Hogwarts Legacy: The Price of Power

Desperate Measures 🌶️

"Are you insane?" Sebastian gasped, gaping at Ominis.

"It's entirely possible," Ominis said, with a small shrug. "But you're tailed whenever you leave the castle, and a simple Revelio charm will see right through a disillusionment. An invisibility cloak, like Dracaena said, can be traced, and it won't cover all of us, you and I are too tall. As unregistered animagi, we have the perfect disguise."

"You're mental," Sebastian declared, leaning back and running his hands through his hair. "Have you any idea how difficult that is?"

"I'm quite well informed, thank you," he replied. "I rather thought you'd have jumped at the idea. That book I borrowed from Valentine's library had a lot of very complex magic in it, a chapter of which detailed the process for becoming an animagus. It's surprisingly simple, more tedious than anything."

Sebastian shook his head. "Ominis, we can't," he said. "Aside from all the things that can go horribly wrong, we'd need to register with the Ministry! That'd defeat the whole purpose of it!"

"So, we don't register," Ominis shrugged. "At least not for a while."

"No," Sebastian said. "Being caught as an unregistered animagi is a sentence in Azkaban! With my record, I'd never get out!"

"Do you have a better idea?" Ominis snapped. "I'd love to hear it if you do, Sallow, and preferably one that doesn't involve blasting apart every suspicious person we come across!"

"Hang on," Dracaena raised her hands. "Slow down a moment, you two. It can't be that bad, Natty's an animagus already!"

"You what?" Sebastian said.

Dracaena blinked. "Um... I probably shouldn't have told you that." She shook her head. "Do me a favour and keep it to yourselves, yeah?"

They nodded.

"Right. If Natty can do it, it can't be that difficult! Not that she's not talented, she is, but she was young when she learned, fourteen, I think. We should be able to."

"Drac, doing it isn't the issue," Sebastian said. "It's the logistics of it! We have to register if we manage to do it, which would defeat the purpose of using it to spy on people! There's only about four registered animagi in the country at the moment, and if we don't register, and we're caught, we'll all end up in Azkaban!"

"Sebastian-"

"I don't want you to go through that," he took her hands, his expression desperate. "Please, Drac. I know I told you about what it's like, but it's so much worse than what I said! I'd rather die than go back there, and I don't want you to ever experience it. We can't risk this."

She swallowed, gazing at him.

"It's not like you to urge caution," she said, trying to smile.

"I don't want either of you to go through what I did," he said, firmly.

"What other choice do we have?" Ominis said. "The Ministry is fortified more powerfully than almost anywhere else, Disillusionment Charms won't cut it, and it's like Dracaena said, if we were to take Polyjuice potion, we'd need to have some level of knowledge about who it was we were to impersonate. That kind of information gathering would take far too long, especially when we have our studies to consider if we're to pass our exams and, more importantly, maintain the illusion of innocent, ignorant students! This is to protect Dracaena."

"I..." Sebastian wavered. "It takes ages to become one," he said. "Holding a mandrake leaf in your mouth for a whole month, and you've got to start all over if you swallow it or take it out! Full moon to full moon, and if the moon's hidden behind cloud the second time, you've got to do it all over again! Not to mention that you've got to brew a potion with dew that hasn't seen sunlight or human footsteps for seven days, and then you have to wait for a lightning storm before you drink it! The whole process could take a year!"