Hermione sniffed deeply as she woke up... she recognised that smell, old leather, painted wood, and camphor, with a big helping of dog and wolf. The rocking motion told her the train was again in motion, and the warmth against her left side was scented with licorice and mint, meaning she was up against Harry. Opening her eyes revealed to her the compartment on the train. Across from her was Pakhet, playing with a piece of knotted string being dangled in front of her by a tall, somewhat gaunt man with long hair tied back, and a neatly trimmed goatee. If he'd been a little scruffier...
Harry stirred, a fact that disturbed her train of thought faster than a mouse in motion. As he straightened, the kitty couple looked over at the door, where Professor Lupin was putting the finishing touches to a few privacy charms. Since Pakhet apparently trusted them, the Bast'et were willing to at least hear what was going on before yelling for help. The gaunt man was extremely happy for some reason, but Hermione noticed the absence of Lupin's dog... "Yes, two plus two is four, he's an animagus... a dog animagus, but I don't think you get to choose what you turn into. Well, maybe Harry, but he does the impossible with distressing frequency."
As Lupin sat down, Hermione spoke up. "Professor, could you re-introduce your companion, please? We're holding judgement because Pakhet seems to like you both, but we have no idea what's going on."
"Yes," added Harry, "and I don't think we can hold back our curiosity any more."
The stranger chuckled. He had a decent voice, not too deep, but one that seemed somewhat raspy, as if he wasn't used to speaking. "Although my friend here hasn't lied to you, the truth is a bit larger than what he chose to share," he said. "My name, or rather one of them, is indeed Padfoot. The other, well, let's just say you can't tell what you don't know. I'm a little embarrassed by how I acted before."
Harry laughed. "How you acted, or how you were schooled?" he asked.
Remus joined in with the catboy's laughter. "He has you there, Padfoot. Look, Harry, I was a friend of your parents, and I'm sorry I didn't speak to you in Gringott's when I was a witness for your parents' wills. I... have a condition, you see, that the Ministry has been using to control my whereabouts. I can avoid them in muggle society, but I wasn't able to enter the wizarding world to visit you..." At this point, the felines' eyes, amber and emerald both, narrowed in anger, and Harry started hissing some of the most vile curses Hermione had ever heard... luckily, in Parseltongue, so that the kneazle kitten didn't pick up any bad language. The two men in the compartment were shocked, taken aback as much by Harry's being a Parselmouth as by the vitriol and loathing he seemed to be putting into his five minute rant.
{... the Minister of Magic himself AND the horse he rode in on!} he finished. The sheer length of the diatribe impressed the Professor and his friend, whereas his mate was reluctantly impressed that he hadn't repeated himself once. Still, it was Hermione, so...
"Harry! Language!"
"Parseltongue, Mai," he responded. "It was that, Lingua Felinarum or English, and Pakhet understands two of those.
Three, came the smug response from the kitten. I'm Mama Mai's familiar, Papa. What she can speak, I can understand, even if I can't speak it.
"Anyway," said Padfoot, "back to a more important section of the discussion, I'd like to make up for my brash rudeness earlier in some way, if you can think of something within my power to grant. Hopefully not something onerous like walk the Hogwarts Express tracks on my hands, though."
Harry turned to his mate with a wicked gleam in his eye. "Do you think?" he asked.
"Of course I do," she replied. As one, they turned to face Padfoot, who suddenly got a bad feeling about all this.
As one, they asked: "Could you teach us to become animagi?"
As the kitty couple and their friends met up once again, to board the carriages for the ride up to the school, Padfoot, once more in his canine form, watched them go with a sense of... what to call it? Trepidation was too timid, exhilaration too energetic, foreboding too pessimistic. It was a strange feeling, akin to the feeling he'd get, oh, so long ago, when Prongs would get that look on his face that told his friends that the Marauders rode again. The boy he'd seen had inspired that feeling again, and he had definitely outgrown the 'Prongslet' nickname the Marauders had used for him as a baby. And the way they'd taken out that incarnation of terror... It sent shivers up his spine that anyone could do that, and to add in the fact that they didn't even realise what they'd managed was mind boggling. Then there was that roar...
Remus followed his friend's gaze towards the carriages as the two of them moved quickly up the teachers' stairs that allowed them to walk from the station to the castle well before the carriages could arrive, let alone the boats. Harry and Hermione were an amazing pair, and best friends on top of it. Having heard the full story of their transformation and the life-style changes that resulted from it, he and Sirius had both been shocked speechless. He'd never had a chance to bring up the Marauders, or anything else. Learning that Harry had been brought up by the Dursleys had stoked a certain degree of anger, but hearing that Harry need have nothing more to do with them was an incredible relief.
"Padfoot, my friend," he said to the Grim at his side, "I think we're in for some very interesting times."
