Harry Potter walked through the park, keeping a careful eye on the shadows. The seven year old had decided on a longer, but hopefully safer walk home. After seeing his cousin Dudley talking to his best friend Piers about how best to punch Harry in the stomach, it was an understandable decision.
He glanced up at the sky nervously. Everybody had stayed late at school because of a field trip to see the Tower of London and now it was nearly dark. Harry had to admit that he had enjoyed the trip. Well, except for those creepy gray people that would walk through the walls when nobody but him was looking.
The moon was so big. So round. If he remembered correctly, the full moon was in two nights. Harry paused to look at it. He had always liked the moon. When he got to see it, that is. Most of the time Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon had shut him in his cupboard before the moon rose.
Harry never once noticed the odd shadows, too caught up in watching the moon to look at anything below the tops of the trees. Harry didn't hear the sound of paws running, the sound of claws clicking against the pavement.
The first sign Harry had of the attack was the feeling of being pushed to the ground. The feeling of claws ripping into his side. The feel of breath on his shoulder.
Harry let out a scream as the claws went across his face, ripping skin and muscle from the bone. There was a bright flash of light, then… nothing.
**
When Harry next opened his eyes it was morning. Wincing, he touched his face. Some parts of his face felt bumpier than others, but that was it.
Trying to remember what had happened, Harry sat up. Looking at his clothing, he stopped short. There were at least two dozen rips in the clothing, each covered in blood. The skin under the rips was a little pinker in some parts, than others.
Harry carefully stood up, trying to ignore how much pain he was in. He was in the middle of a thicket Dudley was too large to get into. Some of the leaves and patches of grass had dark brownish stains on them. Glancing to his right, Harry fought the urge to throw up.
Something… Harry wasn't really sure what that thing was, or had been, was just laying there, dead. There were bits of spotted fur here and there, but most of the charred flesh was exposed. It looked somewhere between human and animal. Harry really wasn't sure what animal, though.
He bit his lip unsurely. Uncle Vernon would undoubtedly be upset that he'd stayed out all night. And Aunt Petunia would be really mad if she saw what his clothing looked like.
Knowing that the longer he put it off, the worse his punishment would be, Harry set off for Privet Drive. Hopefully Uncle Vernon wouldn't hurt him too badly. At least Aunt Petunia had to let him out of his cupboard for part of the day so that he could go to school.
**
Harry noted, with a detached sort of interest, that Uncle Vernon moved much slower than normal. Not that he'd use Uncle Vernon's sluggishness for his own gain. Harry knew quite well that any protest on his part would make the beating worse.
The beating had started moments after he arrived home. Apparently he'd been gone for two nights instead of one. He'd missed school on Friday. The school had called, something which had upset Aunt Petunia. She didn't like it when the neighbors gossiped about her.
It didn't take long for Uncle Vernon to loose interest, throwing Harry into the cupboard under the stairs. Harry lay there for a moment, listening as the door was locked from the outside.
They wouldn't leave him there for long. He had school on Monday and he'd already missed a couple days of school that month. The last time he'd missed too many days of school, a nice lady had come to visit. Harry still wasn't sure what the lady had said or done, but after her visit Uncle Vernon hadn't hit him for a long time. At least a month.
With a yawn, Harry reached up to pull the cord attached to the light bulb. Harry wanted nothing more than to nap, but the light was distracting him.
He let out a shriek, covering his eyes. The light was now nothing short of blinding.
"QUIET!" yelled Aunt Petunia, hitting the door. He heard her walking away, muttering about "ungrateful freaks" and skipping dinner.
It took several moments for Harry's eyes to adjust to the light. In that time, he'd realized that he did not have his glasses on. But he'd been able to see perfectly.
Looking around his… room, Harry realized that he was able to see better without his glasses than with.
He traced the strange bumps on his face that felt similar to the scar he'd gotten in the car accident that killed his parents. The bumpy skin came down his face, over his eyes and lips. There was another bit of bumpy skin that came from the end of his scar, across his right eye, his nose, and left cheek, ending just under the left side of his jaw. Like his scar, it was indented instead of bumpy.
Deciding to worry about it later, Harry changed out of his bloodstained clothing. He turned the light off and curled into a ball. As he covered himself with his threadbare blanket, Harry wished for a quilt.
He felt unbelievably cold.
**
A man walked through a small park, occasionally glancing up at the sky. He had a limited amount of time before the moon rose and wanted to return to his pack before then. His Ulfric had ordered him to investigate the rumors of an escaped zoo animal in Surrey.
The scent was days old, but the man still recognized it as belonging to one of the shapeshifters that lived in London. Adam Johnson was a rather sick individual, almost as disturbed as the rogue wolf Fenrir Greyback.
