It'd been so quiet for weeks. All there was to do was practice quidditch, do school work, and plan pranks with Fred and George. I slumped on the couch in Gryffindor common room, not able to even work up enough interest in setting fire to myself.
"Ron, do you think the adults are handling it?" I asked.
Ron, who was laying on his back on the floor, paused his efforts to do sleight of hoof. It wasn't really hard to see that what he was attempting was impossible, but that just made it an even more wizard thing to do. "Handling what?"
"The Ministry. They've gotten real quiet in the last week or two. No attacks and hardly any of them skulking around the streets." Not that I got to see outside much, what with all the school work. It was almost like everything had calmed down after we came to another world where Voldemort wasn't.
"Yeah." He flicked his hoof and a small stick he was using as a prop for his wand flew up into the air and, when it came back down, almost hit him in the face. "A little less flick. What were—Oh, right. I heard that the guardponies were cracking down on them. It was that witch using unforgivable curses that really stirred things up."
"Was that the one who tried to get your brother?"
Ron nodded, then said, "Yeah. It was lucky he had Blaze with him. Mum told her she could have dinner with us whenever she wanted. Of course, now I don't get to visit Mum and Dad as often, but I guess you get that when you find out your whole family is being watched."
"What, you are?" I sat up and looked at him. Maybe we should have gone and investigated what was going on in the Ministry ourselves?
"Yeah. McGonagall called me to her office to tell me. There must be a mole at the Ministry feeding them information or something. Dad hasn't gone there for ages."
"So what's he doing, then?"
"Well, his experience with magical artifacts was really helpful to getting the Floo network back up. He said not to tell anyone"—Ron turned his head to the side to look at me with an upside-down grin—"this, but they have a link between here and Canterlot and that Percy and one of the princesses was going to where Charlie's been living to set up another there."
"Didn't you say he was living with dragons?"
"Don't get me started on that. Even back on Earth he spent all his time around dragons. Now we hear that he's made friends with dragons on this world, too. Friends, Harry! Apparently dragons here can talk and everything."
"Ron?"
"Yeah, Harry?"
"I've met one. Twilight's… I think he's an adopted brother, but she never said. Anyway, Spike's actually really nice. He cooks great food, too." Even now I could remember the great food I'd help him with. It was fun to learn entirely new ways to cook and prepare food.
"Really? Don't his—I mean, dragons don't have arms, so how does he—?"
"He has arms. He walks around upright, too. No wings though, but his breath does all kinds of wild stuff."
"Harry, you think all kinds of fire are good."
"Yeah, but my fire can't send messages to the leader of Equestria." I pointed a hoof at the fireplace and picked up one of the logs that hadn't caught fire yet—it immediately flashed into life. "Like I said, he's pretty cool."
Ron was staring at the fireplace and the log I'd lit on fire like it was the first time he'd seen magic. "Hermione's with Draco again."
Oh, goody, this one again. "Ron—"
"No. No, I get it. I shouldn't care, but I can't help it, Harry." He flicked his prop wand out again and actually stopped it from flying into the air this time. "How was I to know she'd start—start after Draco?"
Do I even tell him the obvious? He was a good friend, but it was like he was some kind of record that was stuck on this one thing. "Did you—?"
"I didn't. Why didn't I even ask her? Fred and George always made jokes about how I should ask her out. Well, I never did. I didn't even tell her I like her." Ron dropped his fake wand and let out a sigh. "I'm an idiot."
Finally, something we can both agree on. "Ron, listen to everything I'm about to tell you and don't interrupt, okay?"
"Huh?"
"Every time I've tried to tell you something you can do, you have cut me off."
"Oh. Sorry, Harry."
I waited a moment just to see if he would say something that would have interrupted me. When he didn't, I tried to give him the one bit of advice I had. "Ron, tell her how you feel."
"What?!" The shout was remarkable in that it didn't immediately summon about twenty Gryffindors complaining about the noise.
"Just tell her. You like her, right?"
He went quiet for a bit and didn't look at me. Figuring he was actually thinking about it, I relaxed and tried to focus my attention on other things. The whole class of students in Animagus Studies were almost done with their leaves—except Fred, who kept losing his leaf somehow—and would soon be performing the rituals to find their inner animals.
