to reach out to him again, until she had at least managed to think about what had happened, and work out how she felt about it.

She had certainly been loved, but she had never expected her first sexual experience with another person to be a sapphic orgy with her best male friend. Was it rape? Perhaps technically, but not in her mind. She had made no clear protests that she could remember, but she had not really been given the opportunity. Then again, it was clearly not about power, nor had her actual body been touched.

She had managed to gain at least a little awareness of what was going on around her. It made her wonder, what do you call an orgy of one? Had that been incest? Masturbation? Narcissism? Or just the instincts that Professor McGonagall had warned them about?

Given Hermione's intelligence, it was a quick, short step from wondering whether what had just gone on was due to the instincts of Harry's animagus form, to putting together at least a few of things she had seen, and coming up with an answer. It did not explain everything, but it explained a lot--certainly it explained Harry's fear of her reaction, why he had not sought help, and why he had hidden himself away. It failed to explain why there had been more than one of him, how he had stolen her from her body . . . and worst of all, it failed to explain whether his feelings for her were a result of his form, or genuine but previously hidden and only being exposed because of those instincts.

That mattered to her, she realized, more than she ever would have expected.

---

To say Fudge did not take the report from the Department of Mysteries well would be a grave understatement. In point of fact, it so riled him that his reaction, to Algernon Croaker's eyes, was a child's hissy fit, and Croaker felt a sense of doom as once again, he realized that though British Wizardry were certainly the most direct descendants of the great Merlin, it was equally British Wizardry that were going to play the villains of this prophecy.

Only by pointing out rather forcefully to Fudge that his was not the sole stone, and that the other countries would not be slow to find the source of the prophecy's trigger did he finally stir the abominable little man to action.

So it was that he was following a force of twenty Aurors, a snot-nosed brat of a suck-up, the Fudge, and the Fudge's pet Toad across the lawns of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, towards the castle.

He was somewhat surprised to note that there did not appear to be any activity outside, neither near the half-giant's hut, where he understood Care of Magical Creatures had tended to end up, nor in the visible greenhouses, nor was there any sign of activity around the distant hoops of the Quidditch Pitch.

Unlike Fudge, Croaker was an intelligent, and above all, a competent individual, so he was unsurprised when they entered the great doors to find Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall waiting for them, and ushering them up to the Headmaster's office through empty halls. He rightly guessed that the event that triggered the prophecy had generated some form of visible or tangible evidence, and not knowing the cause, that Dumbledore had undoubtedly canceled classes in favor of locating the cause.

No, that was not in question at all in Croaker's mind. What was, was where Dumbledore would fall in this. Would he be a counterweight to Fudge? Could he turn Britain away from a role as the prophecy's villain, or had he already ensured it? If the target of the prophecy was the one he feared, the outcome was not in much doubt, as the damage had already been done. Of course, if it was, that would still be better than Voldemort being the one, as some had feared in recent years. He had rarely been more grateful than when his efforts to localize the disturbance targeted Hogwarts.

Unfortunately, though Dumbledore had obtained advance notice of their arrival somehow, it was obvious from his expression, much though he sought to suppress his reaction, that he had not had any warning of what the Fudge was going to walk in demanding. He was surprised to see Croaker with Fudge, Algernon noted. Though the old man had an impressive ability to control his reactions, and Algernon would not be surprised if Fudge had completely failed to notice, he himself was a practiced observer, and was sure of his read.

Of course, Dumbledore was not the only target of his observation. His Deputy, Minerva McGonagall, might appear to the students to be a stern and controlled taskmistress, but Algernon was not unfamiliar with the Scot's volatile temper. Though she did well at blanking her expression when Fudge or one of his toadies was looking at her, Croaker caught both her dislike of Fudge, and more importantly, that she was anxious and concerned about something even before they arrived, and it was making her impatient.

When Fudge demanded that all of the students be collected in the Great Hall, he thought McGonagall was on the verge of exploding, and he was quite surprised when Dumbledore acquiesced. "He knows something," Croaker mused to himself. That was odd, since the canny Headmaster had clearly not known that the Prophecy had finally been triggered. Combine that fact with McGonagall's apparent worry, and the absence of students told Croaker that the event that triggered the stone must have had some degree of noticeable effect within Hogwarts.

---

Hermione was lucky to have heard the noise of her dormmate's voices, and instead of continuing to head to the library, she was able to slip unnoticed into the flow of students from Gryffindor to the Great Hall.

She was quick to note the presence of Ministry aurors in the Hall. Clearly, the teachers had not found what they were looking for . . . unsurprising, given that she was pretty certain they were looking for Harry, and he was in the Chamber of Secrets, which had been proven to exist in his third year, but which clearly had not been searched yet.

It was less clear why they were being brought together. The teachers had already sequestered the students in their dorms, and taken headcounts, so that could not be the purpose. Perhaps they were moving them so that they could then search the dorms?

Hermione had to suppress an inappropriate fit of the giggles when she overheard some of the rumours floating around. As usual, in the absence of any real details, everyone's imagination seemed to be on overdrive. Almost all of the rumours focused on Harry, since of course it was the Gryffindors around her that had first realized that Harry was absent. As the only student who knew where Harry was, she was not tempted to join in. She knew that Harry had not faced a manticore in the corridors, nor had he fought You-Know-Who on the Astronomy Tower, nor had the castle survived an invasion of Veela . . . though, considering her most recent experience of Harry, that last one was not too far off.

Hermione ducked her head to hide a raging blush, and felt absurdly grateful that her robes were thick enough to hide the state of her nipples. It had certainly been an eye-opening experience, and she wished that she had been able to make it unnoticed to the library. She dearly wanted to know what Harry could possibly have become that would explain her being ravished by a seemingly endless procession of feminine Harry's.

She knew that there were animals that reproduced by parthenogenesis, but she could not think of one off the top of her head that simply had no male sex whatsoever and yet had bat-like wings. There was a lizard species that she remembered reading about that was wholly female, but no bats, nor had any of the magical species she had read about come in strictly female forms, much less multiple different female forms.

She had one particular idea, but it was difficult to reconcile with what she knew of Animagi, and Animagus forms.

---

Both sated and exhausted, the Harrys lay in a pile, trying to come to terms with what had happened. Two of them had fallen asleep, and the rest were trying to deal with experiencing both their usual singular consciousness, and an odd multiple consciousness that seemed to overlay the first.

In a sense, each Harry felt that she was Harry, and the rest were her copies, and yet, she could feel that same sensation in the others. Without any discussion, the five conscious Harry's that had taken demoness form simultaneously pushed it away, returning to their mere human shape.

A slow progression began, as first one, then another of the Harrys started to squirm, across stones, across other Harrys, to get to the pool at the base of the statue of Slytherin.

Several Harrys worked together to drag the sleeping Harrys. One of the two was the first that had taken demoness form, and experienced being the focus of nineteen nubile young women. The other was the one who had reached out and brought Hermione to them, and similarly suffered their collective focus.

Both were slid into the water, supported all about, as the Harry's cooperated, working through their exhaustion to clean each other.

Afraid to come too close to thinking about what they had done to Hermione, and what her reaction would be, one of the Harry's stumbled onto a different question.

In their attempt to cure Remus of his lycanthropy, they had apparently absorbed the basilisk; but in the process, they remembered consuming the wolf in Remus' mind.

There was a sudden bout of splashing as the other Harrys quickly pulled away, as Harry reached into herself, and found the wolf and brought it forward. They watched in startled horror and fascination, as Harry thrashed in the water, her face stretching, fur sprouting. Painful as it looked, it was not Cruciatus level, and she managed to keep from crying out.

When her thrashing began to subside, the others tensed, ready and waiting, in case she lost her mind. Their fears were thankfully unfounded, however, and they could clearly feel her, and no sign of a wolf-mind, or surge of insanity, or any such effect.

The thrashing awoke the sleeping demoness Harry, and as she awoke, she slipped back into human form, without apparently giving it any thought. She looked beside her, a bit disturbed to see her sleeping other-self still in Hermione's form. Another Harry on the other side of the sleeping Hermione-Harry met her eyes with a wry grin, and shrugged.

Three Harrys slogged forward and gently helped the lupine-Harry from the water. Almost as soon as she was out, an uncontrollable urge hit, and the other Harrys cried out and jumped away as she shivered and shook violently, sending water flying.

It did not seem to matter that they had just been in the water, avoiding the spray was a reflexive action. Once they realized what they had done, however, all three joined in the others' laughter. The laughter awoke Hermione-Harry, and she quickly shifted back to herself.

Harry looked around at herself, then pulled out of the water. Warming charms flashed from one of her to another, along with drying charms. In spite of her satiation and exhaustion, she still found it difficult to resist the allure of so many bare feminine forms. Looking about the chamber, she spied enlarged clothing, limp, in a pile on the chamber floor.

Remembering the mirror, a flurry of conjuring followed, and soon everyone was dressed. This did not help as much as she had expected, for her prior experience with clothing was with thick robes and ill-fitting hand-me-downs. None of her wanted to conjure Dudley clothing to wear, and all of them had taken the opportunity to have clothing that actually fit.

Any ordinary hormonal teenage boy, walking into that chamber after they had dressed, would probably collapse from blood loss to his head.

Unwilling to rejoin and lose their more familiar size, even if it would regain a singular state of mind, but also recognizing the danger of continued proximity, Harry split up to finish exploring and mapping the chamber. Though Remus had not managed to complete his explanation, Harry had picked up enough to make a start on mapping. It might not end up as sophisticated as the Marauder's map, but then, he did not need that level of detail or animation. He merely needed accurate maps.

The two most tired Harry's remained together, resting. The one that had taken Hermione's form now found it impossible to resist considering her reaction, and the former demoness-Harry found herself with an armful of crying Harry.

She felt like crying herself, of course, but she focused on comforting her other self, and trying to help the others by attempting to muffle the sobbing Harry's mental link with the others.

As she comforted herself, she also paid attention to her other selves, tasting their experiences. Harry found the pipes the basilisk had been using, when she first heard it, and found that her half-basilisk form, with its ability to readily apply pressure all around the circumference of the pipes, was the ideal shape to use to climb them, as she learned their network.

Harry found actual rooms, even a bedchamber, though the bedframe was rotting, and the mattress barely still present, and abandoned her mapping in favor of practicing mending and cleaning spells. No more sleeping on cold stone floors!

