by Skysaber
based on a challenge forwarded by Lionheart

OoOoO

Boots in hand as I tiptoed out of the mansion, I considered my situation, and reluctantly had to conclude that being about to be married to a few dozen witches was not the worst of my problems.

My biography of Voldemort was supposed to hit the bookstore shelves in magical Britain about the same time as the expose Harry and I had worked on together regarding his early life, and the horrors he suffered, mostly due to Dumbledore. And that was due to happen very soon now. So my little vacation of not having to worry about the manipulative old bastard coming after me directly was rapidly coming to a close.

Since Dumbledore's reputation was his strongest and most subtle weapon, I had already decided, from the moment I set out on this course, to destroy as much of that as possible before he could turn around and wield it against me. So, to that end, I plotted a second punch.

When your enemy is down is the easiest time to kick him. Not something you want to do in a friendly fight, or against honorable opponents, but since this guy was scarcely better than a dark lord, from all that had been revealed about him, well... he was just too powerful and too ruthless to fight on nice terms. I wasn't even sure that, having personally arranged the child abuse and murder of Harry Potter, he was even deserving of it.

Dumbledore was living proof of the adage, "A man can smile and smile and be a villain." The guy loved power more than he loved people, and that was pretty much all there was to it.

Frankly, I was terrified of him.

I had never really set out to be an enemy of the Headmaster. However, I HAD more or less dedicated myself to the support and training of Harry, as vital to the safety and future of this world I was now in, and that more or less came with the requirement of opposing certain things initiated as schemes by Albus Dumbledore.

I had chosen people. But, doing that required I oppose Dumbledore's power, as he was out to sacrifice those very people I'd chosen to protect.

The moment he'd uncovered those acts of opposition he would act in turn to neutralize them, and, I felt certain, neutralize me with them. I hadn't forgotten how he'd sent Sirius to Azkaban for being inconvenient to his own plans. The guy was a master of subtle legilimency who routinely scanned all those who came in contact with him. You couldn't tell ME that Albus hadn't known that Peter was the real traitor!

They'd all rubbed shoulders in those Order meetings often enough.

I had Peter's memories in a bottle back in my room. I KNEW the rat had never studied occlumency! He'd never known the art existed! I'd been able to go over the relevant period in my pensieve a few times, and seen knowing grins and glances as Albus met his eyes during meetings across that whole year of Peter's treason. So I KNEW that Albus had uncovered it!

And as the head of the magical court system, it took AT LEAST his passive acceptance for the then-Minister to get away with sending Sirius anywhere without a trial.

But, no, Albus couldn't have custody of Harry with Sirius still around. So the old man had arranged for one of his own Order members to get locked up and fed on by dementors for the crime of having been inconvenient to the plans of Albus Dumbledore.

That was extremely evil, not just a little but a LOT!

From his perspective I was guilty of that same crime as Sirius was, but far worse as I'd actually intended to be in the way of Dumbledore's plans. That meant that despite never having wanted to be the Headmaster's enemy, I was. And, seeing as how I was his enemy anyway, I might as well strike just as hard and as deeply as I could, on the vague chance I might win this thing.

Not that I really expected I would. In fact, half my plans regrettably had to account for Azkaban as an almost certain fixture in my future (which was an excellent reason for having gotten rid of the dementors beforehand). In most of the rest I was dead.

Still, I could either accept defeat, and make it certain, or fight against it and by doing so open up paths where I might get outrageously lucky. You never knew, it might happen.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Hope dwells eternal in the human breast, and all of that. The only thing truly certain was I'd fail if I didn't try. After all, look at Tom Riddle's original situation - he'd won that war, then during a routine triple murder he'd accidentally shot himself in the face. His followers had panicked, and that was the end of everything for him.

You couldn't say odd happenstance didn't affect things, because they did.

I was able, as a bookwriter, to walk in to Nuremburg prison where they kept Grindelwald and interview him during regular visiting hours from outside the bars to his cell. There, in exchange for some decent food of a muggle sort, he spilled his guts about anything and everything I asked questions about.

Under Veritaserum, no less. Administered by a helpful guard certified to do such things on request, and willing to testify to such in my upcoming book.

