The Forest - R.L.

Chapter 12 - The Idea

 "Professor McGonagall," Grace called out as she put her hand up. It was a Wednesday morning, meaning that they had Transfiguration with the Slytherins.

"Yes, Miss Thorne?" She replied impatiently. The now third year girl was well known amongst the teachers for her habit of asking bizarre questions that had little to no relevance to the topic at hand.

"If your Animagus form was a fish, would you die if you weren't in water?"

"I'm not sure, Miss Thorne, but I would presume so," Professor McGonagall replied before turning back to the blackboard and continued with her lesson. It turned out that Grace's question wasn't as off topic as usual, as they were learning about Animagi.

"You know, the second I turn seventeen I'm going to become an Animagus. I feel as I might be a dolphin or something, though. How unpractical would that be? It'd still be cool, I'd be able to swim across oceans and stuff, but only I could only use it in the water," Grace said to Remus, although she wasn't entirely sure if he was listening.

"Hm? Yeah," Remus said, raising his head from the textbook he was reading.
"Would your Animagus form be a wolf?"
"I have no idea, Grace," he replied, beginning to write down the notes that Professor McGonagall had written on the blackboard "You should probably start writing down the notes."
"You might be right about that."

---

The first thing Grace did on Saturday morning was head down to the Great Hall and pile up two plates with a range of breakfast foods before heading up to the Hospital Wing. She wouldn't usually get up this early on a Saturday, but it was the morning after a full moon, and, just like after every other full moon, Remus was recovering in the Hospital Wing.

Grace knocked on the door, and was greeted with the tired looking face of Madam Pomfrey.

"Good morning, Miss Thorne. He's up the back."

At the beginning of their first year, Madam Pomfrey had been reluctant to allow Grace to visit her friend, but she was allowed to stay as long she was quiet. He needed to eat after all, and the room was usually empty as it was so early.

However, once the other three discovered his secret, the Hospital Wing became quite a noisy place to be after full moons, and she soon decided that only one person should be allowed to visit Remus, and only to bring him his breakfast, and she decided that that one person should be Grace, as she was the quietest, apart from Remus of course, of the group. Now, Grace was in no way a quiet person, the other three just had a habit of being extremely and unnecessarily loud, especially when together.

So Grace had become the designated breakfast person, bringing Remus a plate of food after every full moon. She was supposed to leave as soon as she delivered the food, but she saw no harm in staying around for a little bit longer whilst Madam Pomfrey herself was down in the Great Hall getting her own breakfast.

Then, in the break between second and third year, James had been presented with a gift from his parents. It was the one and only Invisibility Cloak that Grace had heard so much about from her father, and so far this year, they had used it to get into all kinds of mischief, like last week when they had put a snake in the Slytherin common room. It was surprising and amusing how many Slytherins were afraid of their own house symbol.

They often used this cloak to sneak into the Hospital Wing after full moons as well.
Grace entered the Hospital Wing, thanking Madam Pomfrey as she made her way down to the Great Hall, and headed over to Remus' bed at the back of the room. There were no other patients this morning, and Grace was grateful, as they would have to be careful about what they said.

"How'd it go, Moony?" she asked, plonking herself down on the bed beside his own. They had come up with the nickname 'Moony' earlier that year, deciding that 'Werewolf McWerewolf pants' was both too long and too obvious.

"Same same. I'm going to have a huge new scar on my stomach, so that's great," he replied sarcastically, lifting up his shirt to reveal a long cut that had only recently been healed my Madam Pomfrey.

"Nice," she said, handing him his plate "Here, I wasn't sure what you felt like this morning so I grabbed a bit of everything. And I got us both a hot chocolate." Since both her hands had been full with the plates, she had used a simple levitating charm to get the mugs to float in the air behind her. She plucked them both out of the air and handed one to Remus.

As she took a sip from her mug, she looked over at him again. There was a large bruise beneath his left eye, a scrape on his right shoulder, a cut along the side of his neck.

"I wish there was something we could do to help. Like, we could all dance around you, so then you'd try and chase after us instead of tearing yourself apart. None of us are very fast runners though. Unless we all turned into Gytrashes or something, we wouldn't stand a chance."

"Gytrashes?"

"Big white dog things that can run really fast. They're supposed to be part ghost or something," She explained, before tilting her head slightly to one side "Do werewolves attack animals?"

"No. Actually, there's something about that in the book I'm reading at the moment," he said, grabbing a grey book from the bedside table and flipping through a few pages.

"Here we go: 'Companionshipwith animals whilst transformed has been known to make the experience morebearable as the werewolf has no-one to harm and will be less willing to harmthemselves'."

"Great! So all we've got to do now is try and convince some of the animals in the Forbidden Forest to be friends with you. Maybe a Gytrash," Grace said, chuckling to herself.
Just then, Grace heard a very light knock on the door.

"You took your time!" she exclaimed, opening the door to reveal what seemed to be an empty corridor.

"Sorry. Peter wouldn't wake up again," James replied, taking off the Invisibility Cloak to reveal the three boys.

"So, what've you guys been up to?" Sirius asked as they walked back over to Remus' bed.

"Discussing how on Earth we would get animals to befriend his werewolf form. Apparently it might help distract him from attacking himself. Any suggestions?" Grace said as James grabbed a piece of bacon off her plate.

"We could always just transfigure ourselves into animals," James replied, making Remus shake his head.

"Which is highly dangerous and inconvenient. What if it goes wrong? Do you even keep your human mind? One of you might get hurt."

Grace gasped suddenly as she had an idea.

"What?"

"It's highly illegal and extremely difficult, but what if....what if we all became Animagi?"

---

So I might take a break from updating for a week or two bc a) homework is killing me rn and b) I kinda want to go back and do some editing idk we'll see

Anyway, I was thinking of also putting up some of my other writing stuff on this account as well (just random weird stuff, don't get too excited) and maybe even the WW1 short story I'm currently writing for Humanities at school.

Also, are all of these time skips too confusing? Should I write what year it is at the top of the chapter or something?

- Grace