Harry climbed into the Founder's gaping jaw and examined the basilisk's sleeping chamber, which oddly reminded him of a lab-rat's cage. There was another pool in here, this one seemed to have water constantly circulating. A large flat raised stone in a corner, when pressed by Harry using a banishing spell, caused a startled deer to suddenly appear in the chamber.

Though tempted to take one of her more feral forms and hunt it down, Harry managed to resist the urge, and in the process, realized that her eyes, at least in her normal form, did not have the basilisk's lethality. She would have to find a way to get the deer back to the forest later. A slide in a corner of the smaller chamber was surprisingly fun; though landing in a remarkable pile of bones at the bottom was not so pleasant, it explained a lot about the relatively cleanliness of the basilisk's lair.

Another Harry found outlets from one of the chamber's side tunnels into the wider cave system, covered over with rusting iron grates, strong enough to stop the basilisk from escaping, with surprisingly narrow openings, yet allowing air, water, and rodents to move freely. She passed through via the simple expedient of turning intangible.

Finding herself in a confusing labyrinth of un-hewn stone, shaped by water into fantastic forms, Harry sought a way to comprehend it, and remembering her earlier ideas about what her form might be, tried to turn into a bat, to use their improved instincts and echolocation abilities to make sense of the caves.

She succeeded, but not in the way she intended. Instead of transforming into a bat, she dissolved into a cloud of bats, her mind fracturing as she did. Across the Hogwart's underground, Harry's stopped in their tracks, as their minds sought to deal with the mind-fogging influx of information.

"Don't do that again without some warning," the former demoness-Harry said, and the Harry's again stopped, processing the fact that all of them had heard and understood that statement. The former Hermione-Harry in her lap looked up with a sudden grin. "Hermione would go nuts for the study potential in this," she commented wistfully.

"No doubt", the Harry holding her responded, "no doubt." Even as she said this, a cloud of Harry-bats boiled out of an opening into a rock formation in the Forbidden Forest, and Harry, transforming into half-basilisk form again, slid back up the chute, determined to take the deer to the exit, now that she knew the way.

The pipes had been invaded by several of the eighteen roaming Harry's, and as they entered the castle proper through the pipes, each of them recognized the risks in retaining a form that might yet have lethal eyes, if they were influenced by his emotions, or hunger, or something of the sort, and having just experienced Harry's success in taking on a form that was neither his animagus nor human form, and only peripherally connected to his forms and the powers he had absorbed, now sought, and succeeded, in transforming into moderately sized snakes, of a variety of species. One Harry went for a constrictor, and managed to transform without dividing into pieces; the others went for various smaller snakes, and as a consequence dissolved into a small collective.

One Harry collective found themselves just beneath a grating in the floor of the owlery. Unwilling to come out, given that owls are predatory birds, Harry pushed into intangibility, and successfully pulled himself together, and back into human form, before passing up through the floor.

Looking around at the owls, Harry realized that here was a means by which he could keep an eye on some of his friends. That realization was unfortunately muted by an immediate reassertion of reality; he could become an owl and so see Hermione with no one the wiser, but no-one kept their owls with them.

The only other pets allowed were toads and cats, Hermione had a cat, and Crookshanks would probably be perfectly willing to consume any toad that sought to come between them. Still, surely there was something they could become that would suffice?

A memory from his second year surfaced, Cornish pixies in Defense against the Dark Arts; a pixie would be small enough to conceal itself, had wings for avoiding predation, and guided by the larger mind, was potentially capable of writing for communication.

In spite of this realization, Harry was slow to attempt it. Not out of worry about the reaction of the owls, but out of simple fear of the repercussions. So far, he had become simple non-magical creatures, bats and snakes, and the few magical beings he had become, aside from the initial transformation into a succubus, had been due in some fashion to his absorbing them. That left potential limits, within which he might hope to eventually understand all of his powers.

If he could become a magical creature without ever having absorbed one, however, would that expand his boundaries indefinitely? Would that essentially bar him from ever learning his form well enough to make the reverse transformation, and restoring himself to his normal shape?

Several Harry's stopped what they were doing to contemplate this with her, but the two Harry's still in the Chamber by the pool had had little to do but think, and the former Hermione-Harry was quick to point out, "It doesn't matter. Either we can, or we can't, and if we can, well, I expect it makes no difference if you never try, except that if we have the power and don't explore it, we are guaranteed never to regain our form."

Torn between hoping for success and failure, Harry slipped out of the Owlery, and making sure no-one was around, focused on her memories of the pixies. Within moments, to her simultaneous delight and dismay, she dissolved into a cloud of three and four inch tall winged pixies, every one of them female, and on a tiny scale, beautiful.

Ministerial Interference

Hermione watched in some confusion as the Minister of Magic entered the hall, gesticulating vigorously as he had a hissed, incomprehensible discussion with the small group of important seeming wizards surrounding him.

A knot of teachers entered the hall, but remained apart from the Ministry group. No announcements were made, no explanations offered. A small commotion ensued at the Slytherin table, and with everyone's attention instantly focused on it, it required only a bit of watching to realize that individual Slytherins were being taken one at a time out of the hall, and returned a short time later.

She noticed Malfoy get very smug when one of the Aurors whispered to him before leading him out, even as rumour reached the Gryffindor table that the students were having the level of their power tested, a test that the Ravenclaws were claiming had not been performed for over a hundred years.

His expression on returning was rather pouty, and she got the impression that he had not done as well as he had expected. Looking over at the professors, Hermione noted a fair uniformity of expression; apparently the professors did not approve of what was going on.

She also noticed that some students were getting skipped, but she was not the first to understand why. It was the Slytherins themselve, apparently, that first twigged to the notion that only the purebloods were being tested. There were no mudbloods in Slytherin, of course, but the few half-bloods, and even the relatively new purebloods were being skipped over.

The new activity fueled rampant speculation, especially as several returnees confirmed the power testing, and Harry was dropped as a focus of comment. Hermione was amused by this, as she was fairly certain that whatever the Ministry was here for, it was tied to Harry, which only made their testing methodology more silly, as they would have skipped him even if he had been present.

She was so focused on observing the aurors, the professors, and watching Fudge, who seemed to get continually redder and more nervous as whatever he was looking for continued to not appear, that she felt a physical jolt, as if she had touched a live electrical wire, when something touched her hand.

She had made no sound, and was immensely grateful, both for managing to keep from squeaking, and for the intense attention everyone else was giving to the aurors, who had just taken the first pureblood Ravenclaw for testing. She barely held in a cry of shock in spite of herself when she discovered the touch had not come from a neighboring Gryffindor trying to get her attention, but from a tiny, blue, three-inch high pixie, wearing Slytherin green, and smiling up at her from a distinctly familiar Harry-like face, albeit an undeniably feminine one.

The tiny Harry-ette was holding a roll of parchment as wide as she was tall, and once she saw Hermione's eyes on her, she promptly let it fall against Hermione's hand, and dashing across the table, made a leaping dive right into Hermione's robe pocket.

Suppressing another startled shriek that threatened to burst forth at Harry's dive, Hermione glanced around, and once assured that no-one was paying her the slightest bit of attention, she carefully unrolled the parchment.

The note was, of necessity given the small amount of parchment the tiny Harry could carry, quite short and to the point, merely confirming the sprite's identity as a part of Harry, and that what it heard, he heard. It asked Hermione to keep her near, if she could bring herself to forgive him, that he might know if she were in danger.

When she rolled up the parchment and slipped it into her bag, she noticed the tiny winged Harry's face peering up at her from her pocket. Long experience with Harry meant she knew exactly what sort of a guilt-trip Harry would be putting himself through, though she still had no idea how he had done it, nor even really what he had done, beyond apparently causing her to experience an impossibly realistic erotic dream, and showing her a love she had never expected to receive from him.

She smiled at the little woman, and carefully, gingerly brushed her tiny cheek with the pad of her forefinger. The tiny, feminized face of her friend lit up with an almost incandescent glow. Hermione felt something land on her shoulder, and had to suppress her urge to whip her head in that direction, or swat at it, both of which would have drawn undesirable attention.

"Don't worry about me," a tiny voice whispered into her ear, sending an involuntary and irrepressible shudder through her. "I'm invisible and mostly intangible, and Moody's not here, so we're safe. What's going on?"

Not wanting to talk, but knowing that writing anything would be too noisy, and would attract too much attention, Hermione slipped a book out of her bag and opened it. No-one would pay any attention to the bookworm reading, she was sure.

She rested her hand on the page, as if she was keeping her place, and shifted slightly, letting her finger rest just beneath one letter, then moving on to the next. "Can you follow this?" she spelled out, and sighed with relief when the voice in her ear assented.

Slowly and carefully, she explained what was going on, as best she could tell.

---

Of course, Hermione had no idea how long Harry had been watching her before making a move. Just getting to the Great Hall had been an adventure, as he constantly had to get past pairs of Aurors that were searching the halls.

He made extensive use of his ability to drop back into the walls to remain unobserved when he encountered them unexpectedly, and to find paths that would take him around a pair without having to actually pass near them in the open.

Small as they were, they quickly learned that the portraits were attracted to the sight of them, to their swift, darting motion, and they had to work hard to remain out of sight, making them suddenly aware of just how many portraits there were in Hogwarts.

They had to worry about more than just the portraits identifying them and informing Dumbledore. They also had to be concerned about the portraits excited state attracting the attention of the roving Aurors, and it was with quite some relief that they discovered sleeping spells worked on them; though they avoided their use whenever possible. Leaving a trail of silent portraits would be nearly as bad as a trail of over-excited ones.

They also learned that the suits of armor, though internally empty and presumably great for concealing tiny sprites, would move in agitation, and shift about as if trying to scratch an itch or brush away an insect, when they attempted to hide inside.

Or at least, the first one did; after that, they did not attempt to use the suits of armor for concealment again. They did find a use for them, by hitting them with a low-level tickling charm to set up a rattle, to draw away the Aurors from the side entrance to the hall, before slipping intangibly through it.

Once inside, they had observed Hermione for a while. It took considerable concentration on the part of the still human size Harry's to keep the sprites on task, during both the trek and the observation in the Great Hall, as they felt the instinctive desire to be seen, which made convincing them to turn invisible nearly impossible, to be mischievous, and to cause trouble.

Indeed, it was due to one of the sprite's urges that they learned that they could all act as one Harry, in spite of their separation, when they had to suppress that sprite's urge to turn into a nargle and go after Luna Lovegood.

Harry, as a whole, was not inclined to find out what would happen if nargles did not, in fact, exist, and he turned into one anyway. Nor did he like the thought of discovering that a nargle's instincts were harmful, or that nargles were real but seven metres tall.