So, in return for a basket of fruit, a few hamburgers, a pitcher of milk, some bread and a blanket, I received a signed contract stating that I had exclusive rights to write and publish Lord Grindelwald's biography, and hours and hours of interviews about the subject matter including, most especially, his early friendship and partnership with Dumbledore, from whom he'd acquired most of his ideals. The guard sickened and my dictation pens scratched as Gellert, under truth serum, told of how Albus had drawn the young Gellert into Albus Dumbledore's own plans for world domination; how together they'd theorized about Wizard supremacy "For the Greater Good" of the world, and that it was only the intercession of Aberforth Dumbledore sparking a duel resulting in the accidental death of his sister that kept Albus and Gellert from setting off together on paths Lord Grindelwald had later trod separately.

It took a feverish afternoon of work, but one rush order to the printer later and now the book based on that material one was due to come out in stores soon, as well. I could hold off on the four volume set of the complete version of Gellert's history later, as it would take time and research to do it justice. Heck, with maps and outsider accounts and things it might be larger yet. That would be the best way to do it, creating a resource of the age.

But right now I wanted to stick another fork in Dumbledore's eye.

Hopefully my fame would shield me somewhat from Dumbledore's wrath, but I didn't count on it. It was like asking a bit of tissue paper to protect you from rain. It might do a very tiny, teeny bit, but you'd best get the problem solved by other means first. By taking up residence in the USA, however, I WAS able to dodge the bulk of his legal authority and force him into illegal methods that could at least blot his reputation and provide more material to hurt him with...

... in the bizarrely unlikely eventuality that I should survive to write about it. But one had to have hope, after all. Superior forced had lost in the past, and would again. You never knew what could happen if you kept trying.

An old image came to mind, a hand-drawn picture of a frog being held in a pelican's beak, reaching both arms out of its mouth to strangle the bird so it couldn't swallow the frog who was strangling it.

Ok, you may go down, but don't go down easy! It's when things look blackest that you mustn't quit. The enemy's strength had limits, too, and those may be tighter than you know. There was also some small hope this little dodge might also aid me in escaping those engagements Morticia had set up for me.

There was actually a decent probability I was safe there, seeing as how the United States were a young country and didn't have those ancient, pureblood laws grandfathered in like junk accumulated in the back of a closet. So it was doubtful they had anything like the same marriage laws, as the old corruption simply didn't exist to the same extent there.

Actually, the Colonies had always been the dumping place for castoffs, spare sons and criminals in the old days. No self respecting pureblood witch or wizard would even visit the place for the longest time. So no, from what I understood, the magical laws they had there were sane and rational for the most part, without the corruption that had set in on the muggle side as yet.

One thing I knew was I couldn't be married to anyone less than sixteen in the USA. So, score! I planned on taking up permanent residence, ready to let most of my unwanted marriage prospects wilt on the vine while waiting for me to show my nose elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I couldn't settle down to retirement just yet, as Harry was not yet out of the woods as far as Dumbledore's manipulations went. So I had to put off going into hiding until a few more of those issues got resolved.

And I wasn't entirely safe to hide there myself, yet. The United States WERE Britain's closest ally, so I didn't exactly feel sheltered from Albus there. He was bound to have abundant contacts with resources there who could and would come looking for me on his behalf. And I still hadn't solved the problem of how I was going to teach at Hogwarts while not leaving America, but I still had a month or so to address that one, while I had no such luxury in dealing with the most powerful wizard of our age.

Feeling a terrible rush to get ready for this confrontation, and fearing that things were about to come to a head soon, I hurried back to the manor and absorbed the most dangerous of all of the memories remaining in my collection, after stripping out the dark bits through a unicorn and kneazel monitored filtering process and praying REALLY hard for protection during it!

Through Narcissa (one of the many Nicholas has also restored youth to), I'd gotten ahold of Riddle's Diary, then Obliviated it so I could steal his memories from a time when he was at his least evil before AKing the thing. I used those to copy some of his powers, ESPECIALLY wandless magic! But also everything else, as "he was one of the most brilliant students Hogwarts has ever seen."

As a result, I got access to Tom Riddle's wandless skills, something I made sure to share out among my close group, as I was sure we'd need it; A great prison break tool, if nothing else, as it was difficult to incarcerate a man who could cast spells without a wand, and even in the remote chance we didn't need it for that or other survival reasons, it was still nice and useful to have.

On getting his invitation to Hogwarts, Riddle had boasted, "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to." All of those were incredibly useful skills, and that was before any formal training.

