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stormquill · 5 years

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mahpiohanzia | chapter four [Remus Lupin/Reader]

You are an Animagus-in-training nearing the end of your education. He is Generic Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher Replacement #7. Your final year at Hogwarts couldn’t possibly be any stranger than the previous six...but seven is one of the most powerful numbers in magic, after all.

Author’s Notes: Co-written by Andrew. Follow the blog @mahpiohanzia.

Notes: sorry this is late! I got sick and missed january's update. it's a short one, but I felt it was important to keep this sequence separate from the rest of november's events. so much happens in november / the next chapter, I didn't want to minimize the importance of this event by relegating it to an intro.

fun fact, the early november storm is actually canon! it happens the whole first week of november, and the 6th is when harry gets attacked by dementors on the quidditch pitch. the full moon schedule and the canon storm along with how important full moon cycles are canonically to the animagus creation process--look, the timeline falls into place so well, i'm convinced the universe itself wanted me to write this fic.

next update is scheduled for the 19th. see you then!

Amato Animo Animato Animagus.

You were normally still in bed at sunrise, before being jarred awake by the bone-conducting vibrations of your enchanted watch, the Animagus spell becoming a quiet ritual in an otherwise sleeping dorm room. Sunset’s observances were performed in a variety of places, depending on where you were at the time—sometimes whispered behind library bookshelves or in bathroom stalls, or enunciated loud and joyously in whatever isolated corner of the grounds you found yourself studying in.

You were proud of how far you’d come, and each repetition of the spell made you feel more and more alive.

You would repeat the incantation twice per day, pointing the tip of your ebony wand towards at your heart. Sometimes, when you cast it, you could feel the surreal echo of another heartbeat syncing itself with your own, like the ghost of a second consciousness growing inside of you.

As you waited for the lightning storm, you wondered which beast laid dormant within you.

You knew from your studies that one’s Animagus form was assigned, not chosen, based on how facets of your personality intersected with the nature of your own magical energy.

Still, you worried.

Millions of species lived on this planet, most of which you’d likely never even heard of. Statistically speaking, what were the chances your new form would be something awkward, like a cockroach, or a garden slug? Or something even more dangerously impractical, like an elephant, or an ant, or literally anything that lived underwater?

Years upon years of study just to turn into a sea bass.

You might have enough time to be disappointed before dying of embarrassment.

All your worries notwithstanding, you continued your scheduled spellcasting without fail, with your wand to your chest and your heart pounding to the rhythm of another. You resolved to trust yourself and whatever new image was forthcoming—which, you knew, were one and the same. The form you were to become was not the emergence of something other, but an emergence of the self.

And for better or for worse, you would be worthy of it.

In the early morning hours of the second of November, you were woken by a Head Slytherin in their pyjamas, a lit wand in their hand.

“Professor Snape wants to see you,” they said, keeping their voice low to not disturb your roommates. “Says it’s an emergency.”

As you tried to clear away your sleepy stupor, it took a few moments for you to understand the sympathetic sense of panic weighing in the other student’s eyes: an emergency call at this time of night usually meant a serious injury or death in the family.

Thunder clapped outside your window, striking you with sudden clarity.

You knew better.

You were led to Snape’s office at once. You’d hastily thrown on your school robes before heading out—you didn’t feel like facing the upcoming task, or Snape, wearing nothing but your nightclothes.

Snape was at the center of his stone-flask office when the two of you arrived, keeping his shoulders square and his hands folded behind his back. His black night-robes looked only marginally more comfortable than his day ones.

“That will be all,” he said to the other student. They nodded and left, making their way back to the dormitories.

As soon as you were alone, Snape turned his heel and approached a wall of his office, taking out his wand and making a small, complicated movement you didn’t recognize. A small stone brick dislodged itself from the wall, allowing him to remove your crystal phial from behind it. Hidden from sunlight and left to cure for several weeks, the once random slurry of ingredients had transformed into a homogeneous, deep-red liquid.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

You obliged.

Sounds of the incoming storm followed you down the hallways. For how real this was becoming, you still felt as if you were navigating a dream, wandering through dungeon corridors at the tail of someone carrying a vial of spit mixed with a dead insect and an old leaf.

