A Stag With Wings
Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape jump up from where they were simply watching from the Head Table to where Hermione had fallen over.
“Mr.Potter! What is that?!” Professor McGonagall shouts as she helps Hermione up.
Harry slowly blinks and speaks as if he were talking to a child, “This,” he rubs a finger down Umbra’s crest, “Is a snake professor.”
Snape glares, “That is clear to see Mr.Potter, are you so daft to misunderstand a clearly enunciated question?”
Harry spares a glance at Luna and replied, “She asked what it was Professor, so I answered.”
Professor McGonagall sighs, “Why do you have a snake, Mr.Potter? Those are not on the allowed animals’ list, and I remember quite well you not having a serpent yesterday.”
Turning to fully face the pair of teachers from where he was simply turning his head, he hisses to Umbra, “Can you come out fully? I want to ssshow my professsorsss that your my familiar, that way I can hide you.”
The Great Hall seems to come to a halt as he speaks the “forbidden” language of parseltongue,
“M-Mr.Potter!” Professor McGonagall snaps.
Harry holds up his hand and Snape huffs in annoyance as Umbra spirals free from Harry’s waist, coming out from his collar.
Umbra slinks down onto his arm and he holds him up to Snape and Professor McGonagall.
“This is Umbra, rather than a pet, since those aren’t allowed on the allowed animals’ list” Harry rolls his eyes, “Umbra is my familiar.”
“Sssalutationsss” Umbra hisses, his tongue flicking around from where his head rests on Harry’s shoulder.
Professor McGonagall pales, “Mr.Potter!”
Snape sneers, “Just claiming a pet as your familiar will not make it so Mr.Potter.”
Harry’s heart sinks to his stomach, tension starts to build in his shoulders as he frantically thinks of some way to prove this.
The tension in his shoulders must be visible as Snape smirks and pulls out his wand,
“Truly your arrogance knows no bounds Potter, did you think you could lie to my face and not reap the consequences?”
Harry quickly tries to defend himself but is cut off by the flick of Snape’s wand, a pale purple light emits from his wand and engulfs Umbra, leaving him with an Avada like glow,
“Wha--?”
“Severus!” Professor McGonagall snaps. She huffs when he shakes out his wand and sneers,
“Fortunately, Mr.Potter, you’ve been able to flaunt the rules again.”
Hermione’s eyes widen ad her jaw drops from where she’d been standing next to Professor McGonagall.
“That’s impossible! No one can get a familiar that quickly! And when did you even find this snake?”
Professor McGonagall turns to her but Harry cuts her off, “I’m sure Hermione if you actually hung out with me instead of hanging off of Ron’s every word, you would have known when I’d gotten Umbra.”
Harry stands and lifts his shirt quickly to allow Umbra to slink back in around his torso,
“Unfortunately, my appetite seems to have been lost,”
Waving to Luna as he passes Hermione by, lightly shoulder-checking her, he walks out of the Hall and ignores her calls for him to come back.
“What was all that at lunch?”
Harry glances at Hermione as she settles into the seat next to him. Harry tries to ignore her but her glare is scathing and annoys him to no end.
He feels Umbra shift under his shirt and Hermione lets out a small squeak as he sees her glance at his shirt. Realizing he won’t be able to shake her, he answers,
“Yes Hermione?”
Her face slowly grows red in color, absently he notes it reminds him of Vernon coming home from a bad day and finding him in the way, always in the way that’s what he is, his aunt always found something wrong with his work and set Vernon to “shape him up”, screaming about “The hydrangeas! What have you done to them?!” or “You stupid boy! You’ve burned dessert!”, but really he’s never made a mistake since he was six, so maybe his aunt was a resentful little bitch who couldn’t let things go, like for fuck’s sake you asked for creme brulee what did you think the sugar was going to look like--
“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME!?”
Harry’s jolted out of his bitter ramblings with Hermione’s yell across the room. She flushes as dozens of eyes stare at her.
“Are you feeling alright Ms.Granger? Yelling in class without having to answer a question isn’t like you,”
Hermione sinks in her seat as Professor Moody walks into the classroom.
His eye swivels around the class, taking in all the weary faces of those who knew how the first DADA class had gone. As his eye stops on Harry he double-takes.
“Is...that a snake coiled around your torso, Mr.Potter?”
The eyes in the room all stop on Harry as Moody speaks, Ron breaks the silence with a scathing retort,
“I knew you were a dirty cheater Harry, put mingling with snakes too? Maybe the hat should have sorted you into Slytherin instead of the house of Lions!”