That diary also included six full years of Tom Riddle's formal training, as well as all of the independent study and research he'd performed over that time. It came as a vital second perspective, something we could contrast to those same periods of education covered from the Marauder's perspective, and the gaps of one often got filled by the other, or highlighted failings in both. From that basis, our little family could obtain more full mastery of the Hogwarts material than any other student in centuries, given a little time to do so.

Time I feared we may not have.

Of course, Hogwarts was still only Hogwarts. Even granted full mastery of all of their official material, as well as a few sidelines, that school covered only the basic essential grasp of magic. There was only so much you could teach flocks of uncaring students over a space of seven years, and it had to lay a foundation for those students to build on across a lifetime, so they couldn't get into any of the weird, specialty, or fringe stuff - stuff that made all of the difference between a well educated amateur or an expert in their field.

Fortunately for us, Tom Riddle had done more independent study and extra work than had been covered in the entire official course load. And I could view through Pettigrew's memories the sort of outside interests and study on topics not covered that the Marauders had done. It wasn't the same as learning it directly, but did point our family in the right directions.

And we had Sirius and Remus here to provide memories of those independent study sessions and other learning events, so I could get soon hope to get that information directly and become one additional expert helping out in those fields.

Still, of it all, I was most grateful for Riddle's wandless skills. They weren't much by the time he'd reached sixteen, as he'd let those ability atrophy, diminishing his focus on wandless skills in favor of the easy power available by using a wand for all of his spells.

Tom Riddle was big on easy power.

But, these being memories, I could use that trick I'd done before when I'd first arrived in this world and had been trying desperately to reassemble something approaching a magical education. The original Gilderoy Lockhart had been incredibly gifted with memory charms, and I could use those to reinforce the memories of Tom Riddle gaining those wandless magic skills just as I had done to catch up on classes Gilderoy had lazed through. So I went ahead and did so, as I feared I'd greatly need them.

For myself, power was not so much a goal as a means to an end, and the end I was seeking at the moment was merely escape and survival. But to do that, I had to escape what were the most powerful people in the magical world, and that required some power on my own part to do properly.

Not about to consider what I had adequate, we moved on.

Various fanfics had described in detail wonderfully insightful methods for learning wordless or wandless magic, occlumency or animagi transformations and raising your magical potential.

All of those, we put to use now.

Some worked, while some didn't. But the ones that worked were amazingly successful, light years ahead of anything the magical public had available.

I really should NOT have been surprised by that! Most of her fans who wrote were better at the whole figuring out magic stuff than Rowling was. She'd claimed that witches and wizards couldn't think things through very well only to cover her own failings in that department. But maybe that was what put her in tune to witness this place to begin with, because while standing here I could see that it was true, magical folk in general didn't have a lick of common sense. All of those clear-thinking fans who'd done work on figuring this magic system out were leagues ahead of the local witches and wizards.

Hey! Many of them had worked out that that Patroni could be used to carry messages long before Rowling had ever 'revealed' that to be the case. And, if you wanted to listen to some cynics, she might even have picked up the idea from them.

They certainly wrote better than she did, even if they did have to 'follow her tap' as it were, allowing her to make initial contact with this world.

However, we feverishly made use of everything we had.

Bellatrix was the one who taught Draco Occlumency, and did so to such a degree that Snape, who'd been illegally practicing Legilimency for years on unsuspecting students, was unable to casually penetrate his mind. What was interesting to note was that it was in sixth year that defense was tested, and she'd only been broken out of Azkaban during Harry's fifth year, by the timeline in the books. That meant she'd had at most a year to tutor him, and in practical terminology probably only a few months grabbed during summer and holidays for her to instruct Draco to that level.

Thus, it was possible, if you had a decent instructor (something Snape was most definitely NOT) to pick up a respectable proficiency of Occlumency in just a few months of tutoring. Draco's skill level from that was actually impressive, as he'd blocked the scans of a man who'd been practicing the art in secret every day for longer than the boy had been alive.

And we just happened to have the tutor who'd given him that impressive skill on our side at the moment. So that became our plan. We could only hope we had the few months it would take to accomplish it.

But quick, that evening before we did anything to alter Harry's mind, we all skipped off to Russia, where practically nothing magical was illegal, as their last recognized Ministry of Magic failed when the Czars got overthrown, and the Communist replacement had been a crude, badly put together ideological hackjob made up of nearly untrained communist wizards who made the incompetent English ones look like Merlin by comparison.

