Survivor

The days that progressed from the moment he and Daphne talked with Neville had been some of the most tense of his time in the school. If he was being rational, then what he was doing with the stranger was probably higher-risk, but it was a closed, private operation only between himself and the hyper-competent roommate he had in his head. Harry had total control over everything that happened during his investigation, and the only people who knew about his schemes were himself and someone who was literally incapable of snitching on him. 

What he was doing right now had the potential to get his wand snapped and his arse thrown in azkaban. It was also anything but controlled. He had a plan, yes, and it was a good one. There were so many variables to take into account, however, that no amount of planning was guaranteed to make things go well. At the same time, the stranger was of the opinion that this scheme of his was, well, his. No help was going to be given on that end unless things got too big for him to handle, but that safety net wasn’t exactly comforting when he couldn’t even trust half of his group to keep their mouths shut and follow through. 

This was exactly why he wanted to work alone…

Longbottom was making sure to wear his cloak everywhere. They wanted to make sure that nobody on the Ravenclaw team got even a hint of something being off. Sending away Longbottom’s tail was bad enough, but that was required for this to even be a possibility in the first place. As much as he hated to admit it, the Ravenclaw bastards really had their shit together. They were almost perfect with their execution. The only reason they weren’t already in the clear was because there happened to have been a very vengeful wizard with an invisible snake spying on them.

It almost felt like cheating.

Unfortunately for them, the first lesson Harry learned in his life was how completely untrue the concept of fairness was, and it didn’t seem as though they suspected foul play with their unfortunately compromised eavesdropper. With the way they were subtly glaring at the Weasley twins, Harry was pretty much certain they bought their friend’s story. Oh, the poor twins were really taking a beating this year between Harry dumping his schemes on their heads and Longbottom apparently doing the same. 

As was agreed by the group, Daphne was spending most of her time keeping an eye on the Ravenclaws and making sure that their group was conducting business the same as usual. With her confirming that the tails were still active on a consistent basis and making sure that their routines weren’t changing too drastically, it was reasonably assumed that they’d managed to go unnoticed. The rest of Daphne’s time was spent killing him with silence. 

This time, however, felt different from what happened before his first quidditch match despite the similarities. Before, Harry got the distinct feeling that Daphne was ignoring him for the express purpose of aggravating him. Now, he felt more like Daphne was ignoring him because she’d honestly stopped trying. No matter how much he attempted to apologize, she heard none of it. 

The situation was also different from the norm because, for the first time in his life, the indifference of another person was earned by himself. The Dursleys, the muggles, and even some of the Slytherins were things he dealt with by telling himself that it was them, not him, at fault. Such an excuse wasn’t usable with Daphne, and it was…

Depressing.

Her anger with him didn’t stop her from performing her task with what was almost an obsessive single-mindedness. In reality, Harry personally thought that it made her focus on it more than she otherwise would've. It was heartening, in a painful sort of way, that she cared enough to do what she was for him even in the face of her current negative feelings surrounding him. 

Harry's escapades with the stranger turned out to be a massive help with their plan because he was already intimately acquainted with all of the Prefects, their routes, and schedules. The only thing that could've possibly given them more advantages was out of his reach. If he wasn't so sure that changing the night of the plan would alert his targets, he would've loved to move it to a day when Farley was on patrol just to see if he could convince her to take it slow for the night to give them more time.

Unfortunately, it was not to be, and the days ticked on by until the day of their plan arrived. Lounging at their potions desk, having already completed their work for the day due to Daphne's truly stunning ability to brew, he glanced over a Longbottom and marveled at just how composed he looked. The boy seemed as though pressure had no effect on him. Unfortunately for him, his friend wasn't nearly as composed as Harry's was. 

Ronald looked absolutely wired.

To be fair, they were walking on a pretty unstable bridge. Longbottom assured him that they had a surefire method of getting around without being caught. Only the tracker on his cloak could’ve possibly given him away. What exactly that method entailed was beyond both Harry and, surprisingly, the stranger. It wasn’t really a concern for Harry whether or not they got away with it though. All that mattered was that the Ravenclaws and their two Hufflepuff goons got what was coming for them, so Harry let it be. 

When class ended and students began making a rustle, a piece of parchment mysteriously found itself zipping across the floor and into Harry’s open bag. He noticed it the second it happened, and a smirk appeared on his face. It didn’t matter how closely Longbottom was being followed when they only covertly communicated in class. Once he was out of the classroom and walking alongside Daphne, he pulled out the note.