Indeed, the sprite's trouble with staying on task made him question whether this was a viable means of watching his friends at all, but in the end, he went for it. The form had the distinct advantage of being, at least one-on-one, about as unthreatening as he could get.

If Hermione was deeply troubled by what he had done to her, the last thing he wanted to do was frighten her further by looming over her at his full basilisk height, or even in the form of a normal human, who could potentially overpower her. Facing her in a tiny shape would reinforce that he meant her no harm.

Of course, after that, he still needed a form that could get near her and communicate with her, and tests had demonstrated that a human Harry could not clearly understand the extremely high-pitched voice of a sprite Harry, which meant another form had to be chosen, something small enough to be unobtrusive, but capable of being understood.

His first thought was a house-elf, but given Hermione's feelings about slavery, he did not want to take a chance on her thinking that he was mocking them.

He could just reach out to her mind, but given that he had basically kidnapped her through that very medium, he did not want to attempt communication that way until she reached out to him.

Back in the Chamber of Secrets, a flurry of experimentation ensued, as innumerable ideas were tried and discarded. Several varieties of birds, theoretically capable of speech, were tried. Unfortunately, it appeared that their method of vocalization was sufficiently different that speech did not carry over directly.

The smaller humanoids, the few that Harry knew about, from pixies to garden gnomes and fairies, were either inaudible, or incomprehensible to a human-scale Harry.

The solution came when one of the Harry's remembered that while in the shape of the full-size basilisk they had been able to shift mostly to their succubus form, and that in the tunnels and during the orgy, the human-scale Harry's had been able to take basilisk form.

A moment later, one of the watching sprites in the great hall shifted into a tiny succubus. A brief but abortive attempt to then take a normal feminine Harry shape nearly exposed her, as it drew in the nearest other Harry-sprite, doubling her size. A quick return to succubus form stopped the shifting, and going back to the sprite form split him again, allowing him to regain a four inch tall succubus form.

They went ahead by leading with a Harry-sprite. As there had been no blue-skinned Harry's at the orgy, they hoped the sprite would be properly unthreatening, as the demonic Harry certainly would not be.

The succubus Harry went invisible and followed the sprite in as soon as they collectively felt the warmth of Hermione's smile of forgiveness. Settling lightly on her shoulder, she slid through Hermione's bushy hair, careful to avoid stepping on any of the strands as she made her way to Hermione's ear.

Hermione was quick to work out a way to communicate surreptitiously and effectively, but what she was communicating was not answering Harry's more pressing questions. What was Fudge doing here? What were they searching for, and what did it have to do with him? More to the point, perhaps, what would they do if they did not find him . . . and what would they do if they did?

Neither Harry nor Hermione had any idea.

---

The aurors were only just reaching half-way through the Ravenclaw purebloods when there was a disturbance at the doors to the Great Hall, and in moments, the full attention of the Hall was focused on the auror who had just entered, and was now speaking quietly but urgently to Minister Fudge.

Fudge's characteristic bowler hat was observed to visibly vibrate as the short, stocky Minister fairly shook with agitation at what he was hearing. In moments, he burst into obvious shouting, red-faced in his fury, but none of his rant was heard, as apparently a quick-witted auror had cast a privacy ward.

"Oh, this is not good," murmured the succubus Harry, into Hermione's ear. Some of his other selves had been creeping into the rafters throughout the hall, and at least one was within the ward that was cast, so of all the students there gathered, only he and Hermione had any clear idea what the commotion was about.

"Whatever brought the Ministry here apparently triggered detectors all over. There are representatives from other Ministries and nations gathered outside the Hogwarts gates. The old guy, I think he's an Unspeakable maybe, is saying that it is legal because of some treaty, but the Fudge is raving about repelling an invasion."

Apparently the hasty warding spell had its limits, though, and Fudge exceeded them before Harry could continue.

"What the devil do you mean Dumbledore's gone out to greet them?" Fudge's shriek at the news was high and piercing, but the students got no further news from him. Even as he spoke, he had turned and was running out of the Hall, hand on his hat holding it in place.

---

Meanwhile, other Harry's had succeeded in finding that same grouping of foreigners, by flying overhead. Several shifted from bat-form to miniature succubus form, as they settled in the branches overhead, looking down at the steadily growing crowd outside the gates.

Foreigners were not the only ones there, as he recognized Rita Skeeter and her photographer, and guessed that several of the other more normal looking individuals were also from the British press.

There were several groups there, that seemed both unrelated, and somewhat at odds. He recognized the paired red and white-blond of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour near a small group of goblins.

Most of the groups, however, held no-one he recognized. There were two groups that he was sure were Oriental, several had people with coffee colored skin, and one group had deep black skin. Even as he was observing this, another party arrived, in a massive carriage pulled by a truly enormous horse with eight legs! Two of those that piled out of the carriage had blond hair, the other five had burnished red hair the color of fresh copper.

In the distance he saw Dumbledore approaching, and further behind him, the short, stout, bowler-clad figure of Fudge had just appeared at the doors.

Even as the first distant cries from Fudge could be heard, though not yet made out, unless one's hearing were better than that of the tiny Harrys, Dumbledore reached the gates, and they were flung wide before him.

"Welcome, welcome," he said jovially.

The largest of the copper-haired men strode forward, a man as tall as Dumbledore, widely built. He wore a massive hammer at his side, and in his belt a short blade in a plain sheath, and his clothes were leather, lined in fur.

"Merlin's Foretelling is upon us, Dumbledore," he stated forcefully, "The Stones say the Event occurred here. Will Britain stand by Merlin's Pact?"

"By my authority, Britain will stand," Dumbledore responded firmly, ignoring the shriek of dismay of Fudge, near enough now to hear their raised voices, but too out of breath to get his own voice to carry the distance.

Somehow, Harry was reassured by this. Anything the Fudge was so against was probably a good thing, and most of these new visitors at least looked competent, something he could not say for the Fudge or most of his staff.

Unfortunately, while the Fudge was charging out into the field to forestall Dumbledore, this left his henchmen in charge of the Great Hall. They were finishing with the Ravenclaws, and would shortly begin on the Gryffindors. Harry understood now that they were taking only purebloods, so they would probably skip him, but he could not hope that they would miss his absence.

A sudden cry attracted Harry's attention, and he realized that Luna Lovegood had just been tripped by a mean-spirited Ravenclaw, and the Auror who had her arm firmly in his grip had not slowed. The Auror had taken barely a step forward, stretching Luna's arm forward, where the next step would see either her arm twisted out of socket, or her dragged bodily across the stone floor, and Harry's emotions erupted in rage. Before he realized what he had done, he had grabbed the Auror.

Whether fortunately or no, there had been no part of him close enough to stop the man before Luna was hurt more than she had been by falling to her knees, and in his desire to stop the man in his tracks, he had apparently tapped in to another ability of his new form. There in the space between the tables from the stones of the floor a hand had arisen, five feet across at the palm, composed of the very stones of Hogwarts, and grasped the Auror.

Knowing that at any moment things could get out of hand, Harry quickly took control of this new talent, and gently raised the floor beneath Luna's knees, while shifting that beneath her feet forward, lifting her smoothly back to her feet, before sinking back in to the stone, and releasing the Auror.

The auror stood unmoving, stunned, as indeed was most of the hall, staring in complete disbelief at what had just occurred. Hermione jiggled her head, and the Harry on her shoulder looked down to see her finger twitching back and forth, spelling out 'you?' continuously.

"Yes, Hermione, I did not know I could do that until it happened."

Hermione suppressed a giggle, staring at the dumbfounded Auror, who finally shifted and resumed his pace at a verbal prodding from Luna, who asked if he was going to lead her out of the hall, in an innocent voice as if none of the preceeding had happened at all. His hand was resting much more lightly on her shoulder now, and he was not pulling her, but still, Harry could not help but turn a bit of himself invisible, and send it down to ride with Luna. Not only would it make sure no retribution was attempted upon her, it would get to watch this power testing that the Aurors were apparently doing.

The bit of Harry sent to Luna focused, and with a bit of effort, managed to adjust his succubus appearance to that of a tiny Luna with a crumpled horn in her forehead. She was a bit dismayed when Luna's eyes immediately shifted to track her once she approached, in spite of her invisibility, but was reassured by Luna's lack of an audible response or expression of surprise, and by the apparent inattention of the Auror, who seemed more focused on paying attention to the flagstones in front of his feet, lest they leap up at him once more.

The Harry on Hermione's shoulder quickly began a play-by-play as Luna and the Auror passed out of the Great Hall, and were met by an elderly witch, in official-looking robes, though not the robes of an Auror.

She walked Luna through casting several smaller spells through a series of hoops, then taught her a simple incantation and had her cast it at an odd metal sphere. On impacting the sphere, it caused all sorts of odd reactions, sending little widgets and other pokey-out things sliding across the sphere's surface, and various dials and indicators twirling about. The old lady looked at the rather tense Auror, and shook her head, at which he visibly wilted in relief.

"Alright, gel," he said, "back we go."

Luna followed him, a soft smile on her face, her slightly protuberant eyes once more fixed on the tiny Luna figure that had settled on her shoulder. Luckily for Harry, no-one found Luna's pre-occupation at all odd for her, though Hermione was fighting giggles the whole time Luna was walking across the floor, her face turned to look down at her shoulder, paying no attention to where she was going.

Once more one of the older Ravenclaw boys tried to swing around on the bench to stick out a leg, but found his feet suddenly affixed to the stone floor by stone hands grasping at his ankles, and froze in fright and consternation. His sigh of relief when Luna passed and the stone hands slid back in to the floor was audible, and garnered him some odd looks from his neighbors, but the Aurors took no notice.

Once she was seated again, Luna was quick to offer her hand to the tiny version of herself. Luna-Harry, not wanting to make a scene, shook her tiny head, but when Luna insisted, Luna-Harry grew fearful that they would attract too much attention. She was invisible, after all, and Luna was known to see and talk to creatures that no-one believed were there. So she gently climbed on to Luna's hand.

Standing beside Hermione's head was odd enough, as was hiding in her pocket, but it was as nothing to standing on Luna's hand. Harry felt dwarfed by her, as when he had faced Grawp, but Luna's serene but interested visage bore no resemblance beyond relative size to that of Hagrid's massive brother.

Luna gently set her down on the table in front of her, and Harry was startled to realize that at some point food had been set out, presumably to quiet the complaints of students not used to being forced to sit still with nothing to do for so long, without so much as a droning ghost to listen to.

