Harry narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at Jean Gardner. "You seem to know quite a lot."
"Not too much, not too little. Just enough." Jean Gardner smiled. "For example, you're an Animagus, aren't you?"
"Are there any telltale signs?" Harry asked, somewhat puzzled.
He genuinely had no idea where he had given himself away. He had never used his Animagus transformation in front of anyone.
"Telltale signs? There certainly are." Still smiling, Jean Gardner looked toward Professor Lupin at the lectern ahead and said quietly, "Animagi have a distinctive aura. Proficient Animagi can sense the aura of other Animagi of a similar kind."
"Proficient? Similar kind?" Harry keenly picked out the two key phrases.
"Harry, you're unexpectedly sharp." Jean's smile remained. "That's right. Both those conditions have to be met."
"What do they mean?" Although Harry had realized those two phrases must be important, he wasn't quite sure what they actually meant.
"Hmm, it seems you're not a proficient Animagus yet, at least, Harry." Jean covered her mouth and laughed. "Proficient naturally means having a firm grasp of this magic. At the very least, you need to be able to transform without using a wand."
Harry nodded in understanding. He certainly wasn't proficient enough yet.
He had actually learned a few things about Animagus transformations from Sirius. There were two prerequisites for mastering wandless transformation.
The first, naturally, was plenty of practice: transforming frequently to let the body grow accustomed to the magic.
The second was having a certain sense of identification with the animal one transformed into.
Sirius, for instance, identified strongly with his Animagus form, that big black dog. Wormtail hadn't identified much with his rat form at first, so he couldn't transform.
Later, however, he seemed to have realized that he was destined to be a