Cassian strode into the classroom, radiating good spirits.

“Alright, my lovely students,” he said, clapping. “Today we’re talking about the peak of Transfiguration. A subject you studied not long ago, if my sources are correct. Anyone want to guess?”

A few blank stares. Some already looked terrified.

Cassian tapped the side of his head. “Come on. Bit of magical history. Bit of impossible human ambition. No? I’ll help, starts with ‘A’, ends with ‘-magus’.”

Tracey raised a hand, more suspicious than curious. “Why are you so happy, sir?”

“Because, Miss Davis,” Cassian said, “it’s not every day I get to talk about the origin of spells that go as far back as humanity. Real roots. Pre-wand. Pre-magicks. Pre-‘Let’s build a school and put murder trees around it.'” He pointed to the board with his wand and flicked. “Today’s subject: Animagus.”

Hermione straightened in her seat. Goyle whispered something to Crabbe.

Cassian ignored him.

“Animagus,” he repeated, “started as a yearning. That’s where all good magic comes from, by the way, need, desperation or curiosity. Sometimes all three, usually mixed with poor judgment.”

He took a few steps forward, wand raised. “Now. Yearning for what?” He cupped a hand to his ear. “Anyone?”

A few hands went up. Hermione’s, obviously. So was Daphne’s.

Cassian pointed to her. “Greengrass.”

“To become one with nature,” she said immediately. “To understand animals on a deeper level.”

Cassian winced. “I’ll give that half marks and a polite nod. Close. Philosophically lovely. Historically nonsense.”

She frowned.

Cassian tapped his wand against the desk. “Animagus magic originated in ancient human tribes, first recorded in southern Africa, around the early tribal convergence period. These weren’t peaceful druid-walks-through-the-grass sorts. These were survivalists. Magic wasn’t used to become one with nature. It was used to beat the odds of dying in it.”

He waved his wand. The lights dimmed overhead, and above the centre row, illusion magic crackled to life. A clutch of early humans appeared, lean and wide-eyed under an open sky, spears raised, magic raw and reluctant.

“Now,” Cassian said, stepping aside so they could see, “evolution is random. It leans toward survival, not brilliance. You’ve already had my rant on that, I’m sure, but since we didn’t have time to dig in properly… remind me. What’s the core of evolution?”

He gestured vaguely with his wand.

Hermione’s hand shot up. Cassian waited a beat, pretending to survey the rest of the class.

He turned slowly. “Yes, Goyle?”

Goyle looked caught. “Er… fire?”

“That’s the first useful answer you’ve ever given me,” Cassian said. “Sadly, wrong.”

A few chuckles.

“Yes, Granger. Rescue us.”

“Adaptation,” she said promptly.

“Correct.” Cassian snapped his fingers. The illusion shifted, zooming in on a gangly young hunter crouched beside a carcass of a magical beast. “Adaptation. Not perfection. Not divine planning. Not magical destiny. Trial. Error. Ugly as it gets. If something works, nature doesn’t fix it. Which is why an old man groans every time when he sits down, you’re hearing the sound of bad knees from a few million years ago.”

A groan or two came from the back. He smirked. “Exactly. Now. Humans? We evolved different to anything else running about on four legs. Some beasts got speed. Some poison. Claws, wings, the lot. We didn’t. Our trick was this.” He tapped his temple. “Brains. We made tools. Spears. We worked in groups. That let us bring down things much bigger, much stronger.”

The hunter in the illusion rammed his spear into the ribcage. Sparks of primitive magic flared, weak but there. Cassian walked a slow circle round the front row.

“But brains came with baggage. Consciousness. Envy. We could kill the lion, yes, but we wanted what it had, speed, power, bite. We looked at nature and thought, ‘Why not me?’ That’s where Animagus work started. Jealousy.”

The illusion flickered, gone was the victorious hunter. In his place, another figure staggered back from a beast, blood soaking down one arm, his spear snapped near the base. Another collapsed in the mud with something jagged in his gut. Teeth. Horn. Claw. Cassian blurred the worst of it, but not the truth.

“Despite the brains,” he said, waving a hand through the air, “we were worse in almost every other category. No fangs. No fur. Couldn’t fly. Couldn’t outrun a bloody deer if we tried.”

