"Are you still on about that island thing?" Tonks said shaking her pink hair and walking past him. "Wotcher Harry. Woah." She stopped dead and stared at the piles and piles of letters and boxes littering the room. Harry was at the table writing and Shiva was sitting on the floor opening up some of the packages and moving them to different piles. "Just a bit of mail then? Are these the fan clubs for 'I Killed A Dementor' or 'I Killed a Basilisk' or are they the typical 'Marry Me I'm Hot' options?" She picked up one letter that drifted off the top of a pile at snickered. "Gaining some pretty young fans there, squirt. I'd recommend at least waiting until they are out of the crayon age."
Harry snorted. "Thanks for the advice, Damsel-In-Distress."
"Damsel-In-Distress? Ouch, that hurts me right here," she said faking a wince and holding her heart.
"Better than Battle Maid," Shiva commented grabbing another package.
Tonks opened and closed her mouth a few times before finally regaining her voice. "I may be a Battle Maid but I am not going to put on a French fufu apron for you, Harry." She paused and her hair briefly shifted to bright blue before turning back to pink. "And I actually do kinda prefer Battle Maid over Damsel. I may not be an Auror anymore, but I'm still a hell of a fighter."
"Battle Maid, do me a favor and grab me a few more of those crayon letters," Harry said waving to a pile. "They're all my backed up mail from when I was toddler. I'm trying to respond in somewhat chronological order. Sorta. Mostly."
"You're writing all the replies by hand, pup?" Sirius asked grabbing a seat.
"Yeah. Seems the best way to apologize for taking a decade to get back to them."
"You realize you wouldn't have known how to write for the first few of these anyway," Shiva said cocking an eyebrow at him.
"Doesn't matter." Harry shrugged and shook out his hand. "I'm going to get carpal tunnel before I finish these…"
Amelia grimaced in sympathy and leaned against the counter near Sirius. "I feel your pain; paperwork is awful. I recommend localized numbing potions – they are a godsend. It's nice of you do this, Harry."
"What are we doing with the toys and the animals again?" Shiva asked holding up a stuffed dragon that gave a cute little roar.
"Oh I like that one!" Harry said grinning. "Keep the cool ones to the side. The rest we'll send to an orphanage."
"Can I have this panther one, Harry?" Tonks asked holding up a stuffed panther that was prowling around her leg.
"Sure." Harry leaned back and shook out his hand again. "Sirius, if I could feel my hand right now I'd probably be slugging you. Just so you know."
"Little old me?" Sirius asked grinning wildly. "Whatever have I done to warrant such abuse?"
"You mean this time?" Amelia muttered.
"Oh I don't know, maybe roping me into becoming a polygamist without bothering to ask?" Harry said with raised eyebrows.
Shiva snickered and Tonks almost dropped her new panther. "Wait, you didn't know about that, Harry?" she asked.
"Everybody keeps assuming I understand everything about wizarding politics," Harry said with a sigh. "Reading books and being friends with several Heirs will only get you so far you know. I found out from the goblins the other day."
"Oh…" Sirius grimaced. "Sorry, pup. I figured Neville had told you. There's really no one else I can leave the Black name to. Remus has refused flat out to accept it, Frank is in no condition, most of my other male friends are dead or not close enough to me…I'd give it to Andi or Tonks if I could, but some of the inheritance laws only allow for males. It can be changed for the next generation but that doesn't help at the moment. If I didn't leave it to you than it would probably end up passing to Draco," he snorted at that. "There is no way a Malfoy is taking control of the Black family."
"Yeah, I know," Harry sighed. He gestured to Shiva. "Shiva explained that much. If you do something similar in the future though please tell me beforehand. Also don't you dare establish any sort of marriage contract or I will let my friends and family neuter you. Deal?"
Sirius gulped and hurriedly nodded. "Deal."
"Good. Oh, on an unrelated note, I've been meaning to ask you something. How did you go about becoming an animagus? Seems like a really cool thing to be able to do," Harry said.
"It's mostly a meditation exercise at first. There's a potion that helps you connect to your inner animal and then you just need to get good with self-transfiguration. The actual final step is a combination between self-transfiguration and a charm so you have to be decent at both to finish it. The charm is what makes it different. Self-transfiguration by itself would wear off after a bit and you wouldn't really be able to think right in your form plus you need a wand. An actual animagus though is a one form, wandless deal," Sirius shrugged. "Some foreign countries prefer the former because it's more versatile, but I figure the indefinite nature of animagi and the ability to keep thinking like a human is the better deal. Plus you can get a bit of a glimpse into your own inner nature. Animagus transformations reflect a bit of what makes you, you."
"I read there was a ritual you could use to do it basically overnight," Harry said tapping his chin. "Is that what you, Pettigrew and my dad used to do it so fast?"
Harry looked up and saw Sirius and Amelia's faces were white. Tonks' hair had shifted to pure black and she collapsed onto the ground next to Shiva. Shiva's face had gone almost as white as Sirius' and she hurriedly pushed to her feet striding over to Harry. "Give me whatever book you found that thing in right now, Harry!"
"Shiva?" Harry asked taken completely aback by the reaction of the people around him.
"Harry," Sirius said slowly and quietly, "do not, under any circumstances use that ritual. That is not what we did. We worked hard for our transformations. That ritual is not something to play around with on a lark. It is dangerous."
"The ritual you mentioned, Harry, leads to at least three or four deaths per year," Amelia said. Tonks nodded in agreement, still at a loss for words.
"I don't understand…" Harry said looking between the others and shrinking a bit into his chair.
"Harry," Shiva knelt down next to him and put her hand on his shoulder, "the requirements for the ritual are extremely specific. The problem is that the actual knowledge of the ingredients prior to starting the thing is very vague. You could start it knowing you need a mammal of some sort but find out halfway through that the animal is an elephant and you brought a mouse. At that point you're deep enough into the thing that stopping it would kill you from the magical backlash. And continuing would leave you – at best – stuck as an animal for the rest of your life. At worst, you'd be turned inside out as the magic tried and failed to finalize." She squeezed his shoulder and held his gaze. "Promise me, kid, that you will never do that ritual."
"Okay, I promise," he said softly.
"Good," she sighed. "Good." Pulling Harry into a hug, Shiva continued softly, "Don't scare me like that, kid."
"You didn't see the warnings surrounding the description, Harry?" Tonks asked, her hair had shifted to a deep blue instead of black.
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