And that Communist Ministry had made too many attempts to overthrow their neighbors to be trusted, so it did not share any resources with, and was not part of any international community and shared very few of their laws - something that, combined with their own isolationism and inability to properly infiltrate foreign magical societies (who rightly feared their spies, and further takeover attempts), had served to cut them off from outside sources, which in turn kept Russian wizards more or less ignorant of what everyone else considered to be common magic.

Kind-hearted outsiders ignorant of their ruthlessness had taught them spells a time or two, but those examples always turned out so badly for everyone that spigot had dried up quickly.

I mean, when you teach someone a simple Cutting Curse and they use it on Lenin's orders to slaughter a couple million of their own people, plus a few foreigners, you get kind of leery about showing them anything else. And when you teach them a simple healing charm, and they immediately turn around to use it, almost exclusively, to prolong the suffering of victims of their rather brutal interrogations, you stop wanting to show them anything.

And Russian wizards had been so consistently hostile to the rest of the world that none of them could leave Russian soil without triggering the many wards set around their country by hostile neighbors, wards the Russians were too incompetent to detect or take down, and that would result in their deaths if crossed. So they didn't mingle to get spell knowledge. They couldn't even get out over the polar cap, as that had been tried a few times.

So use of the Unforgivables was practically MANDATORY for Russian Ministry employees, who learned those first and used practically nothing else. They were all accounted agents of the KGB and dealt with as part of that arm of the Soviet government - an arm that was still taking its own sweet time falling, as right now it was still very much in force.

Anyway, arriving in Russia, I gave our newly expanded group (now including Minnie, as well as Bella and Cissy) the basic run down of the Unforgivables just as the false Moody had done, and, with a Russian license to practice them in my pocket, very carefully cast the Imperious Curse on Harry.

I may have gasped in heartfelt relief when he failed to obey my instructions and threw the curse off moments later.

That was my intent.

Now I knew ahead of time that Harry was the only person named among the students who was able to throw that off, actually the only person of any age it was specifically mentioned could do so. And we'd needed him to. He may have been the only one, but we knew he COULD!

That was good enough. Where there was one, there could be several by the methods I had already made use of to practice other things.

I got his memory of that event then fed it into every person present, one by one, not even disguising what I was doing this time, even explaining how one could gain skills by absorbing memories directly, and confessing that this was the method I'd used to gain all of my power, finally giving each one a minor Obliviate to erase that tiny event and keep my secret.

However, in this case I attached a rider to my memory charm, in that if anything should happen to me, if I should die or disappear or be permanently incapacitated, my spell would remove itself and they would recall this event.

Now if I should be destroyed, these people would have the tools they'd need to continue on to fight in my absence.

Harry's future should be at least remotely secure.

Yes, it was manipulative of me, but the point where Dumbledore and I differed was that he had stopped caring about what happened to the people involved in his schemes, or the costs they paid on his behalf, while I was doing this so I could give them the same level of powers I had in case they needed them.

They would, after all, be able to find my trunk of saved memories, copies made of all of the experiences I'd absorbed, and from them they could gain everything that I had now.

That ought to throw a wrench in the Headmaster's plans.

Dumbledore had never arranged for anyone to ever match his power, under any circumstance whatsoever. Nor was I motivated by some nebulous 'Greater Good'. I was acting in the best interests of those precious to me, as best I knew how, using the materials and abilities I had available to me.

And full disclosure was coming. It just wasn't going to be right then.

Thankfully, when we picked up on the Imperious resistance practice from that point, everyone fortified by Harry's memory of overcoming it was able, with some difficulty more or less, to learn how to throw it off themselves.

That gave us a priceless extra measure of security.

Then, when Bella (with her own license to practice them on Russian soil) used the Imperious on me, also having been fortified by Harry's memory, I... well, I was halfway through a striptease before I threw it off, but throw it off I DID!

After that we did a bit of practice until any one of us could throw off such a curse in seconds, if not sooner. Harry could overcome the strongest such spell as soon as it was placed on him, and Bellatrix was an expert in their use!

So we had no worry about him; and the others among us, while not at his level, were adequate. We could throw off any such spell, just not as quickly.

Thus defended to a point where one of three Unforgivables was now next to useless against us, we retired to safer countries to begin to implement the rest of our regime of exotic training, including mastering Occlumency and using fan-suggested methods for building up a resistance to the Crucio, most notably including using tickling charms to train our minds in recognizing and overcoming phantom signals coming in to the brain. Of course, in terms of force, a Crucio was a firehose compared to the squirtgun of a tickling charm, but it was a good way to start, and not our only method, a recitation of which would be needlessly boring.

