Cat had been hoping that the rest of the day would be surprisingly pleasant, but she was to have no such luck. The Quaffle hit hard in the Care of Magical Creatures class, though, where the Slytherins were their classmates…

They were just learning about the feeding habits of the chimera (a small ‘cub’ of which had been brought in especially for the lesson by a Greek breeder; it was amazing how tight an appetite a creature with three heads had, especially when one of those heads was a goat) when the Malfoy of Slytherin year three, Wayne Chisholm, thought it’d be funny to feed the lion’s head a filibuster firework whilst Hagrid wasn’t looking. The creature gave a belch and squealed, rushing about madly and tearing itself free from the chain its trainer held it on.

The group all dispersed with screams and yelps, but some stupid instinct clicked in Cat’s head. Instead of listening to her legs, which were screaming ‘Run, Run!’ at her, she made to grab the creature and, succeeding, somehow managed to turn it about so that she had the lion and the goat’s head in check. This meant (unintentionally, on her part) that it’s posterior was facing toward Chisholm, from which, out of the snake’s mouth at the creature’s tail tip, the firework came spiralling and thundered into Wayne’s crotch.

Chisholm howled an, as soon as he’d recovered his senses, gave Cat a death glare.

Cat gladly let Hagrid and the tamer take the startled creature from her grasp (“Five points to Ravenclaw” Hagrid nodded to her in thanks), and she then swiftly backed away, unable to take her eyes off Wayne’s own, which were still locked on her like a dragon eyeing its prey. Then Hagrid did what she was dreading most - he dismissed the class.

Grabbing her bag, she ran, knowing already that Wayne and a couple of his Slytherin cronies were in hot pursuit. She barrelled into the woodland that separated the grounds from the lake, praying that she would lose them in there and be able to get to the Great Hall for tea unscathed.

“Get her! The arrogant Mudblood!” she heard Wayne bawl, a true Malfoy junior, as he crushed and flattened foliage ruthlessly in his path.

“Not again,” she murmured desperately to herself - at least this time she wasn’t near a toilet; they couldn’t stuff her head down one out here. Throwing her in the lake might be their next best bet, though. That didn’t make her feel much better. And this year had been going so well…

“Fiddlesticks!” she shouted at herself in anger, vaulting over a log as the open expanse of water yawned out not far ahead, appearing through the thicket.

“There she is! I saw her stupid blue scarf!”

“Hurry up!”

“Come on!” she pleaded and pleaded, wishing she could run just a little faster; she felt herself breaking within - why hadn’t she run the other way, straight to the castle? At least her friends would have been with her then, and perhaps she’d have ran into some kind of teacher, too.

“Stupid girl,” she muttered; she was sick of Wayne’s bullying - he did it to most people, but she couldn’t take it as easily as the other kids could. She was a sensitive person and just couldn’t gather the will or resolve to ever make herself stand up to his advances, nor could she stop herself feeling wretched after every new instalment of his ‘harassment’.

“Get a move on, Sunny!” she heard Wayne cry to his most inappropriately named ally.

She closed her eyes, clenched her fists and reached into the well of fear within; she willed away the oncoming assault, willed away the humiliation and her own weakness, willed away the shame and the sorrow. And, suddenly, her feet no longer touched the ground. She kept her eyes closed, but could feel herself rising; her arms were outstretched and the currents of air blasting across Hogwarts lake were rushing beneath them, blowing her up, up, up…

“Where’d she go?”

“She was here a second ago…”

“She couldn’t have gone far - look around!”

Cat frowned inwardly - surely they could see her, wherever she now was?

Tentatively, she opened one eye then, gasping, the other, and watched the land and the lake whiz passed below. She was high up in the air! She was flying!

She tried to say something, like ‘Wow’ or ‘Whoah’ or whatever the moment fancied, but all that emitted from her mouth was a long, shrill screech, sounding something along the lines of ‘kyaa’. It then hit her as to exactly how she was flying - she was no longer human! Flapping her wings and flexing her talons, Cat didn’t need to look at her reflection in the lake below to know that she’d become an eagle.