Though he appreciated Luna's offer of a grape from her plate, Harry knew that the sight of a grape hovering in the air, with bites being taken out of it, would be too much for her neighbors to ignore. She giggled involuntarily when Luna shifted and rested her head on her clasped hands, and blew softly against her, ruffling her blonde hair about her crumpled horn. Though gently done, it was akin to a stiff summer breeze, warm, with a hint of moisture, and the strong scent of the bread that was the last thing Luna had eaten.

---

Fudge had eventually managed to catch his breath and protest Dumbledore's words, but it was to little avail, for while he had ordered the gates of Hogwarts be closed against the 'foreign invaders,' he was too nervous to try pitting the few Aurors he had with them against so many. If only, he thought, clutching his round stiff hat in nervous tension, he had not left so many inside to start looking for the new power. But that idea sparked a new one, and soon all his political wiles were focused on stalling, on finding and plucking the strings of tension between the various groups.

If he could keep them out here tied up in negotiations until his men found which brat got boosted, he would have the upper hand. It would not be hard, surely, to ply some foolish child with promises of wealth and power, and to lay the groundwork so that whatever gifts these foreign devils had brought to curry favor would seem to be his work, and accrue to his benefit and not their own.

Inside, as he had directed, the testing of the Pureblood students continued, finished with Ravenclaw now, and into Gryffindor. He shivered inside at the thought of what this was going to cost him, as the testing stone was one of those things the Purebloods disliked and constantly pushed rules and fines against, and there was no exception for the Ministry. The last thing the moneyed and powerful wanted was an instrument that would make merit-based hiring easier.

At nearly a hundred galleons per test, at least he had the comfort of Umbridge's insight that such a power growth would necessarily meed to be built on a firm foundation of the best breeding, and that he had therefore ordered the testing of only the Pureblooded students, a move sure to save him many thousands. At the same time, it saved him from his supporters possible anger over being compared with less worthy students.

Contrary to Harry and Hermione's initial thoughts, Minister Fudge had not only noticed Harry Potter's absence, he had actually been glad of it, though of course he made a show of being irritated. If he had been there he would have had to test him too, lest the Daily Prophet get wind of their hero being snubbed and take up for him again; but to avoid the obvious singling out of their hero, he would also have needed to test every halfblood as well. That would have dramatically increased his expense.

Yet as he stood, safe behind the impregnable gates of Hogwarts (ignorant of the reality that the wall the gate was in did not actually encircle the castle,) arguing semantics with the diplomats on the other side, he saw another figure approaching up the road from Hogsmeade. It was that former Defense professor that had caused such an uproar when it was discovered that he was a werewolf and that Dumbledore had known and allowed him to teach children anyway.

"Werewolf!" he gasped, backing away, and forgetting his plans and schemes, he turned and fled. Though he would have loved to have sent his Aurors after the dangerous creature for endangering a public gathering, that would have required opening the gates and losing his bargaining position. The diplomats would have to fend for themselves, and if they fled, it was all to the good for him.

The diplomats were quick to react to the fearful warning, and their guards were equally fast on the draw, so that Remus Lupin found himself at wandpoint from over a dozen hard-eyed men before he had gotten within a hundred yards of the gate of Hogwarts.

Fudge was not the first to notice Remus, however. That honor belonged perhaps to one of the many squirrelish Harrys watching the gathering and discussions from the trees, or possibly to one of the Oriental contingent, who had reacted to the approaching figure at almost the same moment Harry spied him, though the Harry that saw him react was sure he could not have seen Lupin, so assumed it was the result of some ward or sensory spell.

At any rate, Harry was not about to let his favorite former professor be attacked, and in acting in his defense, set off a firestorm that perhaps might have otherwise been avoided, if the guards had held their fire. This last outcome was doubtful, as the various parties were nervous and on guard, wary as much of each other as of the situation and the peculiar British response.

Even as Remus lifted his hands in startled surrender, Harry lifted the ground in a semi-circle between him and the guards into a shield-wall. The conjunction of Remus' and Harry's response made it seem that Remus had lifted the ground in a display of startlingly powerful wandless magic. Their reaction to this presumptive threat, when each of them had been feeling most keenly the risk they were in by gathering such a large group of politically valuable targets in a region rife with rumours of either a Dark Lord's return, or a new one's rising, was swift and crushing, thirty-six spells slashing across the short space to impact the wall. Not a few of the spells crossed paths, forming new amalgams of unknowable results.

Harry panicked still further, afraid that his shield could not hold against such an onslaught, and reached out without knowing how, and grabbing Remus, held him tight.

Dumbledore was standing closest to the gate, and from his angle, was among the few able to see behind the sudden wall of earth to see a giant hand of stone and dirt reach up from the ground, grab the former professor, and drag him into the ground.

Remus was monstrously confused. After the surreal experience of speaking to Harry in what seemed a dream, then to feel his inner wolf in battle with Harry, he was coming to Hogwarts in search of answers. He was far from prepared for the sight of a number of apparently foreign groups between him and the gates, nor to suddenly find himself at wandpoint.

At the sound of what seemed to be dozens of shouted spells, more than one of which he recognized as spells for slaying werewolves, when he felt everything go dark, and then was pulled through something at high speed, only to burst into light, he assumed he had died.

To be grabbed about the middle by a lithe teenage girl was confusing; that two more piled on a moment later, one as furry as he in wolf-form, though much more pleasantly shaped, and the other possessing dusky red skin, black leathery wings, and black horns splitting her wild locks of black hair was beyond strange.

He was lucky in that the three Harrys had near exhausted themselves with emotional turmoil, and had sated their form's instinct on Hermione, so their hugs were possessive, affectionate, and needy, but not sexual.

Though tempted to make the sort of comment Sirius would have barked out in an instant, Remus was by personality the shyest and most reticent of the Marauders, and after such a strange sequence of events, and surrounded by unfamiliar teenagers, he bit his tongue.

"They tried to kill you," one of the girls murmured, and he nodded, wondering where he had heard that voice before. "They tried to kill you," the furry girl growled, in a tone of anger that felt familiar to Remus, that felt as he might have if someone threatened his pack. "They tried to kill you!"

The demonic looking teen stepped back, and watching her, Remus realized both she and the furred girl had tails, though hers was slender and barbed, and the other's was thickly furred like that of a wolf.

"You will not harm my own!" All three spoke as one, and Remus felt the sound echoing through the chamber, the echoes causing him to look about and realize he was in a large stone chamber, probably cave, but carved by man, with pillars, a pool, and a statue.

"The Chamber of Secrets?" he asked, putting clues together, then looked about, finally paying attention to what his nose was telling him, "Harry?"

---

The sound of Harry's shout had come from the throat of every Harry capable of speech, fueled by magical anger, it shook the Great Hall. It echoed down the halls of Hogwarts, leaving Aurors spinning about trying to locate the source.

The focus of the shout, as well as the greatest number of collective voices was at the gates where Harrys had gathered, trying to figure out what was going on there. At the gates the echoing voice thundered through the air. the rushing swirl of magic sending the guards tumbling abut like pins in a bowling lane, while the diplomats and other non-combatants were unaffected.

The gates of Hogwarts shuddered under the assault as Harry's fury reached through them after the fleeing Fudge, sending the foolish Minister sprawling. The gates fell open, the right gate having lost its lower hinge and hanging askew.

Dumbledore twinkled in spite of himself, his hope winning out over his fear. There had only ever been two possible sources of that initial magical surge to his mind, and only one of those would claim Remus Lupin as his. Tense and Tender Meetings

The opening of the gate by Harry's magic-infused shout broke the stalemate Fudge had been maintaining, as the delegations could no longer be kept out.

When Fudge realized that they were on their way to the castle, he panicked. Even for him it was obvious that the shout that had echoed over the grounds was focused at the gate and therefore could not be attributed to anyone in the Great Hall, and that this instantly annihilated his hopes of getting the new power on his side by fair means. Potter was the only missing student, and Umbridge had been just flat wrong about the breeding foundation issue.

He had not given up, however. He knew what the Prophet had reported about the boy's lovelife. The moment he made it through the doors of Hogwarts, he shouted, "Quickly, place Potter's muggleborn, that Granger girl, in 'protective detention!' He won't dare to act against the Ministry if we have her!"

Croaker groaned. Unfortunately, he could not unilaterally unseat the Minister, and even if he could, it was probably too late already. A Supreme Power had arisen on the British Isles, and the fallout could have lifted the British Ministry to a preeminent and virtually unassailable position. Instead, with Fudge at the helm, the Ship of State was, he feared, about to founder against an immovable spire.

---

Harry had eyes and ears all over Hogwarts now, and as soon as the order was given to detain Hemione, he acted. Hermione and Luna had only a mere instant's warning to stand up, before the ground beneath them liquefied and they vanished into the floor with a quiet splash. Hermione had some idea where they might be going, as they quickly ended up in a long tube, a pipe, down which they swiftly sped, yet though Luna should have been less prepared, she was squealing with delight and glee.

Hermione wondered, as she felt her stomach rising within her, whether the Wizarding world had water parks or playgrounds, and whether this was or was not Luna's first exposure to such.

"Oh, my stomach feels all full of Whirling Dervishes," Luna announced when they were set gently down in the darkness. It sounded to Hermione as though the younger girl were stumbling about, and she put up her open hands to catch her if the apparently dizzy but delighted girl were to bump into her. She had no idea if Luna was referring to the whirling dervishes she knew of, people that wore colorful flowing robes and spun in place in a religious devotion, or some fantastical creature like her nargles that merely happened to share the name, but either way she could empathise with the sentiment.

Her stomach was also aflutter, though in her case she was certain it was at least as much due to her memories of her experience the last time Harry had all but abducted her.

That it was Harry's doing she had not the slightest doubt, as it had been the little Harry-doll figure that had warned her to stand. The previous time she had not seemingly been physically present, as far as she could tell afterwards. This time, she and Luna both were, and she was simultaneously excited and fearful. The Ministry was pretty clearly out to get Harry again, but her concern for the consequences to her best friend were taking a back seat for the moment to her worries for her and Luna. She did not know about the order regarding her, but she knew well enough that whether or not she would have been a target before, she and Luna surely would be now, after vanishing from the Great Hall in front of everyone like that.

She lifted her wand and softly cast, "Lumos," producing a soft glow from her wand, which nevertheless seemed startlingly bright in the dense gloom. They were indeed in an underground chamber, a tunnel hewn through solid stone, where several pipes met above them. She wrinkled her nose at the sight and smell of the water they had landed in, only deep enough to wet their shoes, but who knew when more would come flowing down.

