Harry Potter and the Master of Death [Complete]

Chapter Four: Transfigured

The little brown puppy romped around the room bumping into beds and bookcases in its excitement. Hermione clapped her hands excitedly. Moments before the puppy had been nothing more than a small wooden foot stool and now with a wave of her wand, Hermione had transfigured it into a living breathing animal. She patted herself on the back inwardly, and for the first time, she truly believed what everyone else was always saying. She would pass her N.E.W.T.s with ease. She pointed her wand at it and flourished, repeating the reversal spell. It immediately turned back into a stool and it's momentum sent it crashing into the wall, splintering two of the stool's legs.

Hermione gasped and quickly glanced around the girl's dormitory to be sure no one had seen. She pointed her wand at the stool again. "Repairo!" she said, utterly disgusted with herself.

Her dream of becoming an animagus once again blossomed in her mind's eye. She remembered how easily Professor McGonagall had transformed herself into a cat their first year and wondered. Could I do it?

Hermione Granger was a thinker. She was sensible, a planner She did not do anything on a whim. But she had technically already been a cat, she remembered. When they had used the polyjuice potion in her second year at Hogwarts, she had accidentally put cat hair into her potion and turned into a large tabby cat. So it wasn't as if she didn't have experience.

She could do it. She knew she could. She raised her wand, too excited to consider the consequences and flourished it pointing the end at herself.

There was a bang and Hermione was blown across the room landing silently on four paws in the shape of a brown, medium-sized, Persian Longhaired cat. She had transfigured herself completely, the cat's face was remarkably like her own human face including the return of Hermione's buck teeth, in miniature form. Unfortunately, she was completely a cat. She had no recollection of being human and could not think as a human would, meaning she could not reverse the spell. She was a cat through and through, not an animagus at all.

She padded around the dormitory, sniffing at a pile of dirty robes and investigating the top of one of the dressers. At that moment the door flew open and too laughing girls bounced into the room. Startled, the Hermione-cat, bolted through the open door and down the corridor, narrowly making it through the portrait hole as it closed.

She spent the rest of the day prowling the school grounds, avoiding professors and students alike. Much to Hermione's later chagrin, she missed all of her classes and used the space under Professor Flitwick's desk as a litter box.

That evening after all the students had gone to bed, she roamed the hallways silently. Spying a large, fat mouse she gave chase and scampered after it with reckless abandon. Eventually, she found herself in the hallway next to Dumbledores old office. The new headmaster, Professor McGonagall had chosen not to take up residence here, instead, leaving it empty as a kind of tribute to the late wizard.

The mouse darted left and into a crack in the wall, escaping Hermione's outstretched claws and she slid sideways to avoid running headlong into the bricks. She paced back and forth staring at the hole her quarry had disappeared into and then sat down to wait for it to re-emerge. 

Suddenly she turned and let out a terrified yowl. A tall hooded figure in black robes floated out into the hallway through the closed entrance to Dumbledores office. It paused as if looking at her then moved on soundlessly down the corridor and out of sight. Hermione took off in the opposite direction, her meal... thankfully...  forgotten.

Finally, she curled up in a dry corner of Professor Sprout's greenhouse for the night. She was discovered the next morning by an unimpressed Professor McGonagall who transformed her back to into human form and deducted five points from Gryffindor.

Incredibly Hermione remembered everything she had done while in cat form and she was more than a little embarrassed and ashamed of herself, but she was even more concerned by what she had seen and immediately went to the owlery.