A few days later was a full moon so we could begin the Animagus ritual. It was also the meeting with the goblins where we went to do all that, it was fun. The inheritance ritual came out negative so we genuinely aren't part of some family.
It was a short visit so we finished quickly to start the Animagus ritual. So we were working on that. We can't do other rituals because the magic will interfere with each other and the out come of that would be BAD.
So we couldn't do much more than practice our magic, train our bodies, and hang out with Draco. That one was a surprise we never expected to make friends with the blond, but here we are every few day hanging out with him.
After we made the potion we had to wait. It was during this time that I had made a mistake.
"So I know you said that you don't want a wand, but I don't know why." Draco had said one day we were in a potions lab practicing our potion brewing.
"It is because wands are a crutch and the more you use one the more reliant on it you become." I explained and he quickly understood.
"But what about other magical focus?" Draco asked and I stopped. I had assumed that wands were the only magical focus and only researched them.
So I immediately looked on the 'AR' and found that I had been wrong it is only wands or things similar to them that are crutches things that forces your magic to move instead of moving it your self. But there was a long list of other types of magical focus that don't do that, but rather amplify the magic output.
But there was one that we can make eventually and work well with us, Earrings they will only amplify our magic and depending on what we make it out of, it would be powerful.
" Azrael you ok?" Draco asked, seeing I had spaced out.
"Yes I'm fine and you are right there are other magical focus that we could use and there is one that I like, and it can only be made with magic." I explained to Draco.
"Oh what do you have in mind" Aisha asked.
"Earrings that are made with our magic and other materials that we will need. It will have to wait until we get our Animagus forms though." I explained to the two of them.
"I think I will stick to a wand." Draco said, and we immediately denied.
"No you will be getting a staff made by us." Aisha exclaimed, and I nodded my head.
"I don't think that is a good idea. I don't even know how to do wandless magic like you two." Draco attempted to reason with the unreasonable.
"I will teach you how, in-fact from now on you will be taking part in our training." I told him, and sense then we had been drilling him. he was able to do some miner telekinesis and small transfigurations by the time we all got our letters. The reason it took so long was because Draco had to forget everything he knew about magic and all of the misconceptions and replace it with what is true.
On another note, it took until May before a storm hit us. Now you may be wondering how we did the whole wand over the heart thing. Well what that does is it leaves a ring of wording made of magic over wherever it is placed, wording that acts similarly to a ward, the wording being the incantation used during the ritual. Which interestingly makes this easier, as all we had to do was make the rings around our magic cores, so we just had to pull the magic out and around our core. It didn't take much effort or magic to do.
We drank the potions at Malfoy manor because we had hid them there. And it was a big event that we had done in the garden. It was us our parents and the Malfoys who were attending. We had never told our parents the danger and we never told the Malfoys that we were becoming magical Animagus, the looks on their faces will be priceless.
As we drink the potion and word our magic one last time, our magic envelops us. Aisha a burning ball of white fire, and me into a ball of shadowy black. Aisha was the first to come into being, the ball of fire that she was condensed to the size and shape of a large bird. The fire eventually fades to reveal a snow white phoenix with black ends to her feathers. She opens her eyes and looks at herself and sings a song of joy making everyone happier.
Then it was my time, the shadowy black orb that was my cocoon condensed into a vaguely human shape but did not fade. Instead sinking further and further, until all that was left was a black shadowy figure with no features other than glowing white eyes on a vaguely human head, and just shadows flowing off the figure like smoke with no body and no limbs, I had become a shade. The adult Malfoys paled Draco was astonished, and our parents were just happy.
I don't blame the Malfoys though after all they had no idea what we were actually doing. So one of us becoming a phoenix and the other becoming what can only be described as a bondless soul would be both unexpected and terrifying.
Being a shade was strange it felt like I was there and not, like being in two places at once, my body was both there and not. I could manipulate it like a gas, I could make arms to manipulate things but I could also phase through them or I could touch them.
"Congratulation, Azrael and Aisha" Mom had said with happiness in her tone. It had faltered a bit when I had looked at her.
"You are certainly scary Azrael, and Aisha is quite the beautiful bird, but what are you two?" dad stated then asked.
"Aisha is a phoenix a bird known for its ties to life, fire, and immortality. Azrael on the other hand is a shade a creature of myth, the only thing we know about them is that they are souls that are not bound to a place. They are a pain to deal with because nothing can touch them, not magic and any physical action." Narcissa had explained.