"Come on, Luna, let's get out of this muck, and under some cover," she said, tugging the younger girl away from the center of the confluence.

Even as they moved away, a nervous and very obviously female version of Harry stepped diffidently into view. Unlike the concealing Hogwarts robes that Luna and Hermione wore, Harry was dressed in simple, well fitted Muggle clothing that left no doubt about his gender, or his considerable feminine appeal. This was far from the confident, take charge Harry that Hermione had experienced, but even so, Hermione felt her pulse quicken and her breathing deepen as her mind replayed those events, which had occurred not very far from this spot, if her guess was correct.

Hermione had expected to feel cross. Her last encounter with the infuriating boy had ventured well beyond anything she had expected to ever experience, and now he had kidnapped her in front of the whole school, and she was fairly certain by now that this entire mess was his fault. He had attempted the animagus transformation without supervision, in spite of being warned against it. She was not at all sure how the weird school wide testing was connected to his absence, considering that all it ought to have taken was a simple headcount to identify the missing student, if that was their concern, but she was pretty confident it was Harry's fault somehow.

When she saw him . . . er, her, all thought fled her mind and she had crossed the distance between them in an instant. Her eyes registered the shift in Harry's expression, from a sort of naughty puppy look of a dog that had made a mess and been caught with it, to a panicked look and an attempt at evasion, but only after she had caught the smaller girl up in an enveloping hug.

When she was once more able to focus on what was happening, she found Harry had clutched on to her just as tightly, pressing into her and breathing hard, her breath hitching every now and again as though she were fighting off tears. Another weight to her side turned out to be Luna, who had blithely joined in the hug. Hermione was tempted to slap Harry anyway, out of sheer principle, but held back. He was obviously emotionally fragile at the moment, considering he was apparently quite literally falling apart. She pulled back and glanced down at her pocket to confirm that all that had happened was not merely her imagination working overtime.

The tiny blue-skinned Harry was still there, hanging on the edge of the pocket gasping for breath from where she had been crushed between them.

A rather more solid voice sounded beyond them, "Well, welcome, Hermione. I see I'm not the only one to have been so summarily taken. And, Luna, was it?"

"Professor?!" Hermione squealed in shock. Remus Lupin stepped into view, trailed by two more rather diffident girls, also well-dressed in close fitting Muggle attire. "Oh, no!" She stared in horror at what was clearly a werewolf-cursed Harry. For a moment, she was tempted to grab Luna and run from this madness. Werewolves, no matter how much she might hate the discriminatory laws the Ministry had against them, were genuinely dangerous, and their instincts would be to attack any humans they encountered.

Her logical mind swiftly overrode that concern, as it was clear that nothing in the were-Harry's behavior indicated that they were in any danger of anything other than puppy-dog eyes. Her gaze moved to the other Harry, the one with red skin, wings, black horns, and a pointed tail. "Succubus," she breathed, now utterly certain what Harry had become. There was nothing yet to explain his splintered state, but there could be no denying that this was a succubi version of her best friend. She felt her nipples tightening, her heart speeding up, and she ruthlessly suppressed herself, pressing her magic down and fighting against her response.

Luna felt no such concern, and had happily run across the room to hug the Professor, and then the two Harry's, one after the other. It was only then that Hermione noticed the tiny Luna that had managed to dive onto Luna's robes when Harry grabbed her, and just finished climbing back to her shoulder.

She glared at Harry, well, at the Harry closest to her, the human, but clearly female Harry. "What in Merlin's name is going on, Harry?"

"Yes, quite," Remus said. "What on earth has been going on?"

All the Harry's looked down, abashed and ashamed. "I'm sorry, to all of you. I just keep making things worse." He gestured and two large couches appeared facing each other. As he morosely slumped into one, and the other two Harry's headed that way, it was immediately obvious to the other three that he intended one couch for the Harry's, and one for the others, and none of them were going to stand for that. Hermione plopped down right next to the human Harry, while Remus and Luna dragged the other two down to the other couch with them.

He looked up finally at Remus, staring with huge, sad, tear-filled eyes at the last of the Marauders. "I . . . I wanted Sirius to be proud of me. I wanted to be able to keep you company. I thought . . . Professor McGonagall said I couldn't do it, because I could not see enough of my form, but I was sure! I mean, if Pettigrew could do it, I had to be able to!"

"You attempted an Animagus transformation without anyone to watch you," Remus said in understanding rather than approbrium. Harry nodded, sniffling and rubbing his nose.

The succubus Harry, who had somehow ended up on the couch with Luna on her lap, and looked a bit shell-shocked, finally spoke up next. "We turned into this, and . . . and after how everyone reacted to my being able to speak Parseltongue, well . . ."

Hermione gulped, remembering Ron's initial reaction to that, and her own. "You thought we would turn on you." She stared at the succubus, wishing jealously that she felt confident enough to sit in her Harry's lap the way Luna was.

He shrugged, looking down at Luna's blond hair where she was leaning her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

"I was afraid of it, but even if you didn't, Hermione, how would Ron react to me becoming a girl? Or a demon? But mostly, I was afraid of what the Order would do. An animagus form . . ." He trailed off, and the human Harry picked it up again.

"An animagus form is like a Patronus, it reflects what is in you. Parseltongue Dumbledore could pass off as coming from Voldemort, but this! Apparently, I really am Dark." He looked down sadly.

"I don't think . . ."

"Excuse us." Remus Lupin's protest was cut off by a new voice, smoky and sensual, and they all turned to see two more succubi. There could be no doubting their nature. Garbed in halter tops that made it clear there were no bras worn beneath, and loincloths worn with belts, that draped between their legs nearly to the floor, they were visions of sex and lust, and Remus was far less conflicted about his body's response to them than he had been about his involuntary response to his little Harry-ettes, though the resemblance one bore to Lily Potter was a little off-putting. Not that she was at all unattractive, mind. He had experienced the same attraction to Lily as most of the wizards at Hogwarts during her later years there. Once she belonged to James, though, that attraction had been stronly suppressed.

"Oh, look Idra, there's no question, she's definitely my Lily's spawn!" The taller of the two, red-skinned and copper-haired, with a dark, forked tongue and long, curling horns, ignored the sudden tenseness and defensive stance all the Harry's took in front of their chosen mortals. She was staring at the succubus Harry with an odd mix of hunger and affection, and the other Harry's looked at each other.

Lupin's sharp eyes caught movement behind the two succubi, as more Harry's slipped silently into the room. Amongst them he noticed a new form, like unto an Indian Naga, half beautiful feminine human-like Harry, half massive snake, like a large constrictor, all green scales, with closed eyes.

"Such power," the other said. "Mahaila, how can it be your sprog? Feel how old they are. Far older than us." She shivered, and stepped closer to her companion. She was far less sanguine about her situation than Mahaila, who once she recognized Lily in the child, had cast her fear aside.

Mahaila just laughed, and dropping to one knee, threw her arms wide. "Come give your granny a hug, darling," she said.

"Granny?" Harry asked from behind her. "What do you mean by that?"

Idra squawked and spun about, and seeing them surrounded, looked up as if looking for a means of escape, and squeaked at the site of a Harry poking the top half of his body down through the ceiling.

Mahaila looked back at the Harry that had spoken, and for the first time, appeared to actually notice the other Harry's, especially the two additional succubus-form Harry's. "What . . . by Odin's hairy bodkins, sprog, what've you done to yourself? These . . . these are all you!?"

Idra, who had skin of a pinker shade, a sort of cotton candy shade that looked delectable, and horns more like those of a sheep, triangular in cross-section, ribbed, and curving towards a coiled shape, was turning slowly, her hands held up defensively, clearly unnerved at being surrounded. Mahaila, on the other hand, seemed more worried about what had happened to Harry than fearful.

"Oh, never mind, darling, it doesn't matter," she said, reaching out and grabbing the Harry that had crept up behind her and thus come within range, and dragging him into a cuddly hug, ignoring the way all the other Harry's tensed up, and the way the magic swelled and swirled in the room like a living thing. "Granny's here for you now. You weren't supposed to wake us up yet, you know."

She rubbed Harry's nose with her own, as if he was a small child, paying no attention to the attempted interjections of Remus and Hermione. Luna was almost the only one not trying to say anything, as she was satisfied to cuddle the Harry she was holding. Even Idra was talking nervously, trying to get Mahaila to pay attention to the danger they appeared to be in.

"No, no you weren't, not for a hundred years or more, but just look at you, all overflowing with power and age, why, you feel like a millenial already!"

Harry was, if anything, even more vulnerable to gentle, tender affection than he was to sexual attention, but he also had a dozen minds in the room that were not so clouded as the two being cuddled. He had no objection to Luna's gentle cuddling, but being treated like a baby by someone he had never met, that was obviously Dark, and had apparently something to do with why he was trapped as a female, was too much to be borne.

The girl in Mahaila's hands dissolved into tiny sprites that fled in all directions, hiding on the other Harry's, and diving into Hermione's hair, Lupin's pockets, and landing on Luna's shoulders.

"Oh, my, did you see that, Idra? She's learned so much!"

"HE!" More than a dozen voices spoke in concert, as Hermione had reached her limit as well, and joined the chorus of Harry's in their protest.

"What?"

"I'm a guy," insisted one of the Harry's firmly. Mahaila nodded thoughtfully, not seeming to be put off by this claim coming from a visibly feminine form.

"Oh, Lily had a son? I see, but then why? Surely because you can't, yet why would that be so? Oho! Of course, Lily must have put a spell on you to protect your friends when you first embraced your Inhumanity. Your instincts in male form might have been quite disastrous. I expect once you've learned to manage your instincts in this form, you'll find your male form comes readily enough."

"You can change genders?" Hermione was surprised to hear that, given that all of the Harry's she had thus far encountered had been unequivocally female, and she realized that she found the thought of experiencing the attention of so many Harry's at once while half or more were male was enticing and the mere idea of it had set her heart to racing.

"Normally," Idra said. "But we've been trapped here for ages, without being able to feed. I'm not sure I could muster the mana to change my nail color right now."

"Oh, stop whining." Mahaila was focused on the nearest Harry. "At least neither of us are sealed. Harry, even if you can't take a male form right now, you will be able to again one day."

Harry huffed. "In other words, what you are really saying, is, Harry, you're a freak, abnormal in yet another way. You'll never manage to change back from your animagus form, but it's okay, you'll be able to fake it."

