Thank you to my new Patrons: Bk, Nik Mahi, Striker Rocker, AlumpinyourPump, Kunta
-/-
Harry idly walked around the pale red-haired body of his transfigured twin. He occasionally twitched his wand to add or detract details, moulding the flesh in front of him into a famiscile of life.
"You're a beautiful little fucker aren't you?" Harry muttered as he worked, sweat dripping from his brow.
Almost six feet tall at 14 with wavy red hair going down to the shoulders. A relatively athletic body, but with a healthy layer of fat, so the abs didn't quite show. Sword-fighting and duelling had been good to him.
He slapped the pale face of what was essentially a soulless husk and received the tactile feedback of slapping a bag of jelly. The face remained distorted, necessitating another wave of the wand to return it to its desired shape.
"Cake-ass motherfucker," Harry cursed. He'd been at it for several hours now, and with the sense of exhaustion that was starting to creep up on him, he had to stop despite how much he wanted to continue.
He sat down on the bed that Dobby had acquired for his secluded cave, treating it more as a couch than a place to sleep.
A few more notes joined the others in a notebook that had been empty just a week ago. Now it was already almost full. Anatomical sketches of humans, their skeletal structure, limbic system, blood circulation system, brain nodes, and everything down to the structure of the cells.
"Fuck I'm tired," Harry muttered and glimpsed to the side to see if Dobby, who was watching curiously from the side, was disturbed by the sight of his dead master.
As if on cue, the flesh-puppet Harry had been upkeeping slowly started melting. The skin sloughed off first, revealing the messy muscular structure underneath. Blood spilled on the floor before vanishing, and eventually, the structure was reduced to just a skeleton covered in a gooey red mass. Another minute passed, and the remains of a slaughtered pig started stinking up the cave.
A wave of the wand vanished the gruesome scene, another cleaned the stone slab that Harry had been experimenting on and freshened up the air.
"Remarkably life-like, master," Dobby commented. "Shall we be needing any more animal remains?"
Harry shook his head. "No, no. We're done for today."
He glanced down at his notebook, then at his bookshelf. Medical journals and books on the human body had joined his magical tomes. It made for an interesting sight: Human Anatomy Volume 3 sitting right next to Speculations on the Nature of Time Magic.
Just because he'd decided to learn the animagus transfiguration and the ritual was quite straightforward, if complicated, didn't mean that the preparatory phase wasn't difficult.
The thing about becoming an animagus was that the ritual transformed you into the animal hidden within. However, one's ability in human and animal transfiguration determined the success ratio of doing so without screwing up, while a strong sense of self helped prevent a descent into the animalistic.
Magic was like this. It took the knowledge of the user into account. It was easier to create something that one had intimate knowledge of. Harry had done the same for his wasps back when he'd decided on wanting to use them as a weapon. The more he understood wasp anatomy, the less concentration the creation took, and the longer it could be sustained.
Now he was doing the same thing with a human body, more specifically, his own body. Or at least, he was trying to. Human transfiguration, as it turned out, was difficult.
There was something in the magic that rebelled against the creation of human flesh, as if influenced by a greater consciousness with its own taboos and desires.
It resisted.
Harry was beginning to understand why human transfiguration started so late at Hogwarts. Creating an entire body wasn't even covered by what he understood. At most, seventh years would be asked to turn one of their arms into the wing of an eagle and back, but never an eagle's wing into a human hand.
In that sense, human transfiguration was probably the wrong term, since it only consisted of turning humans into animals and then dispelling the change, which wasn't quite transfiguration. Harry, however, was having to deal with real human transfiguration because when one turned into an animal, one really became one, if one ignored the mind, of course.
The literature that McGonaggal had suggested did not speak of this preparatory step, but Harry was paranoid about potentially being stuck as an animal, and he'd read between the lines. Transfiguration of a human body was not dark magic in the sense that it required negative emotions to fuel it. It was just considered deeply improper and unethical.
He didn't have a choice. He didn't know which animal he would turn into, so he could only train the reversion. The animagus transfiguration worked differently than human transfiguration, which was the issue. One became an animal; reverting back meant becoming a human. It wasn't simply dispelling a temporary change. If an animagus failed to turn back, they would be stuck in that form until the end of their life; it wouldn't simply run out of juice.
