PRIORI INCANTATEM by Arianna Waters (christmas read aloud TXT) 📕

At the breakfast, Harry was surprised when Lily asked him, “Harry, can your dad and I have a word with you after you’ve eaten.”

He nodded, but he couldn’t think of what they might be wanting to talk to him about.

Let’s just say, saying he was surprised afterwards would be the understatement of the century.

(Hah! A cliffhanger! I know I'm evil *grins maniacally*)

Lily took Harry to her and James’ bedroom and James closed the door behind him.

“Harry —” James began.

“Yes dad?”

“I can’t do this Lils!” James moaned, turning to Lily. “This is even harder than proposing you!”

“Yes you can, and you will!” Lily firmly replied. “As for proposing me, it wasn’t all that hard for what I know — seeing you did it five times a day — for four long years!”

Harry sniggered before turning his attention back at James.

“Harry . . . D’uwana’veasiblin?” James said in a single breath.

“Sorry dad, but what?”

“Well . . . will you be happy with a . . . sibling . . . ? Do you want . . . er . . . to have a sibling? I mean . . .  I understand . . . you might not want the responsibility of a younger sister or brother . . . since you’re used to living alone . . . and have already have too much burden.  . . . Your experience with your only cousin hasn’t been a nice one. . . . I and your mother thought . . . it would be better to . . . ask you whether — well — you know?”

“What — a sibling?” Harry said. “I get to be an elder brother?”

“I thought you wouldn’t want to,” said James quickly. “I understand, I just thought I’d —”

“Are you insane?” said Harry, his voice easily as croaky as James’. “Of course I want to have a sibling! Or siblings‼”

James turned back to look at him.

“You want to?” he said. “You mean it?”

“Yeah, I mean it!” said Harry.

Both James and Lily’s broke into the biggest grin Harry had seen on their faces, and hugged him fiercely.

Harry was having the best time of his life. Everyone beside him disliked cleaning, which, in Ron’s words was ‘working like house elves’, giving Hermione another excuse to shout out about S.P.E.W., but Harry was fine with it. He enjoyed working with everyone, listening to Sirius’ and James’ rants and Fred and George’s jokes. He loved eating the food cooked by his mother, which he had never been lucky enough to have tasted before. He loved how James shared his like for treacle tart. He missed Quidditch, but enjoyed being audience to Fred and George’s private lessons at the hands of James, Sirius and sometimes Remus, which had resulted in a number of pranks casted upon the members of Grimmauld Place.

He immensely enjoyed spending time with Tonks, who was much more hilarious than she had first appeared and told stories about her stupidity or listened to how they had confronted the Dursleys over and over ; or with Kingsley, discussing about Auror training and tasks. Even Mad-Eye was a pleasure to sit with, as he listened to him going on about how he had caught a number of Death Eaters. Most of all he loved the Animagus lessons he was taking in secret with his father and godfather, which even Ron and Hermione didn’t know about.

He remembered the day they had begun only too well. It was about a week after he had come to Grimmauld Place:

“Psst! Over here, Harry,” Sirius had whispered from the door of the drawing room the group was cleaning.

“What?” he asked.

“Shh! Keep your voice down,” James whispered. “Follow us, c’mon.”

They led him to the basement.

“Descendo,” muttered Sirius, pointing his wand at the low ceiling. A hatch opened right over their heads and a ladder slid down to their feet.

“Clever, isn’t it?” James said. “People might wonder about a basement under a basement, but not one over it!”

“Yeah, we’ve got a basement attic on the first floor, no one knows about it,” Sirius said as he climbed the ladder.

They found themselves in a well-lit room with cozy red couches at the far end and a lot of free space in the centre.

“You’ll be having your animagus lessons here, son,” James said. “For now, no one should know about it.”

Before Harry could open his mouth, Sirius said, “Not even Hermione and Ron, for now.” Looking around, he told Harry, “Even my parents didn’t know about this room. This secret had died with the builders, but most unfortunately for them, I’d found it in my second year and this has been my hideout since then. If your dad wanted to visit me, he would apparate in here.”

“That explains the Gryffindor decorations,” muttered Harry.

“Just . . . keep this secret to yourselves. No one except for us three should know about the existence of this place until necessary. Maybe sometime in future, the Order might need a hideout from some traitor,” Sirius said with a smirk.

“So, enough of this,” James said. “Let’s get started with your lessons.”

“This,” he said pointing to a small vial in his hand, “is a potion which helps us discover our inner animal. It took us two years to gather information about it and prepare it.”

“Fortunately for you,” said Sirius, “you’ve got us to help you out, thus saving two years of your effort.”

“The discovery is easy,” said James. “The latter part, which involves the actual transformation, is difficult and dangerous. But you needn’t worry; you’ve got specialists here for your help.”

