Harry Potter belongs to J K Rowling, the wonderful lady who has inspired so many people to try their hand at writing too.

I should also say a big thank-you to my very patient Beta Jacobus-minoris who has read and reread my writing, pointed out my grammatical mistakes, questioned the suitability of some of my wilder ideas as well as putting up with my long winded rants about plot ideas.

Author's Note

I thought I could get away without one of these but apparently I have caused much confusion with this short story, so I will give you some of my thoughts on it and what I'm attempting to do here.

So, this is one of a series of plot bunnies that has been plauging me for the last year or so, and don't they breed just like bunnies :-/ all of them looking at cliches within HP fanfiction. The Cheque Book story is another of these, and I've got more in the works as well, including a do-over time travel one which I'm kind of looking forward to sinking my teeth into. Think of it as new coats for old tropes.

But because they are plot bunnies that have developed around a cliche they are of varying quality, I suppose you could say. Some of them are more developed than others. This one I couldn't see it going any further than this, the plot-bunny itself didn't provide with any more than this, and if I did take it further it could potentially get very dark and depressing very quickly, particularly since I was thinking of him as a sort of Incubus. It was probably a good idea Granny Evans couldn't remember what happened.

I hope that answers some of the many questions that have been asked in the reviews, and thank-you all very much for reading :-D

Small (Creature) Comforts

The night had been disturbed, long and hot, his t-shirt sticking to his back irritating and itching and uncomfortable until, in the small hours of the morning he'd ripped it off in frustration, balling it up and throwing it across the spare bedroom of 4 Privet Drive, where it hit the old dilapidated wardrobe with a soft thud, landing on the old carpet with a pathetic rustle.

Harry turned and twisted trying desperately to get comfortable, but as with every night since he had arrived back in Little Whinging, it seemed sleep eluded him, the days marching by in an increasing grey haze of exhaustion, of a prickling itching back and constant headaches. What he would give just now for one of Madam Pomfrey's sleep elixirs…Uncle Vernon's hideous old knobbly socks…the one t-shirt he had that didn't look like it would fit a baby elephant…his photo album…his beautiful Firebolt… his father's cloak…

He sighed heavily; and if wishes were galleons, he'd have a veritable dragon's horde.

Groaning, Harry pried himself off the bed, wincing as the sheet peeled off where it had stuck to his cheek. Wonderful, he'd drooled again. Muzzily, he reached for his glasses, wincing at the dull ache of his back; oh, just great, so now he was going to spend the day doing whatever Aunt Petunia could throw at him with sore muscles, just because he fell asleep in a really stupid position. Just great! Could the day get any better?

He hauled himself out of bed, slowly stumbling as his foot got caught in the sheet, blearily looking around for something to wear. Where was that t-shirt from last night? That'd do. He staggered over to the crumpled pile in front of the wardrobe, grimacing as he picked it up. He really had pulled something in his back, and…oh, err, no he couldn't wear that. Talk about utterly rank. He tossed it on the to-be-washed-at-some-vague-point-in-the-future pile.

Surely he'd got something that wasn't dirty or smelly or just plain hideous and malformed. He scratched his head as he squinted around the floor, his hand coming into contact with…what the hell. He patted frantically at the strange and definitely-not-there-yesterday protrusions on his forehead. What was happening? Had he caught some strange magical disease? He jerked the wardrobe door open, intent on the cracked old mirror on its other side.

At the sound of the terrified scream, footsteps came running.

"What on Earth do you think you're play…oh good grief!"

Harry turned, mind whirling frantically to find Aunt Petunia standing in the doorway staring at him in furious horror, Dudley peering over her shoulder, eyes wide as saucers.

"I…err…" he tried, but what could he do to explain? He had no more idea what was going on at this moment in time than Dudley.

"You can't be seeing looking like that you…you little freak," Aunt Petunia sneered as she looked him up and down, "that's it! Stay in here and sort this out! Now! Because you aren't coming out till you do!"