It sucked that I couldn't join them, but not bursting into fire for a month is just a task beyond me now. Maybe I'm just too much of a wizard to—
"Alright. Yeah, I'll do that." Ron rolled over and onto his hooves, then jumped into a standing position.
I watched him march down the hall toward the exit and out of sight. "I didn't expect him to just go right now. I wonder what he's going to tell her?"
Ginny appeared beside the couch out of thin air. That's when I realized her diary was still sitting on the bookshelf. "Whatever it is, it can't be worse than his moping has been."
"Ginny!" I hadn't jumped far, but enough that she'd know she surprised me. "You heard all that?"
"I don't sleep anymore, Harry. I hear whenever anyone says something near my book." She slumped down on the couch beside me. "I didn't realize how much he liked Hermione."
Laughing, I shook my head. "I don't think Ron knew how much he liked Hermione."
"Do you like anyone like that, Harry?" she asked.
Did I? I tried to think about all the girls I knew. Hermione was a great friend, but I don't think I like-liked her. Ginny was harder to say that I didn't; I hadn't gotten to know her as well as I did Hermione, so I guess I need to fix that and find out. Sweetie Belle was nice, but I don't think I like-like her either. Same with Diamond Tiara. "I don't know. There's only a few girls I've gotten to know well-enough to even get a feel for, and of them all you're probably the closest to like-liking."
My attention drifted back to the fireplace and I watched the salamander dance in the magic fire I seemed to create whenever I touched things. After a bit, when Ginny didn't reply, I turned to look at her to find her not actually there. "Ginny?"
She popped into existence again smiling in a way that had me thinking something was wrong. "Hi!"
"Is something the matter?" The problem, I realized, was I had to deal with a grade A witch. She was, from what I'd seen of her dueling, a step above any other single witch or wizard.
"No!" Ginny's drawing seemed to be a little wobbly around the edges. "There's nothing the matter!" She was smiling a lot, though. "Nothing at all!"
Something was the matter, but I had no hope of getting it out of her. "Do you mind if I try drawing again?"
"Yes! I mean, no! I'd love it if you would"—Ginny stopped and looked like someone trying to take a breath, not that she breathed anymore—"I'd like to see what you'd draw now."
Well, at least she'd stopped shouting. I walked over to the bookshelf and spotted her book immediately. Picking it up with my hoof, I put it on my back and walked over to the couch again. "I can hold a pen between the toes of my hoof, so I think that'd be the best way to draw—until I can find a non-flammable pen."
"Well, at least I'm non-flammable. Oh, hold on, I want to try something." Her shape flickered and shifted beside me, shrinking and changing in incomprehensible ways until she was a pony. No, wait, she had a forked horn tip like mine—she just turned herself into a kirin! "There. Better?"
She shook her head a little, the fuzzy outline of her mane ruffling in the air. Harry Potter, she's a witch, be careful. "Yeah. It's kinda weird having even the first year students be taller than me. I guess kirin grow bigger later."
I sat a moment, trying to figure out both what Ginny had just said and what I wanted to draw. In the end I used the Locomotion charm to pull a pen closer and fit it to my hoof, then started drawing the fireplace. After the stonework came the logs, the happy little salamander dancing on the wood, and finally the flame.
"Nice layering. Building up from the most solid to most ephemeral is good. Want another sheet?" she asked.
"Yeah, thanks." She turned her own page over to reveal a blank one for me to write on. This time I drew a kirin. Not a little kirin like me or like Ginny was at the moment—I drew Autumn Blaze. She was half kirin half nirik and was setting her stump on fire with her emotions.
"Is that a particular kirin? You met some, didn't you?"
I nodded. "This is Autumn Blaze. Of all the kirin, she was the only one who had some useful advice for me. The rest of them seemed to be living in denial of their emotions. At least, that's what Hooch called it. I don't think she realizes how much these emotions are part of being a kirin."
"I don't feel any strange emotions, but then I'm not actually a kirin." Ginny gestured with a hoof to me. "I'm just a picture of one."
"You're a very good picture of one," I said. "Being a kirin is probably one of the more wizard things that has happened to me."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when you think of someone being a wizard, what do you imagine that someone to be?"
She didn't reply immediately, seeming to be focused on what to say. "Wearing robes, being mysterious… using magic for everything. Oh, and using big, flashy spells."
