A/N: This will be a two-shot based on a random idea I got. It's a pseudo-creature!Harry based off of the Strigoi from World of Darkness Changing Breeds.
Also, I'm shamelessly ripping off parts of ulktante's excellent fic Benefits of Old Laws, so don't be mean to me over that. Please?
Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor the new World of Darkness.
The police never found the fourth resident of the Dursley household.
The wife was found in the living room, her throat torn out by what Forensics identified as some kind of claw or claw-like weapon. The husband's death was less humane, his body covered in long lacerations and bone-deep wounds. His back - which was suspended almost three feet from the floor by the sheer bulk of his belly - had large sections torn out and missing, as if they had been severed by a knife or some kind of bladed weapon and the killer had taken it with them. Warnings were put out that it was possible there was a cannibal on the loose.
The floor of the hallway where he had fallen was slick with congealing blood by the time the authorities had arrived, but it was not enough to distract for long from the contents of the open cupboard underneath the stairs: a nest of blankets and the crayon scrawlings of a child on the walls, amid the bottles of cleaning chemicals and bleach. At first it was feared that it was the Dursley's son was the one who had been abused, until the child's blatant spoiled nature had been made evident, along with the sheer size of the child.
The police were mystified until, over a week later, an officer overheard a neighbour of the Dursleys' commenting to a friend that "It must have been that Potter boy." The following round of questioning revealed that there had been a fourth resident of No 4 Privet Drive, one not mentioned on any census or official documentation. The descriptions all had a few things in common, though. A thin, black-haired troublemaker with a scar on his forehead.
The message was put out, although few in the Department had much hope that the child would be found. The kind of strength that would have to be put behind many of the wounds on the Dursleys ruled him out as a suspect - a six-year-old wouldn't be able to drive a knife through a marge man's ribs and shatter them - , and so it was likely that either he or his corpse had been taken by the killers.
There was one thing, though, which utterly baffled both the officers who went to inspect the scene and the forensics.
Where did the dozens of enormous owl feathers come from, that lay like bloodstained snow on the floor about the corpses?
XxXxXxXxX
12 years later, London back alley
Dumbledore trudged tiredly down the refuse-strewn alleyway, following what was in all likelihood his last chance to make amends for what he had done, and to end the conflict which was tearing the British wizarding world apart.
Voldemort had returned almost seven years ago, now, but had not launched an attack upon the Ministry, or even the public. Instead, he had become an altogether more insidious threat, making use of a number of legal loopholes and - the headmaster was sure - hefty bribes to secure Tom Marvolo Riddle as a separate person to Lord Voldemort, who he had claimed was the personality of an ancient evil wizard which had taken him over while he was exploring an ancient ruin.
A sob story and sufficient galleons could get you anything, apparently.
After Tom's exoneration, though, he had entered the political arena, riding the wave of sympathy for his 'horrible fate' along with the title of Lord Slytherin right into the Wizengamot chambers, where he quickly established himself as a moderating and reasonable voice. Few bills or laws were proposed by him, but Dumbledore saw far more with his mark upon them.
Muggleborns were given jobs which paid enough to maintain a good standard of living, but which would place them far from the forefront of society, comfortably inertial. The right to approve the establishment of a business was moved from the Wizengamot to the local landowners, ostensibly to help reduce bureaucracy. In practice, it meant that it was Pureblood lords who decided who could do business and who could not, barring new families of wizards from any possibility of rising in the world, except by submitting to Pureblood lines.
In truth, as terrible as the last war had been, Tom had made himself vastly harder to resist this time around. He had allied himself with the Ministry and shamelessly taken advantage of their near-monopoly on reporting and newspapers to spread his gospel of discrimination. The worst part was the way in which people seemed to simply accept it, as though there was nothing wrong.
