How They Fell

Chapter Nineteen


Draco woke up with sunlight piercing his eyes. He felt decidedly odd. He groaned quietly to himself as last night came back to him.

He opened his eyes suddenly and then jerked back in alarm.

Three things shunted for space in his mind. Firstly he had tried to kill himself. Secondly, that had not been a groan. And thirdly the world looked really, really strange.

Draco decided to deal with the third first.

The colour was wrong. Draco blinked.

‘Ok, well that felt weird!’ He thought. He had definitely managed to blink, but it felt as though he was using a different set of muscles to do it, and his bedroom was still weird colours. He also noticed that he could see every detail. He moved his head to look around and jumped up.

‘Whoa!’ He thought. Moving his head had never felt like that before. In fact even jumping to his feet felt weird – but he wasn’t on his feet, he was on his knees, but they felt like his feet, where were his feet?

Draco tentatively lifted his left leg. It worked, but it too felt very strange.

Looking up he glanced in the mirror, did a double take and leapt onto his bed.

There was a panther in his room!!!

From his bed Draco looked around, his heart thumping his panic. The panther had gone. He, on the other hand, was half way across the room! There was no way that he could have jumped from in front of his mirror to here!

What the hell was going on?

Slowly he looked down at his legs. He jumped again, and was amazed to see the panther legs jump with him.

Sitting down again he carefully lifted his front paw. The smooth, sleek, black paw rose and stopped in front of his face. It was a big paw. He turned his arm to look at the other side, but he couldn’t, he could only move it so that the underside of his paw was at a right angle from the floor. From that position he could just see a smooth, leathery pad.

He tried to flex his fingers. He couldn’t. But when he tried to make a fist he found that sharp claws appeared from in between them.

He tried to do this with his other hand, but as soon as he raised it he felt himself fall forwards. He put both hands down to stop himself and then paused, puzzled. He carefully raised his left hand again and tried to bring up his right. Again he overbalanced. Then comprehension filled him. He lowered his left hand and then brought up his right this time without falling over.

Another black paw appeared in front of his face. It was much the same as the other one, and it too brought out sharp claws when he clenched his fist.

This was really, really weird! Was he hallucinating? Dreaming?

He brought up his hand to pinch himself, but it didn’t work. Instead he could feel a paw against his…fur???

He was furry?

Draco jumped down off the bed and stood in front of the mirror. Again all of his movements felt strange.

The panther was sitting before the mirror again. Draco paused, thinking, and then raised his right hand. The panther in the mirror did the same thing.

Shit! The panther really was him!

How the hell did he become a panther?

Draco lay down to think about this, his paws pointing out in front of him.

‘It was probably the potion,’ his mind reasoned.

‘But the potion was deadly,’ he argued back, ‘why am I not dead?’

‘It might only have been deadly for Potter, or he might have done the spell wrong. Yes that seemed likely, Potter had done the spell wrong so he had died, but he had done it correctly so he was a-a panther?’

‘Why did Potter want to become a panther anyway. I mean it was cool and all, but a bit of an inconvenience.’

‘Shit! How do I turn back? Can I turn back?’

Draco had jumped to his feet again and was looking around desperately.

‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic! Just think, what do you know about animal transformation. Ok, non-permanent, that’s good. Hard to cast on your self. Only possible through a spell – Wait a minuet! But he had taken a potion. Animal transformations didn’t work with potions – unless.

Draco’s eyes grew wide as he looked at himself in the mirror.

Potter’s potion had made him an Animagus?

‘No way, Potter wouldn’t be able to brew a correct Animagus potion, they were meant to be nearly impossible, no he wouldn’t know how to…Granger would though.’

‘Shit, I’m an Animagus!?!’

‘Wait a minute; don’t get your hopes up! To be an Animagus you have to be able to transform at will. Right then, here I go. I want to be Draco. I want to be Draco. I want to be Draco. I want to be Draco.’

Nothing happened.

