Switched

Cerberi were, in Harry's estimation, even more fun than bulldogs. He danced away from the left head with the football he had found in one of the lower troughs of Hogwarts's massively complicated roof-scape and ducked under a bite from the middle one, grinning. It had taken several visits before the massive dog had let Harry get close enough to pet him without snapping, but after nearly a month of daily (or more often, nightly) visits they got on well enough to play fetch or ride-the-dog without Harry being seriously injured. He had gotten a few nips, but nothing that had actually stopped him leaving the (Misnamed) Corridor of Very Painful Death by the same window he used to enter. Honestly, the cerberus was hardly even dangerous, let alone deadly. Yes, he was big, and clearly not friendly to strangers, but he wasn't mean. And he was smart, and clearly bored, locked up here all alone. Harry had started training him to sit using fetch as a reward.

The right head barked at him, an excited little throw it again yip, but sort of loud because the dog was bloody enormous, much bigger than any other dog Harry had ever seen — at least six feet tall at the shoulders, he had hit his middle head on a chandelier jumping around the first time Harry had unstuck his chain from the floor and let him run around the corridor. He was pretty sure he wasn't done growing yet, either — his paws were still disproportionately large.

"No! Bad Righty! Quiet!"

Lefty used his distraction to make a second attempt to grab the ball out of his hands, which earned him a smack on the nose, which earned Harry a growl and a near-miss at getting his right hand bitten off, which earned Lefty a nip on the ear from Central. (The middle head liked Harry the best out of the three of them.)

Harry backed away and gave a sharp whistle before the heads could start really getting into it. "Want the ball?" he asked, holding it up. Lefty lunged at him, but the dog was really very uncoordinated when the heads didn't quite agree on what they wanted, and the other two knew they had to sit before he would kick it. (Harry was pretty sure each head had its own mind, and all three had some degree of influence over the entire body, which seemed like a terrible design for an animal that someone had to have used magic to create. Aunt Marge would be appalled.) "No! Sit, Lefty!" he demanded, skipping a few more steps back.

They tried, at least, still scooting forward slightly with their tail whipping wildly across the floor and whining, too excited to really sit still, which...Harry could sympathise. "Close enough."

He kicked the ball, sending it between Righty and Central because Lefty had tried to steal it. Watching two-thirds of a cerberus try to turn around to its right and one-third try to turn around to its left had to be one of the funniest things Harry had ever seen. All of them wanted to move, but indecision on which direction often made the entire dog lose his balance while simultaneously bounding and/or scrabbling forward, trying to get traction on the smooth stone floor. (They were getting better at it, but still went sprawling more often than not, which gave the ball time to get a few bounces away, so they actually had to scramble after it.)

Harry had no idea who had trapped the poor dog up here with no one to play with or why, but he was inclined to say it was bloody criminal of them. Not only was he going to get mean if he was never around people, he wasn't going to learn how to be a functionally coordinated adult if he was chained up all the time. He suspected the gamekeeper — an oddly proportioned man Harry suspected might actually be a giant or a troll or something — agreed with him, because he always took an hour or so to play with the dog when he brought it food and cleaned up the corner it used as a toilet. He was only about the same height as the cerberus, and the dog probably weighed at least twice what the gamekeeper did (he was still puppy-gangly, but he was also the size of a bloody elephant), but he was much closer to a match for it than Harry, so he could actually wrestle with it and play tug-of-war with what Harry strongly suspected had once been a bed curtain. He also had the leverage to man-handle the giant puppy back to his chain when he had to go — it was normally stuck to the floor just out of reach of a door that led back toward the centre of the Castle, near a trap door Harry was pretty sure didn't just lead to the second floor, because the gamekeeper shovelled all the poo- and pee-soaked sawdust down there — so he could also let him completely off his chain.

Harry would stand approximately no chance of getting an unruly puppy that probably outweighed him by a factor of fifty back onto a leash, so he just let him drag the chain around and charmed it to the floor again in more or less the same area before he left. It wasn't like there was anything for it to get stuck on, and he could use it to climb up to the dog's back and get in on the three-way fight for the ball which pretty much always ensued when they reached it.