The man walked quicker. The last thing he wanted was to be anywhere near Adam. But he was the Geri of the pack and his Ulfric had ordered him. He reminded himself that Adam was a wereleopard without a pard and there only three wereleopards in all of England and Scotland.
Leopard lycanthropy was very difficult to catch. Feline shapeshifters in the British Isles were generally family guardians or those cursed by a witch. There were less than two dozen feline lycanthropes in the entire United Kingdom.
Smelling blood, the man pushed down his beast. Who had Adam killed this time?
The man couldn't help but blink in surprise when he saw the body. The remains of a badly burnt Adam Johnson lay between two trees, still in his leopard form.
It didn't take long for the man to get an idea of what had happened. A day or two earlier, Adam had attacked somebody. That somebody had used what could only be magic to kill Adam. The person had been injured, but had managed to walk away from Adam without leaving a trail of blood.
Shit. There was likely a new wereleopard in Surrey. A wereleopard with some sort of magical or psychic powers.
The man knew that so long as the wereleopard did not make the news or approach the pack, his Ulfric would leave the issue alone. For once the man considered rebelling and tracking the new shifter down. Whoever had been infected would know nothing about lycanthropes and be a danger to society until he or she learned control.
That thought was quickly dismissed. He'd never disobey his Ulfric, even if he did think the man's decisions were wrong.
**
Harry awoke in a mess of sticky goop and torn bedding. Wondering what had happened, he frantically tried to clean it up.
It was not until he had rolled the messy bedding into a ball that Harry realized that the light was not on. With more questions than answers, Harry turned the light on, carefully shielding his eyes.
Feeling the blood drain from his face, Harry carefully examined the walls and door. It looked as if something had tried to claw its way out of the room.
**
By the time Monday cam around, all of the scar tissue, except for the scar that ran diagonally across his face had disappeared completely. Several people questioned Harry's lengthy scar, but not to his face.
Over the next month, Harry's behavior changed significantly. Not that anybody paid enough attention to Harry to notice.
Instead of daydreaming in class, he would watch classmates, wondering how easy it would be to catch them and what they would taste like once he did catch them. Several times he barely managed to catch himself before he moved from his seat. When one of his classmates had skinned her knee, it was all he could do to stop… it from escaping. Harry wasn't sure what it was, but he knew that if it escaped it would have hurt the girl.
He settled for listening to their heartbeats and the sound of their breathing. Harry wasn't sure why he wanted to… hunt-for lack of a better word-his classmates, but he did his best not to give in to those urges.
Dudley and Piers found that, much to their annoyance, Harry had become fast enough to avoid being caught by them and their friends. By the time two weeks had passed, the boys had given up on the game of Harry Hunting.
He was so much stronger as well. Harry was still surprised when he lifted anything that weighed more than he did with ease.
But the worst was the hunger. He was always so very, very hungry. No matter how many times he ate whatever leftover wouldn't be missed, he never seemed to be full.
**
If anybody were to enter one of the small parks in Little Whinging, they would doubtless be surprised. A small black leopard cub seemed to be using it as his hunting ground.
At the moment, the leopard cub was happily munching on his third squirrel of the evening. Once the cub had eaten his fill, he climbed up the highest tree he could find before settling down for a nap.
**
Harry yawned, blinking at the bright light. For once he'd woken up before Aunt Petunia banged on his door.
He sat up. Might as well get a start on breakfast. It'd be easier for him to sneak some food that way.
"Gaaaaaaaah!"
Loosing his balance, Harry fell from the branch he was laying in. Expecting to be seriously injured, Harry was surprised to find himself on the ground. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, knees bent so that his butt was less than a foot from the ground.
Harry looked down and blushed. Where were his clothes? He knew he'd been wearing clothing the night before.
A glance at the sky told him it was false dawn. Nobody would be up yet. It would be best to make a run for it.
By the time the Dursleys awoke, there were no signs of damage to their house except for the broken screen in the kitchen window. The kitchen window had been closed and the screen thrown out, the furniture righted, and Harry's bedding washed.
**
The first chance he got, Harry headed to the school library. Despite what his teachers might think, Harry understood everything that they were taught in class and was, in fact, rather intelligent. But getting better grades than Dudley meant that Uncle Vernon would beat him.
Harry knew that both nights he'd blacked out had been the night of the full moon. Harry knew that his sense, strength, reflexes, speed, and stamina surpassed human limitations by a wide margin, even if he couldn't quite put his thoughts into words. He knew that he had healed far too quickly from injuries that should have killed him. And Harry knew that fantasizing about hunting his classmates was not, in any way, shape or form normal.