Which, in the end, was why Dumbledore was here, trying to ignore the unidentifiable liquids which tinted the puddles with odd hues and which were, he was sure, slowly working their way into the leather of his shoes. Without Harry there to act as the instrument of prophecy, resisting Tom would be functionally impossible, and so the aged wizard had directed his efforts to finding the boy and preserving as much political capital as he could for when he had a suitable agent to support. His initial efforts at locating Harry, begun over a decade ago now, had long since failed, both his divinatory magic and the networks of informants.
Finally, he had resorted to consulting in the 'shadow world'; the assortment of creatures, squibs, monsters and stranger things which lived in the shadows of the muggle world. Since he had begun his inquiries, Dumbledore had had a number of close scrapes, almost being killed on more than one occasion (the first time had been the consequence of irritating a powerful vampire, the second the result of an indelicate expression in a discussion with one of the wolf-shifters who called themselves Uratha).
It was such a contact which had led him here, to the grey and decayed-looking warehouse which squatted as a corroded hulk before him, purportedly the lair of a shapeshifter who specialised in ritual magic. The magic of the shadow denizens frequently operated on different lines to that of wizards, and he was hoping that the difference would be enough to overcome whatever magic was preventing his spells from tracking Harry. He knew that the boy was alive - that was one of the few instruments of his that had not been damaged beyond repair when a series of them exploded in rapid succession twelve years ago - but precious little else.
Finally, the aging wizard reached the end of the alleyway, a dull brown door marked with scrawls of black and grey graffiti. This close, Dumbledore could feel a weight, an uncomfortable cold pressure against his skin. Some kind of magic, he assumed. He had been told that the occupant of the building - Cailleach*, they called themselves - liked his privacy.
After a moment's fumbling through the detritus which inevitably gathered in pockets, the wizard located the slip of paper he was looking for. Holding it up and shielding it against the light drizzle, he carefully tapped out the sequence of knocks on the door that the slip described. The oppressive feeling lessened, and there was a click as the lock disengaged. Cautiously, Dumbledore replaced the paper and, wand in hand, gently pushed the door open.
It moved only a little, before becoming jammed against something. Deciding against simply using magic to move the blockage - shadow-folk were notoriously edgy about people using magic anywhere near them unless they knew exactly what it did - the aged headmaster pushed harder, widening the gap until he could - just - squeeze through.
The sight that greeted his eyes made him question the wisdom of his visit.
The inside of the warehouse, a space at least as large as the Great hall of Hogwarts, was a labyrinth of books, filing cabinets, crates (some intact, some broken open to reveal everything from magazines to piles of silvery slabs that Dumbledore realised after a moment were the 'laptops' that muggles were going on about nowadays) and stack upon stack of loose papers, teetering up towards the gloom of the ceiling, some 30 feet above. Here and there, strings of odd objects dangled down like strange dreamcatchers or the tendrils of a vast jellyfish, frozen cascades of coloured glass, coins, bottle tops and little bleached bones.
To his magical senses, the place fairly thrummed with power, sitting cold and clammy against his skin, like something between a breath of air and the brush of water. It felt almost sticky and Dumbledore wondered how someone attuned to magic could bear to reside in such a place.
Where the walls were not obscured by pinned-up papers, clippings and other paraphernalia, their original colour was rendered indistinguishable by marks and sigils scrawled in spray-paint and reddish-brown substances which the headmaster feared he knew the origin of. The whole place had a smell to it, the musty scent of old paper, mixed with the corruption of decay. All was silent, save for the sound of his own breathing, the quiet chimes of the dangling tendrils and the soft crunch-crackle of papers shifting and crumpling beneath his tread as he clambered awkwardly over one of the smaller piles so as to get out of the drizzle.
Above the light of the sodium lamps which illuminated the papery wasteland of the warehouse's floor, the aged wizard could just make out the faint shapes of an arrangement of platforms. He would not have notice them, save for the pale light which could be seen over the lip of one.
He cleared his throat, a gunshot in the tomb-silence. The light on the platform flickered as something passed in front of it and Dumbledore heard the slightest creak of shifting material, high above.