“We’ll come to the second part later, let’s tell you about what exactly you should expect with this potion,” Sirius said. “Now, I’m going to go, so that people don’t generate suspicions towards us three, I’ll cook up some story to explain your disappearance.”

As Sirius left, James began. “You know, transfiguration of inanimate objects into one another is the easiest, and transfiguring animate into inanimate and vice versa, is tad bit difficult.”

“Yeah, we’ve done both at school,” said Harry.

“Good,” James said. “What you haven’t done on a vast scale is transfiguration of one animate object into another. It follows certain rules and principals. For example, you cannot convert a snail into a rat because a rat is a mammal and a snail isn’t. You can convert a rat into a rabbit, as both are rodents. As you can convert a Rohu into a Salmon, but not a Salmon into a whale, for you must be knowing that a whale is a mammal.  Salmon and Rohu are not. Following me so far?”

“Yes,” Harry said confidently. He had been hanging on each and every word his father had been speaking.

“Human transformations are even more difficult,” James said. “You cannot just transform any person into any animal. A human can be transformed into their animagus form only — so, going under transfiguration by someone else’s wand is one of the methods used for discovering the animagus form, but it’s a bit unreliable. Few can do it accurately, and I’m not going to take chances on my son.”

As James stopped for breath, Harry, who had been trying to control himself, burst out into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” James asked, amused.

“Nothing . . . it’s just . . . Moody . . . Barty Crouch . . . had used . . . animal transfiguration on . . . Malfoy . . . and he had . . . turned into a . . . FERRET!” Harry spoke between fits of laughter.

James started laughing with him. After five minutes, as their laughter subsided, Harry spoke again, “I can’t believe it! Malfoy’s animagus would be a — a — ferret!” and the two started laughing again.

“What are you two laughing at,” Sirius Black spoke, as he reentered the room. Harry explained the reason and Sirius doubled over, laughing harder than ever.

“Lucius Malfoy’s . . . son . . . a . . . a . . . FERRET?” he gasped.

“Atleast . . . Malfoy’s cute in . . . animal form,” Harry managed to say with difficulty.

“Okay, enough of it, back to the task,” James managed to say with a straight face, before the trio went roaring with laughter once more.

After a quarter of an hour of messing around, Harry stood up, “Okay, that’s enough, dad, Padfoot, let’s get back.”

Almost reluctantly, the two Marauders stood up.

“So, son, I told you about human transfigurations. Now, this potion does the same work in an easier manner,” said James, pointing once more to the vial. “Instead of converting you, it gives you visions of your inner animal or animals.”

“You mean to say more than one animagus forms are possible?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” said Sirius. “Dumbledore is said to have two animagi, one of them being a Phoenix. Though, we haven’t ever seen him transform, so it could be a rumor. Maybe, people consider Fawkes to be his animagus, which isn’t possible, because I’ve seen them in same room together hundreds of times.”

“Yep,” James spoke. “Dumbledore isn’t even listed in the seven known animagi of the century. But, though punishable, there must be a lot of unregistered animagi amongst us.”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Rita Skeeter is one, her animagus being a beetle.”

“Let’s not dither from the topic again,” James said before Sirius could ask more about Rita Skeeter. “Merlin is known to have had three forms, including a Dragon. Usually, the animagus form is a common creature and not a magical one, but powerful wizards are known to have magical animagus forms, and a few very powerful ones even have two. Three is nearly unheard of. Voldemort is said to have just one —”

“A snake?” Harry asked.

“Yes, a Snake,” Sirius said.

“We suppose you might be having that one as an addition to your own form or forms,” Sirius said, “considering you can speak Parsletongue.”

“So, anyone who can speak Parsletongue is supposed to have a snake as their animagus?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” said James. “Mostly, even in their human form, an animagus can talk to their kind. Sirius here can speak to dogs,” he said. “And Pettigrew could talk to rats.”

“And you?” asked Harry.

“Haven’t tried yet,” James said. “Stags aren’t exactly easy to catch when you’re a human, are they?”

Harry shook his head.

“So, you want to try the potion today?” Sirius asked, looking eager.

“Of course!” Harry replied.

“So, what’re we waiting for? Here, take this,” James said, handing the vial to Harry.

As Harry gulped the potion down his throat, he found himself drifting into a sleep.

The darkness around him cleared, he found himself in a thick forest. ‘Forbidden Forest?’ he wondered. But the trees were younger and the ground wasn’t as thickly covered in vegetation. A loud roar startled him. He turned around, coming face to face with a majestic Lion, basking in the glory of his lordship over the jungle. He hadn’t seemed to have seen Harry. As Harry crept closer, he noticed a scar in the shape of a bolt of lightning, very much like his own, on the Lion’s head.

Darkness crept in once more. Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, Harry found himself in broad daylight near a beautiful lake. A dragon was flying overhead. As the dragon lowered itself to the shore of the lake, Harry