Atropos → george weasley

xiv. the perfect red herring

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fourteen

the perfect red herring

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The next day, after her second Potions lesson during which Ottilie saved Vincent thrice from causing certain destruction, she ate a lightning-quick lunch and headed straight for the library. She needed to research if she wanted her idea to work.

For days, she'd been spending her free time coming up with plans to sneak through the castle at night undetected. All of them had led to dead ends but, yesterday, she finally knew what to do. It was going to be a difficult and dangerous process, she was sure. But, after all of her brainstorming, there had been no better options.

An early plan she'd considered was using an invisibility cloak. But that wasn't ideal because she needed a reliable one. The common cheap ones still allowed an observer to see vague forms if they were looking closely, and Ottilie had to assume Madam Armani and Madam Flaminia would be looking closely. Unfortunately, the sort of proper, dependable invisibility cloaks she needed were exceedingly rare. Ottilie had no idea where even to start looking for one.

Disillusionment Charms were another option, but the charm didn't actually make you invisible. It just turned the user into a human chameleon, and she wasn't sure if that would be enough to completely hide her identity from the portrait.

(And, though she was reluctant to admit it, she was also not good enough at the charm to make it viable. It didn't hide her at all. Instead, it just made her look like she was standing in front of a movie projector: the colors on her skin were unnatural, and her features still discernible.)

After that, she thought she'd cracked the case when saw that the library register claimed it stocked an invisible book on invisibility. She reckoned it may have had good advice, but she never could find it.

So, she now knew she'd have to settle on one rather impractical solution. Impractical, yes, but she had to admit it was also exciting.

The idea came to her after she watched Millicent stop Marvin from sneaking out of the Slytherin common room. She had suddenly remembered Professor Binns telling her about cat Animagi.

It was the perfect plan. Mrs. Norris and other students' cats always roamed the castle at night. So, if Ottilie could turn into a cat, she could easily get away with walking directly in front of that portrait. Or any portrait, for that matter. They'd all just assume she was some Slytherin's pet, doing her usual late-night prowling through the castle.

And, even though she had never been much of an animal person, Ottilie couldn't deny that being able to turn into a cat at will was an intoxicatingly intriguing idea.

She remembered watching girls at her primary school spend their breaks outside pretending to be cats out in the field. Ottilie had always silently mocked their silly games as they meowed in the grass and licked the backs of their hands.

Now, with a new perspective, she supposed she could see the appeal.

Still, by the end of the weekend, she was no closer to transforming into a cat than those girls had been.

It marked the third afternoon she'd wasted on a fruitless search for instructions for the transformation process. The library contained many books that mentioned Animagi, but all only explained in vague terms what they were. There were no instructions—not even the vaguest hint—on how she could become one.

The only progress she made was finding a book on the history of self-transfiguration. The twelfth chapter was all about the eighteenth-century law requiring Animagi to register themselves legally with the Ministry. Knowing there was a section containing government documents on the second floor, Ottilie searched there for a good hour until she found a registry for Animagi. She planned to find someone who could help her.