The illusion zoomed out, the tribe, ragged, smeared with soot and blood, huddled around the carcass they’d barely brought down. Half were limping. One was missing an ear.

“And no magic like you know it. Just raw spellwork, pulled from instinct. Wild, unstable, and often suicidal. Magic back then was like trying to light a fire with your own fingers. You could do it. Once. If your bones didn’t melt first.”

Dean leaned forward. “So how’d they figure out the animal thing, then?”

“The original way of becoming an Animagus is lost in time. Ancient records suggest it wasn’t neat or elegant, nothing like the tidy rituals you’ll find in a Ministry handbook today. Early tribes practised it through permanent mutations, offering up part of themselves to mimic part of an animal. Sometimes literally replacing a piece. A hand for a claw. An eye for sharper sight. They called it merging. It was brutal, it was messy, and it worked… occasionally.”

A few students shifted in their seats. Seamus muttered something about nightmares.

Cassian shrugged. “You think the first Animagi were all graceful stags and noble hounds? Try half-botched experiments. Men with beaks that never shrank back. Spines that tore through skin and stuck. Chimeras, if you like.”

He flicked his wand again. The illusion shifted, and the image that took its place wasn’t poetic at all. Men and women hunched, cracked, misaligned. One had too many joints in his limbs. Another had eyes too far apart and a jaw that never quite shut. A woman staggered past, her spine arching under a ridge of scaled bone. They didn’t move like beasts or humans, just somewhere wrong between.

Someone near the back made a sound.

Cassian paused. He had another image in mind. A massive dog, white-furred and and brown hair, crouched low. Naaah.

No need for that one.

He turned back to the class. “Eventually, other communities developed their own methods. Different places, different magic. You see the spread as early humans wandered and made contact, or war, with each other. There’s scattered accounts from early Mesopotamian tribes using blood-bond rituals. Some early Arctic groups used dream-state transformations, fuelled by fasting and herbs that’d knock you sideways even now. All of them messy. All of them dangerous.”

He walked to the front again “Then came refinement. South African tribes, those who actually survived the early merging process, began to develop frameworks. Repeatable patterns. Ritual structures. And from there, the first recorded Animagi who could shift back and forth without losing parts of themselves.”

He leaned against the desk, arms crossed. “Of course, none of this got written down neatly. Most was passed by oral tradition, and the few scraps we do have are usually second-hand at best, filtered through colonial wizarding scholars who thought anything non-European was either nonsense or dark magic.”

“Now,” he continued, tapping his wand against the board again. “Let’s talk classification.”

A new projection appeared, simpler this time, two columns, side by side.

“Animagus. Metamorphmagus.”

He looked at the class. “Who knows the difference?”

Hermione’s hand shot up. Again.

Cassian gestured lazily. “Anyone else?”

Silence.

“Granger, you may now speak.”

She glanced around, then said, “Animagi choose a single animal form. Metamorphmagi can alter their appearance at will, but not fully change species.”

“Correct.” Cassian pointed at the left column. “Animagi are limited to one form. You don’t get to pick. The magic chooses for you. It’s like your soul running a compatibility test with the rest of the animal kingdom and saying, ‘There. That one. Hope you like feathers.'”

Lavender raised her hand, hesitant. “So… you could be, like, a slug?”

Cassian considered it. “Technically, yes. If that’s the best fit. Would be a bit rubbish in a chase, mind you.”

Ron snorted.

“Now,” Cassian continued, “becoming an Animagus today isn’t the same as it was. We’ve got records. Procedures. Legal registration. But even now, the process isn’t quick, and it’s definitely not safe if you botch it. Ask your parents what happened to Elspeth Mirke years back. Half-turned. Took a team of specialists to convince her lungs she wasn’t meant to breathe through her back.”

Seamus muttered, “Nope.”

“Exactly,” Cassian said. “Nope.”

The board flicked again, showing a circular diagram this time, stages of training.

“The modern method involves a focus object. You’ll hear more about that in your seventh year, if you’re foolish enough to try. You carry it with you for a month, build a bond. There’s meditation, ritual potions, self-monitoring spells. And then, when all goes right, one morning you shift.”