The Sorting Ceremony had gone very well, with all the firsties going to their new Houses, although a few had to stay under the hat for a few minutes before it called out their destination. There were quite a few students with pet cats in the Great Hall, including a first-year who from all appearances had wound up with the large orange half-kneazle from Eeylop's. From what Hermione could remember, her name was Astoria Greengrass, and as she was sorted into Slytherin, she probably needed the help that her new friend Crookshanks would give her.
As the feast began, the presence of the dementors was announced, much to the dismay of the entire student body, and the auror by the entrance who was in charge of the nigh-unkillable terrors seemed very nervous. He'd made a 'head count' of his charges after the train had arrived, and came up one dementor short. The thought of a rogue dementor was upsetting, to say the least, so he'd quietly asked the Defense teacher to cover Patronus Charms in his curriculum this year, at least for everyone he felt could learn them. He hadn't actually said he suspected a rogue dementor, though. But what really made him nervous, what really scared the crap out of him, was the behaviour of the rest of the creatures.
They were scared.
After the feast, Harry, Hermione, and their Gryffindor friends were sitting in the common room, where the felines delivered some of the news about their new DADA professor. After explaining what had happened on the train, they were scoffed at for a moment by Fred and George, but the others believed them without hesitation.
"But it's impossible," the twins chorused. A passing seventh-year snorted at that.
"That just means no-one's done it... yet," Jacan Vaughn corrected them, "according to my big brother, anyway." As he walked off, meeting with another young man who had to be his twin, the Weasley twins sputtered.
"He's right," declared Ginny, glaring at Fred and George. "It was impossible that I'd become a heliopath instead of dying, it was impossible that two second years could kill a millennial basilisk and it was impossible that Riddle could avoid dying in the first place."
Neville chuckled. "Not that Harry's ever seemed to care about what's impossible," he said. Spending the summer corresponding with Susan Bones, and occasionally visiting her, or being visited by her, had built up the lad's confidence, at least among friends.
After an hour or so exchanging Summertime stories, with Harry suggesting that Ginny register herself as a heliopath with the ministry, as the only other wand-bearing Light creature, before the politicians came after her as his friend, along the way, the group broke apart as they each sought out their beds.
Draco Malfoy was not in a good mood when Potter and his friends walked into the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning. The humiliations of his father, and himself, had to be repaid in full upon the person responsible. For some reason, he was convinced that was Harry, with a side order for his friends, and nothing anyone said would convince him otherwise.
As the felines and their Gryffindor friends took their seats at that table, where they were quickly joined by Susan, Hannah and Luna, the 'Prince' of Slytherin marched over to them, flanked by his bodyguards Crabbe and Goyle, with Pansy Parkinson tagging along. That quickly, the group was the centre of attention for the entire hall.
"Hey, Potter," the Malfoy heir called out. "I heard you passed out when the dementors came onto the train! Are you that much of a coward..." His voice trailed off as Harry pulled something from a pocket of his robes and threw it at the boy's feet. A withered grey lump the size of Draco's fist, rattling across the floor, until the Malfoy stooped and picked it up. "What is this thing? Some kind of challenge? All because you fainted?"
Snape stared at the grey lump in Draco's hand. There were exactly three people at the staff table who he knew of that could identify that... thing. Lupin was grinning with pride, Dumbledore was looking puzzled, and he himself was terrified. "How did Potter get that?"
"What you hold in your hand, Draco," Harry said, "is the heart of a dementor. You can only get them by killing a dementor. They are good for only one thing, instilling fear, and when they are removed from the dementor, their potency fades rapidly. In one hour, they are just a paperweight. Yes, I passed out. After the danger was gone. Can you say as much?"
As the blond boy reached for his wand, Hermione snatched back her mate's trophy, and Draco Malfoy lashed out with the first spell that came to his mind: "Stupefy!"
The dart of crimson magic sped across the small distance between Draco and Harry, who didn't have time to draw his wand, instead throwing himself forward, low to the ground, brushing his fingers against the flagstones in a manner that brought to mind a pouncing panther as he launched upwards, taking Draco by the throat and twisting the wrist of the pureblood scion's wand arm. As the teachers all stood, as Draco's wand hit the floor, Harry lashed his claws up along the blond's right cheek, leaving three parallel lines that welled up blood instantly, and scabbed over almost as quickly.
"Those will scar, Malfoy," Harry announced. "They are your first warning. I hope you don't need another." Turning, he returned to his tuna omelette and milk. Draco snatched up his wand and was about to bring it to bear again on his nemesis when the most unexpected thing happened.
"Mr Malfoy!" bellowed Severus Snape. "Thirty points from Slytherin, and a week's detention with Mr Filch!" Shock and silence, stillness beyond any in Hogwarts history, filled the Great Hall. Two Ravenclaws fainted.
Luna and Ron held out their hands to the Weasley twins, speaking in unison. "Pay up!"