While Harry dressed in the predawn hour a pair of steady cat eyes followed his every move. So early, the only movement in the boys' dorm room was Harry bustling about in the darkness putting on his exercise clothes and the almost metronome-like back and forth flick of the cat's tail.

Harry was kneeling on the floor tying up his trainers when the cat acting as both alarm clock and watchman grew impatient and let out a meow. In the comparative silence of the room, it may as well have been a raucous roar.

"Shh..." Harry chided, but he wasn't actually upset or annoyed. He was in too good a mood to be grumpy about possibly waking his roommates. The cat's near-black eyes met Harry's. Their pupils were nearly dilated to the same degree, and Harry knew his vision was only a fraction worse than his animal companion's. By now, he was confident of those kinds of things. He knew because he could feel the unfettered strength of his animagus form great and stirring in his chest, just behind his sternum.

After his first transformation into the panther he could tell he was changed. Since that day he always felt there was a powerful reserve dormant in him, lying in wait, waiting to be tapped. Ready to be unleashed at his command. It never left him completely, never slipped from his awareness. It was the new normal for Harry Potter. He had no recourse but to adjust to it.

That adjustment was the best Harry had ever felt in his young life. His animagus form was strong. It was decisive. It was unapologetic. It was freedom in a sense Harry had never known before.

Hermione had realized quickly after that first night, after the first change, that they would have to find a time when no one else would be around to be their animal forms. One couldn't learn how to move in a body they never adopted, after all. So they changed their regular running time from evening to morning before classes. No one was awake at that hour and it was well within school rules. There were curfews dictating how late students could stay up, but not how early they could rise. Switching their runs to early morning meant Harry and Hermione could make their usual circle of the grounds... and that they could slip unnoticed into the Forbidden Forest where they would become the cats.

Hermione a lioness and Harry a black jaguar. Hermione had researched both their forms, naturally, and come to the conclusion that Harry was more jaguar than leopard, since both felines could come in the black variety and looked very similar. She decided he favored the jaguar based upon the underlying spot pattern beneath the black of his coat and the body build of his cat form, stouter and stronger than the leopard's. Harry had looked at the picture in the book Hermione was reading, to know what he looked like from Hermione's perspective, but he was more interested in his capabilities than the National Geographic special on his animagus form's source animal. That was the beauty of their morning runs.

Given what they knew, Harry and Hermione should have been more reticent about traipsing heedlessly into the Forbidden Forest, for both the banned nature as far as Hogwarts's rules were concerned and also for the inherent dangers found therein. However, it turned out Harry and Hermione's cat forms were recklessly unafraid. As lioness and jaguar, they didn't fear the things that would have frightened them as children. Not when they were so fast, so strong, so in touch with the world around them that it seemed they saw, smelled, and heard everything a mile away.

That pure sense of invincibility, of speed and wild alacrity, well made up for the sleep lost when Harry had to rise before the sun.

"Mrowerrr."

Harry, already buzzing about the impending change, smiled at the housecat. "I'm nearly ready, Crookshanks."

Crookshanks was sitting across from Harry, inches from Ron's bed with his back to the snoozing redhead. He calmly swished his long-haired tail from one side of his body to the other, managing to look rather expectant. Much like he'd waited on Harry for the past several mornings. It was a new routine that the cat was Harry's first sight when he woke. How Hermione had gotten Crookshanks to be their go-between and shared alarm clock Harry didn't know, but he confessed he never minded the kneazle's pig-nosed face in his first thing in the morning. Strangely enough, Harry found he liked Hermione's familiar even more than he used to. Maybe it was from experiencing the world from a cat's perspective; perhaps it created some sense of kinship or common ground.

Ron grumbled and rolled over, unknowingly throwing one of his arms over the side of the bed. It smacked an unsuspecting Crookshanks right on the top of his head and the cat spun indignantly and hissed. He swiped at Ron's dangling hand with unsheathed claws and Ron woke with a curse. "Bloody 'ell!"