The dog, though, was getting wise to his trick of scrambling up to an adjacent head — fingers and bare toes digging into shaggy, wiry fur — and leaping at the head with the ball in a sort of flying muzzle-tackle that usually dragged the head with the ball down to the ground, where Harry could grab the ball and twist and roll away with it, avoiding playful chomps from all three sets of teeth. They had begun coordinating against him — this time, Central ducked and Lefty tried to grab Harry in the middle of Harry's attempt to steal the ball from Righty. Harry fell flat on his back in a slobber puddle, knocking the wind out of him (not his finest moment — eugh), and the dog bounded off triumphantly down the corridor, chain clinking merrily behind him, as though he wouldn't be back daring Harry to try to take the ball so he could kick it again in a minute or two.

Of course, before he did someone unlocked the door the cerberus was generally chained near, opening it with a very distinctive creak that brought the enormous dog running to confront the intruder, all three heads barking their stupid snouts off, the ball forgotten somewhere down the corridor.

"No! Stop! Bad dog! Get out!" That last one was directed at whoever had just come in, but they didn't listen to him, bright red spell-light knocking out Central even as he spoke. The other two heads obviously took this as provocation, snapping at the intruder and pinning her in a corner, whereupon she turned into a cat with a small pop, darted across the corridor, popped back to her human form and used some sort of spell to shrink the furious three-headed dog to the size of an actual puppy while he was still struggling to turn around. (Which was really bloody impressive, he was going to have to tell Danny about this later...)

The tiny cerberus was adorable, but also obviously terrified, now cowering in the corner himself behind his harness, the two side-heads nuzzling and licking the middle one, trying to wake it up. "Er...hi, Professor McGonagall," Harry offered, ignoring the puppy's yapping, growling attempts to bite him and picking him up to check on the middle head. It didn't respond to him pushing one eyelid open, but it did still seem to be breathing. But then...Harry was pretty sure the whole dog only had one set of lungs, so maybe that didn't mean anything. "Um. You didn't kill one-third of him, did you?"

"Potter! I should have known it would be you in here! What on Earth were you thinking?! And how did you get in?! The door was still charmed shut from the outside!"

"There's a window in the third classroom on the left that's not locked," Harry admitted, nodding down the corridor.

"Through a window?!"

"And I was mostly thinking that a dog like this needs exercise, and someone chained the poor thing up in here for no reason I can see, so as long as I stick his chain back where I found it why shouldn't I play with him for a while? Seriously, did you kill Central? What do you even do with a cerberus that's only one-third dead? We're not going to have to put him down, are we?"

"No, I didn't kill the stupid dog! It's only stunned. And were you not paying attention at the Welcome Feast, when the Headmaster said that a very painful death awaited anyone who thought they'd break in here?!"

"Of course I was, why do you think I was exploring over here in the first place?" he asked, scritching the ears of the central head, which was just starting to come around and seemed every bit as panicked about being tiny as the other two had been at first, whimpering and tucking itself closer to his chest. "And I'm not the only one who's been poking around." He still wasn't sure what the consequences of being in here might be (since they clearly didn't include dying), so he'd been trying to stay out of sight when students got curious and stuck their heads in. Most of them had tried it before he'd gotten to the point of letting the dog run around (the cerberus hadn't been able to reach the doorway, chained to the floor as he was), but even after anyone with half a brain ducked right back out and slammed the door when they saw an eight-foot-tall, three-headed dog barrelling down the corridor at them. Which so far had been everyone except Professor McGonagall.

Not that he was saying Professor McGonagall didn't have half a brain — he was in here, after all — but stunning one-third of a cerberus and shrinking him down to a shaking foot-tall puppy was sort of cruel. She was going to give the poor thing a complex about cats, or something.

"Ooh, that is it! We are going to the Headmaster's office! Right now, young man! Where is the broom?"

"Er...broom?"

"Don't try to play dumb, Mister Potter! You said you came in through a window, which means you have to have borrowed a broom from someone, and you won't be coming back for it, so bring it here, now!"

"I did come in through a window, but I didn't use a broom."

"Oh, I suppose you just flew up here unaided, then?"

"Um, no? I climbed. It's not that hard..."

"You climbed. Up to a third-floor window. To break into a corridor you were expressly forbidden to enter."

Well...sort of? Honestly, he'd been exploring over here to see what was in the mysterious forbidden Corridor of Lies and No Very Painful Death at All, not specifically to break in (at least the first time). Breaking in had been a sort of spur-of-the-moment decision when he'd realised there was a giant puppy in here. But somehow he suspected she wouldn't appreciate that distinction, especially since after that he had come here to do exactly that. (Also, he usually climbed down from the fifth floor, but that was an even more trivial point.) "Yes, ma'am."