Though you had no wand pointed at yourself, your heart was already beating fast enough for two.

The large, empty hall he led you to was as frigid as the rest of the dungeons: not a classroom, but one of the many spare chambers kept cleared for various use. The torches lining the stone walls were already lit, revealing the silhouette of a rather tired-looking McGonagall, standing nearby in her night-robes.

“Professor,” you beamed. “You’re here.”

“Of course,” she said, as if it were obvious. “I’ve spent the last four years preparing you for this—it would be a shame to miss the debut.”

“Procedure mandates a minimum of two witnesses for the first transformation,” Snape drawled. “Nothing more than a requirement for your registration with the Ministry.”

McGonagall clicked her tongue. “Come now, Severus, I think you can afford to be a little more excited.”

Snape remained expressionless.

Somehow, having McGonagall present dulled the anxious edge of the situation. Though you would never admit it, if something went wrong and you had to choose between the two of them for help, you would choose McGonagall without hesitation. You wouldn’t be able to handle impatient ridicule for any missteps tonight, not while you were already teetering on the precipice of a faltering confidence.

“The potion appears adequate,” Snape said, examining the phial closely beneath the torchlight. “I take it you’ve performed the incantation?”

“Twice a day,” you nodded. “Sunup and sundown.”

“Never missing an instance?”

“No, sir.”

“On your life?”

“...yes, sir.”

“Hm,” he sneered, sounding unconvinced. “We shall see.”

He handed the potion to you. You looked at it as if it were a live grenade.

Reaching into your robes, you pointed your wand to your heart and recited the spell, one last time.

“Amato Animo Animato Animagus.”

Years of study, of patience, of vigor, all leading up to this moment.

You uncorked the phial and braced for the worst.

As the blood-red concoction hit your tongue, you found Snape’s words inside your head, words you carried with you these past two years like a mantra.

Hold your nerve.

The potion ran thin and tasted stale, imbued with the faint flavour of Mandrake leaf drowned in standing water.

The reaction was immediate.

The second heartbeat rematerialized beneath your chest, pulsing distinct and out of time with your own, growing faster and more powerful with every beat. The wand and phial fell from your hands; you dropped to your knees and pressed both hands over your heart, convinced it was going to burst from your chest if you didn’t try holding it in.

It should’ve hurt, you thought, but it didn’t. None of it did.

Pins and needles tingled at your fingertips, surging up your arms and spreading through your body like waves of static. An immense pressure was suddenly bearing down on you from all sides, as if a magical gravity was pushing against you, into you, forcefully reshaping you into a mold that was not your own. Too many strange sensations happened all at once, in an instant—your glasses sinking into your face, your robes seeming to melt against the surface of your skin—it was horrific, otherworldly.

But then it wasn’t.

Your out-of-sync heartbeats harmonized until you felt only one remain.

You opened your eyes. You were lower to the ground than before, much lower, but whatever body you occupied now felt just as natural to you as your first.

A secondary consciousness swiftly joined your normal thoughts, snapping at you in quick, sharp compulsions.

Inside. Indoors. Danger. Get out. Out, out. Now.

The sudden urge to escape was overwhelming, enough to move your body on its own accord; torn between the instinct to run and the rationality to stay, you stumbled over your own feet and fell over.

‘I’m safer here,’ you told yourself. ‘It’s okay. I’m safe.’

Up, then. Up.

That, you couldn’t ignore.

Before you could stop yourself, you lifted yourself up, up, up. You were lighter than you could possibly imagine. Lighter than air. Almost hollow.

Stand high. Stand high and look.

You landed in an archway of the chamber, your feet-turned-talons scraping around a corner edge of stone. Being high up felt more comfortable than being on the ground, and it set your panic at ease.

It might as well have been daytime for how clearly you could see into every corner of the dimly lit room. Not only could you see better in the dark, but you could somehow see more than you used to, as if your peripheral vision had been widened by several degrees. The sheer scale of your new optic scope was so much to take in all at once, you found yourself moving your head every few seconds just to properly process all the details.