"Oh, is your name Harry, too? Animagus, hmm?" Mahaila glanced at Idra. "Well, I guess that might explain how you managed to unleash your Inhuman side early, but Harry, darling, this is who you are. You are one of us, and you always have been, just like your mother, my daughter Lily."

Idra glanced nervously back at her, then resumed warily watching the encircling Harry's.

"You think that makes it better?!" Harry practically screamed, while Hermione crushed her Harry's hand in her grip, desperately trying to ensure that he did not fear she was going to abandon him. "It's not enough that I'm a freak in the Muggle world, I have to be a freak in the Wizarding world too? How is that a good thing? I'm a Dark Creature?!"

Mahaila looked at him, puzzling over his words. "But Harry, that is what wizards and witches are; the offspring of Inhumans and Humans."

"Like Merlin," Hermione asked, leaning forward, still clutching tightly to Harry's hand. "He was supposed to be the child of a Demon and a human woman."

"Yes, exactly," Mahaila smiled, leaning back. "Oh, to be sure, most of the rabble I can sense above us have diluted their blood to the point their Inhuman side is far too small to ever manifest, but . . ."

Hermione broke in. "What about Muggleborns? Does that . . ." She faltered for a moment, looking vaguely ill. "Does that mean my dad, isn't . . ."

"Isn't your father? Probably not, dearie," Idra said, brightening up as she had something encouraging to offer the human girl that seemed to be important to the ancient being that had her surrounded, "if two different dormant Inhuman lines cross, it can come back in force. But generally, even direct Inhuman lineage involves three partners, not two. It is easier that way."

"Because you don't have human DNA?" Hermione asked, relieved at the revelation that her parents might still be her parents.

"Dunno what that might be," Idra shrugged, "but it takes a lot of magic and power to spark a child without two mortals. Some have been known to do it, but it takes skill and power that most haven't got, much easier just to join with one of the mortals and contribute to a joining."

"Is that what you did?" Harry asked, staring hard-eyed at Mahaila. He was torn between hating her for making the accusations of "Freak!" he had heard all his life true, hating her for having taken advantage of his parents? Grandparents? What did she even mean by Granny? She had called Lily her daughter. Did that mean Petunia was not really his Aunt? And accepting the love of a family that he had wanted just as long.

Mahaila smiled broadly. "Oh, I did it all! I had a wonderful time with Harry and Rose. I met them after their had their first girl already, and I knew right away we could have something wonderful."

Harry grimaced, wrapping his arms around himself tightly, stubbornly ignoring the pressure it put on his breasts. Did he really want to hear this?

"I'm sorry it couldn't have lasted longer, but when they passed, and then Lily got pregnant and was constantly being scanned by healers, I eventually had to return to hibernation. Without a ready source of food, I could not stay active, and, well, it was and still is not safe to hunt for new sources. I would have never become active had Rose not found me and awoken me."

Idra was shivering and looking around wild-eyed, as the circle of Harry's had tightened substantially, drawn in by the intense desire to learn more about his family.

Hermione interrupted the family history lesson. "Source of food. What is it, exactly, you consume?"

Mahaila smiled at the girl. "As if it weren't obvious from looking at us?" She drew her legs closer together where she was kneeling, and settling back so her bottom was resting on her heels, struck a Betty Paige style pinup pose. "We feed on lust, the lust of mortals, or their lifeforce in great need. Other emotions will do in a pinch, but lust is the easiest to arouse without causing emotional harm."

"I don't feel drawn to you like I did to . . ." Hermione stopped, blushing.

"Like you did to my little Harry? We are suppressing our allure, to keep from being noticed by HIM."

The curious emphasis she put on the final word was not missed by Hermione, but Harry spoke up again before she could question her further. "You fed on my grandmother."

His voice was flat and hard, and Mahaila shook her head. "Not like you are thinking, to be speaking so grimly, darling. They were as willing participants as I, and took no harm from it."

"But if you could feed on human lust, how can you possibly have needed to hibernate!?" Hermione was confused, aroused, and irritated, a dangerous combination. "There are no end of copulations going on all the time."

Mahaila sighed. "That which is not freely given must be forcibly taken, and that is not without its harms. It is far better, Harry, that you never take without willing cooperation. There are those who hunt us, here in this world, and if you are harming others without cause, they would be right in doing so."

"So, you don't," Remus Lupin asked, leaning forward. His arm had at some point been dragged around the shoulders of the lupine Harry that was now leaning hard into his side, snuggled under his arm. "Feed on the unwilling, that is?"

"No, definitely not," Idra said quickly, "HE knows what to look for, and HE knows he does not have us all."

Now Hermione was definitely not going to let this pass a second time. "Who is he? You are putting a special emphasis there."

"The demon lord that conquered our home plane, and bound and sealed most of our family. We cannot speak his name, else his attention would be drawn to us and we would be taken."

"Oh, that's just great," Harry groused. "Another damn Voldemort to deal with. Is there another prophecy to go with it?"

"None that I know of," Mahaila assured him. "And he does not know of you, and you do not know his name. He will not perceive you, and even if he did, you are not a former member of the kingdom he conquered, he would have no power over you."

"You . . . you aren't planning on having me fight him?" Harry asked, feeling suddenly off-balance, as the expected storyline failed to materialize.

"Fight HIM? Oh, no, Harry, you mustn't think of it! I don't want to lose you too, not after I just found you."

Idra spoke up then. "I, err, we were hoping, once we found out that Mahaila had managed to have a daughter, that one of her get might in time grow strong enough to awaken us, to sustain us so that we could one day have a new home."

"Sustain you?" Hermione asked suspiciously.

"A demi-Inhuman can sustain themselves from mortal food," Idra pointed out, "as Harry here has lived most of his life. As her descendants grew in number, there might have come a time when there were enough of them that they could pair with those of us who remain on this side, free of HIM, and allow us to remain awake and active. Then we could begin building a new home. We . . . we weren't expecting him to have the power to awaken us for another hundred years though."

"Right," Mahaila said, her eyes narrowing. "Something happened to you, Darling, and the shock of it awakened the both of us, and you feel over a thousand years old instead of a mere handful, and you are all over the place. What happened?"

Harry glanced nervously at Remus. "Ehrm, eh, before I answer that, how do you feel about other Dark creatures?"

"I'm sorry, Harry-darling, I don't know what you mean by Dark creatures."

"Like, werewolves, and vampires, and such."

She shrugged. "Werewolves are just mortals with a moon-curse, right? I'm not sure what you mean by how I feel about them, but if you are worried, don't be. You cannot catch that curse. And no vampire would be likely to see you as a food source."

Harry glanced at Remus again, and Remus nodded slightly. "Well, uh, I was fighting with a werewolf's curse, and leaning up against the body of a basilisk I killed when I was twelve, and I really needed some way to fight it without hurting Remus, and, well, I somehow absorbed the basilisk."

Remus started, and stared for a moment at the green skinned Naga-like Harry, then quickly averted his eyes. No wonder that one had her eyes closed.

"So that was that wave of magic that swept through the school," Hermione shouted, jumping to her feet, staring down at her Harry. "You absorbed a thousand-year-old basilisk while fighting a werewolf's curse?!"

"Uhm . . . yeah, and I think I ate the curse, too."

The furry Harry under Lupin's arm waved a hand, as Hermione spun to face her.

"You ate his werewolf curse?" Hermione shrieked in disbelief and panic. Lupin was staring down at his Harry with a look of shock, while Luna merely looked mildly interesting, her hand carding through her Harry's hair, while a row of little pixie-Harry's, and one tiny Luna, sat swinging their legs on her shoulders.

---

Visiting Scotland had not been on Freja's bucket list. She and her brother, Frej, named for the like-named twins of the Vanir, had heard of Hogwarts, of course, and likewise of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, the three largest schools of magic in the wizarding world, but they had not harbored any particular desire to see it. Their training was traditional, an apprenticeship in the old style, from before the days of universities and schools, and they had not felt any particular desire for a different way.

To be sure, if you got a bad Master, an apprenticeship could be a burden, but Sigurd and Vilhelmina were excellent teachers, and under their instruction, she had learned much more than merely wand-magic.

Still, it was in Scandinavia that one of the thirteen branches of Wæccan be Myrddin, the Watchers of Merlin, had settled, and Sigurd was the latest in a long line who had guarded and watched one of the stones, ancient precursors of the legends that inspired crystal balls, prophecy spheres, and similar devices in the long ages since.

So when her Master and Mistress made ready to travel as swiftly as could be managed to Scotland, she and her brother had joined them. Now they were temporarily encamped outside of Hogwart's outer walls, and Freja watched as her teachers debated what should be done, and who could be trusted.

The original division, she understood, had come about at least partially because the very Foretelling that said that one would return with power greater even than Merlin's own had also said that this power would be so great that to resist would ruin a nation, and yet that in spite of that very prediction, one who knew those words would prove them true and bring about a ruler's fall. Over the years, as various nations learned of this, through spying and inter-marriages and other means, they each sought to avoid being the one, and so banished the knowledge to an independent organization, trying to avoid being the ones whose downfall was thus named. In some cases, the independent organization had moved into a country of its own accord. National borders were so fluid over most of history in Africa and Europe that the organizations there were almost certainly no longer associated with their country of origin.

She assumed that the other parties present were members of similar organizations in their own countries. She did not know who had the original stone, or how the copies were made, but she had heard that at some point the method had been lost, or perhaps had ceased to work, and she knew that the island of Japan, who had the very last stone, was looked on with suspicion. After all, they had the thirteenth stone, and in the West that oft had an ill luck associated with it.

Her teachers had not bought in to this theory, pointing out that even if it was one of the thirteen that would fail, and not merely, as the Foretelling actually said, one that knew the words, that it was folly to assume that the order had any bearing on the fulfillment of the prophecy. She knew that to the Japanese, four held more dire significance, though thirteen was also sometimes seen as unlucky, and guessed the Chinese might feel similarly.

She found nothing quite so tiresome as the politicking of the old, though, and as several of the other groups had also brought young people along, she ignored the shouted discussions in favor of crossing the no-man's land between them and talking to the group from Japan, who were closest. The thunderous voice that had warned against harming what was its own, when the ground had swallowed up the werewolf, had sent shivers through her, and she would never be able to shake them off while listening to her elders debate them endlessly.