Seventh floor, portrait of the Fat Lady.

Well, besides the fact that the Gryffindors apparently named a very unfortunate lady after her body size, there wasn’t much odd about that request. The trick to their entire scheme was, of course, crossing paths after-hours without giving away that Longbottom was going off course. It had to look like he was taking a logical route to the exchange location, or they were going to get suspicious. The solution was for them to meet at the common room and take the marked cloak from Neville before they split ways, the Gryffindors going to the new drop-off by the forbidden forest and them leading the Hufflepuff duo toward the roof where they were to be met with nothing but a floating cloak. 

That was, at least, the plan they all agreed on. 

Giving a nod to Daphne, they went to the library where they were going to stay until it was time. They picked a spot near the corner and sat in silence, doing little but reading and occasionally using a simple charm to check the time. As the hours counted away, a feeling began to rise in Harry’s chest. It wasn’t excitement, really, or nervousness either. He supposed he’d have to call it anticipation.

This was different from his current heist with the stranger in more than just a logistical sense. He just wanted whatever Dumbledore had been risking his life to keep hidden, but these kids were directly responsible for his own pain and suffering. When the time finally arrived, he was practically vibrating.

It wasn’t past the time when most students would confine themselves to their beds, but that was sort of the point. It was, in some ways, less suspicious to be wandering around with other people out and about than it was to try and pull off their plan when nobody but the prefects were truly around to find them. They approached the seventh floor, keeping things casual as they looked around for anyone potentially lurking in the hallways. The Ravenclaws, apparently thinking that they took all of the risk for the first plan, were staying in tonight. It was Preece and Rickett with the responsibility of catching Longbottom red handed. Still, Harry felt as though it would’ve been irresponsible to not be at least somewhat wary of their presence.

Once they got to the seventh floor, Harry brought Daphne over to an indent in the wall and sat against the window. Not too many people were wandering around at this hour, so he felt no need to hesitate when he gently hissed into his collar. 

“Jason, can you check out the floor and tell me if anyone suspicious is loitering around the portrait with the fat lady on it?”

“Of course,” Jason hissed back as he went down Harry’s robes and onto the floor.

The stranger, as he said, wasn’t about to help with this scheme, so he didn’t have that nifty active camouflage to help him out. Luckily enough for him, the stranger’s advice was finally starting to kick in. If he couldn’t make an actively changing cloak to blend in with their surroundings yet, then he just had to find something simpler that accomplished mostly the same thing.

“Colovaria,” he whispered, and Jason’s vibrantly green scales turned a dull, dark grey that matched the stone floors of Hogwarts almost perfectly. 

The colors didn’t have to actively change if everything was the same color already.

Leaning back to relax while Jason did his thing, he glanced over to see the somewhat curious, most definitely bitter expression on Daphne's face. 

“What?” he asked

"So that's how you figured out their plan?" Daphne asked with a bit of a chill to her voice. "You had Jason listen in while camouflaged?"

"Yeah," was Harry's awkward answer. "It wasn't even that difficult, really."

It took a bit of time for his companion to explore the area, time that Harry was perfectly willing to spend for his own safety. There was too much on the line for him to get caught here. 

"I see none of your targets lingering nearby," Jason hissed as he slithered into the open sleeve of the arm Harry offered him. 

"We're clear," he said to Daphne.

The two moved away from the window and down the hall, coming to a stop before they reached the portrait. It was fine for paintings to see them roaming around, but that didn't mean they wanted the portraits most likely to get asked questions seeing them around if they could help it. He realized it seemed paranoid, but, in the case something went awry, it was best to err on the side of caution. 

Checking the time with his wand, he counted down the seconds until Longbottom opened the portrait door with Weasley by his side. 

"Come on, then," Longbottom said quickly, gesturing for them to follow. 

A glance between the two Slytherins was all they spared before walking past the portrait door and into a place not many of them had ever ventured before. To think that it was by Longbottom's invitation that he'd enter Gryffindor's common room. He would've been lying if he'd said that he wasn't at least a little curious about how and where the other houses lived.

It was… different. 

The Gryffindor common room, in comparison to his own, was surprisingly less open. Despite the fact that he lived in the dungeons and underneath the Black Lake, his common room was actually much more spacious than one that was so high up and surrounded only by air. At the same time, this common room was a bit more cozy. The smaller space allowed the fire to heat it a bit more, and the light was all natural. Slytherin's common room gave a much more ethereal, mysterious vibe with the light that filtered in through the lake and the orbs of glowing, green magic that acted as the only other source of light besides the fireplace.   