For a backup until such time as we had our Crucio resistance training up and functioning at a usable level, I overlaid a delayed spell on each of us. That freaky pain/pleasure reversal spell used by the LeStranges, set to activate only when we were under a Crucio.

Okay, the curse would still incapacitate you, but it was slightly less likely to drive you permanently insane in the aftermath, and would serve until we had a better form of resistance to the Pain Curse.

That left us with two of the three Unforgivables at least partially protected from. And, from what Rowling said, especially when Riddle was gloating over getting his new body (that it shared the remnants of Lily's blood protection over Harry) there was every possibility that Harry's resistance to the Killing Curse was a blood gift, and therefore something I might well have gotten a copy of when I unintentionally copied his other gifts.

Logically, it should have copied along with the rest. Naturally, this wasn't something I was eager to test. But the possibility was there all the same. A hope of last resort, that if every other defense had failed, that one MIGHT come forward and save the day.

And if I could somehow share that out it could potentially give each and every one of us some protection against the last of those three dreadful curses, a last line of defense for if all else had fallen.

I'd still far rather charm statues, stones and furniture into jumping into the way of a killing curse as far more reliable, even if this did work, as I knew well enough to know there was so much that I didn't know to stay cautious. What if Harry's resistance only applied to curses cast by Moldyshorts himself?

Things like that made me want to stay cautious in any event, as I could very much see a resistance that applied only to the first person who tried to use one on you, for example.

Not worth your life to find out the exact parameters.

It was Moria who came up with our solution, in a way. We blood typed Bella to see who could share her gift of Empathy, and the littlest girl in our company asked the innocent question of "Why can't you change blood type when you change faces?"

Out of the mouths of babes come the most startling ideas sometimes.

I tried it, and it turned out you CAN!

Shifting back to my own form, pre-Lockhart days, and I tested out as a solid O negative, just like I'd always done before arriving here.

Well, that made things simple. As Lockhart, the AB positive, I could receive from all of the common blood types. And as Jared, the pre-HP verse author, I could give blood to anyone.

Soon our entire company were empaths, metamorphs and parselmouths; any other gift we had, we shared in common among us all (even if we didn't know we had them).

Then at sunset I made sure to do a quick trip to visit Trelawney. The old bat may have been a fraud who had useless skills, but even Dumbledore admitted that she had the BLOODLINE of a true seer! And we did see her use that gift from time to time. For all of being erratic, uncontrolled and infrequent, she did make the occasional correct pronouncement.

The more active seers you had on your side, the more likely one of them was to give out some actual useful information. So I had dinner with my fellow teacher in her tower and surreptitiously took a blood sample.

Unfortunately her great-great-grandmother, the very gifted, very famous Cassandra Trelawney wasn't still around to copy from. But better a slight gift than no gift at all.

The next morning it was time to visit Luna Lovegood and see about acquiring Mage Sight, the ability to see magic and interpret auras, something that had once been described as "seeing in color when everyone else saw only in black and white."

The less said about that trip the better. It was odd even by my standards.

By now I was dashing about, trying to get all of the abilities I could lay hold of, for fear of a looming confrontation with Dumbledore. Nicholas Flamel and his wife Perenelle had both hidden out as hunters of the elusive demiguise at one point during their long as colorful pasts. So they'd had the training to see the invisible and between them had no trouble helping me overcome my difficulties in getting my own skills in that area sorted out right, to where I could both control and rely on it.

Of course, this did nothing to divert us from our many projects on the side.

As part of long-term plans that had to be fit in amongst all these hurried preparations, I started our group on the study of martial arts, getting them to where they could hopefully, eventually become physically fit and ready for anything. Because they'd need that when the time came.

As another a core element to one of my long-term contingency plans, I also introduced them to D&D and strategy games to start to develop that part of their minds, along with the problem solving aspects of those games.

The mind can truly be the most potent weapon anyone could have. But it has to be developed to do you any good.

Around this time we began making our rounds of public appearances, shoring up our image. No one really wanted to, but quieted when I said, "Remember that hungry lion, Fame, Harry? Now is the time to tame it."

Besides, if it all came down to a popularity contest, I didn't want to grant Albus too easy a victory. And, knowing Dumbledore, the way he preferred to dispose of his enemies was to use the government to destroy them for him, like he'd done with Sirius, and like he'd failed to do with Voldemort.