Harry drew a shuddering breath as the door slammed shut behind him, the cat-flap rattling in its frame. What the hell had happened to him? He took another look in the mirror, at the horns rising up from his temples and curling around his ears and the bat like wings that now sprouted form somewhere around the area of his shoulder blades. He hunched his shoulders trying to get a better view, the contortion causing his new limbs to spread and shift as muscles he didn't realise he had came into play. What had produced this? Was it some sort of strange Wizarding puberty thing?

It had been quite a while since the very vague and unhelpful Sex Education lessons that he'd received in his last year at Junior school which hadn't got much past tentative descriptions of hair growing in strange places and horrible things happening to his voice. He also had vague recollections of a baby growing in a lady's tummy, but it had been very unclear how it had got there in the first place, and how it was going to even get out. He'd been plagued with nightmares for weeks after of fanged babies tearing their way out of women's bellies.

He'd not been able to look at Aunt Petunia in quite the same way afterwards. It must have been horrific for her when Dudley made his exit. No wonder she was so sour and miserable all the time.

The only other thing he could remember about this sort of thing was Fred and George telling him and Ron something about growing tentacles and it hurting, but then Percy had chased them off and refused to answer their questions, going very red-faced indeed, muttering something about "asking Mum" which was totally unhelpful for him of course.

Or had he eaten something? His stomach went cold at the thought. When he'd got wind of Dudley going on a diet at the beginning of the holidays he'd written to Ron and Hermione and even Hagrid, begging for them to send him food, any sort of food, he really wasn't feeling picky, and they had responded magnificently, sending him cake and pies, and healthy sugar free snacks, and even completely inedible rock cakes that he could probably use in self-defence.

So while Dudley suffered through the indignities of grapefruit quarters and tiny bowls of salad, he had cake, increasingly stale cake, but still it was cake, and Dudley didn't know a thing about it.

A chilling thought occurred to him. Fred and George. What if Fred and George had got wind of the emergency food parcels and decided to add their own unique contribution, which could be almost anything, a combination of weird experimental brews that he must have been eating for days. He may only be a third year, going on fourth year at Hogwarts, but even he knew how bloody dangerous what they'd done was.

An impatient tapping at his window pulled him from his thoughts. A strange and impatient looking owl sat there glaring at him.

"Fine, fine," he muttered as he let the bird in, "do you want some water?" The owl dumped a discoloured letter on his desk before diving back out the window in a flurry of feathers.

"Be like that then," Harry shouted after it. "Ungrateful feather duster," he muttered as he poked the letter suspiciously with a pencil. It didn't explode or disintegrate into a puddle of goo, or even try biting his hand off. Bit disappointing really.

So he opened it.

My darling little Harry…

Harry stared at the letter incredulously, his eyes drifting down…

…you're reading this then we're…

There was a splotch as of water having fallen onto the parchment at this point, smearing the ink and then drying…

…unable to explain certain things to you…

In horrified fascination his eyes drifted down to the signature…

…your loving mother, Lily.

Hands shaking with fury, Harry screwed the letter up as tightly as he could and threw it hard at the wall. It knocked a wishy-washy landscape of a flatulent deer askew falling behind his bed. Of all the sick and twisted things…he could just imagine Fred and George chortling to themselves as they wrote out the letter, aging it with tea and adding the splotches to imitate tears…

He was going to kill them, he was so going to kill them, he thought as he scrabbled on his desk for a spare piece of parchment and an unbroken quill, or he could just shop them to their mum. Hah, that would sort them out.

Grinning evilly to himself, he began penning his letter.

OOOOOO

Fred looked down at the letter again. "But we didn't send him anything," he turned to George, "we didn't…did we?"

"Of course we didn't," George snapped, "it would be pretty mean to send the poor chap suspect food when he's probably having to rely on it."

They exchanged dark looks before examining the letter again.

Dear Fred and George,

Ha, ha, very funny, I don't think.

I'll be lucky to see the light of day this summer now I'm sporting horns and wings, my "loving family" are just that thrilled by my new look.