"How did you do it, how did you transform into magical creatures" Lucius asked so curious that you could see it from a kilometre away.
I let the transformation fade and it felt like my body was solidifying but not fully, as if I could shed it at any moment. Aisha decides to perch on my shoulder while I'm contemplating this. Then I ask the others something.
"Shoot a spell at me." After I finished that sentence I could feel my body fade a bit in my chest, and notice Lucius had casted a jinx at me. When he saw nothing happen he clicked his tongue and said.
"Tsk, and here I was hoping it would hit you. You would deserve it for ignoring me." Lucius had told me clearly irritated, and surprised that it went strait through me. But I had expected this although that doesn't lessen the surprise I felt, after all I just learnt that I was right and some of the traits from our magical beasts crossed over to our human ones, and as a result I gained the intangibility of my shade.
But does that mean I accidently made my-self Immoral, and what of my sister will she forever have the 'Spark of Life' that her Phoenix has and have burning days. Will we be stuck here in the land of the living to watch as time passes on forever changing, while we will be the same for millennia. Have I made a mistake in allowing this or will this be a blessing and I'm just worrying over nothing and I will grow old and die like everyone else. Phoenix can choose when they pass by burning and deciding not to be reborn, but shades can't they are already dead.
It was then that I realized that I was kneeling on the ground being hugged by my sister and Draco with the adults surrounding me all with worried looks. It made me feel irritated 'Why the bloody hell was I having a panic attack about this didn't I promise myself to just go with the flow.'
After those words went through my head I calmed down I gave the widest smile I had, ear to ear, teeth blinding and spoke.
"Sorry just grappling with our probable immortality." I joked and I heard Aisha let out a small giggle.
"Hehe, we are going to look better than all of you at twice your age." Aisha exclaimed to the adults.
"Little brat!" All the adults yelled and started chasing Aisha while they all laughed. As they do that I take a look at the 'AR' to see whether my guess was right.
By the look on Draco's face he also knows the answer to that question, not as well as I do, but has a good guess. As long as my soul stays intact I can't die, and as long as Aisha chooses nether will she.
"Let me guess you two are actually immortal." Draco guessed somberly.
"As long as my soul is in one piece I will never die, and Aisha as a phoenix can choose if she dies. And if I know her as well as I do she won't pass until I do." I told him.
"Once I get to the point, I can can you teach me how to do what you did to become a magical Animagus." Draco asked.
"Of course, you are my student and my friend. If I didn't I would be a bad friend and an even worse teacher." I told him with a smile, and he had grinned at me back.
"Hey, I just noticed but you have a mark on your neck." When he pointed it out I instinctively grabbed at it.
"What does it look like?" I asked him.
"It looks like your shade. It isn't big by any means, but it is about three fingers thick." Draco described my new tattoo. When he finished I rubbed the spot it was in.
"Hey, Aisha come over here." I called my sister over here to see if she had one.
"what is up Azrael." She asked like nothing happened, meanwhile the adults were on the floor dying of fatigue do to Aisha running circles around them. No actually, she was running circles around them, it was somewhat amusing.
"Come and sit down, I want to check something." I asked her and she sat down next to me.
Checking her neck there was no mark, then her arms, it wasn't until I checked her legs that I found it. She had a mark as well, It was a bird with their wings spread wide and fire in the back round. Upon a closer look the mark was animated, the fire was burning and the bird would occasionally flap its wings. No her wings, this was a representation of Aisha's phoenix and it deserves the respect it is owed.
Feeling the phoenix it wasn't smooth skin but rather like a bump, and you could feel every detail on it. Reaching for my mark I notice that it is the same. It was a bump on the skin and I could feel the smoke wafting away from it and dispersing, but never leaving like it was generated by the shade. I could also feel the eyes, eyes that felt like it peers into the soul of whatever it looks at.
Then I felt a gentle hand on my neck where my mark was, it was Aisha's, she noticed the mark on my neck and was feeling it like I felt hers. I hadn't realized that the marks were sensitive but also were somewhat sentient. I could feel the shade enjoy the attention it was getting.
"As adorable as the two of you are, what did you find out about your marks?" Draco teased and asked.
"They are sentient and are representations of our phoenix and shade respectively. They also are representations and manifestations of our magic. So I might be able to." As I trail off my shade moves from my neck down my shoulder, across my arm, and down to the back of my left hand.