Then there was silence again. It stretched out, moment after moment, until the aging wizard was almost certain that it had been a trick of the light and his dulling senses.
"Close the door, would you?"
The wizard whirled around, wand whipping out and half-forgotten instincts ingrained during his misspent youth surging to the fore. He just about managed to restrain himself from launching a wordless stunner, but it was a close thing.
There, perched on one of the taller filing cabinets, was a boy, perhaps seventeen years of age. More a young man than a child, really. Scraggly black hair hung in unkempt dreadlocks from his head, brushing the shoulders of an ancient T-shirt with 'Green Day' scrawled across it in spiky capitals. Small feathers poked out of the black cascade of hair, seemingly woven in as accessories. His feet were bare, the toes curling over the edge of the cabinet and his legs were hidden beneath a pair of scuffed and faded jeans.
His eyes, though, were what drew attention.
The irises were a solid yellow and stretched almost to the edges of the eye, so that almost no white could be seen. They were not human eyes, bearing more similarity to those of an owl than to those of a man. They regarded the wizard with an inscrutable intensity. It was an uncomfortable feeling, as though those eyes could see right into him. Dumbledore noticed that the boy's motions always had a certain jerkiness to them, a birdlike poise.
"Well go on, you're letting the draught in."
Startled from his reverie, Dumbledore coughed awkwardly and grasped the edge of the door, pushing it closed. He turned back to the yellow-eyed man.
"Are you Cailleach?"
A smile split the boy's face and he sprang up, fairly bouncing on top of the dangerously creaking cabinet.
"That would be me. And you're Albus Dumbledore."
"Yes-"
"No, don't answer; rhetorical question. So, what do you want me for?"
"Well-"
"No, wait, come over here and sit down."
The yellow-eyed man took a flying leap off the cabinet and the wizard was just preparing to cast a levitation charm to catch him when there was a twisting, a flurry of feathers and the boy was replaced by an enormous owl, its wingspan longer than he was tall which took soundless wing out over the stacks, leaving Dumbledore to clamber gracelessly after it.
A minute or two later, the wizard had finally reached a (relatively) clear space. The floor was cold grey concrete and a number of aging settees were arranged asymmetrically around the area. Cailleach was perched on the back of one of the sofas, in human form again. He gestured absently towards the settee opposite.
"So, what are you here for?" he asked bluntly. Dumbledore took a moment to compose himself and settle on the - delightfully soft - settee before answering. Then he cast a quick privacy spell, just to be sure, after asking and receiving permission from the 'host'.
"I would like to request your aid in locating someone. I have tried to do so myself but achieved nothing. I suspect that he must be concealed somehow."
Cailleach nodded, a serious expression wiping away . "And why do you want to find this person?"
Not missing a beat, Dumbledore replied, "I knew his parents, they were very good friends of mine and I promised to do my best by their son. He is at risk from some very dangerous men, and I cannot protect him if I cannot find him."
"And? If that was all there was to it, you could have gone to a wizard. You dealing in the shadow world and with the night-folk smacks of secrecy."
The wizard sat back in his chair, his mind churning. This was his best chance so far to find Harry, but was it worth the risk of revealing the prophecy, even in part?
"I am afraid that that information is quite dangerous. I would be willing to reveal it, but only if you will take a vow of silence with regards to what I tell you."
"Hmm. I would be willing, but I doubt that your wizarding vows will work with me." He lapsed into thought for a moment. "I may have something which will work, though."
So saying, the yellow-eyed man hopped down off the sofa and disappeared into the chaotic morass of miscellaneous objects, leaving the elder wizard to ponder. The shapeshift was truly strange, to Dumbledore's eyes. He was not a wizard - that much was clear from the ephemeral, gas-liquid-cold-warm-talons feeling of his magic and the strange aura which he had, between the bright, bold colours of an animal's and the complex weave of a human's - and yet his transformation was effortless in a way that few among the shadow-folk could match. Even an animagus' transformation was more forced than what this man had shown. For him, it seemed as easy - easier, even - than slipping off a jacket to show another skin underneath.