"B'quiet! Pity's sake..." one of the other boys slurred. It sounded a bit like Seamus, but at such an ungodly hour it could just as well have been Neville.

Ron sat upright, blinking blearily. He squinted hard at his hand, at Crookshanks looking supremely not sorry, then at Harry standing near his own bed fully dressed for his morning run. Ron was straining to see in the dark, but Harry touched the jaguar, only brushed the slumbering power in him, and for it he saw better in the dark. That ability, when Harry quite accidentally stumbled upon how to use it, had surprised even Hermione. She hadn't known they would be able to do that, utilize their animagus capabilities and gifts without physically becoming their animagus forms. Of course, once she learned what Harry had figured out how to do, she set them both to practicing it. Harry had mastered that feat faster and more effortlessly than Hermione. It took her a good bit of concentration and effort to merely touch the lioness without rushing into her skin, and even when she managed to do it that ability was never as acutely tapped as when Harry did it. It only made Hermione want to practice that aspect of being an animagus all the harder. It was yet another thing they worked on together in the early morning hours.

Ron picked up his pillow and hurled it viciously at Crookshanks when Ron's sleep-addled brain finally put together what had happened. The cat streaked away with a spitting scream and disappeared through the dorm room door.

"Damn cat!" Ron seethed, "why can't Hermione keep her bloody pet under control?" Ron flopped down on his back on the bed, groaning when he noticed the absence of a pillow to lay his head on.

"Sorry about that," Harry said on Crookshanks's behalf, though he really wasn't sorry. Crookshanks wouldn't be, because there was no guilt or shame or embarrassment there. Not as a cat. Harry knew.

Ron grumbled under his breath then flopped over on to his stomach.

"I'll see you at breakfast," Harry said as he stooped, retrieved Ron's pillow turned projectile, and tossed it back to his friend.

Ron grunted when the pillow hit him in the back and he flipped over. "You know, I thought you two were barking for that running business before, but this getting up before dawn! You're both totally mad, you know that."

Harry smirked. "Still don't care to join us?" He could invite Ron all he liked without worry, because Ron would rather take Snape to the Yule Ball than crawl of out bed before sunrise to go running.

Ron snorted, stuffed his pillow back under his head, and promptly rolled over to go back to sleep. Harry suppressed a chuckle and quickly left the boys' dorm.

Hermione was waiting for him in the deserted common room, Crookshanks purring contently in her arms. She was dressed and ready for their run and from the light in her eyes when she caught sight of him, he could tell she was just as eager as he. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail but a section had fallen loose.

"Took you long enough." Hermione set Crookshanks down on the couch and turned to face Harry. She was practically glowing. She'd been alive and vibrant in a way Harry couldn't rightly describe since the transformation. It was like he could look at her and the untamed elation of the lioness was just behind her eyes. But it was more than that. There was the newfound suppleness to her body movements, the keenness in her eyes, even the way she smiled. It was affected, touched, all of it. The grasslands were in her. Like the jungle lay in him.

Harry crossed the room, and without even thinking about it he reached up and tangled his fingers in her bit of wild, unbound hair. The way he'd find himself burying his fingers in her mane when he was boy and she cat. Hermione cocked her head, let her eyes flutter shut, and she rubbed her cheek faintly against the palm of his hand. As though it was completely unsurprising that either should do exactly what they did. She opened her eyes and smiled. "Come on, then, let's go." She moved into him before turning, brushed her shoulder against his, and left for the portrait hole. Harry was quickly on her heels.

The sky was barely painted maroon and violet when they emerged on to the grounds of the school. Only the most ambitious birds were stirring to song and the crickets had called it a night. It was the hour before daylight that Harry and Hermione were growing to know very well. With no one else at Hogwarts awake yet, it was as though the whole of the world, for that time, belonged solely to them.

Harry and Hermione wordlessly started running. They had a pattern by now, a path they followed every day. They each knew it as well as the other, so talk was unnecessary. They headed away from the castle, passed the north shore of the Black Lake, and skirted the boundary between grounds and forest, step for step, strides matched.