"Wow," Harry observed. "How is it possible that not a single person is down here besides us?"

He was well aware that Longbottom said he could do just that, but forgive him for being skeptical about such a claim.

"I just told them we needed the room for the night. Nobody argued," was the answer Harry received. 

He gave a few slow nods as Daphne primly huffed in a display of sardonic exasperation because, of course, Longbottom just had to ask for an entire house worth of people, almost all of which were his seniors, to give them perfect privacy for the foreseeable future. With that knowledge, Harry still had his reservations. Just because things seemed to have gone their way didn't mean they were actually in the clear.

"There's no need to worry," Longbottom told him. "We put privacy charms on the staircase and the portrait. Nobody is going to be eavesdropping on us tonight."

Deciding to accept that at face value, considering Longbottom's neck was on the line here just as much as his own, Harry gave a nod of approval. Some trust was necessary to work together on this. That he reached out with his magic to confirm that something was there didn't need to be explicitly mentioned. It didn't matter that he couldn't discern what kind of magic coated the stairs and the portrait. Knowing it was there at all confirmed Longbottom's claim well enough.

"So where is it?" Harry asked. 

"Why do you need to see?" Weasley immediately shot back. 

"Oh," Daphne sighed, rolling her eyes to look toward the ceiling as if she was truly working the gears in her mind to find a suitable reason. "Maybe because we're helping you move it?"

Weasley was assumedly about to respond when Longbottom raised his hand, immediately silencing any possibility of an argument. "It's over here.

The Boy-Who-Lived led them to a single-strap, leather bag that he had stashed next to the fireplace. He moved it to the center of the room, unclasped the bag, and levitated it out with a whisper and a vague flick of his wand. What came out of the bag was fascinating. 

To actually see a dragon after only ever hearing about them in fantasy stories was just as strange as it was enlightening. It looked reptilian and had a long snout sporting a very spiky set of teeth. Its wings were as big as its body; he could tell even when they were folded against its back like some kind of spiny, scaly shield. 

It was asleep.

"How did you manage to knock it out?" Harry asked curiously. 

"The people we're giving it to sent us the bag and a potion. It's runed to be featherlight, and it's bigger on the inside. The potion was the Draught of Living Death. Apparently, in the proper dosages, it can knock out creatures with high magical resistance like a dragon instead of killing them like it would with all of us. All we had to do was follow the instructions.”

"Good," Harry said. "It'll be easier to move around that way. You're certain they'll be on time?"

Just because those two getting caught wasn’t the end of the world for him and Daphne didn’t mean that making sure it went smoothly wasn’t at all beneficial to everyone involved.

"They're professionals, Potter," Longbottom responded, as if that was all he had to say. 

Stowing the blacked out dragon back inside of the bag, Longbottom took a seat on the couch by the fire. Harry chose to sit on the couch perpendicular to Longbottom's, and their two friends soon followed their lead. It was on those two couches that they sat until the prefects were set to be the only ones with authority out and about. They wanted to meet while it was still generally open to avoid the chances of getting seen wandering around together when it would've been more suspicious, but they needed the halls to be as barren as possible to do their work. 

"Okay," Harry said eventually. "It's time. You remember the schedules and routes I gave you?"

Longbottom didn't even deem his question worthy of an answer. "We'll go first. If there's someone watching the portrait when we leave, we'll send you a warning and move to plan B. If they're waiting elsewhere to avoid getting seen by us too soon, then we continue as is."

Harry nodded, and the two left through the portrait hole after handing over the tracking rune. How they were going to remain unseen was still poking at him, but he let it go in favor of calming his nerves and going through the entirety of their plan in his mind. A few minutes later, they left as well with the rune in tow. 

The halls were dark, quiet. Their shoes echoed further down the corridor than he liked, but that was fine. They were allowed to be out here, and the only people they didn't want finding them personally knew their exact location anyhow. The plan, according to what he'd heard through the charm on Jason, was for the two quidditch players to wait many floors below Longbottom and climb up after them, delaying the chase just long enough to catch them before they handed the dragon to the smugglers. Once the operation was blown wide open, the smugglers were bound to leave quick because smuggling a dragon with the aurors on their trail was impossible, and that was more than enough to get Longbottom and Weasley tossed out of the school and possibly into prison if the Wizengamot was feeling harsh at the time. 