So, at some point it was almost guaranteed that one or more of those of us who opposed the Supreme Mugwump on the issue of Harry's treatment was going to end up in Azkaban. Probably sooner rather than later.

That made animagus transformations a top priority.

We already had most of the skills and training required to do that, plus an expert of our own in the form of Minnie to help us in overcoming obstacles in the last few steps, and an advisor in the form of Sirius himself.

What we really had to do now was choose what shapes to aim for. You had to have some kind of connection to your proposed shape, and the stronger the better. This was the stage most aspirants failed at, in selecting an animal form that you had a clear, perceivable connection to, rather than choosing a beast you merely liked or felt fond of. Thinking a shape was cool didn't help you to turn into one. You had to have some sort of connection.

It didn't need to be a literal connection. Figurative ones were almost stronger so long as they were evident to those around you. Minerva had been quite catty in her youth, and so that's where she got the form from. Dragon lady might be more appropriate for her now, although she was loosening up a bit.

Even being engaged to her, and her youth being restored, I would forswear any potential comments about her being a fine bit of pussy.

Tom Riddle was a snake. Pettigrew, obviously, had been a rat, both figurative and literal. Sirius had been named for the dog star, and was as loyal as a hound. James had been something of a stag, while Rita Skeeter had always been bugging people even before she became a reporter or animagus, while Albus was a barmy old goat (he rarely used his animagus form).

So the trick was to pick an affinity and go with it, building on that connection until you had a solid basis for making that transformation.

Harry's was the most important to us.

He loved flying, so a bird form gave an excellent foundation. And, given the series as it was originally written, he'd also managed to raise himself from the dead. It might have been a cliche for him, but that wasn't going to stop us as it only got that way by being so tremendously useful, even logical.

Actually, being cliche just reflected the fact that the child had an enormous perceptible connection to the proposed form.

Having survived the killing curse twice, loving flying and helping others, and being a Gryffindor (the house of Fire to go by Rowling's intentions) Harry pretty much had to become a pheonix. Once this got explained to the others, they all agreed, so we aimed him toward becoming one (and having the group agree on this perception strengthened it, and helped him in no small way to reach that goal as his alternate form).

For myself, I became a lion. Hermione became an otter, and her mother a seal. Moria became a flying squirrel, and Bellatrix a fox, while Narcissa joined us as a parrot. Dora, predictably, got stuck as a chameleon animagus.

They all had their reasons. Don't ask me all of them, as some of them were embarrassing. For my sake, they'd insisted I try lion as it came closest to reflecting what they saw in me, and not the least of the factors shaping the proposed selection was my having a pride of females forming around me.

But I was also, in their eyes at any rate, commanding and authoritative (don't ask me how they got this perception, as I don't know), powerful (this one at least I knew how they'd formed THAT misconception) but also graceful in a very fundamental way. This last I could explain, having always been dexterous and that only having been added upon by all those memories of martial arts practice as well as dance, proper comportment, and so on.

I was also commonly believed to be a true Gryffindor, because of the bravery people assumed I had because of all of my reported exploits. But bravery and the House of the Lion connection more or less got me cornered (in spite of my expectations the original Gilderoy had actually been a Gryffindor, but he'd never been a very good one - too much like Ron, actually).

That being their perception of me, and most if not all of the magical world seeing me in a very similar light, I got pretty much locked into that form. It might have been more useful to be something more discrete, but discretion was not what they had a clear perception of me for. I was charm and grace and power, to their minds, and that spelled lion, so that was my connection.

If I HAD to be a great cat, I personally preferred tigers. But I didn't get to make that selection and got to have a go at being a lion despite it.

Narcissa, who'd spent most of her life repeating what lines others had told her about pureblood superiority and so on, almost became a mockingbird, and would have if I hadn't pointed out her beauty and that factor caused her to switch her aims over to another famous mimic that just happened to have gorgeous plumage. So she became a beautiful macaw, largest and most famous of the parrot family. Something oddly suitable on all counts.

She would have been a monkey but for the fact that she took herself so seriously, and monkeys just were plain undignified. Although I made a note to suggest that form to the Weasley Twins at some future point.

Trust Hermione, that muggleborn witch who was comfortable in both worlds, to become an animal at home both on land and in water. The playful aspect of otters surprised me a bit, though, as she'd hid it well in the novels. She'd first raised the question of becoming an owl, for their supposed wisdom, until I pointed out that she hated to fly, so a bird form was out of the question for her. But she loved swimming as much or more as she detested flying so that made for a clear bond.