When they'd circled the castle, once they'd reached the point where the most of the massive school they could see was the greenhouses, they veered. Hermione went first, dodging into the tree line as though trying to feint out a pursuer. Harry jinked and followed suit. They were both quickly swallowed by the Forbidden Forest.

They ran on, weaving between trees and around shrubs and bushes. Vague, indistinct shadows, struggling to exist given the sparse light of early morning, passed softly over them as they passed beneath branches and vaulted ceilings of leaves. They stayed side by side, almost shoulder to shoulder.

They were running right for a fallen tree, its trunk blocking the path.

Neither Harry nor Hermione moved to go around. Neither of them flinched or balked at the quickly approaching obstruction.

When they reached the log they both jumped. They kicked off and dove forward, arms reaching out in front of them, pulling their bodies horizontal like leaping from a diving board, as though they meant to hit the ground on the other side with a drop shoulder-roll.

Instead they came down on the other side as cats. They landed gracefully on sure paws and with barely a bobble continued their run through the trees.

It was flawless. Had anyone been there to see it they might even call it breathtaking. One might even mistake them for animagi of several years' experience. It seemed they had learned so much in a remarkably short time. Scantly a week possessing the ability to change into animal form, and yet they had excelled in leaps and bounds. They'd mastered transforming with their clothes (to their shared relief), as well as managing to switch from cat to human and back again without losing their balance or tipping drunkenly to one side or the other when their center of gravity sudden shifted. They could smoothly transition from one form to another until it was uncertain which was the more natural state.

At times, Harry wasn't sure of the answer.

Hermione gave a playful flick of her tail and she accelerated ahead of Harry, far faster than she could have run as a girl. With a thrill of adrenaline in his veins, Harry gave a guttural sound of merriment and took off after her.

They charged with abandon through the forest. Trees passed by them as gray blurs to their joy. Potential dangers in the notoriously treacherous woods were mere afterthoughts.

Harry closed on Hermione's gracefully racing form. He saw her left ear tick back toward him to better catch the sound of his approach, and he put on a burst of speed. He passed her. When threading and wending between trees at a dead run, Harry was faster. If they hit a clearing with open space, room to go flat-out, Hermione was the quicker. They were discovering slight differences in their abilities such as that. For now, amid bramble and bush, the advantage went to Harry, and he used it.

The wind sang in his ears and slicked along his sides like cool water.

Freedom. Absolute freedom.

Then he jumped and gave a short yowl when Hermione lightly nipped his haunches. Harry turned a leaping stride into a spin. He whirled to face Hermione, agile and swift, and opened his black arms to snare her. He caught her around the neck with one forearm, claws safely sheathed, as she barreled into him.

They went down together in a tangle of legs and tails. They rolled and tumbled and when finally they came to a stop Harry was on his back and Hermione's head caught between his forelegs. She was half lying on top of him, panting from the exertion of their chase and tussle. Her dark brown eyes were glittering in feral delight as she looked down at him. Harry's tail was twitching madly with glee.

Hermione lowered her head and rubbed her chin against his chest. Then she brought up a paw and gently swatted at his face. Harry made a mewing sound in the back of his throat and twisted beneath her. He righted himself but still Hermione would not get up off him. She lay atop him, pinned him with her upper body, and lightly took the nape of his neck between her teeth.

Harry made a fake sound of complaint and pulled free of her teeth only to reach back and rub his head against her shoulder, whiskers tingling with the dancing sensation of contact with her.

Then the tawny limbs around his shoulders became slender girl's arms. The weight atop Harry lessened and the smell of her changed to an all-together different but just as familiar scent.

Presently, Hermione the witch was draped over Harry the black jaguar, like a girl might wrap around a beloved family dog, and Harry closed his eyes. He didn't change to match her right away. Just as he sometimes enjoyed touching Hermione the lioness with human hands, so did she find enjoyment in being human while in the company of Harry the panther. It was an affinity to which they'd mutually confessed, so it was not unusual for one to stay human while the other became the large cat. It permitted the curiosity inborn to each form, human and cat, to interact with the other as a species different from its own.