From below, McGonagall conjured a small puddle of liquid silver on the floor.

Shiny. Get it.

You let yourself come down from the ceiling to investigate. The mystery substance was highly reflective, allowing you to see yourself clearly as you approached it.

You tried to make a noise of surprise, but a garbled croak escaped you instead.

You were bigger than you thought you were—at least two feet long, if not longer. A slightly curved beak took place where your nose and mouth had been. You were completely covered in sleek, oil-black feathers, with the ones around your neck fluffed out in all the wrong places. Uncanny markings lined your eyes where your glasses had been, and there was a thin band of grey around one of your scrawny black ankles, the closest thing to a wrist you had now from where you wore your watch.

The longer you stared in the makeshift mirror, the more relieved you felt. You were a bird—and a common one, at that. Not embarrassing or impractical in the least.

A whole new world of possibilities sent your mind racing. An inconspicuous Animagus form would actually prove useful for a position at the Ministry of Magic, instead of just something impressive to pad your application. With a skill like this, you didn’t need to settle for the mere goal of ‘detective.’ You could be a Hit Wizard.

You could be a goddamn Auror.

Being sure to give you enough space, your professors watched as you carefully examined your own reflection.

“A crow?” Snape asked.

“Too big to be a crow,” McGonagall said, shaking her head. “A raven, I believe.”

“How ominous.” He lowered his voice. “When shall we let them know that turning into the animal is the easy part?”

“Give it a few more minutes.”

#remus lupin #remus lupin x reader #lupin x reader #harry potter imagine #mahpiohanzia

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j-kaiwa · 5 years

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Discussion Article January 7th

The Norwegian Town Where the Sun Doesn't Rise

I spent a year in Tromsø, Norway, where the “Polar Night” lasts all winter—and where rates of seasonal depression are remarkably low. Here’s what I learned about happiness and the wintertime blues.

Located over 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Tromsø, Norway, is home to extreme light variation between seasons. During the Polar Night, which lasts from November to January, the sun doesn’t rise at all. Then the days get progressively longer until the Midnight Sun period, from May to July, when it never sets. After the midnight sun, the days get shorter and shorter again until the Polar Night, and the yearly cycle repeats.

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So, perhaps understandably, many people had a hard time relating when I told them I was moving there.

“I could never live there,” was the most common response I heard. “That winter would make me so depressed,” many added, or “I just get so tired when it’s dark out.”

But the Polar Night was what drew me to Tromsø in the first place.

Despite the city’s extreme darkness, past research has shown that residents of Tromsø have lower rates of wintertime depression than would be expected given the long winters and high latitude. In fact, the prevalence of self-reported depression during the winter in Tromsø, with its latitude of 69°N, is the same as that of Montgomery County, Maryland, at 41°N. While there is some debate among psychologists about the best way to identify and diagnose wintertime depression, one thing seems clear: Residents of northern Norway seem able to avoid much of the wintertime suffering experienced elsewhere—including, paradoxically, in warmer, brighter, more southern locations.

I first learned of Tromsø two years ago, as a recent college graduate looking for more research experience before applying to graduate school for social psychology. In search of an opportunity that would allow me to explore my interests in positive psychology and mental health—and satisfy my sense of adventure—I stumbled upon the work of Joar Vittersø, a psychologist at the University of Tromsø who studies happiness, personal growth, and quality of life.

After reaching out to him via e-mail, I learned that the University of Tromsø is the northernmost university in the world. It seemed like the perfect place to test just how adventurous I really was, while also providing a unique population for a psychology research study: How do the residents of northern Norway protect themselves from wintertime woes? And could these strategies be identified and applied elsewhere, to the same beneficial effects?

A few months after our initial correspondence, Vittersø agreed to serve as my advisor on a research project designed to answer these questions; a year later, after receiving a U.S.-Norway Fulbright to fund my study, I boarded a plane to Norway. When I arrived in Tromsø in August, the Midnight Sun period had just ended, the sky was only dark for an hour or two each night, and the Polar Night was still some three months away.

