Chapter 117: Storm Practice

Rain arrived before dawn and stayed for three days, striking the windows of Grimmauld Place hard enough to drown the quieter portraits.

Edward used the weather as an excuse to remain indoors. Sirius used it as an excuse to make practice less comfortable.

"A spell that works only when you are dry, rested, and pleased with yourself is a classroom trick," he said.

They moved Patronus practice to the covered courtyard, where the rain could be heard without soaking the floor. Edward began with the same modest memory that had worked before.

"Expecto Patronum."

Silver mist left his wand and spread waist-high. It held for several breaths, then thinned.

No animal emerged.

Sirius nodded. "Again after a rest."

Edward lowered his wand. "It is stronger than last week."

"Denser. Not stronger in every useful sense. A Dementor does not grade aesthetics."

The correction prevented Edward from treating every visible change as progress toward a promised form.

They spent the next session on movement. Sirius walked around him while Edward maintained the mist. The first turn broke his concentration. The second reduced the Patronus to a narrow ribbon. On the third, Edward kept a patch of silver between Sirius and himself while changing position.

"That is useful," Sirius said. "You protected a direction."

Edward recorded it as such.

Occlumency remained rougher.

Sirius began each attempt by naming the memory he intended to touch. Edward prepared a surface image and tried to keep deeper associations from following it. Sometimes the exercise worked. Sometimes one smell or word opened a chain of memory before he realized what had happened.

When Sirius named Regulus, Edward's thoughts jumped to the cave, the locket, Kreacher, and the witnessed destruction.

Sirius ended the probe immediately.

"You followed the association yourself," he said. "I barely pushed."

"Then how do I stop it?"

"You do not stop having associations. You learn to notice the first one before the rest becomes a road."

That answer was less dramatic than an impenetrable mental wall. It was also something Edward could practice.

The Animagus preparation continued in parallel. At each required time, Edward used his walnut wand exactly as the reviewed instructions demanded. The Mandrake leaf remained intact. Sirius checked it. The healer checked it again after a week.

Nothing about the process granted new power day by day.

That fact disappointed Draco when he visited through the Floo.

"So you have been doing this for weeks and still cannot transform?"

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Edward tried to answer around the leaf.

Sirius translated. "He says that is the point."

"How do you know?"

"Because I had the same leaf in my mouth when your father was still learning not to fall off a broom."

Draco wisely changed subjects.

The storm worsened that evening. Lightning flashed beyond the windows while Edward reviewed the first-transformation plan. One line bothered him: expected animal form unknown.

"What if the form is magically unusual?"

Sirius looked up. "All Animagus forms are magical in the sense that a wizard becomes an animal. Most forms are ordinary species. There are rare disputed accounts of magical creatures, but you do not plan around the most flattering story."

Edward thought of his fire affinity and the old Black family fascination with phoenixes.

"So I assume ordinary until evidence says otherwise."

"Exactly."

When the lunar cycle ended, the preserved leaf went into the prepared mixture under supervision. The potion was not ready to drink immediately. Sirius sealed it, the healer signed the container, and Kreacher placed it in the protected room where the remaining conditions could be met.

Edward felt almost cheated by the lack of spectacle.

"Good," Sirius said when he admitted it. "That means the safeguards are working."

They waited.

During that waiting, Dumbledore returned with news about Sirius's old school artifact. Filch did still possess a confiscated blank parchment matching Sirius's description. Dumbledore had not opened or activated it. He placed it in his own office under adult custody until Remus Lupin, who was joining the staff that year, could confirm its identity.

Sirius looked relieved and embarrassed.

"Remus will recognize it."

"And Peter's work is part of it," Dumbledore said. "Which means we will also consider whether he built any way to deceive it."

Edward appreciated the objection.

Sirius did not.

"We never built a secret Peter-is-actually-a-rat exception."

"You built it as teenagers who believed they were cleverer than every professor in the castle," Dumbledore replied. "I will allow for optimism."

Edward hid a smile.

The storm broke before midnight. Rain softened to a steady whisper against the windows.

Edward stood in the courtyard one last time and cast his Patronus.

Silver mist unfolded, denser than before but still shapeless. It drifted between him and the open door, held while he took three steps, and faded only when he lowered his wand.

That was the form it had now.

Edward did not need to invent an animal inside it to call the practice worthwhile.

The Animagus potion waited in its sealed container. The Map waited in Dumbledore's office. Peter waited at Hogwarts without knowing how many questions now pointed toward him.

For once, Edward let all three things remain where they were.

Remus arrived two evenings later, thin and tired from travel but alert enough to notice every locked door Sirius pretended not to watch. Dumbledore had already told him that new evidence existed. He had not told him what conclusion to draw from it.

Sirius stayed across the room while Remus read the old Ministry record and the statements concerning Peter's missing finger. Neither man seemed willing to trust the first emotion that crossed his face.

"You believed I did it," Sirius said at last.

"I believed twelve bodies, a street full of witnesses, and Peter's finger," Remus replied. "I also believed the Ministry had actually investigated."

Sirius flinched harder at that than Edward expected.

Dumbledore placed the Marauder's Map on the table only after the conversation settled. Remus identified the handwriting, the activation phrase, and several flaws known only to the four students who had created it. He did not declare it infallible.

"It can be fooled by things we never anticipated," Remus said. "Polyjuice does not change the name it displays, but that does not mean every enchantment in Britain obeys the same rules. If it shows Peter, we corroborate."

Edward nodded. That was the standard he wanted and, increasingly, the standard he needed imposed on him.

They agreed that the Map would remain in adult custody. Scheduled observations could be made in Dumbledore's office or another secured room with Remus present. Edward would not carry it through the corridors, and Harry would not be recruited to watch his own dormitory.

After Remus left, Edward tried his Patronus again under Sirius's supervision. Silver mist spilled from his wand, brighter than before but still without shape. For an instant he wanted the night's progress to mean everything was improving at once.

Then the mist broke apart.

Edward lowered his wand.

"Still mist," Sirius said.

"Still useful against nothing yet."

"Useful as evidence that you can cast the charm at all. The rest takes time."

Edward had spent years treating time as an obstacle to overcome. That summer, it was beginning to look more like a safety measure.