His thoughts were interrupted - and didn't Cailleach have a talent for interrupting as well? - by the other man's return. He hopped down from one of the stacks, holding what looked like a thin string. As he came closer, Dumbledore realised that it was, in fact, a length of straw braided into a crude cord.
"Would you mind giving me a hair?"
"Pardon?"
"I need one of your hairs for this to work. I bargained for it with a changeling, almost a year back. I summoned up his girlfriend's ghost so he could say goodbye."
And there it was. For all his seeming childishness, the man before him was a self-professed necromancer. How far had he fallen, the great 'Albus Dumbledore, lord of the Light', to consort with back alley ghost-conjurors.
Still, he had come here for a reason, and this seemed to be the way to see that reason through. The elder wizard reached into his beard and isolated a strand from the rest. With a slight wince, he plucked it out and handed it to the yellow-eyed man. He plucked a hair himself, and then wound the two strands, black and grey, around the braided straw, before tying the odd artefact around his own wrist like a crude friendship bracelet.
"I swear, that what is told to me by the wizard calling himself Albus Dumbledore shall remain secret unto me until he gives me leave to speak of it or unto the ending of time," said the shapechanger, rubbing a finger back and forth over the bracelet, eyes closed. The words had a ritualistic quality to them and Dumbledore could feel the magic snap into place, even second-hand. It clinked like delicate silver chains and gripped like the firm hold of a lover's hand.
"Now, what are your reasons?"
The bluntness was a stark contrast to the chanted words which preceded it, and it took Dumbledore a moment to answer.
"A prophecy was made, by a True Seer, that the one which I seek would be the one with the power to bring down the Dark Lord Voldemort. I seek him in order to put an end to the discrimination which is being engendered in the Wizarding World."
"Ah, I see. And what is the name of this 'chosen one', if I may ask?"
"Harry Potter."
Something passed behind the man's inhuman eyes, but it was gone before Dumbledore could identify what, exactly.
"Very well, then. Do you have something to use as a connection to him?"
Wordlessly, the elder wizard reached into one of his pockets and withdrew a crystal phial containing a red liquid. He placed it into the outstretched hand of the other man.
"I'm not going to ask how you got a hold of his blood and still don't know where he is." deadpanned Cailleach, "Now, if you could stand back, be quiet and not interfere, I'll get this over with and get my payment." He shooed Dumbledore away with a waved hand. The wizard stepped back out of the clear space, leaning tiredly on one of the paper-laden cabinets. His bones weren't what they used to be and the atmosphere of the place wasn't exactly comforting. The damp cold of the walk to get here hadn't been altogether welcome, either.
The other seemed to be ignoring him, muttering something under his breath as he wandered around the room, picking out seemingly random items from the hanging strings. A twist of metal here, an old compass there and a handful of glass beads over there. Finally, he turned back towards the bare floor between the settees and began to pace in a wide circle, occasionally dropping one of the beads as he went. They fell to the floor and stopped where they fell, not rolling a centimetre. The sound of their impact resonated unnaturally in the air.
"Ah, Illusah, erethas krah makuth, en setafus krogh mulakasn." The words were guttural and sounded unnatural in the throat of a human being. Or at least one who seemed human.
The compass was placed in the centre of the rough circle of glass beads, the twists of metal arranged around it seemingly randomly. Cailleach continued to pace, crouched low to the ground and dragging his fingers in odd patterns over the grey material of the floor. There was a grinding, crunching sound and Dumbledore saw that the man's hands were tipped with vicious black claws which dug into the concrete, leaving pale trails in their wake.
"Ah, muthurum, hulaksanas en gurathi vusuthsalak, vusuthalaken furtun."
Shadows danced in edges of the wizard's sight and the clammy pressure which had weighed down on him since he had first stepped in the building redoubled, pushing and pinching at his flesh with cold and cruel hands. The lights flickered on and off overhead, turning the rite into disconnected flashes. Cailleach's yellow eyes were twin coals, flashing eldritch light as his strange dance gained in tempo, to the accompaniment of unseen drums and invisible bone-rattles.