"Exactly!" Excitement built. I couldn't help it. I had found someone else who understood wizarding! "And what's more flashy and uses-magic-for-everything than setting yourself on fire just because you're upset with something?"
Ginny giggled and nodded. "Yes! Wait, is there a version for witch too? Witches are meant to be calculating and mysterious. Manipulative. Am I a witchy witch?"
"I don't know as being manipulative is required. You definitely have your magic going for you. You always seem to know what everyone around you is doing. I'd say you're a good witch, Ginny."
"Thanks. I think." She giggled. "Okay, want another page?"
"Sure."
"What they're bringing is on the up-and-up. See, this here matches what we learned about the daily routine within the school." Boris tossed his notes down on his supervisor's desk. "From what I can tell, they're both keeping their heads down in the school and keeping their eyes open."
"Useful?"
"Low. Neither is in a position to have any bearing on the school, and none of the information is actionable." Boris didn't take the seat his boss had offered, sitting was for men who didn't need to be ready to run at a moment's notice. "It's just a couple of kids doing what they think they should."
"Keep them active. It's impossible to tell if an informant may become useful later. How is that other matter?"
"It's magical. Some kind of Imperius curse in it. Rich, what does that mean? Who'd put that on the boss?" The very idea that someone had coopted the leader of the Equestrian branch of the Ministry had Boris panicked, but with Richard Fellows as his boss, he felt a measure of stability.
"That I don't know, but I will be attempting to find out. Trencent, for all his foibles that I don't agree with, doesn't deserve that. I will be working to cut him out of the Ministry office here while finding out who has him in their grip. You're one of the old guard, Boris, do you think you could find out who he's meeting with?" Richard despised the need to divert his attention inward, but his old friend had left him with little choice.
An order was something Boris liked, even if his boss made it sound like a simple request. "Sure can try. You want me to talk to the others about this?"
"No. I think things are getting out of control here. Trencent had a good plan, but things are moving away from him—even before this latest problem. I'll call in reinforcements. You're a good man, Boris."
"I just try to do my best for all of us. Sir, if this goes south, what do you want to do?"
Breathing out a sigh that betrayed his eighty-plus years of life, Richard shook his head. "You might as well find Arthur Weasley and tell him everything, because he's the only one who could sort this mess out if it gets that bad."
Taking the leaf out of her mouth after a whole month of keeping it there felt odd. Hermione had gotten so used to carefully eating and drinking without disturbing it that not having the leaf under her tongue made her panic every time she noticed it.
She set the leaf into the tiny phial and stoppered it, then carried it to the window along with the other students.
"It took me three tries to get this part right. On Earth it wasn't so easy to ensure a clear and full moon to quicken the mandrake leaf. Here, it only took a missive to a princess and a favor owed to some pegasi to make the perfect night for the process." As he strode along behind the students, Sirius Black able to appreciate how progressive Hogwarts had turned under Minerva McGonagall's leadership. "Notice the moonlight glittering as it falls into the leaf? If it isn't, you'll have to start again."
Harry watched as his friends and others of his year gasped as their leaves quickened in the moon's light. Hermione stood with Draco on one side of her and Ron on the other. He still had no idea what had happened when Ron had stormed off to tell her how he felt, but things didn't seem so ready to break into violence.
"Now, for everyone whose leaf is quickened, bring your phials over to your workbench for the next steps." Sirius enjoyed taking advantage of his abilities now, swapping from pony to dog so he could bound to the front of the room and behind the desk before turning back to a pony. He waited for his students to return to their workbenches. "You all have several strands of your hair prepared and beside your mixing stands. You also each have a vial of morning dew, provided by Professor Snape, and a chrysalis of a death's-head hawk moth from a small but very precious supply Professor Sprout donated. Now, add a strand of your hair from the prepared sample to the phial."
Ron was nervous. This would require another month of careful eating, drinking, and sleeping to get another leaf. He suppressed the shudder that he would have to repeat the process, lest it become a self-fulfilling event. Using tweezers held carefully in his right forehoof, he lowered a strand of hair into the phial.
The moment each student's hair touched the leaf a buzz started in the back of their heads. Sympathetic magic, tightly bound to each witch and wizard, raised the level of energy in the room. The only ones who were immune to the raising excitement were Draco and Harry, both sitting at the back of the class and pretending not to notice each other.
The pretending worked great until Harry let out a groan and reached up to rub his horn. "There's a lot of magic in the air."