She just stared at him for a long moment, as though she didn't actually think he was lying but couldn't quite believe he was telling the truth. "Unbelievable! In all my days teaching I have never—! Let's go!"

Harry followed her out of the corridor, still carrying the dog.

"I thought Hagrid was imagining things when he told me that the dog was being moved between his visits!" she muttered, locking the door behind them again. "How long has this been— Why do you still have the dog?!" she demanded, as she turned to lead him up to the Headmaster's office and realised Harry was still holding the tiny cerberus. One of the heads growled at her (adorably).

"I think the Headmaster should see what you've done to this poor animal," Harry said, completely straight-faced. He didn't really think Dumbledore would care that McGonagall had shrunk his dog, he'd really just felt sorry for the poor puppy. He was a good dog, he didn't deserve to be miniaturised — or worse, miniaturised and abandoned.

Professor McGonagall resumed her furious muttering with another ooh! but she apparently didn't want to unlock and relock the door again, which meant that when they finally reached the Headmaster's office — a circular room at the top of a tower, filled with light and light magic (too warm and slightly stifling) and an actual phoenix (the illustration he'd seen in Grey's hadn't done them justice), and little sculptures enchanted to move or make chiming sounds (which made Harry sort of jumpy, moving in his peripheral vision like that) — after Professor McGonagall explained that Harry had been caught out of bounds for the fifth time in three weeks, "recklessly endangering himself" by playing with the cerberus, Harry was able to say, "Good afternoon, sir. I thought you should be aware that your cerberus doesn't get nearly enough exercise chained up in that corridor, and also that your Deputy Headmistress attacked said cerberus with an unreasonable degree of force while she was trespassing in the Corridor of Very Painful Death."

If Uncle Vernon had taught Harry everything he knew about negotiating, Aunt Petunia had taught him everything he knew about dealing with authority figures. One of her favourite tactics when she was actually in the wrong and she absolutely knew it was to find some way the other person was in the wrong (even if it was a completely trivial thing, or entirely made up), and pretend that was what the entire argument was about when the situation eventually escalated to finding a manager. If some poor stockboy at Tesco told her she couldn't let Dudley eat a package of cookies they hadn't yet paid for while walking around the store, he would end up in trouble for ignoring a non-existent request for assistance, or "embarrassing a customer" by "shouting rudely" at her from "halfway down the aisle" rather than addressing the issue calmly and reasonably. Harry was fairly certain that most of the time the manager and the stockboy shared a good eye-roll as soon as Aunt Petunia left, but the important thing was that Aunt Petunia didn't get in trouble.

Accordingly, he had every intention of making the problem the fact that Professor McGonagall hated dogs, rather than that he had been out of bounds yet again (or at least try to). He set the tiny cerberus on the Headmaster's desk. He had stopped shaking while Harry was holding him, but he began trembling again as he realised that he was now trapped on a small island, high off the ground (relatively speaking) and surrounded by too much space. He crouched down, tail tucked beneath him, whining up at Harry as though to say don't leave me here. "Look! He's terrified! And she stunned one of the heads!"

She took the bait. Her lips were already about as thin as they could go, but her nostrils flared on top of that as she snapped, "You little—! The dog will be fine! If you hadn't let it loose, I wouldn't have had to stop it from biting my head off!"

"First off, you didn't have to come in! Everyone else who's tried to break in while I'm there has just closed the door again when they realise there's a giant bloody dog charging at them. And secondly, you got away from him just fine as a cat, cursing him in the back on top of that wasn't necessary. I think you overreacted because you're prejudiced against dogs," he declared, taking custody of the puppy again, as it seemed to be contemplating trying to escape by jumping to a chair. Given that the cerberus was not a coordinated animal at the best of times, he'd probably miss and break a leg or something.

"I am not prejudiced against dogs, Mister Potter! I am prejudiced against smart-mouthed little troublemakers who think themselves above the rules!"

"Were you listening, sir? Professor McGonagall just admitted that she has an unfair bias against me."