It was an admittedly smart move, and it showed that they weren't underestimating Longbottom. There was a possibility they would get noticed if they directly followed him, so they were going to make use of the rune to follow at a perfectly safe distance until the time came to strike. That fortunately worked in his favor because realizing that they were following a fake wasn't really possible when they were merely tracking the position of a rune through the castle.

The only thing they had to be wary of was the possibility of the two Hufflepuffs starting from a different location. Their whole scheme went belly up if they found out they weren't following Longbottom. That was why they kept it slow-going and patient. They needed to make sure that the Hufflepuffs believed their progress to be similar to that of two students smuggling a baby dragon through a secure, patrolled castle, and they also had to be ready to evade them if the Hufflepuffs got impatient for the impending confrontation. 

They did this, mostly, by having Daphne make liberal use of the human detection charm. It was one that she'd apparently been taught by her father before arriving at Hogwarts. One could, in her own words, never be too sure that they were alone in a castle as crowded and nosy as this one. 

They detected nobody though, and they made slow but decent progress through the castle until they finally arrived at the main staircase. Well, by main staircase, Harry meant the entirely open and absolutely terrifying open space that went from the ground floor of the castle to the top. Occupying that space was a set of multiple demented staircases that swiveled from one set to another, sometimes with people standing on them. This created a branching pathway up the castle that gave the opportunity of getting off at multiple areas of the castle depending on where the individual staircases led at any given time. 

It also provided one of the fastest ways to the top of the castle that didn't involve some kind of secret passage. Well, that was what he assumed because, of course, the passages were secret, and the stranger seemed to be content to let him find them on his own. It was apparently up to every student to individually find their own secret areas of the castle. That he didn't have much time to experiment yet was merely circumstance. He'd find them eventually. 

The castle was dark, very dark. At this point, Harry was comfortably sure that the portraits couldn't see them properly enough to ascertain an identity, not that it'd matter much whether or not they saw a student or two crossing their path. Almost all of the people within the portraits were sleeping at the moment anyway. Walking up the staircase, knowing they were close to the top, they tried to find the perfect spot to wait. Unfortunately, the constantly changing layout of the stairs made it hard to actually plan to wait at a specific spot. What they found was a suit of armor that stood tall and proud, halberd in hand, as it faced the staircase currently leading to the floor it was on.

With a satisfied grin, Harry motioned to Daphne, and the two of them stepped close to the suit of armor, using its massive frame to keep them out of sight from the staircase. Harry took stock of the portraits around them, using his not-so-human pair of eyes to see more than he should've in such a poorly lit section of the castle. 

They were all asleep.

That was even better than he was initially hoping. Even if their identities were properly concealed, witnesses were liabilities. All they had to do was make sure to keep things relatively quiet. 

Holding the tracking rune in front of him, he tapped it with his wand at the end of a swish and flick. "Wingardium Leviosa."

The paper began to flutter as he held it in the air with his magic. Using his hold over the paper, he slowly moved it over to the staircase and made it head directly up toward the roof of the castle. It became more taxing the further the parchment got away from him, but he had a decent enough hold to lift it a floor above him, maybe two. He didn’t have to make it perfect; he just had to make the Hufflepuff imbeciles believe that they were going up.

He could feel his heartbeat raise in tempo by the second, but he kept his breaths as slow and deep as he could. His lips smacked once together, and, noticing that they were startlingly dry, he wet them as his eyes hyper-focused on the staircase. The pressure of the approaching moment of truth was almost lethal, but he kept his head on straight and, out of paranoia more than genuine fear, checked down both sides of the hallway to make sure that the Prefects were still on a different floor than them. 

That was when he heard the scuffing of shoes against stone flooring. Someone was coming up the stairs, and there wasn’t a light to be seen. He glanced at Daphne and saw her look back, even though she probably couldn’t see him like he could see her with his diamond pupils. It was a chore, let it be noted, to keep his pupils changed without changing his irises. It was something he’d only tried recently, and it took a large amount of effort to be confident enough to use it now. 

Slowly turning their gazes back to the stairs, they saw the heads of two males appear as they approached their floor. He stared so intensely at them that he was certain he could see their entire life histories, but he couldn’t quite tell that it was them with enough certainty to justify what they were about to do. That was when, as if God himself heard his request, one of them opened their fat mouths. 

“They’re climbing awful fast, aren’t they?”

