Harry Potter - Fanfiction

Year 3 - The Time is Now

Monday comes around yet again, the start of another week. The days drawer closer and closer to November. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous for the transformation to my Animagus state.

With the start of the new week, Draco is almost beside himself with glee at Gryffindor's defeat. He tells me Monday morning that he is glad to finally get rid of his bandages and stop pretending. He is so cheerful with everything that he spends most of our Potions class doing dementor imitations across the dungeon; Ron finally cracks after a while and flings a large slippery crocodile heart at him, which hits him in the face and causes Professor Snape to take fifty points from Gryffindor. I am watching the whole event unfold, of course, and the moment it hits Draco I can't help but laugh. He is so embarrassed that he doesn't look me straight in the face for the rest of the day.

Professor Lupin is at least back at his post and brought along a glass box containing a hinkypink; a little one-legged creature who looks as though he is made of wisps of smoke, rather frail and harmless looking.

The rest of the weeks in October seem to drag by until at last November rolls in. I rush down into the dungeons one evening, into the Potions class, to meet up with Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape; Exactly one month before this I met with Professor Sprout instead to retrieve my Mandrake leaf.

"Miss Granger, you're finally here. I'm glad the sky has cleared up for us tonight. We certainly did plan this at the right time," Professor McGonagall says as I walk towards the table they are standing by.

Professor Snape gathers up his things, we then all make our way outside of the castle ensuring that the moonlight directly shines on us.

Professor Snape hands me a crystal phial. "Place the leaf inside."

I do as he says and remove the leaf from my mouth, placing it into the phial. Glad to not have to micro-manage a leaf in my mouth anymore, it certainly was difficult eating.

"Now one of your hairs as well," Professor Snape adds.

Finding a decent length of hair, I pluck it from my scalp and place it with the Mandrake leaf.

Professor McGonagall speaks as Professor Snape continues adding the rest of the ingredients, "Professor Snape has obtained a silver teaspoonful of dew which needed to be collected from a place untouched by sunlight and human feet for seven days - Thank the Forbidden Forest for that. Along with a deaths-head hawk moth."

Once Professor Snape is finished, we all walk back inside to his classroom. He then takes the phial, placing it in a small cupboard near his desk. "I will keep the mixture here. As you would have studied, the mixture needs to remain in a dark, quiet place and must certainly not be disturbed, touched by sunlight or even looked at until the next electrical storm."

"Miss Granger, you remember the incantation you must say?" Professor McGonagall asks.

"Yes, Amato Animo Animato Animagus", I respond.

"Good, remember to do this every dawn and dusk. Don't forget that your wand tip is placed over the heart. I remember my progress all too well." Professor McGonagall smiles. "After a while of chanting my incantation, I begun to sense a second heartbeat in my chest."

Professor McGonagall straightens herself, slightly embarrassed from being seen acting as if she was back in her younger years.

Professor McGonagall continues, "right, Miss Granger, as soon as the lightning appears the final stages are to be enacted. I suggest we meet up down by the Great lake, a rather far distance away from the castle, you will need space since we don't know what animal you will turn into."