"Ah Irraka! Rakal uk inortath veuth! Rakal! Rakal, Irraka!"
There was a terrible wildness to the magic which whirled in the air, and which sang like screech-owls and wolves in accompaniment to the ecstatic chant. In the flashes of illumination, Dumbledore could make out the shapes of feathers and three-taloned hands as the creature - as much owl as man, now - capered and twisted in a feral and primal dance. Grey-feathered wings burst from shoulders and beat the air soundlessly, creating gusts of wind which stirred the loose papers into a storm of whirling sheets.
Irraka! Irraka! Muthurum en Ilusah! Gurathu murr otur! Mulausu en uruk!"
A red phial was held high in a momentary gleam of light and was cast to the ground. The light vanished again before its shattering could be heard, ringing like a bell in the darkness and sudden silence.
The lights flickered spasmodically into life, revealing Cailleach hunched on the floor, still in his half-owl form. Even curled up like that, the shapeshifter was nearly as tall as Dumbledore himself. His wings were spread like a feathery cloak, and were drawn up about his head and neck, concealing both his face and the ground beneath. A long minute passed, the only movements the slow settling of the scattered papers and the occasional, faint twitch of the wings.
Eventually, the wings curled back and Cailleach unfolded from the grey - now red-stained - floor. Standing, the shapeshifter was nearly half as tall again as the headmaster. He loomed over Dumbledore, a grey spectre whose silhouette was only broken by the dark slash of a beak and the twin luminous orbs that were his eyes. It walked on yellow, gnarled feet tipped with black, curving talons like the feet of a bird of prey, and its hands were much the same. One was clutched to the thing's chest, as if it were holding some small object.
It bent down and the aged wizard took an involuntary step backwards as the cruel meathook of a beak sank to the level of his face. Two inhuman eyes stared into his own as the shapeshifter extended one of its hands towards Dumbledore. It spoke, in a voice somewhere between the rasp of a parrot and the screech of a barn owl.
"Yours."
Tearing his eyes away from hypnotic golden pools which bore into them, Dumbledore glanced down at the outstretched hand. Lying there was the same compass that the shapeshifter had picked out. It was an old-looking thing, made of brass and with thick glass covering the needle and dial. The wizard took it, carefully avoiding the talons that rose like a cage around it. The spectre withdrew its hand and stood straight, unnaturally still. A shiver ran up Dumbledore's spine. He looked back down at the compass.
Now that it was in his hand, the headmaster could feel the faint trace of otherworldly power about the thing, like fingers of almost-substance trailing over his hand. The needle didn't point north, either. At the moment, it was pointing straight through Cailleach., a bearing which, if Dumbledore's sense of direction was correct, was eastward, over the Thames.
"Well, then, shall we discuss payment?" the old wizard said as he made his way over to one of the settees.
The owl-man remained where he was, silent as a statue. Its head twisted to track the wizard as he moved, an unnerving effect when combined with the intensity of the shapeshifter's gaze.
A little awkwardly, Dumbledore glanced down at the compass. The needle had moved position. It was still pointing towards the shapeshifter. Frowning, and with an unpleasant feeling welling up inside him, Dumbledore moved his hand to the left. The needle swivelled so that it continued to point at Cailleach.
Throat dry, a word squeezed from between the aged wizard's lips.
"Harry?"
*Pronounced 'kai-EACH'.
A/N: And that's that.
Also, for those who'll go 'But Harry was a wizard first!', it is canon in the World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness franchises that being one kind of major supernatural thing (wizard, vampire, mage, werewolf, shapeshifter etc) pretty much precludes the possibility of becoming one of the others or, if it doesn't, means that you effectively swap one state for another. The types of mojo don't like each other. In this case, Harry 'chooses' being Strigoi over being a wizard, for reasons which he has explained.