Tromsø is a tiny island, roughly the same size as Manhattan, and is home to approximately 70,000 inhabitants, making it the second-most populated city north of the Arctic Circle. With everything a person could “need”—a mall, three main shopping streets, and a few movie theaters—but nothing extra, Tromsø felt more like a small suburb than a city. Surrounded by mountains and fjords on all sides, it also felt isolated and wild.

For all that, I soon found Tromsø likable. For the city’s relatively small size, I was pleasantly surprised to find it home to an astounding number of festivals, cultural events, and city-wide celebrations. The main pedestrian street is thrumming every day of the week except Sunday, when most shops are closed, and is particularly lively on Saturdays and after 2 a.m. on weekends.

I settled into my student-housing apartment, with its amazing fjord views and three Norwegian roommates, and began building my Tromsø life. I took Norwegian lessons, which I used mostly to decipher food items in the grocery store, as almost everyone in Norway speaks English. I found a group of friends composed mostly of European international students, all of whom shared my desire to experience all that Tromsø had to offer (and to do it cheaply— Norway is prohibitively expensive). Instead of frequenting bars and restaurants as I had in the U.S., I enjoyed hikes, cabin trips, and yoga with my new friends. I joined several Norwegian meditation groups, which gave me friends outside the student community, and my Norwegian friends in these groups were kind enough to hold conversations in English for my benefit.

I soon found my routine: work on my research and graduate-school applications during the week, and enjoy the outdoors and potluck dinners on the weekends. Over several months, Vittersø and I laid the groundwork for our study, expanding upon the background research I had conducted before coming to Tromsø, deciding what questions we wanted to ask, recruiting participants, and testing the online platform we would use to distribute our survey. I became more comfortable spending time alone, and frequented Tromsø coffee shops where I would spend the day working or reading, nursing a $6 latte to the point of loitering.

As I became more at ease in my foreign surroundings, I discovered an additional benefit of my research topic: Almost everyone I spoke with—in casual conversations, at parties, over psychology-department lunches at the university—had a theory as to why their city flourished during the Polar Night. Some people swore by cod-liver oil, or told me they used lamps that simulated the sun by progressively brightening at a specific time each morning. Others attributed their winter well-being to community and social involvement, Tromsø’s wealth of cultural festivals, or daily commutes made by ski. Most residents, though, simply talked about the Polar Night as if it wasn’t a big deal. Many even expressed excitement about the upcoming season and the skiing opportunities it would bring.

Even so, it wasn’t until October, several months into my project, that I realized I might be asking the wrong kinds of questions. The crystallizing moment was a conversation with my friend Fern, an Australian transplant who had been in Tromsø for more than five years, about how long I was planning to stay. Although my grant technically ended in May, I explained that I hoped to stay through as much of the summer as possible. (Tromsø has only two seasons: a long winter, and a brief summer that arrives almost overnight sometime between late May and late June, at the start of the Midnight Sun period.) “It would be a shame to make it through the winter only to leave right before the best season,” I said.

Without pausing, Fern replied, “I wouldn’t necessarily say summer is the best season.”

Fern’s comment helped me to view my research question with a newfound sense of clarity. It dawned on me that the baseline assumption of my original research proposal had been off: In Tromsø, the prevailing sentiment is that winter is something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured. According to my friends, winter in Tromsø would be full of snow, skiing, the northern lights, and all things koselig, the Norwegian word for “cozy.” By November, open-flame candles would adorn every café, restaurant, home, and even workspace. Over the following months I learned firsthand that, far from a period of absolute darkness, the Polar Night in Tromsø is a time of beautiful colors and soft, indirect light. Even during the darkest times, there are still two or three hours of light a day as the sun skirts just below the horizon, never fully rising. During the longer “days” of the Polar Night, in November and January, the skies can be filled with up to six hours of sunrise and sunset-like colors.

It was now clear to me that my original research questions were colored by my own culturally biased perspective—in New Jersey, where I grew up, almost no one looked forward to winter, myself included (I even chose to attend college in Atlanta to escape the cold). In my experience, people simply got through the wintertime darkness on the way to a brighter, happier season. But in Tromsø, the Polar Night seemed to hold its own unique opportunities for mental and emotional flourishing.

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