He snapped his fingers.

“And if it doesn’t go right,” he added, “someone in St Mungo’s has to scrape you out of your own kneecap.”

Someone near the front whimpered.

“Now,” he said, raising his voice slightly over the rising discomfort, “why does any of this matter?”

He let the question hang a moment.

“Because it’s the best example you’ll ever get of magical identity. You don’t control what you become. The animal you shift into, it’s not about what you want to be. It’s what you are. Somewhere deep enough magic can see it.”

He tapped his chest. “Animagus magic is honest. Brutally so. The raw, inconvenient truth.”

“And yes. Sometimes, that truth isn’t pretty. But it’s still you.”

Cassian let the lights come back up with a flick. The illusions faded. Chairs creaked. A few students avoided his eye.

He straightened. “We’ll cover registration laws next week. For now, homework, give me five examples of Animagus use in recorded magical history, and at least one instance of Animagus deception.”

There was a groan from half the class.

“Dismissed,” Cassian said. “Try not to chew on any classmates on the way out.”

***

Harry and Neville stayed behind while the rest of the room emptied out in twos and threes, still buzzing from the lesson.

“Alright, future Patronus-casters,” he said, glancing between them. “Sorted your happy memories, then?”

Both nodded. Bit tense, but not dithering. Good enough.

He stepped forward and nudged the edge of a wooden chest with his boot, dragging it into the middle of the rune circle. The latch jiggled.

“The charming rune-carver you know as Professor Babbling got bored over Christmas and decided to improve the art of terror.” He pointed at the faded sigil etched into the side on the ground. “This little number here rewires the boggart’s usual game. Doesn’t matter what you fear most. Step in front of it, and it becomes a Dementor.”

Cassian crouched to check the binding line around the base, gave it a quick tap with his wand, then stood. “I was going to call it unethical. Then I realised it was brilliant. So here we are.”

Harry glanced sideways at Neville, then took a step forward.

“Alright then,” Cassian muttered, wand already at the ready to step in if needed.

The chest flew open with a creak that echoed far too loud in the quiet room. Smoke poured out. It twisted into shape fast, cloak, rotten breath of a mouth, no face, just that gaping hole, and the sudden drop in temperature.

Harry raised his wand. “Expecto Patronum!”

Light burst out, not a full shape, but it held. Stronger than before. The mist snapped into a bright arc and hit the boggart-Dementor straight in the chest. It staggered back.

“Hold it,” Cassian said.

Harry pushed forward. Another shout. The silver light thickened, not an animal yet, but close.

The boggart let out that sucking noise, the one no one ever quite got used to, and vanished with a snap into the trunk.

Harry dropped his wand arm, panting heavily.

“Better,” Cassian said. “That was something real.”

Harry beamed. “Thank you, sir.”

Cassian waved him off, already nudging the trunk shut with his foot. “Don’t thank me. That was you.”

Neville stepped up in Harry’s place. Cassian flicked his wand. The latch snapped. The boggart spilled out again.

Neville raised his. “Expecto Patronum!”

Silver light burst from the tip. The boggart recoiled as the magic hit, tripping over its own cloak in a weird sort of stagger before collapsing back into the trunk with a bang.

The lid slammed shut.

Neville stood blinking, panting hard, wand still raised.

Cassian tilted his head. “Well?”

Neville blinked again, looked down at his wand. “I think that worked.”

Cassian clapped a hand to each of their shoulders. “Great job, boys. I’m proud of both of you.”

Neville smiled brightly. Harry looked like he wasn’t sure if it was sarcasm or a compliment and decided to take it as both.

Cassian slung an arm around each of their necks like he was dragging two reluctant mates out of a pub. “Right. Let’s sneak into the kitchens and celebrate.”

Neville blinked. “Are we allowed to?”

Cassian didn’t stop walking. “So long as I am with you.”

The halls were mostly empty, benefits of staying after hours, or being the one with the keys. Cassian led them down the familiar narrow stairway when he felt a pair of eyes watching from the shadows.

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Just sayings. Shou Tucker would react to chapters. He would probably mix everything but still.

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