'How do you see me?'
'The Mongoose I want under the house when the Snake slithers by.'
-Hannibal.
Weeks turned into months and Harry was gradually making progress. Slowly he had begun to seperate himself from the being that haunted his dreams and had crept into his waking hours as well.
The serpent-child moved slowly through the grass, following the taste-trail of the warm-squeaking-food. Muscles flexed, as scales slid soundlessly over the leafy ground, down into the safe-nest-hole. The hunt was quick, soon fragile bones fractured and broke under scaled coils of muscles as the serpent-child settled into digest its meal.
Anger...frustraition...trapped in a form too small. Inadequate...limited...
Bushes filled his vision as Harry looked around, heart hammering in his chest, finding himself kneeling in the midst of Aunt Petunia's rhododendron bushes. Pruning shears fell to the ground from shaking hands, as he fumbled to tear off the canvas gloves and tugged up the to long sleeve of his shirt. Taking several deep breaths through his mouth and out his nose as he had been taught to calm down, focusing on the watch at his wrist before looking around at his surroundings.
"My name is Harry Potter," another set of deep breaths, "It's 1:36pm and I'm in Little Whinging, Surrey." Another set of deep breaths, as his heart finally settled back to a normal rhythm.
Glancing down at the watch, a gift from Hannibal to help ground him in the present, here and now. It was helping a lot; that now familiar band of leather, metal and clockwork pieces he never took off except to shower. He admired the devise for a long minute before hiding it back under the sleeve of his shirt, no point in tempting Dudley into destroying it by leaving such a thing out in the open.