"My feathers are itching." Draco kept his eyes fixed on those he now considered his friends. Ron and Hermione were chief among them.
Neither looked at each other—each convincing themselves that they would have said the words out loud anyway and were not actually talking to the other.
The next step was adding liquid to the phials. Everyone poised a pipette containing a teaspoon of pristine morning dew over their potion and carefully added it. "This step is a litmus test. A friend had used a dirty piece of hair and the moment his dew touched it—" Sirius cut off when a purple cloud poured into the air above Dean Thomas' head. "Did anyone see what happened?"
Dean slumped to his counter, burying his face in his hands. "I only took it out once! I promise! I just needed to…"
"It looked really annoying to keep a leaf in your mouth the whole time." Draco had seriously thought about trying the process, just to see what he'd get, but it wouldn't stop him from feeling like he was in the wrong body—and besides, he liked being a pony.
Harry almost nodded his head, though managed to suppress the urge since that would mean he'd be as much as admitting he was talking to Draco. "I lasted less than a minute. Got angry, burned it up."
"I'm just content being a pony." Draco had to clamp his mouth shut before he went too far. He was just talking to himself, obviously, and not Harry.
Hermione, of course, finished first. She had the moth carapace in and the potion was acting correctly. Then she double-checked her results. Then she triple-checked her results. Finally, after just two more checks, she raised her hand—still the only one with a completed potion. "Professor Black, I'm done."
Approaching, Sirius reared up to set his hooves on the bench and examine the potion. Memories flooded back of his own efforts to become an animagus. His friends had been too, which had made things a lot easier to both hide and accomplish. A quickly muttered spell was all he needed to know the potion was correct. "In two hours some local pegasi will be providing us with a lightning storm. I don't pretend to know how their abilities allow that, but it is most fortuitous."
Over the course of half an hour, all the rest of the students had made viable potions. One by one Sirius examined them and felt his own excitement building. They still had an hour to go and everyone was on edge. "While we wait for the pegasi to whip us up a thunderstorm, perhaps you'd like to hear a story about how a young wizard and his friends became animagi?"
It was like shooting fish in a barrel. A story about animagi for students about to become animagi? Sirius could feel the focus and curiosity of every pair of eyes on him—even the two students who weren't here to become animagi.
"We were four friends, and one of us had a secret he couldn't tell anyone." It was a relief to be able to tell the story now. Of the four of them, one was dead, one had turned so evil he didn't care what happened to him, and his final brother was living openly as a werewolf. "You see, he turned into a beast every month at the full moon. We called him Moony, when we found out, on account of the moon.
"It wasn't fair to him to be the only one not having fun for three days every month, so we decided to all become a little like him so we could keep him company. A very nice witch gave us all the information we needed to reach the point you are all at now, and it was only a matter of time for the three of us to join our friend."
"Professor," George said, pointedly didn't touch the spot in his coat where the Marauders' Map was hidden in an inner pocket, "who are Padfoot, Wormtail, and Prongs?"
Sirius' gaze flicked toward Harry for just a moment. There was ever a tightness in his heart when remembering what happened to James Potter. "Astute. I am getting to that bit. It took us half a year to all get our potions made successfully." He rolled his eyes, getting laughs from the room as he intended. "We couldn't just ask for a full moon from a princess who could grant it, nor could we request a lightning storm immediately after—I am sure you will thank Princess Luna and the local weather pegasi once the changes are done.
"So we all drank our potions in the midst of a wild thunderstorm in the Scottish Highlands. The first time was scary. We were alone, just the three of us, and we had no idea how it was going to work." Closing his eyes, Sirius pulled the comfortable change around him and though his perspective didn't change, he was far more focused on the here and now.
Fred caught on first. "Padfoot…"
Jumping over his desk and bounding up to Fred's, Sirius flowed back to his pony self. "Clever. Ten points to Gryffindor." Turning and trotting back to the front, he continued. "On that night I became an animagus capable of turning into a large hound. It cemented my bond of friendship with Moony even further. Wormtail was the next to change. He guzzled down his potion greedily and became a fat rat. Fitting.
"The last was my brother, James Potter. When he drank his potion there was no panic in him, no moment of terror as his body reshaped. He became a king of the forest—a ten-point buck that towered over even a werewolf. Prongs."