You'd better have some sort of antidote to whatever goop you've gone and dosed me with, and you'd better send it right now. I've told Hedwig to not leave without it, and to encourage you if you're slow. Believe me when I say that Hedwig is very intelligent and devoted to her duty…

Fred and George gave the Snowy Owl nervous looks. Hedwig stared back at them, completely unimpressed.

…and if that doesn't work I'm going to tell your mum. I'm sure she'll be well impressed to find you've been mucking around with her cooking.

Fred put his head in his hands, groaning. "What are we going to do? If Mum decides we've being sabotaging her cakes…"

"Hell, yes," George shuddered, "it'll make that time with the unbreakable vow look like kiddies' playtime."

"…if I don't get a reply in four days I've told Hedwig to go ahead and tear your gizzards out. I'm not sure what a gizzard is, but it sounds really painful.

So cough up NOW!

Yours seriously unimpressed,

Harry.

P.S That letter was a particularly nasty and sick touch. I'm seriously impressed with your devotion to detail."

"There's only one thing we can do," Fred said, his freckles standing out starkly against his ashen skin.

George made to stand, but froze as Hedwig hunched her shoulders, putting her head down aggressively, her intense stare never wavering. "And what would that be?" George said out of the corner of his mouth as he tried to look at his brother while not letting the angry owl out of his sight.

"We've got to go to Mum with this ourselves, show her the letter and tell our side," Fred explained. "It's obvious something has happened to Harry. Maybe…maybe he needs help?"

"Well obviously," George muttered.

"Like medical help, sort of help," Fred said.

"You think this might be some sort of rare magical disease?" George turned to his brother with a thoughtful expression.

"Maybe," Fred shrugged.

Hedwig lunged with an angry shriek. George squealed in panic, and dived behind his brother, heart racing, only to find Hedwig looking extremely amused, softly barking, her feathers fluffed up.

"Oh very funny," George growled, "we should write back as well you know." He gave his brother a meaningful look.

OOOOOO

"…truly honestly, cross our hearts to die, we haven't tampered with the food Mum sent you, honestly truly…"

Yeah right, Harry snorted in derision, like he believed that for two seconds.

"…we appreciate just how intelligent the proud and beautiful Lady Hedwig is but we're pretty certain you haven't been training her in potions. So we took advantage and told her the vial was the antidote…"

Harry glared at the small vial, oh this was too much, those two jack-asses.

"…but since we haven't in fact actually pranked you we can't really help you on that front so we sent you Pepper-up instead. We figured you probably needed it…"

Curling his lip in disgust, Harry considered slinging the vial against the wall, but…you know, it was a useful potion to have on hand (if he could trust the Twins' word. It looked okay). Blast it, he growled to himself, his new wings twitching irritably, it wasn't as if he could really teach Hedwig to identify different potions even. How good was an owl's sense of smell anyway?

So what did he do now? He looked at the letter again, he only really had one option left to him. He pulled fresh parchment towards him; oh yeah, Mrs Weasley would sort them out; the Twins would wished they'd never been born. He grinned evilly to himself.

OOOOOO

Mrs Weasley looked at the letter dubiously. "So it wasn't one of your silly pranks after all," she said.

"Mum!" Fred whined. "Would we mess around with something this serious?"

George fervently nodded his head in agreement. "It's not as if it's even particularly funny."

But Mrs Weasley wasn't listening. "Unless you've dragged poor Harry into your ridiculous nonsense," she glowered at them.

"Mum!" George exclaimed hands raised defensively. "He sent us that letter we showed you out of the blue. We've no idea what's going on…just that he's really upset…and he's apparently developed extra appendages..."

"And we'd never interfere with your cooking either," Fred said, "that's be like…sacrilege or something."

"Yeah, exactly," George agreed.

Mrs Weasley glared at them suspiciously. "Hmm." She wandered around the kitchen deep in thought, tidying the already neat dresser. "Extra appendages," she said thoughtfully, "I think we need to tell the Headmaster about this. Something very serious could be going on."

"What do we need to tell Dumbledore?" Mr Weasley said as he wandered into the kitchen, "You haven't been causing trouble have you?" He frowned suspiciously at the Twins. The Twins looked scandalised at the baseless accusation.