McGonagall had been right. He'd breezed through the transfiguration material for fourth and fifth years. He could sit the test right now and get an O. Human transfiguration was already N.E.W.T level. He should have scheduled the exams to be sooner, but he'd been suspicious about how ahead he really was. Training the wasp conjuration had seemingly put him further ahead than he'd thought.
Dobby suddenly coughed politely. "The time is nearing 4 pm," the servant observed, causing his master to nod.
Harry threw a look at his two vanishing cabinets. He'd started analysing them again and was making good progress. He was fairly sure he could even repair the broken one soon if he put in a few days of effort.
But, well, Dumbledore had given him a task, so he had a different priority now. His eyes looked to the floor in front of the cabinets, where a variety of empty textbooks were scattered chaotically on top of each other.
His first task in creating the never-ending copy book that he'd thought of was making a notebook with an infinite amount of pages.
This was a relatively common enchantment; such notebooks could be bought in Diagon Alley. The instructions on how to make them were widespread, if complicated.
Harry was making steady progress, increasing the page count of the books page by page as his proficiency in the relevant spells increased.
The issue would come later, as the notebook would have to be enchanted with the ability to copy other books in their entirety. For that, Harry would have to first modify the copy spell given to him by Slughorn all those years ago before transforming it into an enchantment. The calculations would likely fry his brain. Perhaps it was good that he was continuing arithmancy.
His next year was looking like a mix of transfiguration and enchantment, with a heavy part of magical theory.
"Let's go," he eventually said to Dobby and stood up.
The servant nodded and popped over, and then they were gone.
-/-
Harry reappeared on a small grassy hill overlooking a small village on the outskirts of London.
A magical commune, hidden and forgotten, still living out the medieval era right next to one of the biggest metropolises in the world.
He walked and idly looked at the houses clustered around a large tree in the middle. Houses made of stone, houses dug into a hill, reminiscent of the way hobbits lived. A full-blown wizard's tower jutting high into the air with seemingly less structural integrity than the leaning tower of Pisa.
Penny's house was on the outskirts, which made sense when one considered their relatively large garden full of potion ingredients.
He'd been keyed into the wards a few years ago when he'd had a sleepover at Penny's place, so he directly hopped over the fence to walk through the herbology exhibit and towards a small stone shed puffing noxious fumes into the air above.
Something suddenly tugged at his jogging pants, causing him to lock down to see a small garden gnome trying to gnaw at his Nikes while clutching his pants.
"Bloody thing," Harry muttered and shook his leg to get the thing off.
It didn't budge, continuing to gnaw.
"Oy!" Harry exclaimed. "I know it's just a little reparo away from mint condition, but these are new!" He kicked his leg up, causing the gnome to finally detach and fly into the airspace right in front of Harry's waist.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Harry took a step back and a step forward while extending his leg. His foot slammed into the small gnome's torso with what he thought was the force of a truck, but was more likely the force of a children's tricycle.
Nevertheless, Harry's enemy was small, defenceless and weak… Wait, that came out wrong.
The gnome flew out as if kicked by a rocket. It drew a graceful parabola in the air, shrieking all the while.
Harry had already started demonstratively clapping his hands free of dust before he paled as he saw where the gnome would land. He flexed his telekinesis, but he was too late. The gnome fell directly into the chimney of the potions shed.
Not a moment later, the shed shook, its stones rattling. Its thatched roof vibrated, and the smudged glass windows were blown out in a billow of black smoke.
An unrecognisable but still human figure stumbled out of the door in the front, covered in soot and guts.
The figure belched out smoke in its best rendition of a slightly disabled dragon before perking up when it saw that a guest had arrived. "Harry!" the girl shouted, waving her arms.
"Are you alright, Penny?" Harry asked as he approached the girl, already pulling out his wand.
His friend waved him off. "Of course, of course, it happens sometimes. I don't know where the guts came from, however," she said, gingerly taking some of the tripe stuck in her hair and waving it in the air before dropping it to the ground.