‘Hmmm…maybe I’m not doing it right.’ Thinking about likely way’s to change back; Draco decided to try focusing on how being human felt like. He closed his eyes and focused hard on it.

“Damn it didn’t work!” Then he opened his eyes. “Whoa!!!” He sat looking around his bedroom; it was back to its normal colours. He was human again!

Now if he could only turn back into a panther.

He thought very hard about being a panther…then opened his eyes.

‘YES I’M AN ANIMAGUS!!!’ He roared his happiness and tried to jump up and down, a move which didn’t translate well in his panther body. Instead he found himself lolloping in an ungainly manner on the spot. But he was too happy to care.

This was just way too cool. He had followed Potter into a girls bathroom, been given a spell, stolen a bit of potion, said the spell, drank the potion and he was an Animagus!!!

He laughed with happiness; it came out as a strange purr sound. Most wizards worked for months to become Animagi, he had just been in the right place at the right time.

And what an awesomely cool form he had. A panther – wow!

He wondered what else his new form could do. He wanted to go outside right now and try it out. However, he realised that it wasn’t the best idea. How would the other students react to seeing a panther roaming the corridors, he had freaked out enough and the panther had been him!

* * *

That day was one of the most frustrating days of his life. He tried to sleep, he tried to work, but all he ended up doing was counting down the hours until night when he could go out safely.

Then finally it was dinner, Draco sat jogging his knees up and down with impatience throughout the entire meal. For the first time since the start of term he failed to notice his exclusion from the rest of his house. Then dinner was over and he was free.

He surreptitiously made his way out of the entrance hall and though the doors, unable to restrain his grin of delight.

He moved to the edge of the lake, out of sight of the castle in the darkness; and changed.

It was easier this time, although still a bit of a struggle. Draco guessed that as he became more familiar with his new form the time it took for the transformation and the difficulty would decrease until he would able to slide in and out of his form.

Lifting his head he looked around at the night covered Hogwarts grounds. He quickly realised that a panther’s sight was infinitely superior to a humans.

He could see everything! Even distant objects were clear and distinct! He watched a bat flap overhead, his quick, eager eyes easily following its course through the sky.

However, as good as his sense of sight was, it was his sense of smell that really impressed Draco. Even faint smells were strong and unmistakable. He was even able to pick out individual smells amidst the complex mixture that the night presented. He could smell the water from the lake, fresh and slightly fishy, faint traces of individual students as well as the odd fox and rabbit in the grass and a confused medley of scents from the direction of Hagrid’s hut.

This was all simply too incredible! He was an animagus! A panther!

If Harry Potter had been present Draco would have hugged him for his stupidity in leading Draco straight to the potion.

Tentatively at first, and then with growing confidence Draco began to run forwards.

The movement defiantly felt strange, but amazing as well. He began to move faster, his muscles extending and contracting, his shoulders and haunches moving with ease. Draco revelled in the power and grace of his feline muscles, his padded feet pounding against the grass.

He could run for miles he realised. He was practically at the other side of the castle already; he could see the Quidditch pitch looming up in front of him.

After a while longer he began to slow, the tiredness he had felt all day making his muscles more tired than they should be. It was late anyway and he had school tomorrow. He turned and trotted back to the main doors.

The only part of his new anatomy that he wasn’t entirely certain about was his tail. As there was no human equivalent it felt even stranger than the rest of him, it also meant that he felt very unsure what to do with it. He was ok when he was running in a straight line, then he simply held it out behind him, but anything else seemed to result in his balance going funny. He seemed to cope when he did something on impulse, like leaping on to his bed earlier, but if he thought about anything he did he became confused and ended up falling over.

Draco realised that he was going to have to do some research on panthers. He should find out what they ate, how they hunted, how they lived and what their character was like. Hopefully somewhere along the way he would find out what to do with his tail

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Authors note: well I’m back! With the promised update as well. Hope you enjoy this one and thank you to all those people who have reviewed.