Yes, the paper was rising pretty quickly if he had to say so himself…

Knowing for a fact that the person he’d just heard was undoubtedly Malcolm Preece, he nodded his head to give the green light and reached out with his magic as far as he could push it while still acquiring useful sensory information. He didn’t feel a soul on their floor, and he smiled what was possibly the most malicious, wicked grin he’d ever constructed on his face. The tension was making his limbs physically hurt, but something was overpowering that by a large margin.

With his magic stretched out around him, he could feel the righteous anger and desire for revenge pumping through his friend. He could tell because those feelings were the same he’d been feeling for a long time. All she was missing was that twisted, crooked, selfish desire to hurt that he’d felt in equal parts for about the exact same amount of time. He saw her level her wand at the boy in the lead, and, as he stepped onto their floor, she let loose her spell.

“Flippendo,” she growled, using a jinx that he, for reasons beyond him, couldn’t use.

A streak of color dashed from behind the suit of armor, and Harry saw the startled fear light up in the boy’s eyes. Malcolm Preece was many things: aggressive, headstrong, brutal. A duelist, unfortunately for him, he was not. The jinx smacked him right in his midsection and, milliseconds later, his feet left the ground. 

His body flew backward, and his back was shoved into the front of his friend. The force of the collision shot the both of them directly over top of the steps they just climbed. Gravity quickly overcame their horizontal velocity, and their bodies crashed down about a quarter of the way down the staircase.

… They tumbled like ragdolls down the entirety of it.

It was a rather silent affair. The portraits didn’t even wake up. The boys didn’t have time to shout before the spell hit them, and it seemed as if they were too busy clinging to each other for dear life to yell as they fell. Once they hit the staircase, well, Harry knew damn well just how quickly the darkness came. Slowly moving from behind the suit of armor, he approached the stairs with Daphne by his side. 

She was very intelligently casting the levitation charm as many times as she could on a quill she brought with her. After she was done with it, he was going to take it and use it himself. If they, for some reason, became suspects for this, then all they’d see was two children practicing a first-year charm together during a late night study session.

As he peaked over the edge, he could just barely make out the crumpled form of the two students who did almost exactly the same thing to himself just a bit ago. Harry used the words almost exactly because he may have sent them down one or two more steps than he personally encountered during his own tumble. Who was really keeping count?

When his eyes fell upon them, the feeling in his chest exploded. It was beyond vindicating; the feeling was absolutely euphoric. His smile hadn’t left his face since he’d laid eyes on the Hufflepuffs climbing the final steps of the staircase leading to this floor. Everything was right with the world for the entirety of 10 seconds. That was when two screeching alarms went off within the Hufflepuffs’ robes.

Daphne jumped, understandably frightened by the sudden noise. 

no…

Panic began to set in at the thought of being caught in such a position. They’d be expelled at the very least. Those absolute bastards didn’t change their plan, but they came up with a contingency. Those alarms had to have been their design because there was no way two quidditch jocks created a piece of magic like that. They probably set them in the Hufflepuff’s robes without their knowledge, intending to set them off in the case that something went wrong. The trigger could’ve been anything. He suspected that it was probably set to go off if their body was harmed, hoping to at least get everyone caught if the prodigious Neville Longbottom managed to somehow incapacitate the Ravenclaw’s two vigilantes. 

That realization made anger slowly seep into his panic, mixing with it and eventually overpowering it to the point that he was no longer quite so worried about the possibility of being caught. Those Ravenclaws pulled a final, hail mary plan out of their asses to get him caught after he beat them at their own game by blatantly and uncaringly sacrificing their muscle to whatever their fate ended up being. He was initially alright with ruining their plans and sending the two originators of his stint with the dungeon staircase down their own flight, but that was before. 

His desire to minimize his own risk was negated by how badly he wanted to destroy those Ravenclaws. This was the last time they’d be running one of their little plans with him in the castle. Daphne reached out for his sleeve, latching onto it and trying to tug him along. Harry didn’t budge in the slightest. His size didn’t matter when the zouwu was beginning to make an appearance. He was so furious that the beast was already rippling right beneath the surface of his skin. 

“Come on!” she yelled over the sound of the blaring runes. “We need to go!”

He looked over at her, and he could see her fear. She was absolutely terrified, knowing exactly the fallout that would come from her being caught. There was more on the line for her than him. This right here was him living exactly how he wanted to, standing over the crippled bodies of those who tried to harm him, knowing that shackles capable of truly binding him existed no longer. 