Like many Europeans, she was multi-lingual, but Japanese was not one of the languages she knew, so she attempted English, guessing that as they were coming to Scotland, they might have chosen delegates that spoke the language, and she assumed they would have been more likely to find English speakers than Japanese that had learned Gaelic.

"Hi, my name is Freja," she said brightly, dipping into a bow and rising again, "What are your names? Oh, and this is Frej, my twin brother," she added, feeling her brother step up behind her and set a hand on her shoulder.

Working Around a Problem

Matsui Junko had been trained and groomed all her life, the latest in a long of young men and women who had gone through the same process, to become Japan's offering to the new earthly god, or kami, predicted by the Buddhist Sukai - it was only much later that the organization formed to ensure that Japan did not suffer the wrath of the earthly kami learned of Merlin's Foretelling, and developed assocations with some of the other, similar groups. She had, like her companion, been trained in the arts of war, of fighting, of pleasure, and of service, to be a gift to the new god from the nation of Japan, to turn aside his wrath.

Most of the Japanese contingent had at least some martial training, and it was clear to her from their general tenseness that they, like she, could sense the watchful presence that surrounded and pervaded the area. She was mortally certain that the new kami was watching her, judging her, and when the kami's thunderous voice had shaken the earth, condemning their attack on the werewolf, she had feared an immediate divine retribution.

That the flame-haired gaijin could smile so brightly under the pressure of the kami's scrutiny was difficult to credit, and Junko had noticed Haru tense up nearly as bad as she had when the gaijin came bouncing over, as if none of her group had fired on the werewolf. It was not so, of course; they were as complicit as any, for all diplomats travel with guards, and guards are ever quick to act against threats.

Of course, they had thought, from the way the dumpy little British minister had shrieked and fled, that it was a werewolf somehow forced into its lunar form, lethally dangerous, an obvious attempt on their lives. They might have resisted reacting completely upon seeing that he was in his human form, had not the earth raised with his hands, though on further reflection, it was clear that the synchrony was accidental, a result of the kami moving to defend him at the same time as he tried to show he was unarmed.

Still, distasteful as the red-haired girl's obliviousness to her culpability was, there was no reason or excuse for discourtesy, so she promptly returned the girl's bow, and attempted to reply in her language.

"I am named Matsui Junko, very nice to meet you." She gestured at her companion. "This is Hayashi Haru."

"Hello, I am Hayashi Haru. It is nice to meet you." Haru offered a slightly more perfunctory bow than she had, but his English was smoother, his pronunciation more fluid, and Junko growled to herself. No-one had known when the kami would come to earth, as that had not been part of either their prophecy, or the foretelling of Merlin, so she had not really expected this to happen, but she had wanted to be able to speak to him or her if it did happen. English was just so frustrating, though, and she disliked the class intensely.

Unfortunately for Freja's good intentions, the shout had removed the gates as an obstacle, meaning the long drawn out discussion she had anticipated had actually been a short vociferous one, quickly resolved in favor of getting into the grounds before they could be sealed against them again.

She essayed a quick goodbye when she heard someone calling for her, and hurried away. Junko's own group was soon called to move as well. Though there had apparently been some quick discussions over who would enter the grounds and in what order, and whether they would bring the guards that had offended the Foretold, it had apparently been quickly settled, and they were entering in the order they had arrived at the site.

The goblins had apparently been the first to arrive, and everyone else watched with interest and trepidation as they crossed the boundary of the walls where the gates had formerly barred their way. Whatever specifically it was they feared, nothing transpired, and there was a palpable release of tension. Junko felt her own tension ease still more when the first of the human guards that had actually executed the attack on the werewolf passed through the gap unmolested.

She had no idea yet whether they would end up encamping upon the castle grounds, or would actually be housed within. The history of England had not been touched on much in her classes bar the discussion of Merlin when she had been chosen as one of Japan's next generation of offerings. The massive and obviously well-aged castle that came more fully into view as her group finally passed the walls could probably house thousands comfortably. Whether it was mostly empty, with plenty of room to house all the delegations, or mostly full, she had no clue.

Indeed, it might make no difference at all, she discovered, as the various delegations spread out as they reached the doors of the great castle and found two very nervous local officials barring the way, claiming that the local head of government had ordered the doors sealed and that none would be permitted within.

She could hardly bring herself to care. They had an entire temple complex with them, bound in a set of torii they would erect. It was not physical comfort she was concerned about at the moment, but the ever present gaze of the kami. She could feel it weighing on them, judging them, as they stopped. By the doors, the floridly garbed elder wizard who had come down to greet them argued with the door guards about whether they could enter or not.

"Hey! Sorry about getting called away like that!" Junko turned slowly to face the ineffably perky voice. Freja was back. "So, that it happened at a school is a good sign, don't you think? Better chance the prophecied person might be our age!"

Haru looked dourly at the school. "What's so great about the Foretold being possibly immature and incompletely trained?"

"Well, more chance we might get to actually meet them? And I think it makes it a little less likely that it was some stereotypical power-monger type who triggered the power boost with some ritual or something. Maybe less chance they'll be looking to abuse it?"

He shook his head doubtfully. Not that it would matter for him and Junko. They were going to be gifted, whether it was a kid or an ancient geriatric. Japan did not intend to be the ones spoken of. "The only good I see is that the Englishman with the funny hat seems to take the role of the 'one who knows but fights,' which may say that England will take that role, and save Japan. But that may be bad for all here."

---

It had taken several minutes of cuddling to calm Hermione down from what she thought might have been a genuine panic attack. It had been strangely difficult to control her breathing, or to hear or understand what the others were saying for several minutes, as it seemed she could scarcely hear anything over the thunderous sound of her own heart pounding. As concerned as Harry had been over being a Dark Creature and how the school and his friends would react to that, the idea of abandoning Harry had seemed so unreal, so incomprehensible to Hermione, after all they had been through together, that she had not been able to give his concerns the same weight he was.

Until he said that he had consumed Professor Lupin's werewolf curse, on top of somehow merging with the basilisk that had so nearly killed him in their second year. Together with actually seeing the lupine Harry on the other couch, and having experienced the fright of running from a werewolf and seeing the life-crushing consequences revelation of his status had caused to Professor Lupin - he had been Fired! From Hogwarts! If Harry was expelled, that meant no more magic. It meant being cut off, trapped in a world that did not understand, that could not understand, as she had been before finally finding the magical world... it was too horrible to even contemplate.

Eventually her heart quieted, her hiccups and tears subsided, and the feeling of Harry's arms around her seeped through and brought her back ot herself. Which only left her feeling deeply ashamed and abashed. He was going through so much and her weakness had... She brought her hand to her cheek in shock as Mahaila grinned at her, having just slapped her face. Not that hard, granted, but it had startled her quite thoroughly, and Mahaila hardly seemed concerned that so many of the Harry's around had just pulled wands on her. "No use getting stuck in an emotional loop, darling, there is more story to be told, and more to learn, and no, for all your worries," she tapped Hermione on the nose, "have you not noticed the number of wands pointed at me? How many did Harry have?"

"But he lost his wand!" Hermione protested, her bushy hair flying up and getting in her way as was its wont as she spun about, staring at all the Harrys, who seemed as startled as she, staring at the wands in their hands in confusion.

"I did," one Harry said, and then after a moment, the wand in his hand slowly vanished, like it was shrinking away. "I've been casting without a wand, but..."

"You've clearly unlocked your Shifting as a primary talent," Idra commented from where she had retreated to a smaller two-person couch that Hermione had missed. Had Harry made it for her? Or had one of the other magic-users conjured it? "That was not a conjured wand, based on how you undeployed it."

"Shifting?"

Mahaila nodded, straightening as Hermione's curiosity overcame her embarrassment. "One of the best ways to produce lust is to look like someone that inspires lust. Some succubi do better with illusions, others with shifting, or dreams, or mirrors, or the mind." She moved over to one of the Harrys, who was still eyeing her nervously, and Hermione wilted a little inside, realizing that she had possibly interfered with Harry getting to know real family that actually wanted him. Well, if they could trust anything said by a succubus. "After all, I did tell you that we could swap sex if we chose. Most succubi have at least some skill with shifting their form, and some skill with one or more of the other techniques, but likewise, most have a focus. Or at least, a focus of the moment."

Idra laughed softly at that. "If you don't want to end up as one of the most boring immortals alive, you'll shift your focus from shifting at some point. If for no other reason than that always following the same exact playbook means eventually, someone will design a counter to everything you do, and take it all away." Her voice turned melancholy towards the end, and Mahaila sighed.

"Don't go getting maudlin on me, Idra, when I've just found Lily's child," she remonstrated her companion, and turned back to Harry. Well, to the Harry she had chosen to focus on, anyway. Hermione still had a Harry sitting on either side of her, so she surely had no reason to be jealous of Mahaila running her hand through Harry's hair, and gently touching her horns. Because of course she was focused on one of the succubus-form Harrys.

"I don't think mine is Shifted," Harry muttered from beside her, hands running over his wand. It looked like his wand, as best she could recall, though she realized then that she had perhaps never actually paid close enough attention. She could describe his wand in general terms, but as she looked at it in his hands, then glanced at the one held by the Harry on the other side of her, she realized that unlike her own wand of which she had spent considerable time taking meticulous care and whose foibles and peculiarities she knew as well as the proverbial back of her hand, or perhaps even better, she could not mentally identify any particular scratches, dents, or markings whose presence or absence could speak it it being or not being his wand.

"Mine is, I'm pretty sure," her other Harry said, showing that his wand could shrink away. "Did you conjure that one?"

The other Harry shrugged. "Not sure."

She wanted to retort that it was clearly impossible, no-one could just conjure a wand, but she was too unsettled. Everything was topsy-turvy, who knew what was possible or not?

She focused on Mahaila again, who had apparently heard rather a lot of Hermione's own internal misgivings. Had she been talking while she could not even hear herself over the sound of her heart? Probably, she supposed. It was just in her nature to try to correct her boys when they were doing silly, dangerous things.

"You need not worry about having your wand snapped or taken from you. The magic of a succubus is innate and does not need a wand to draw it out, though you can certainly feed it through a wand. And our magic grows stronger with time as long as you are well-fed and not starved, though our personal wells are rather depleted."

Well, that was a relief to hear. And it sounded like, as Mahaila continued, that the pair of succubi could help train them even if they got expelled. Well, train Harry, anyway. She fingered her own wand nervously, and Harry leaned against her, whispering. "Don't worry, Hermione, we won't let anyone snap your wand."

"Have you figured out what is going on in the Hall, Harry? Why did you grab us like that, anyway? What changed?"

