Harry Potter - The Accidental Animagus

Chapter 12 - Telling the Grandparents

December 1989

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace-we've got work to do!"

"Ace totally would have been cooler with super cat powers," Harry said.

"Well, of course you'd say that," Hermione shot back. "I think it's better that she resisted violence and let the Doctor solve it."

"Girls," he muttered under his breath.

"Well," she put her hands on her hips, "isn't the show about brains over brawn, anyway?"

"I certainly think so," Emma defended her.

Harry mumbled something and turned away with a very feline look of ignoring them.

"You're not going to start going on about the thrill of the hunt, are you?" Hermione said anxiously.

"Maybe..." Harry said, staring back at her. He focused and tried to morph just his eyes and his teeth to cat form, like the Master, but from Hermione's reaction, he didn't think it was working.

His sister rolled her eyes at him. "I'm just glad you're too small to hunt anything bigger than a squirrel."

Harry grinned evilly at her and hissed slightly, "How fast can you run, sister?"

"Ahhh!" Hermione ran up the stairs with Harry chasing her.

"Kids, behave!" their mother yelled up after them.

The lights flickered from hastily cast wandless magic. It still wasn't very powerful in direct effects, but the spillover could still be strong when the children got overexcited. A moment later a mewling black and white kitten ran flat out back down the stairs.

Emma took the first couple of steps up, then stopped and shook her head. "No, I don't want to know."

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April 1990

That Saturday was easily the hardest and longest Harry had ever pushed himself-much harder than his weeks wandering as a kitten long ago, harder than his most rigorous efforts to train himself in magic. He had been specifically preparing for this day for a solid month. It was a full day of demonstrations, assessments, strength tests, and sparring matches. Paul and Tiffany had shown up to cheer him on, and Grandma and Grandpa Granger had come down from Manchester to see him, even though Grandma mostly hid her eyes whenever he was sparring on the floor. Cousins Ted and Andi were there, too, and even old Ms. Wilkins stopped by near the end of the day to see how here one-time case was doing, though no one was sure who had told her the test was that day. Sensei John commented that Harry seemed to be a very popular boy. His family silently recollected that he didn't know the half of it.

The day nearly ended in disaster early on when he landed a badly mis-aimed strike on his sparring partner, and pain shot up his arm. He knew enough to know that a botched strike like that could have broken his wrist, but after a few minutes of recovery, it seemed to be intact. An ankle rolling out from under him nearly floored him again, but he knew how to fall to avoid putting too much pressure on it, and he bounced right back up.