The shade may be a part of me, but he is also a partner. So, thinking of this, I asked him to reach out and he does. Shadows start falling off my hand and fall to the floor, once the shadows stop falling from my hand they gather and pull together, then rise and form into the shade.
When the shade left my body I could feel a part of me leaves with it and I know what it is immediately, my soul. Pushing my magic into my eyes and changing it to soul magic I see that the shade in front of me is me, possibly more so than any other Animagus. There is a small string attaching my body to my soul that, while focusing on it, I can transfer my consciousness through it.
The whole thing was just surreal, while in my body it felt like I was missing a part of me, while as the shade I felt like my form was free and unrestrained but that I didn't belong. All in all it will take some getting used to, to separate my body and soul like I was, and I don't think I will do it that often. After all, if my body dies I don't know if it will regenerate in the shade or not and I am not willing to test that just yet.
Aisha could do something similar, her mark will just instead burned when the phoenix flew out. I asked Aisha what it felt like and she told us.
"It feels like I'm taking a fire that is in me and pulling it out. No not pulling but coercing it out." I had understood what she meant, but part of that is because I do something similar but with my soul.
It was a month later, June 5th, Draco's birth day, now usually muggle borns aren't allowed to attend but there is nothing saying a phoenix and a shade can't. The reason we can't attend normally is because the Malfoys still need to keep a public face, as most of their investments are in pure blood extremists. So if we just showed up out of nowhere we would probably be tortured.
So while Draco was greeting guests, Aisha, as a phoenix, stayed on Draco's shoulder. It gave most of the guests pause, after all Draco had a phoenix on his shoulder where as the only phoenix they had ever seen was Fawkes, Dumbledore's familiar.
Meanwhile, I was just roaming the house at random scaring the guests then disappearing. That was easy to do to, they would be walking to the back where the party was set up and I would just stand in a shadowy corner with my eyes open. If you think that that isn't terrifying then I want you to imagine one the corners of your room or hallway being unnaturally dark, and a pair of glowing white eyes staring at you from what seems like a dark abyss that is a corner. What makes it more terrifying is when they would look away I would go through the wall behind me, so the guests would be walking through a barely lit hall to begin with, glance at my spot see my eyes, look away, realize what they saw, and do a double take to only see the corner brighter than they first thought.
"Did you see that?" one guest said.
"See what?" Their wife asked.
"Nothing." The man said, clearly suspicious.
I proceeded to let the man see me many times more just to make him think he was going crazy. He had at some point started casting jinxes and hexes at me. I had made it clear that they hadn't even touch me by floating towards him, revealing that I was a shade in the prosses. His face paled faster than a vampire, he then started running and screaming that there was a shade in Malfoy manor.
It actually started a witch hunt for a shade, so I had to stop being a shade and used my metamorph ability to transform into a house elf and wait until Lucius managed to calm everyone down. It took a hour or so for the man to be proven wrong and that there was no shade in the manor, I had also found out that the man was the Minister, Fudge, and the women next to him was not his wife but Umbridge. I didn't realize who I was torturing because I had to be a bit of a distance so I couldn't properly see who it was, I have no excuse for Umbridge though.
She looks more like a toad, than a toad. She is so GOD DAMN DISCUSTING, she puts toads to shame in that department. Later I found out Aisha had properly burnt Umbridge because she had attempted to pet her, Aisha had nearly burnt the manor down just to make a point. It wasn't even her first warning that had belonged to Aisha peaking her finger, then biting it, then burning it, and finally sending so much fire it was mistaken as Fiendfyre for a moment. Aisha was pissed by the end of it and needed me to pet her to calm her down.
That was something that Aisha had developed after the ritual, she began needing pets and as a result I got good at giving them, she just didn't like others petting her. She explained to me that it felt like someone had been doing something that only one person was allowed to, that they were overstepping a boundary.
The rest of the night was uneventful and the guests left leaving the strange night behind. We had been stretching ourselves thin as it was so we hadn't learnt how to craft magical focus yet. So we had given Draco a snake so that he could have a familiar, we just omitted that it was a basilisk. If the Ministry ever found out Aisha and I had hatched a basilisk we would probably be kissed by a Dementor.
Good thing no one knows but me, Aisha, and eventually Draco when he watches her petrify a rat and eat it. That is a misconception too, basilisks can eat petrified prey just when they are younger, as they age they stop eating and just absorb magic and use it as sustenance.