Hermione rested her head against the point of his shoulders. "If I'd known being an animagus would be like this..." she said dreamily.

Harry turned on to his back again, rolled under her arms, and soon he was looking up at Hermione from his back. Hermione smiled down at him, her hair even less contained by the ponytail band than it had been to start. She looked the wilder for it, and in this wild hour it was only fitting. The tip of Harry's tail was in a constant state of motion and he hooked her around the arm gently with one massive, curled paw.

Hermione chuckled and smoothed her hand over his muzzle. "Come on, Harry, I want to talk to you."

Harry changed back just like that, as easy as he might have removed his glasses. Hermione ended up with her upper body lying across his chest, the both of them spread out on the forest floor like beach-going vacationers. As though neither was even aware of the dreary, ominous Forbidden Forest thick all around them.

Neither of them made a move to get up.

"Okay, so talk," Harry said with a playful smile.

Hermione folded her arms atop his chest and dropped her chin to rest on top of her hands. She gazed down thoughtfully at Harry, his face only inches from hers. He watched her back, waiting patiently. She still had the kiss of the wind pink in her cheeks. Once again, Harry did not fight the compulsion to reach up and tangle his fingers in her thick hair.

"Harry..." Hermione said as he played idly with her hair, "now, don't go playing the modest card when I say this... but you know how you're a remarkably powerful wizard?"

Harry made a face.

"Don't even try and deny it, Harry Potter. You are."

Harry dropped his hand from her hair only to place both behind his head and interlace his fingers into an improvised pillow. He could tell Hermione was on about something, and it usually didn't do any good to try and stand against her. "Okay, let's say for now that I am, what about it?"

Hermione shifted one hand free from supporting her head to pick off an errant bit of leaf that had fallen on Harry's neck. "Well, I was wondering if maybe you might actually be able to perform magic in your animagus form."

Harry's eyebrows rose. "As the cat? Is that even possible?"

"I don't know. There's not a lot of literature on the specific abilities of animagi, truth be told, maybe because it's so individualistic concerning the witch or wizard in question. We didn't even know it would be possible to tap into things like heightened hearing and sight while still holding human shape until you managed it. But I got to wondering about the possibility of you doing magic in animagus form because magic like that would clearly have to be wandless, and you can do a fair bit of wandless magic when you want to."

"You mean when I'm in a right temper. I don't think that really counts. It's not wandless, it's uncontrolled."

"It's both. Maybe you could hone it. You know, learn to control it."

"Hmmm," Harry shifted to get up and Hermione sat up and away from him. Harry rolled up to his feet and looked around the forest thoughtfully. "I don't know that I can do wandless magic the way you're talking about. Like Dumbledore does."

Hermione stood and faced him. "I bet you could if you worked at it. I don't think any of us really know how powerful you can be, Harry. Not even you." Harry turned his eyes down to her and the doubt was in his gaze and stance. Hermione had so much faith in him, but he knew he wasn't as strong or powerful as she believed him to be. Hermione was not one easily deterred, however. "We tackled the challenge of becoming animagi because we thought it might help you against Voldemort, right? Well, mastering wandless magic would, too. Even if you couldn't do it as the cat, being able to do it as a wizard would really be a benefit to you. I'm confident of that."

He was dubious. Wandless magic was a very difficult to perform magical talent, with only the likes of Dumbledore truly mastering it. Harry couldn't honestly hope to rank with Dumbledore for magical ability. But still, Harry had to admit that Hermione's animagus idea had come through brilliantly, and he'd been uncertain of that, too, at the onset. Perhaps here as well he should follow Hermione on blind faith. "Well, if we did decide to try our hand at wandless magic, is that something you can teach us to do from a book as well?"

Hermione's eyes widened at his words. "Oh, I only meant you, Harry. I couldn't do it."

He canted his head and regarded her querulously. "Why not you, too?"