Harry remained silent for a few moments. "It was very weird…" he eventually muttered. "There was a bird and then it dived and…" he continued explaining as he grew more and more red in the face.
"Ha!" Penny exclaimed. "Those bloody hawks keep picking up garden gnomes and dropping them once they start fighting back. You won't imagine how annoying it is to be eating outside and then suddenly a naked gnome drops into your salad." She looked contemplatively at the potions shack. "I think I'll have to isolate the chimney," she eventually determined.
Harry nodded his head energetically. "Sure, maybe I can help?" he asked.
Penny approached him with arms extended for a hug. "Sure! You're a lifesaver, Harry. We can do it today."
Harry stepped back as the girl approached. "Let me clean you first," he eventually said and pulled out his wand to cast Scourgify. A second later, the girl was standing in front of him in simple, washed-out jeans and a black shirt, buttons and all. She blinked her big blue eyes.
"Thanks!" she exclaimed before once again coming over to hug him.
This time, he let her.
After extracting himself from the greeting, he looked dubiously at the wrecked shack. "Can I cast a reparo on it?" he asked.
Penny waved him off as they walked towards it to look critically at the shaky structure. "Sure, Slughorn exaggerates about how magic shouldn't be used to clean cauldrons. That's only the case for a few specific potions. Although it's quite big, are you sure?"
Harry was already raising his wand. After a flourish at the end, the stones that had been blown off promptly floated back in their proper place, and the shack righted itself like a lorry that had just woken up for work.
"Alright," Penny eventually said after Harry also scourgified the entire structure. "I guess you can do that; we all have our talents."
"Thanks," Harry said as they entered the shack.
It wasn't more spacious inside like most wizarding structures; it contained only a large cauldron in the middle with a fire underneath. A few other cauldrons were stacked on the side. Pewter, iron, silver. No gold. A bit too expensive, maybe?
"I bring in the ingredients individually; if something goes wrong, I don't want to lose the stuff I need for future projects," Penny explained.
"You didn't have this shack last time I was here," Harry commented.
"Grandma helped me build it when I said I was trying for my O.W.L.", Penny said excitedly. "She even let me start working independently. I've only exploded twice!"
Harry gave the girl a complicated look. "Penny, school finished a week ago," he reminded her.
"Exactly!" the girl nodded her head excitedly. "Only two accidents in a week is great."
Harry shrugged. "You'd know better than me."
He suddenly thought back to how the Malfoys would be leaving England behind to live in France for the next few years, or until the Voldemort issue was resolved definitively.
"Say, Penny," he suddenly started a bit awkwardly. "You know how, well, You-Know-Who isn't as dead as he should be, the dumb cunt. But what do your parents think about that? They lived through the last war, no?"
Penny nodded idly. "Yes, my dad went to school when he first rose to power. Scary! He said."
Harry stood there, dumbstruck. "Is that, uh, a normal reaction?" he asked.
The girl looked thoughtful. "Well, he did say it wouldn't be a normal Hogwarts year if there wasn't at least one monster on the loose. He told me about Durmstrang, insane that they can't get through a year without at least four. Hogwarts sure is safe!"
"So, your parents aren't leaving the country. I mean, the dark lord is…"
Penny looked at him with a weird look. "Why would we leave? Britain is our home," she said.
Harry gave her a blank look. "I see." He gave up. "Why don't you tell me what I'll be helping you with today?" he said, switching the topic.
His friend immediately brightened up, if that was even possible considering her glowing blonde hair and already incredibly cheery countenance. "Let's do it! First, I need your help drawing up a schedule for the next six weeks. Then you'll quiz me on theory. After that, we'll make a potion together; I'm thinking Draught of Peace." She looked at him in approval.
"It's the least I can do," Harry said with a smile. "In the words of Penny, let's do it!"
-/-
After coming back home from Penny's, Harry found an interesting letter waiting for him. A frown tugged at his mouth as he read it. He'd have to consider the issue more seriously over the next few weeks.
-/-
AN: If you want to support me and read ahead like 30 chapters consider joining my patreon! You'll never be able to afford a house anyway so what's a little treat?