Wordlessly Mrs Weasley handed him the letter. As he read, Mr Weasley's eyebrows climbed higher and higher. "Merlin," he breathed, "Dumbledore. Definitely," he said firmly.

OOOOOO

Harry was busily trying his new wings out when the door-bell rang. Probably a double-glazing salesman he thought as he tried to flap his wings with something close to coordination. He'd finally managed to do it without shrugging his shoulders this morning. It wasn't as if there was much else for him to do now he'd been confined to his room for the rest of the day.

He'd been threatened with confinement nearly a week ago now, but that hadn't lasted even a day. Apparently, Aunt Petunia had had second thoughts when she realised it would mean she had to do all the cleaning and dusting herself, and the gardening as well, since he definitely wasn't allowed outside, though he was now on probation from dusting thanks to not having complete control over his new appendages.

Some spindly figurine had taken a dive onto the carpet and not survived very well. How was he to know it was a gift from Great Aunt Agatha? Who was Great Aunt Agatha anyway?

Shrill shouting drifted up from downstairs. Harry stared at the bedroom door in confusion; that was strange. Normally, Aunt Petunia got rid of unwanted callers fast, probably by smiling at them. One look at those terrifying rows of tombstone teeth was enough to give anyone nightmares.

There was a male voice as well, arguing back, sounded vaguely familiar too, What the heck was going on? Harry stared nervously at the bedroom door. Should he be going for his wand? Footsteps began climbing the stairs.

Feeling increasingly nervous, Harry dived over the piles of junk and discarded clothes on the floor, hastily snatching his wand up from the battered old desk.

The familiar, slightly warm feel of the wand soothed him as he turned to watch the door nervously. Who could it be that had managed to talk their way into the house? The bedroom door slowly inched open.

Oh…was he being picked up early for the Quidditch World Cup? If so that was going to be brilliant. "Hi, Mr Weasley," he said smiling sheepishly and hiding his wand behind his leg.

Mr Weasley stood in the doorway, eyes wide as he took in Harry's altered appearance. "This is definitely not Fred and George's handiwork."

"Really?" Harry shifted nervously, "I thought, because of the food…"

Mr Weasley gave Aunt Petunia an uncharacteristically nasty glare.

"…and they love inventing stuff…and…" he shrugged helplessly, wings furling and unfurling involuntarily.

"I'm afraid, Harry," Mr Weasley shook his head, "that this is something of rather more significance."

OOOOOO

From his place on the garden bench Harry watched wistfully as the others zoomed overhead on their broomsticks in an enthusiastic game of pick-up Quidditch. He'd tried joining in but something about actually being in flight while he'd got wings but wasn't using them had caused him to become disorientated and loose his grip on his broom.

Unfortunately his wings were too small and immature yet to keep him airborne and so he'd tumbled to the ground. He'd have been quite badly hurt too if it hadn't been for Bill Weasley's quick thinking and even quicker wand-work. Despite the soft landing, he'd still managed to pull a muscle in his shoulder and now he was grounded for the foreseeable future. Mrs Weasley had even confiscated his fire-bolt so he "couldn't be tempted."

Scuffing his battered trainer into the dirt, Harry sighed heavily to himself. Okay, he wasn't cooped up in a small and poorly ventilated room anymore, but not able to fly at all…he stared sadly upwards at the ongoing game just as Ron fumbled a pass and Ginny triumphantly swooped away with the quaffle.

"May I join you?" a familiar voice dragged him from his thoughts. Harry looked round to find Professor Dumbledore gazing down at him with a kind smile.

"I…oh, hello Professor," Harry grinned, "having a nice summer?" he asked as he shuffled down the bench to give the Headmaster room to sit.

"Well enough, well enough," the Headmaster said as he sank on to the bench with a grateful sigh, "I have just returned from visiting with your Aunt."

Harry considered this for a moment. "Oh," he finally said, at a loss what to say.

"Surprisingly informative she was, too," Dumbledore said, as he gazed up at the Quidditch players.