She was doing this only for him. This, for her, was nothing more or less than helping a person she cared for. If she was caught, her family would take a hit too. Her father was respected in the government, and the fallout of their failed plan was capable of demolishing that completely. Everything was on the line for her, and, for a single moment, his eyes softened. He considered leaving it be and saving the both of them in order to be absolutely certain they’d get away.

Then he remembered every second of his life with the Dursleys, and it played in agonizing detail. He thought about what this knew life meant for him, and he saw the way those Ravenclaws and their two Hufflepuff partners threatened that for him, how they tried to chain him, declaw him. He momentarily glanced down at his robes, and he remembered the promise he made to Jason…

Everything swirled around him in a tangled mess that could’ve only been matched by the emotions running through his head, and he realized that there never was a choice, not when it came to this. His eyes hardened in an instant, and he yanked his sleeve out of her grip. There wasn’t time to fight, not if he wanted the best chance of doing the only thing he could think of to hit the Ravenclaws back while escaping the fate slowly approaching them.

Never again…

“No,” he told her with only the utmost confidence. 

Kneeling against the ground, he used one of the charms Iris taught him to color things with only his wand, and he drew on the stone a rune. It was a very familiar rune, the same one, in fact, that he stepped on himself last semester. He inscribed it with as much painstaking attention to detail as they did, once upon a time, despite the extra ten seconds it took away from him. He kept on searching with his magic, waiting for the arrival of someone who was undoubtedly going to try and capture them after seeing what they did. 

Only once it was finished did he stand up and grab Daphne’s wrist. He pulled her down the stairs after him as he dashed for the two fallen boys. A feeling deep within his gut told him that someone was approaching. He could feel their suspicion and apprehension. It was the emotions of a student who was hoping they weren’t about to walk into something beyond their capability to handle themselves. 

They had no idea.

Once he got down to the sixth floor, he knelt next to the boys and rapidly, messily sifted through their robes, snatching the runically inscribed parchment. 

“Ignis!”

They caught fire upon his exclamation of the first spell he’d ever learned. The noise immediately stopped upon the destruction of the runes, and he started to run when the stranger stopped him in his tracks. 

“Give me a moment,” the stranger requested calmly and went quiet for a second before choosing to speak again. “They will remember nothing about tonight or the task they were given.”

With that knowledge firmly lodged in his head, he took off down the opening that led away from the main staircase. The further away he got from the scene, however, the more people he could sense coming for them. They were slowly getting cornered. His options were quickly beginning to close themselves until his brain settled on the one other time he needed to be somewhere else with the desperation he possessed tonight. He really didn’t want to do this, but he had to if he wanted to save himself and Daphne from their immediate situation.

He, at least, owed her that much.

Wrenching open the door to a supplies closet the first chance he got, he yanked Daphne in after him and slammed the door shut behind him.

“They’re going to find us here!” she frantically whispered.

If only she knew that they were going to be found either way.

People were closing in from every angle. He could feel them getting closer. It was only going to be a minute or so until they were discovered. There was but one solution, and he knew what it was. He just didn’t want to use it at all.

Daphne being with him was the only reason it would work. The noise was going to be legendary, and, just like the night with the viridian hounds, people were going to be all around the castle. Since a female was with him, however, there was exactly one location that he could go now that he couldn’t have before, not without getting caught. His teleportation could make as much noise as it wanted because the alarm he was going to set off the second he arrived was sure to overpower it. 

His eyes turned yellow as he stared into Daphne’s, and he latched onto her arms when she attempted to pull herself away from him due to the shock of seeing him change. 

“Forgive me for what I’m about to do,” he whispered in her ear as lightning flowed across his skin and tusks protruded to curve above his upper lip.

Fur grew across his body, and his hands turned into black claws at the same time as his shoes were morphed into identical looking feet. His transformation was far too large to fit inside of a broom closet, but that hardly mattered when the beast was already moving him to his room in Slytherin’s dormitory before the change was even complete. The sound of rumbling thunder was left in his wake as he disappeared in a stormy conglomerate of swirling blue light and yellow electricity.

With the look of a full-fledged, juvenile zouwu, he appeared in his room and dumped Daphne on his bed, morphing back mere moments later. Unfortunately, the alarm was already going off even before he changed back, but that was completely expected. It was the reason he was so sure this would work in the first place. He had but a few seconds to look at Daphne’s horrified face before an irate Severus Snape burst through his door with half of Slytherin in tow.