Malfoy snorts, “Please Weasely! Keep the epiphanies to the educated lot in the room, if you think Potter’s a snake then you need your eyes checked! Though better not get your hopes up, your family couldn’t afford the cheapest optic healer in Diagon!”
The Slytherin side of the room erupts in titters while the Gryffs bristle with indignation, Ron choosing instead to pull his wand, his face matching the color of his hair.
“You take that back!”
“Or what? You’re worth no more than common riffraff!”
The two descend into bickering while Harry watched the Professor. Moody looked around the classroom with indifference, though his eyes straying towards the back of the room where Harry sat, and where Umbra stayed coiled around his waist.
Hermione, finally having enough of the arguing, pulls Ron down by his sleeve so that he flops into his seat, “Be quiet! You’ve wasted more than 10 minutes of class!”
At Hermione’s declaration, the students in the room fall silent and look towards where Moody had stood, arms crossed at the front of the room.
“I expected more from you fourth years, and this is how you act?”
He glares at Ron, “Does this look like a dueling center Mr.Weasely? You do not pull out your wand on someone in a petty argument!”
Malfoy snickers, bringing Moody’s attention back to him, “And you! Keep that silver tongue to yourself! Yelling across the room as if you were, what did you say? No more than common riffraff.”
“15 points from Gryffindor and Slytherin for appalling behavior!”
Ron and Malfoy wisely keep their mouths closed as Moody finishes and stalks around the classroom in silence.
After a moment or two, he speaks, “Do you know what they’ve stationed around the school, Mr.Weasely?”
“Dementors sir.”
Moody grins, his face pulling wide to make space for a smile with too many teeth,
“So the Tinman has a brain!”
He pauses for a moment, “Potter! What can repel a Dementor?”
Harry thinks of Remus, of chocolate and boggarts, of his mother’s scream and the roar of the air in his ears when he flies, he thinks of heartbreak and grief, and love that runs too deep, that has nowhere else to go. He also thinks of Umbra, a feeling flashing quickly across his mind, too quick for him to place.
“A Patronus.”
Moody’s eyes glint with something strange, “I’ve heard from Dumbledore that you’ve got something impressive with your Patronus.”
“What!?”
Heads turn to a shout in the Slytherin section of the room, Malfoy in the center of it with an affronted face, “Potty can cast a Patronus?”
Pansy mocks, “What is it? A few bits of wisp?”
Harry rolls his eyes and pulls out his wand, “Shall I give a demonstration, Professor?”
Moody takes a step back from the center of the room so he walks up, cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders, he breathes out a calming breath.
He thinks of Sirius and Remus, of the life he wants to have; of Luna, his brand new friend; of Umbra, and that odd fluttery feeling that comes with his name.
“Expecto Patronum,” He whispers, and then there is an explosion of light.
A peryton is an unusual creature, an atlantean myth, a fusion of a stag and a bird. Known as a man-eating monster, an eldritch being of chaos and death, thought to be the haunted hearts of travelers long past, who could not escape from the drowning of Atlantis. They are tortured souls, unable to find their rest; so it makes sense why one would be his Patronus.
“I thought your Patronus was a stag…” Hermione mutters, but in the quiet room, it echos and bounces around.
The eldritch Patronus shakes its feathers and opens its gaping maw, the fangs glinting in the candlelight, and eliciting gasps from the awestruck students.
Harry reaches out his hand and the peryton walks forward, laying its snout into his palm.
Harry faces Moody as the former Auror clears his throat, “It’s not every day a Patronus shifts. You seem to have gone through a remarkable change Mr.Potter.”
Umbra slinks up and out of his collar, sliding down his arm to rest his head near where the peryton laid his snout.
Not taking his eyes off Umbra and his Patronus, he answers, “It seems I have.”
Moody claps his hands together, “Now! Thanks to that inspiring display, I’m sure you all want to find your Patronus as well.”
Harry walks back to his seat, the peryton following close behind.
“I can’t keep calling you Prongs now can I?”
The Patronus dips his head in acknowledgment and Umbra shifts from where their head is nestled under his neck.
“The Patroni’sss magic tassstesss of yoursss Jussst Harry.”
Harry jolts, “That’sss right! You never got to anssswer me.”
“Hmm?” Umbra hisses.
“Do Patroni actually hurt Dementorsss?”
Umbra blinks slowly, “Sssometimesss they do not,”
“Sssometimesss?”
Umbra pauses as he wraps himself a little tighter around Harry’s arm, “The Patroni act asss deterrentsss to Dementorsss, however, their magic does operate under magical intention.”
“Magical Intention?”