"Prongs." Harry whispered the nickname. He'd never heard his father called that, but knowing he had this secret life with his friends was completely new and, he had to admit, somewhat exciting. But, at the same time, he felt his heart turn to lead and fought to keep his eyes dry.
Everyone—even Sirius—nearly jumped out of their skins when a deafening crack of thunder pealed across the sky outside. A tapping on the window of a pony was silhouetted by a flash of lightning. Gathering his wits, Sirius walked over and opened the window onto the small landing outside.
"One small thunderstorm, as ordered!" Rainbow Dash flashed a big smile. When the call had gone out that Princess Luna had requested a small and experienced team of weatherponies to handle a small group of thunderheads in the Crystal Empire, Rainbow had volunteered the Ponyville weatherponies for the job. "You should have a good hour of high-grade lightning."
Sirius was a little in awe of the mare. Not only was she doing something seemingly impossible by wizard magic and Earth science, but she talked about it as if this was just something normally done. "More than enough. Look." He gestured with a hoof at the room behind him and the students' potions all bubbling and turning red.
Everyone in the room had been so distracted by the lightning and the pegasus that they gasped when they looked at the potions before them. The noise level of the room rose several marks as they all started talking at once.
"Whoah. So you guys are doing some weird magic then?" Rainbow asked.
Sirius felt excitement in the air. The students were buzzing with new energy that seemed every bit as potent as the storm outside. "Something like that. Those potions will allow them to turn into an animal. As an assistant and guest of the school, you can watch if you'd like?"
"Ugh. I can't." Rainbow hung her head in defeat. "I have to keep an eye on this thunderstorm. Can't just buck it away now or it'll dump all its energy at once. Last time somepony did that—well, they're still trying to grow their mane back to normal."
A chuckle escaped Sirius at the thought. "Well, perhaps you should come back another time so I can thank you?"
Blinking at the invitation and brashness, Rainbow felt herself smiling. "Uh, I'll be busy tomorrow cleaning up the local weather from this. What about the day after?"
"That'd be great. Just ask for Sirius Black." When Rainbow nodded, turned, and ran off the balcony, Sirius realized what he'd just done. For several heartbeats he watched the lightning flaring in the sky and let the thunder rumble around him as he marveled at the fact he'd just asked a pony out on a date—and she'd said yes.
Relegating his possible romantic plans to later thought, Sirius turned and announced to the class, "We have plenty of time. We will do this one by one so everyone knows who their fellow animagi are."
It came as no surprise to anyone that Hermione Granger was first in line. She'd rushed to the front of the class the moment Sirius had mentioned the process and held her phial carefully. When she got a nod from Sirius, she held it up to her lips—and shivered at the smell. Animalistic and pure of concept, the fumes of the animagus potion were already pouring into her and encouraging her to drink—and drink deep she did.
"The first transformation will, as we discussed, be painful. You will experience every twist and fold your inner magic needs to do to warp your flesh into your animal side." Sirius kept his voice even and steady as Hermione started to shudder and shake. When her body started to shrink away, and some students laughed at her struggle to remain at least modestly clothed during the process, he was about to remind them that they would all go through this—but a voice spoke out.
"What are you laughing for, Seamus? You're going to be going through the same thing." Draco was probably the only one in the room not surprised by his defense. What did surprise him, though, was Hermione's change. From the moment her head poked out of the collapsed clothes on the floor, he was amazed. "A snake…"
Hermione should have been completely lost in her new, alien body. She had lost her arms and legs, grown a stubby tail at the end of her long body, and was inundated by a flood of new senses. She also had far more muscles to worry about than ever before—but she managed a credible slither to the side, to where Draco and Harry were standing.
"A snake. Surprising for a Gryffindor, but there are far worse things to become than a highly refined predator. Well done Miss Granger." Looking at the next in line, Sirius nodded. "Go ahead, Miss Bell."
When Katie Bell lifted her potion up, the smell of it made her sway in place. It was musky and potent. She shivered at the way it made her whole body twitch. Two gulps was all it took to down the blood-red potion, and the moment she did she felt a heavy drumming in her ears. Looking around, feeling like there were enemies everywhere, she backed up to a corner and put her rump to it as her body started to ache in pain.