The Headmaster chortled. "I'm afraid that claiming to be a smart-mouthed troublemaker who thinks himself above the rules does not, in fact, help your case, Mister Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes as dramatically as he could. "Literally every instance of so-called 'trouble' I've caused for Professor McGonagall involves her taking an unreasonable degree of offence to me doing or not doing something that harmed absolutely no one. Why is it a bad thing if I decide to go play with a dog that desperately needs exercise? I guess maybe someone could get hurt if they come in when he's off the leash, but the entire school was warned that that corridor contains the possibility of a very painful death, so anyone who sees an elephant-sized puppy running toward them barking its heads off and doesn't just close the door and walk away and maybe tell people the warning was legitimate has no excuse if they're 'attacked'. I mean, complaining that there was a giant dog loose on the other side of that door is like complaining that you walked out into the middle of the M.-Twenty-Five and almost got hit by a car."

The Headmaster was clearly trying not to smile, but the Deputy Head was only growing more furious. "That is not the point, Mister Potter! And it's a bad thing because you might have gotten hurt!"

Harry scoffed. Not only was it somewhat ridiculous to think McGonagall actually cared if he got hurt — about half of their interactions had been her yelling at him for something stupid or telling him he couldn't do something he very clearly could, and the rest had been her ignoring him, there was no love lost, there — but he was clearly fine.

The witch turned to the Headmaster. "Not only was he in the Forbidden Corridor, he claims to have gotten in by climbing through a window! Rules exist for a reason, Mister Potter!"

"Professor Sinistra says there's no rule against scaling the walls of the castle unless I'm planning on sacking it," he informed the Deputy Head. "And I'm not sure there's actually a rule against being in that corridor either. I mean, the Headmaster said it was off limits to anyone who doesn't want to die a very painful death, not that it was off limits period."

Harry seemed to have pushed McGonagall to new depths of rage, coming back around to red-faced from pale with fury. "You see, Albus? He's completely incorrigible! It's hardly fair to the other Ravenclaws to continue taking points from him, and repeated detentions have had no impact on him whatsoever! I am at my wits' end!"

Pretty short on wits, then, eh, Minnie? It's only been six weeks... He didn't say it, because mocking the professor would make him look like a jerk instead of the reasonable person in this argument. "A, that's not true, I think you'll agree my handwriting is improving; and B, what impact are detentions supposed to have on me? Sure, they're boring, but as far as consequences for breaking rules go they're barely even inconvenient."

Harry had between a hundred and a hundred and twenty hours of free time to fill every single week, depending on how much he slept. He did have homework, of course, and he'd joined a few of Madam Pince's muggle subjects study groups and the Ravenclaw History study group, but that only ended up being a few hours a day (on average). Even getting five or six hours of detention over the course of a week and spending all of Saturday morning writing lines barely cut into the time which would otherwise be spent on spell practice and/or exploring and/or hanging out with people.

"Albus!" McGonagall was apparently out of arguments, since she just turned back to the Headmaster, gesturing dramatically.

Harry turned to him as well, and gave a little shrug to indicate his complete lack of understanding of the problem. Which was only a little faking, honestly. He knew adults worried about kids doing dangerous things, like in general, and that yes, teachers, especially at a boarding school like Hogwarts, were sort of responsible for the students' safety in general — he would get it if she had a problem with him endangering other students (like Snape just out and telling him not to murder other students, which was still...slightly mind-boggling, honestly). But he wasn't. Not other students who were smart enough to see an angry cerberus and bloody well leave it alone, anyway. And he was pretty sure that when the (potential) danger of doing a thing only applied to Harry himself, he should have every right to decide whether or not to do it and take that chance.

Dumbledore gave him a very serious look, peering over steepled fingers and half-moon spectacles enchanted to...do something. Harry could see the magic in them, but he couldn't tell what it was for. Almost certainly not to correct his vision. Danny said that wizards had ways of fixing poor eyesight (after your eyes stopped getting worse, which...Harry hadn't realised was a thing?), so pretty much any adult wizard wearing glasses was only wearing them because they had enchantments on them to let them see wards or through glamours or various other neat tricks.

"Perhaps, Minerva, it would be best if I speak to young Harry one-on-one," he said, at length.

"Please!" she huffed, as though to imply it's about time, damn it! Not that he disagreed. Dumbledore had supposedly been legally responsible for him for nearly a decade now, and they'd never actually had a conversation before. "And when you have a moment, do look over the proposal Zabini is planning to put before the Governors at the November meeting. I have some serious concerns about the—" She cut herself off, eyes flicking over to Harry as though she didn't want to discuss whatever it was in front of him. "Well, you'll see it, I've annotated your copy. We can discuss it at dinner."

She was out the door before he finished nodding.