Harry Potter and the Rise of the Ordinary Person - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Animagus Training

Two years later, Charles’ biggest area of improvement had been in Transfiguration. After a large amount of careful deliberation, Charles had finally decided to challenge the highest state of Transfiguration–the art of Animagus.

In truth, before now, Charles had a deep understanding of the time when professor McGonagall had warned the students in her very first Transfiguration class, “Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts.” To be accurate, Charles could expand on this even more saying, “Aside from the small amounts of soul altering magic, Transfiguration is one of the most complex and dangerous branches of magic.” And the Animagus training Charles wanted to challenge was one of the most dangerous and complex sub-branches of Transfiguration.

Animagus Transfiguration, like Occlumency, was one of the types of magic that required no wands to cast inHarry Potter. Its ability was to allow a wizard or witch to transform into a specific animal. In general, this animal was a non-magical type, and wizards or witches was only able to become a single type of animal.

In the original works, Animagi were exceedingly sparse. McGonagall was shown to be a spotted cat with a decorative spot where the glasses would be. James Potter was a stag, Sirius Black was a black dog, Peter Pettigrew was a rat, and Rita Skeeter was a beetle.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Magic heavily regulated the Animagi. If one wanted to become an Animagus, they would have to register with the Ministry of Magic at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. In the 20th century, there had only been seven Animagi, one of them being McGonagall. As for the rest of the aforementioned people, none of them had bothered to register with the ministry.

Charles had spent a large amount of money to obtain several information on Animagus from Borgin and Burkes. After doing a detailed research on the subject, he didn’t dare to be too presumptuous with his experiments. Experimenting on an animal was fine, but if he wanted to involve himself in an experiment, he wouldn’t hesitate to run to Julie for help. After being coaxed and pestered with promises, Julie had finally agreed to help him and protect his secret.

When it came to Charles’ excellent-no, crime-like talent at Transfiguration, even Julie was curious about it. There was no one Charles’ age who was as skilled as he was in Transfiguration ever recorded in history. If Charles succeeded, then he would be the youngest Animagus ever in the history of magic. Plus, Julie knew that if becoming an Animagus was a path to walk on, Charles would most definitely be able to walk to the end of that path.

After studying extensively, Charles had discovered that the blood of the wizard as well as their nature influenced their animal form. For example, some of the Animagus that were in Slytherin had snakes as their animal form. But the type of snake was always different. There had been pythons, vipers, etc etc. But the bloodline of a wizard wasn’t the dominant factor of a wizard’s animal. Sirius Black’s animal form was a black dog which reflected his loyal nature. The Black family had never any records of having any connections with the canines either.

Maybe Sirius wasn’t their true child, or perhaps there was some sort of genetic mutation? Charles thought of several possibilities.

Charles was a muggleborn wizard, but even those had a precedent of becoming an Animagus. It was only because muggleborns had no one to consult so they had no idea what their animal form could be, thus, becoming an Animagus was very challenging to them.

But this wasn’t important. Immersing himself in practice was.
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Practicing for countless of months, this was something that could be said to be completely true. At the very least, Charles had a very deep understanding now. Without incident, another year had passed. And in that year, there had been a simple flow to Charles’ life. That was to study and research, analyze, write a summary, find Julie, fail in his experiments, study and research once more, analyze…it continued to loop through these acts. For the sake of having more time to research, Charles had managed to create an energy ring like the ones in DND. Its effect was that it allowed the wearing to compress a full night’s sleep into two hours. Of course, since he was in the stage of his life where he was growing, he didn’t dare overtax his body before a foundation could be established. He had only modified the magic on the ring so that for two hours every day, he would be able to get a large amount of deep sleep. In these two hours, even if Mount Tai were to have a landslide, he himself would not wake up, (Because sleep).

Under the usage of the energy ring, Charles was able to study magic for hours on end. Even the initially unwilling Julie had a change of heart when she saw how furious Charles was and had decided to help Charles become an Animagus.

Finally one day when Charles and Julie were practicing, Charles closed both eyes and felt his body twist and turn. Then, transforming in a plumage of feathers, he became a healthy looking crow.

The crow gave two chirps to Julie before spreading its wings and start to run on the ground. The wind blew through its wings before it used energy to lift itself off and feeling itself rise into the air. Bringing up its legs, the crow began to rise higher and higher before it flew around the room once before flying out the open door.

Julie looked at the child that had so fiercely studied magic. At the beginning, she had no idea just why the child was so infatuated with learning about magic, since to her who had been in contact with magic since birth, magic was just a way to earn money. But now, she had finally understood something!

As the crow practiced flying and flew out the room, Julie followed it outside where the crow had extended its jet black wings under the sun. Beating its wings, it flew higher into the sky and left a shadow!

At this moment, Julie felt an indescribable feeling in her heart!

Julie knew that this achievement had been by accident. If it weren’t for Charles’ excellent skill at Occlumency, then he would have stumbled across the problem every Animagus would experience: Charles’ large amount of control or many years of tempering himself to create a foundation of his skills had gave way to his excellent talent in Transfiguration. If Charles did not throw himself at his studies so meticulously, he would not be able to avoid all sorts of danger that came from his experimentations. Without these things, he would not have become an Animagus.

Charles had felt that flying through the air was almost superb. The wind flying through his feathers had given him a feeling he had never felt before. After a while, he saw Julie on the ground below and slowly brought his soul in order. Tilting downwards, he quickly descended to the ground, and with another twist of his body, he stood back on the ground in his human form.

“Flying for the first time isn’t bad huh! How was it?” Julie immediately asked when Charles landed on the ground.

“The feeling of flying is great!” Charles closed his eyes and let out a breath of air before breathing in. But what he didn’t realize was that when his eyes were closed, Julie’s face had gone red before returning to its regular color.

“Maybe you have a talent for flying? You can try out of the Quidditch team when you enter Hogwarts.”

“Forget it!” Charles had declined, “Don’t think I don’t know”. He spoke, “Quidditch practices takes a lot of time, that’ll get in the way of my research.”

“Hey!” Charles head was assaulted by Julie’s fist.

“Kids who spend all day in their rooms will end up gaining some sort of illness you know that!”

“Yes yes, I know.”

“Now that you’re an Animagus, you should cook up a congratulatory dinner for your sis!”

“Nope! This is illegal child labor!”

“Eh! What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we are eating hot pot today.”

“Find, you said it, no take backs!”

“Ah! Back at it again!”

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While the amused sounds of laughter could be heard, the two shadows of their figures could be seen being drawn out by the sunset.