Katie's change was far more burdensome, or so Sirius could gather. Where Hermione had practically relaxed into the body of a snake, Katie seemed to fight every second of it. She still shrank, though being a pure-blood, she wasn't wearing anything already and so watching dark fur, huge claws, and a face that spoke of almost berserker-like fury painted a different picture. "If I don't mistake things, I'd say Miss Bell is one of the fiercest animagi I have ever heard of—a wolverine."
Her senses focused on Sirius and it took Katie a second to remember who she was and where she was. The thudding in her head seemed to gain a regular tempo and migrate to her chest. Shaking her head, she walked over to where Harry, Draco, and Hermione were. Of the three, Harry surprised her by reaching out.
When Katie's instincts overtook her and she lashed out at him with her claws, Harry just chuckled. "Don't worry. Claw at me all you want, Katie. I'm armor plated, remember?"
"Ah, three Weasleys all in a row. Why don't you all change at once?" Sirius could see that Fred and George were both on-board with this idea, though Ron looked a little less-so.
Turning to face each other, George and Fred held up their potions in their hooves and downed them without so much as a hint that the smell bothered them. Their smiles wavered a little as Fred's body shrank rapidly by a similar amount to how much George grew.
Shivering and rolling his shoulders, Fred felt his whole body itch and, before he knew what was happening, he crawled out of a husk that had been his body and crawled around on all… six legs. It was a new sensation, but what delighted him was the two new limbs on his back.
George, by contrast, felt muscle upon muscle wrap around his strong legs. From the corners of his eyes he noticed a wide pair of horns growing out of his head to each side. He looked back at Sirius and saw that he was many times larger than him now. Snorting out, he became the first Kouprey in the world to giggle.
Ron had delayed his drinking just long enough to watch his brothers grow huge and tiny.
Now, though, with the potion burning down his throat, Ron felt his body start to twitch and shift, his form jittery as the potion spread its magic throughout him. He didn't shrink and he didn't grow taller, but he did get significantly rounder.
Dull brown fur covered him and his hooves changed to what looked at first like hands. Ron got excited until a stiffness seemed to rush up his spine and all four of his legs shortened so that his body was almost brushing the floor.
He looked around to spot Sirius looking at him confused. Ron wanted to ask what he was, but all that came out was a squeaking sound.
"I'm at a loss. He looks like a huge guinea pig." Looking around the students, Sirius spotted a glint of recognition on Draco's face. "Mr. Malfoy?"
Draco looked at his friend and felt a little sad that Ron hadn't gotten what he'd wanted. "He's a capybara, sir. A, uh, South American rodent."
Looking down as best he could, Ron couldn't manage to see his feet to judge how useful they'd be. Still, as he strode over to the group of animals that were also his family and friends, he didn't feel too bad about the result. He liked rats, after all, and Draco had said he was just a really big rodent.
Smirking at the tiny bug that Fred had become, Alicia Spinnet stepped up, holding her potion carefully with one hoof while standing balanced upright—thanks to her half-blood status. She gulped down her potion and tried to focus on feeling what it was doing.
Small. Or rather, everything else became huge. Alicia felt her body twist and her arms seemed to double—then her vision went haywire. She could see a billion tiny images all focused on different things in front, above, below, to the sides, and even behind her. Confused, she felt four more limbs sprout, these on her back.
She tried to ask what was going on, but there was way too much going on with her mouth now to figure that out. There were multiple sets of jaws, teeth, and even little arm-like bits that all moved independently.
With an instinct that surprised her, she set all four of her wings moving and took to the air. Flying without a broom was something new, though being able to see so well made working out where the other animagi were easy. She swooped in and spotted Fred.
Fred, meanwhile, felt panic well up inside. He let out a shocked chirping sound with his wings and made a jump for it—landing on Ron and quickly ducking into his fur.
When Fred had taken to the air, Alicia's entire mental faculties locked in on him and she rocketed toward where he was going to be just a moment later. He touched down before she got there, but she landed on Ron right beside Fred.
Ready to flee again, Fred watched in rising panic as Alicia leaned closer and—kissed him. There was so much going on with her mouth, but the way she just pressed the outside parts of her mouth to his side and then pulled back was obvious.
When Fred turned to her, Alicia wasn't sure what to think. He looked small, delicious, and she could still taste him—but there was recognition now and he chirped in the cutest way she'd ever heard. It was also the only way she'd ever heard a person chirp.
"Alright," Sirius said, "who's next?"