"Oh, right," Harry said, louder, interrupting his possible grandmother and drawing more attention to them, "Fudge had just come in the front doors after I, well, I knocked him down shouting at them about trying to hurt Remus, and he told the aurors to take you into protective detention to force me to do what he wanted! So I had to take you out of there."

Luna bounced on the other couch. "What about me, Harry?" She looked happy to Hermione, pleased about something.

"He hadn't mentioned you yet, but if he was trying to get something to hold over me and he had put together that I was responsible for grabbing Lupin, I was afraid I was a bit too overt in protecting you when that jerk tripped you and when they saw me take Hermione, they would have gone for you next."

Luna beamed at him.

"What about Ginny?" Hermione asked, and Harry looked at her blankly for a moment.

"Oh, uhm... if they go after her, I guess I'll grab her. But she's got all her brothers there, I don't think they would let the aurors separate her too easily. But I'll keep an eye on her."

"What is the Ministry doing here in the first place?" Professor Lupin asked in a concerned tone, and Hermione peered across the odd stone chamber at him. He looked a bit ragged still, and she wondered again what the consequences would be of Harry self-professedly consuming his wolf curse.

"They probably felt the same surge of power that woke us up from our somnolescence," Idra responded. "I'm sure anyone close enough would have felt it."

All the Harrys seemed to frown at once, and Hermione shivered at the sight.

"Well," he grumped, "I'm glad you haven't a prophecy for me to fulfill, because they seem to think they've got one. 'Merlin's foretelling', one of them said, and Dumbledore knew what he was talking about. That's what all the people around the gate seem to have been here about, too, at least from the ones who said anything in English." He looked deeply unhappy about it, and Hermione could not resist hugging one of her Harrys, but which?

She glanced out of the corner of her eyes back and forth, and finally just grabbed the one on her right and squeezed him for a moment, then did the same to her left Harry.

"So that's what the testing was about," Luna commented thoughtfully. "They were trying to see if our magic had gotten stronger than Fudge's heliopaths."

---

The two girls being taken from the Great Hall in spite of the presence of the teachers and Aurors had seemingly set off a powder-keg, as the Great Hall had erupted in recriminations, accusations, and panic. Many of the students promptly climbed up onto the tables, ignoring the Aurors' shouted commands and demands, seeing the floor as unsafe. Others tried to run, to get away from the vicinity of the two spots, as though the floor were simply collapsing there, when any fool could see that it was as solid after it had sucked them up as before.

Meanwhile the teachers were trying to get to those same spots, to try and work out what had happened, while the Aurors were trying to restore control. The only saving grace the Aurors had in this situation was that their orders had been shoruted at the front door of Hogwarts, out of earshot of the hall itself, so no-one in the hall was yet aware that one of the two swallowed up girls had just been ordered into custody.

It was practically inevitable given the general clamor and the tension everyone was under that a spell would end up being thrown. And given that most of those within were students, it was frighteningly probable that one or more of them would be badly injured when the fully adult and trained Aurors responded, or so it seemed to Professor McGonagall.

How they could resolve this panic without harm was a puzzle she had very little time to solve, so she had to put aside her concern for one of her current favorite students in favor... and it was too late, there was the flash of spellfire coming from, not the Slytherin table as might have been anticipated, but the Hufflepuff table. Even now a Cannonblast or Sonorous charm would do more harm than good, but if the Aurors moved against her students, they would find a Mistress of Transfiguration was not so easy an opponent as they were perhaps used to dealing... and they were gone.

She had missed which Auror had started casting, though she had heard the voice and been turning in that direction, but whatever force had been reshaping the castle - and she had a tightly held knot of concern within her that claimed she knew quite well who was responsible, were she but to admit it to herself - reacted instantly.

More than one student, over the years, had written clever papers for her later classes on how Charms and Transfigurations could be combined in the defense of a castle like Hogwarts. And indeed, more than a few of them had hit upon ideas that were actually present in the castle's behaviors, correctly hitting upon the meaning behind the shifting staircases and odd network of hidden passages. What she saw now, however, was more akin to the more fanciful writings of her less experienced and more hopeful students, as the stone of the castle simply reached out and engulfed the Aurors, not one after another but all at once, each one swallowed up into apparent nothingness, though she had little doubt they were being ejected somewhere. It remained to be seen whether that was out of the castle or into an oubliette, and given that in spite of her misgivings about the Minister and some of those closest to him, many of the Aurors were her students themselves once upon a time, she rather hoped it was more of the former and less of the latter.

Professor Sprout was right on scene, of course, having headed for her Hufflepuffs right off, correctly surmising that they would need calming and that her skills were not what was needed in working out the cause or reversing the vanishment of the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw girls.

The doors to the Great Hall promptly closed themselves, all around, both the great doors and the smaller side doors. A silvery figure flew through the sealed doors and she turned to it, listening as the patronus phoenix relayed Dumbledore's words, before sending a patronus message of her own in response.

So, the aurors had merely been dumped out on the grounds, and Minister Fudge had likewise been ejected from the castle. A bit impolitic, perhaps, but as neither she nor the Headmaster had ordered it done, Dumbledore could rightfully disclaim involvement. Merlin's Foretelling, though. If that was what this all was...

The Professor straightened herself up, shook her robes straight, and strode the rest of the way down the aisle to where Hermione had sat, her heart considerably lightened. Given that there had been more than once when they had feared that Voldemort had or was about to stumble upon the secret to the leve of power-up that would make him unbeatable, it was a very great relief to see that it was his prophecied defeator and a good-hearted if lonely boy that had stumbled his way into it instead.

It did put rather a poor light on Fudge's interference and ejection, though. Merlin's Foretelling had a rather dark side to it, revealing as it did the end of one of the nations that knew of it. Rather a lot of philosophical drivel had been written, she felt, on the propriety of revealing the foretelling to anyone else at all, and she was slightly chagrined to recognize that if Britain itself fell into that role, then all those arm-chair philosophers who claimed that the only way the prophecy could hold true at any and all times was if Britain was always the one foretold, as that was where the prophecy had been revealed. Which was itself blatant poppycock and symbolic of their wooly thinking, since Britain had not existed as such at the time in the first place, but if it was Britain that fell they would claim it as proving their correctness.

A simple flick of her wand revealed that the floor was as solid and sturdy as ever, her lion's temporary liquefaction of it had been satisfactorily reversed and had not created any significant new stresses or fractures.

At any rate, it was not the nation's downfall that was predicted, but the ruler's downfall, and so if that was Fudge? Well, she would cry no tears over that, the man had never been well-suited to managing a government.

---

It was wholly unsurprising, Freja thought, that when high level wizards from many countries came together every little thing would turn into a contest, whether expressly and deliberately or merely implicitly, but it was a bit irritating that Sigurd and Vilhelmina were participating in such a useless activity. Even more so that it meant that they still had no shelter from the weather. Not that it was terrible or anything, and she was used to far worse, but she could see that several other contingents were from more moderate climes, and would be quite glad to be out of the weather.

And instead they were all still standing around debating over who would get what bit of the grounds to set up their portable environments on when the British Minister of Magic and his retinue of officials were summarily ejected from the castle, spat into a pile on the front walk, with said Minister moaning and complaining beneath quite a pile of angry wizards and witches.

If they had all been safely ensconced in whatever form of housing they had brought, they could have pretended not to observe, and let the Brits untangle themselves with some degree of dignity. Instead, everyone was still standing around, so all those high level wizards and witches were there to see the embarrassement of the local pols, which of course, just ratcheted up the tension and the anger another few notches. The furious Minister in his now rather crumpled suit and bowler hat was turning a rather unhealthy shade of red.

"How long do you think they will be arguing over placement now?" She asked, glancing at Junko. She was amazed at how stoicly they stood there, faces impassive in the face of the antics of their elders.

She spotted the school's Headmaster, who had been engaged in trying to mediate between everyone, fire off a silvery spell that darted into the school, passing right through the closed doors.

Well, getting to see interesting magic was one of the benefits of being on a trip like this!

"Perhaps," Haru ventured, "they will come to an agreement sooner, to present a united front?"

Getting to see interesting magic was just one more reason Freja wished they would get over themselves and start setting up. She was sure that watching everyone put up whatever they had brought would be a lot more interesting to watch than them just standing around bickering and dickering. "I hope so."

Though, if the Minister, who was the one that had ordered Hogwart's doors closed to them, not to mention ordering the gates closed earlier, had been evicted, did that mean they now might be let into the school instead of having to set up outside?

She moved a little closer to the doors, part of a general movement amongst, she assumed, whatever portion of the gathered wizardry either spoke English or had a translation spell running, to try and eavesdrop on the conversation as the angry Minister was ordering his Aurors, to judge by the tenor of his gesturing, to smash the doors of Hogwarts open again.

She was just close enough to hear the Headmaster's fairly quiet but steely voiced rebuke. "Minister Fudge, if the Aurors assembled here attack the doors of Hogwarts, I shall be forced to defend her."

The Minister looked fairly apoplectic at this, but sputtered an order to his men to stand down. "Look, Headmaster, you can't deny us entry, we have every right to enter the school and find..."

"The Compact will be upheld, Minister," the Headmaster responded. "I did not interfere with your testing, as it at least gave the children something to occupy them while we debated, but it was not I that denied you entry. As best I can see, it was one or the other of either Hogwarts, or the Foretold. If you wish to attempt to enter again, feel free. But cast no battle-magics upon the walls or doors of Hogwarts," and here his gaze passed over the assembled Aurors, "or the staff or children within, else, as I have said, I will stand in their defense."

"If we knew for sure," Haru mused, "that it was the One who ejected him, then we too would have to stand in defense of Hogwarts. We must side with the One."

Freja shrugged. "Are we sure this Minister knows the Foretelling? The way it was explained to me the one whose government will fall is one who knows. If he's just ignorant, it could still be someone else."

Junko shook her head doubtfully. "It certainly seems it must be him, but the chance that it is not is part of why we must stand with the One. We will not let Japan fall."

"Not like I want Scandinavia to fall either," Freja responded. "But not fighting them is not the same as fighting for them, or trying to fight their battles for them." She shrugged.

Junko eyed the Scandinavian teenager dubiously. It did not sound like the other girl was expecting to be given to the One, the way that she and Haru were. But was that because the Scandinavians had a different plan, she wondered, or merely because Freja was not yet informed of the full plan? Though, surely gifting someone who was unwilling was a good way to create exactly the conditions about which Merlin had warned them?

Not yet posted.