He would have said he was a werewolf, but whatever had attacked him had not been a wolf. Ten minutes of research confirmed for Harry that he was indeed a lycanthrope. It took three weeks and numerous trips to the local public library to find out that werewolves were not the only type of lycanthrope.
Apparently, because the overwhelming majority of lycanthropes in the British Isles were werewolves, there were very few books that talked about anything other than werewolves. An ancient, rather disturbing book about Jim Corbett, a hunter from the early twentieth centuries that specialized in killed "man-eating" wereleopards and weretigers told Harry exactly what type of lycanthrope he was.
Once he'd realized he was a wereleopard, the research became a bit easier. Wereleopards were generally little more than blurbs of information in the books he had access to. Lacking any better idea of what to do, Harry began to read various books on natural leopards and the less prejudiced books on werewolves.
If nothing else, the books on werewolves could help him. Harry was quite sure that sooner or later he would meet some of the local werewolves. He had no illusions about the fact that fighting any werewolf would likely result in his death if for nothing else than the fact that he was outnumbered by werewolves several thousand to one in Britain alone.
He now knew enough to know that staying in Number 4 on the full moon was a very bad idea and that the strange goop was a side effect of the transformation. He was just grateful that he hadn't done anything too bad during the full moon. If he had, it would have been on the news.
He could never tell the Dursleys that he was a wereleopard. They hated anything to do with magic and had even forbidden the use of the word magic in the house. Uncle Vernon had often complained that the government was too lenient on the "beasts" and that all werewolves should be exterminated.
But now he had to find somewhere to go to for the full moon. He couldn't stay in the park. He might eat somebody.
There were a lot of forested areas farther into Surrey. But Harry wasn't quite sure how to get to one of them. He knew that if he could get to one, he could safely transform. He'd initially considered locking himself up, but the thing inside him had rebelled at the very idea, nearly coming out in the library.
The only think he could think of was to take a bus to a town closer to open land and then walking from there. But that plan had several problems. He had no money and the Dursleys would certainly never give him any money. Not to mention that he'd have to think of some excuse to explain why he was missing for the night.
Harry had no problem figuring out which bus to use. All he'd had to do was find a bus map for Surrey and a map of Surrey. He even knew how much bus fare cost each way and which bus he would have to take.
**
Three days before the full moon, the answer to his money problems hit him in the face. Literally.
Harry winced, then picked up the rake Mrs. Figg had dropped. Even if he didn't much like being babysat by Mrs. Figg, he generally went by her house on the way to and from school. Dudley tried to stay as far from the old cat breeder as possible.
"Do you need help?" asked Harry. He didn't really want to rake her yard, but Mrs. Figg was so… old and frail.
"Shouldn't you be getting back to your Aunt and Uncle or playing in the park?" asked Mrs. Figg.
Harry shrugged. "I'm not supposed to be back until dinner."
"I suppose it'd be alright if you raked the front yard," sighed Mrs. Figg. "I'll go get you some lemonade."
By the time he'd finished raking Mrs. Figg's front yard, Mrs. Figg had given him two glasses of lemonade and a sandwich as an afternoon snack. Once the leaves were all bagged, Mrs. Figg came back out of the house.
"For your troubles, dear," said Mrs. Figg, handing Harry a pound.
"Thank you," said Harry. "I could come back tomorrow and mow your lawn or do your backyard."
Something passed through Mrs. Figg. Harry wasn't sure what, exactly. "I'll pay you two pounds a week to mow my lawn and rake the leaves each week, more if you work on the garden."
"Thanks," said Harry. "I'll be back tomorrow after school."
**
By the afternoon of the full moon, Harry had enough money for bus fare to and back from his chosen hunting grounds. The bus tickets would use all his money, but he could make more. The only thing he hadn't figured out was what to tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon.
Although he doubted they'd care so long as the neighbors didn't talk. With that in mind, he boarded the proper bus.
Hillsdale was a small village a couple towns over from Little Whinging. It was very picturesque, like the villages in the fairytales Aunt Petunia told Dudley.
By the time the moon started to rise, Harry was a mile away from the town. Mindful of what had happened the last two times he'd transformed, Harry removed his clothing. He carefully folded the clothes and put them in a small hollow in a tree.
Once the moon rose completely, Harry's world went black.
**
Harry stumbled back into Hillsdale around dawn. He curled up at the bus stop to wait for his ride home. For once his belly was comfortably full, and Harry tried not to think about the fact that he'd probably eaten some sort of small animal.
He lazily watched as people started to pass. A girl around his age walked by the bus stop, on the way to school, judging by her book bag. Although why she'd head to school at such an early hour, he didn't know.