Miranda was mostly the same as her oldest daughter, caught straddling two very different worlds. Although, like a seal, she'd favored one environment over the other. And that elegant lady confessed to always having loved the ocean. It wasn't the strongest of connections, but enough of one.

Moria fit in a similar form, only choosing two different environments to be at home in, and trading in a certain amount of playfulness for a touch of nutty. Plus, unlike her sister, she absolutely adored swings and flying.

Bellatrix, being both lovely and deadly, clever and cruel, made a perfect fox. While Dora, having been showing off her Metamorph powers so long, had a strong public perception as one who changed (especially her hair color), and the only good match for her with that kind of connection was the famous animal who changed colors. So she got to be a lizard with a funky skin.

Not what she would have picked for herself, but them's the breaks. You took what form you could get, or didn't become an animagus. And she nearly gave up the quest, and would not have continued on but for our prompting.

Luna joined us as a unicorn, and the story of how she'd joined us was a tale all its own, but the form suited her beautifully. Lovely and ethereal, magical and free, mysterious and unfettered by all but her own whims, it suited her right down to her bones.

She was also able to give Harry a metaphysical kick in the pants, touching him with her horn while she was a unicorn pushed him over the edge to achieve his own pheonix transformation.

It was a feverish bit of work for the rest of us, and took more time than I felt we could easily spare save for how vital it was to our futures, should we be facing ones that featured Azkaban.

Despite several turns of the Time Turner, three weeks advanced during our studies and both school and our marriage dates grew much closer. During this time we also moved around extensively, hiding from Albus.

Finally having achieved those forms (correctly defined as non-inheritable gifts, although the potential for the gift itself could be passed down, the form itself would not be) we used purified blood magic rituals to share them around, so that each of us could access the forms created by the others, even those designed by Sirius and Minnie. So the whole flock of us could hide out as cats or dogs, foxes, otters, lions or the slew of forms now available to us. It gave us a ton of useful disguises, modes of transport, even combat potential.

With our metamorph abilities working on so many base creature templates we would be practically unrecognizable in any urban or rural environment. A cat or dog able to change its fur and markings the way Dora could change her face and hair, made for an animal that could pass itself off as virtually any breed, and thus fit in practically anywhere.

Foxes and squirrels had a more wild bent, but the same thing still applied, and parrot and chameleon forms gave us the tropics. Lions, while tremendously useful for their combat powers, could also, with a bit of morphing, be seen as pumas, and the various breeds of those were found practically worldwide, so that form, too, could be used as a disguise in the wilder regions.

I didn't even know how to begin quantifying the advantages of those magical forms. And while there were fewer calls for hiding in an aquatic environment, being able to fit in there too was not without benefit - fewer people around to try and pierce the disguise, for one.

And, if one was going to be escaping from a small island in the north sea, you did well to have a swimming form so immune to extreme cold.

Actually, there was hardly a cage built that could contain that wide an array of possible forms. Most things that could contain a man would let you slip out between the bars as a squirrel, or fly off as a parrot. You could cut through whatever mesh could contain the squirrel with the claws of a lion, and hit the ocean as a seal. The only thing you'd have to worry about is becoming whale food, as sharks or killer whales saw seals and thought 'lunch!'

And that was presuming that we couldn't just transform into pheonixes and 'flame teleport' to someplace safer.

Now we had a solid means of escaping Azkaban, if we were ever incarcerated there. Next would be to prepare for a life on the run, and the most sensible thing for us to do in that circumstance would be to leave the UK. Albus had near supreme authority in Magical Britain, and it would be some time for that to decay around him, even with the information I'd already dropped. So it would behoove us to do our hiding elsewhere, because as I'd said his influence (while still existing) dropped sharply once you left the British Isles.

And there were ways to make a life abroad far more comfortable. This was especially easy if you had the right magic.

And, as we were basically out of time, it was our last opportunity to acquire any. Unfortunately, it turned out that I was far too late.

Dumbledore had caught up to me at last. And his anger was stormy.

OoOoO
Author's Notes:

I really like this quote from one of my reviews (written by Sharpe1815)
"I have come to the conclusion that the most dangerous person to a stratified community is a gamer with access to the power to change things. Mostly because a gamer can analyze the "rules" such as they are and then interpret in such a way as to completely shift the paradigm."