"Ah," Harry felt his stomach sink. This was bound to be unpleasant, he thought.

"As I'm, sure you have become increasingly aware," Dumbledore gave him a reassuring smile," your current condition is both hereditary and permanent."

Harry nodded morosely, the horrible thought he'd been trying to avoid for days now rearing its ugly head like a giant ship-eating squid. "Did my mum…did she..?" He trailed off uncomfortably.

"Sleep with someone other than your father? No, I don't think she did at all," Dumbledore said, much to Harry's embarrassed surprise. "I'm sure you're sick of hearing this but you look uncommonly like your father…but you have your mother's eyes. No, rest assured, James and Lily are most definitely your parents, and in the short time they had together they, as far I know, were happily married. Which means you'll want this…" He pulled a carefully folded piece of parchment from a pocket, handing it over to a puzzled Harry.

Opening it, Harry found it was the letter he'd thought was a part of some elaborate and sick joke of the Twins.

"I'd put that somewhere safe if I were you…it's always an odd feeling seeing the handwriting of a deceased acquaintance. You'll understand when you're older, hopefully much older," Dumbledore sighed.

Harry gazed at the letter with new appreciation. His mum had written this herself, just for him. She had actually touched this very parchment, dipped a quill in this ink…this was her handwriting, so much neater than his own. He had so much of his dad's…but this, this was mum's. He clutched it carefully in his hands. As soon as he got the opportunity he was going to slip it into his photo-album, nice and safe like.

"Thanks, sir," he smiled up at the Headmaster.

"You're very welcome Harry," Dumbledore said, "oh look, a ladybird!" He pointed out the little creature that had landed in his beard. "Aren't they charming?"

"I still don't know how I could end up like this," he said, "Mum's kind of vague in the letter. She sort of mentions some sort of test she had done at St Mungo's, but…" he shrugged helplessly.

A fat bumble bee meandered past on some errand or other, slow and lazy in the hot air.

"Hmm, that is where your Aunt comes in," Dumbledore said as he watched the Twins argue with Ron about a possible foul, "a very interesting story she told me as well. It seems that one day when she was a little girl, her parents had a terrible row. Money was tight, your Grandfather was working long hours to make ends meet, and your Grandmother was looking after a sickly, and I suspect, rather petulant little girl."

Harry almost grinned at the thought of a very young Aunt Petunia with a sniffle and an attitude to match Dudley's. And he'd always thought he'd got it from Uncle Vernon.

"One day it all became too much, and your Grandmother walked out leaving your Aunt in the care of her father, disappearing for several days." Dumbledore gave him an intense look. "When your Grandmother finally reappeared, she and your Grandfather made up and all was forgiven. Nine months later your mother was born to much celebration. I don't think your Aunt ever really forgave her for it."

Harry shrugged in puzzlement; it all seemed pretty ordinary so far. "But?" he said suspiciously.

"Your mother looked nothing like the rest of her family," the Headmaster continued, "plus she was extremely magically talented…and there's also the little fact that your Grandmother was never able to explain where she went or what she did during the time she was missing."

"So…had she been obliviated?" Harry asked, the cogs of his mind whirring away.

"Who knows," the Headmaster sighed sadly, "I'm afraid that your Grandmother took that secret to her grave."

But that was more confusing than ever. Harry leaned forward, wings fluttering desperately. "But…but what am I then? Nobody seems to know. Am I part creature…or some weird sort of experiment…or…or…"

"I think "or" is the most accurate description," Dumbledore gave him a sad smile, "we'll know more as you grow and mature. I will make arrangements for you to have regular check-ups with Madam Pomfrey so we can keep an eye on your progress, spot any problems before they can develop, that sort of thing."

Harry sighed heavily, scuffing at the grass with his battered trainers. "You know what the worst part of all this is," he grumbled, "I've got wings, which might actually turn out to be pretty brilliant…and these really stupid horn things…but my eyesight, it's still utterly rubbish." He scowled, and adjusted his glasses.

"Ah well," Dumbledore gave him a small smile, "you can't have everything."