Perhaps it was his full stomach, but for once Harry had no desire to hunt the girl. When she passed by, Harry's felt some sort of strange tingling. Nothing unpleasant, but it'd certainly caught his attention. It made the thing inside him want to come out and play.
He was a bit too young to notice, but the girl was relatively pretty. She had curly brown hair that looked like it had never been cut, pale skin, and the largest brown eyes he'd ever seen. Although at the moment it looked like her hair had a mind of its own.
She paused near him and Harry couldn't help but wonder if the girl had felt the strange tingle as well. The girl gave Harry a confused look before continuing on her way, leaving Harry to wonder exactly what had happened.
**
Uncle Vernon didn't hit him too hard. He'd believed Harry's excuse that he'd gone to school early. Mrs. Figg kept her part of the agreement, and ended up paying Harry four pounds a week because of how much work Harry did for her.
Harry found that when he didn't have Aunt Petunia yelling at him every other moment, he enjoyed gardening. It also helped that Mrs. Figg was paying him.
Although Harry was still unsure as to why half of Mrs. Figg's cats avoided him like he had the plague. Perhaps it was because he was a wereleopard. But some of the cats seemed to be rather fond of him. And Harry had to admit that he was rather fond of the cats-not that he'd willingly listen to another of Mrs. Figg's cat related stories.
Once he'd put aside the money needed to pay for his bus fare, Harry had what he thought of as quite a bit extra. More than enough money to pay for some food. Remembering that he was carnivorous, Harry mostly bought deli meat in small portions. Along with the various afternoon snacks provided by Mrs. Figg, he ate better than he'd ever eaten before. Other than the day after the full moon, it was the closest he'd gotten to feeling full since he'd been infected with lycanthropy.
The next full moon, he'd managed to remember bits and pieces once he'd woken up. Harry wasn't really sure he'd wanted to know about eating two rabbits and a squirrel. But they had tasted very good… Perhaps hunting wasn't so bad.
Harry was once more curled up at the bus stop when the brown haired girl walked by. He felt the strange tingling again, and knew just by looking at the girl that she felt it too. This time she glanced at him once, not even bothering to slow down.
**
The year Hermione Granger turned eight, her life flipped upside down. With a new little sister that cried constantly, Hermione left home shortly after she got up, returning only for dinner.
Neither of her parents seemed to notice their elder daughter's absences other than to give her money to buy lunch. Both were busy with Gertrude (Trudy) Granger, and their private dental practice.
Hillsdale was a small village with a magical population of two; Hermione and Gertrude Granger and the strange boy that visited once monthly. Like Gertrude, the strange boy made Hermione's body tingle.
Both the boy and Gertrude gave her a pleasant tingly feeling. But the tingles from the boy had an added layer of warmth, not to mention that the tingles from the boy were much… stronger than those from her younger sister. Sometimes, when Hermione walked by the boy, she could see an animal-like afterimage.
After the first six times of seeing the boy, Hermione began to write down the date on which she saw him. It was not until she'd checked the dates on her mother's calendar, two months later that Hermione realized what the boy was. Each day she was him was the morning after the full moon.
It took only seconds for Hermione to realize that the boy came to Hillsdale because the town was next to uninterrupted countryside. Once she'd decided that the boy had to be a werewolf, Hermione was left to wonder about the tingles.
By the time Hermione had discovered exactly why Gertrude and Harry gave off the tingles that nobody but her noticed, it was nearly her ninth birthday. According to the handful of books on the Preternatural in the local library, the tingles meant that her magic felt another person's magic.
Hermione had always known that magic existed. But it was a rarely talked about subject. And one she had never had a desire to learn about.
The knowledge that she and her sister were witches greatly excited Hermione (she was pretty sure that she was not a psychic, none of the descriptions of psychic abilities matched any of the formerly unexplainably strange things that had occurred in her life). There were only two books on how to actually do magic in the local library and by the time September came around, Hermione had worn them ragged.
The full moon that September took place two days before school began once more. Though Hermione was cautious about walking past the werewolf boy-all of the books had said horrible things about werewolves-she was quite sure that so long as she didn't linger he wouldn't hurt her. Sure, he watched her walk by each time, but he'd never moved from his spot. Perhaps he was tired from the full moon.
So back strait, head held high, Hermione walked past the bus stop. She glanced at the boy long enough to make sure that the boy did not move toward her as she walked by. Around ten feet from the bus stop, the block ended. Usually she turned, but this time she went to cross Main Street. Hermione had planned on going to the bookstore to try to find some books on magic.
She didn't hear the sound of oncoming traffic until it was too late.
-->