The Cupboard Series 4: The Fourth School

Chapter 34

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"You know you guys don't have to do this?" Harry tried again.

"And we've told you, Harry; we want to do this," Hermione stated without even looking up from the book that she was perusing.

"Yeah, mate, this could be us in a year's time and you know that you'll be helping us," Neville agreed.

With a sigh, Harry turned back to his own book. Neville did have a point. He was about a year in advance of the others in their quest to become animagi. Not that it was easy to tell, the mind arts were so fluid and personal that each individual journey was different.

Sirius had highlighted that fact by pointing out that, although he, Harry's dad and Wormtail had all started the process at the same time, they'd all finished at vastly different points. The difference between Prongs (who finished first) and Wormtail who was the last to complete his transformation was apparently close to eight months.

There'd been a great deal of excitement and interest that morning when he'd told his friends that he'd taken the aminagus revealer potion the night before and had met his animal in a trance. Hermione, Daphne and Susan had all bombarded him with questions about what it was like. Even Luna and Neville had thrown in a question or two.

And when he'd revealed that he had no idea what his animal actually was, he'd been dragged straight to the library, a crowd surrounding him. He'd then been sat down and, while Hannah and Luna had gone to fetch all of the animal books in the library, he'd been made to retell every scrap of information that he could remember not only about what his animal looked like, but also about the environment that he'd met it in.

Tables had been pushed together to make one massive place where Harry, Hermione, Neville, Daphne, Susan, Hannah and Luna could all sit together, books galore in the middle for them to research through. Hermione had declared that none of them were moving until they'd identified Harry's animal, a decision that was unanimously agreed upon by all of the others despite Harry's protest.

"What about a squirrel?" Luna asked. "You could be a squirrel. It'd be nice to be a squirrel. They love chattering away and eating nuts. Although, I don't think that they like macadamias, which is a pity; they're very yummy."

"I know what a squirrel looks like and it wasn't that," Harry replied.

"Look at this one!" Daphne declared a short time later, turning the book that she was looking at around for everyone to see.

"A kangaroo?" Hermione asked.

"I'm not a kangaroo," Harry stated.

"Oh, I know you're not," Daphne replied. "Your description is nothing like it. But could you imagine being able to hop everywhere? Apparently, they can jump quite high."

"Having a pouch would be quite handy," Luna remarked.

There were some general murmurs of agreement at Luna's statement, although Neville did look a bit dubiously at her, making Harry suspect that Neville didn't know about kangaroos and other marsupials having pouches.

"What about this one, Harry? It looks like what you described," Hannah asked, passing her book across the table.

Harry examined the picture closely.

"It's close, but not quite right," Harry told her.

Harry was about to pass the book back when Hermione's hand stopped him. She took a moment to look at the picture before addressing him.

"Perhaps if you tell us the differences between this meerkat and your animal it'll help us to identify what you are a bit quicker," she suggested.

Harry looked at the meerkat once again, mentally comparing it to the image in his mind.