Yes people, Harry WILL have a velociraptor harem...sort of. And I'm sure many will laugh when they find out what I plan to name the fifth member of his pack.
The sight of a drunken Hermione would plague the Gryffindor common room for a full month before McGonagall finally took the girl aside. After that she spent the rest of the year learning from Flitwick...and the entire castle found out quite by accident that the girl had an unhealthy fetish for blowing shit up.
The twins immediately enlisted her the moment she was declared 'safe to be around' by the teachers after her break down. Considering this meant she could wreck revenge on Harry for not giving her Talon's full description when he obviously knew it, Harry had learned to test his food before he ate anything.
Hermione was mean when she was motivated. At this point he wouldn't be shocked if she ended up marrying one of the twins out of sheer frustration.
Harry cheerfully hummed something under his breath. It was a rather raunchy drinking song he picked up from Sirius a while back. Probably best not to let McGonagall recognize it.
"So how was your Christmas Harry?" asked Neville.
"It was great! I broke Hermione, Sirius got to meet the guy I 'bought' Talon and Sickle from, and I'll be getting a third to round out my raptor pack for next year!"
Hermione, when she heard that, twitched. Then she reached for her bag, took out what was clearly a flask filled with liquor, and then took a quick drink of it before capping it.
To be fair, her parents could completely understand the need to drink once they found out their daughter's friend had an honest to god pair of velociraptors as pets and had even trained them... and that he could turn into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It wasn't the animal form that bothered them, but the raptors.
However they were limiting her to the weaker proofs before she became legally 'of age' in the muggle world. And she was only allowed to drink when Harry was doing something phenomenally stupid...again.
She was more fun drunk than she was sober.
"How did he react?" asked Fred.
"Eh... I'm pretty sure the guy who owns the park I'm investing in was relieved to finally have an adult with me this time. Though I didn't explain he had been falsely imprisoned as the reason why he was missing the first time."
"I don't want to know for fear of needing a stronger drink," said Hermione flatly.
"Let me put it this way...the lead scientist is an arrogant asshole who thinks nothing of the creatures in the park, the head programmer is a fat bastard who reminds me painfully of a smarter, uglier Dudley, and the guy who owns the place is like a kid with a new toy," said Harry.
"And he's letting you go to his park before it opens...why?" asked Hermione.
"Target audience, I have common sense and knowledge of the animals in question, and I've proven I can handle almost anything thrown at me when he found out about Talon. He gave me Sickle to see if I could replicate it. Considering I'm one of his primary investors at this point, he's giving me the third one for free."
That and there had been a slight...incident at the park where one of the raptors apparently took over the pack and killed all but two of the others. Hammond had not been happy, but at least none of the workers had been harmed when the safety measures had to be implemented.
The raptor had, as Harry had predicted (and demonstrated with Talon's help) rammed the gate trying to knock the cage loose. The bar behind the cage had bent from the sheer force it had used...but it didn't break. The worker who had been opening the cage had fallen flat on his ass, but thankfully it had been behind the safety of the steel-wire mesh that had been threaded so closely together that the raptor couldn't get a claw through to snag the worker's boot.
Muldoon had been furious, more so when that same raptor demonstrated the clear intent of making it's own pack.
The idiot known as Henry Wu neglected to tell him that he had accidentally breed an Alpha raptor, which was ten times more dangerous than the normal betas.
Muldoon was just glad the kid had talked some sense into Hammond. Almost immediately after the Alpha decimated the pack, they tranquilized every single one in there and put them into a much more secure building that there was no chance they could escape from. They were fed animals small enough to get through the doors, but not big enough for them to even squeeze through. And unlike the original paddock, this one was reinforced with actual steel rods that had spaces so that they could see the outside, but were too close together for them to get so much as an arm though. There wouldn't be any risk of them jumping outside this paddock.
They were simply too dangerous to keep in the regular park, not if they wanted to avoid accidents. Not even Talon could force the new Alpha to stand down.
And Harry wasn't stupid enough to go anywhere near the inside of the cage.
Ironically this made the insurance adjusters happy, because it told them Hammond took the safety of the people in the park more seriously than they had assumed. Unfortunately it had delayed the opening until they could breed a new pack of velociraptors to put into the original paddock.
This time they wanted no mistakes, considering the danger level of the raptors. Seeing Talon and Sickle hunt a pair of boars had been enough for Hammond to be convinced...and they were relatively tame compared to the Alpha Henry had accidentally introduced.
In other words, Hammond wasn't opening the park until he was absolutely certain the vicious raptors were trained to the point that they could at least guess what they were saying. He wanted Harry to teach the new batch Morse code. Either that or show them how to train a small pack (three or less) to follow one person as the Alpha so they could keep them contained without worrying.
Harry was just glad he found a new programmer who could take Dennis' place the moment he slipped and did something Hammond could legally fire him for. He didn't trust that fat bastard any more than he had Dudley whenever someone gave him something.
"So what's on our schedule for today?"
"Ancient Runes, CoMC, and Defense," said Neville.
Harry had picked Runes, CoMC and a lesser known course in advanced transfiguration that you had to ask for and have parental consent.
Hermione had been furious when she found out the only reason McGonagall had accepted his request for the advanced lessons (which meant he no longer had to sit in the regular ones after a brief test) was because Harry was an animagus.
Hermione redoubled her efforts to finding the potion so she could become an animagus as well. If she had asked, Remus would have been happy to give her the extra vial that had been left over.
Harry loved being the TA for the CoMC class. It meant he had a legitimate excuse to deduct points from the Slytherins if they pissed him off...and they had lost their ability to harass Hagrid.
It was mostly keeping the new kids from bothering the raptors and keeping Hagrid from going overboard with the creatures he brought out.
It also meant he got an automatic perfect grade, and didn't have to turn in any homework or go through the tests. Not to mention it counted towards his CoMC OWL's grades, and later if he was still acting TA, his NEWT's.
But mostly he loved the fact it allowed him to be with the pack for several hours a day. More than he had the previous two years.
The number of near misses with the velociraptor pack had dropped to almost zero with Harry outside ready to act as intermediary.
Fortunately the other students were quick to treat the two raptors as a partially tamed dragon. They were trained enough to not immediately attack students on sight and to stay out of the castle, but not to the point you could actually pet them without the risk of losing your hands.
"So bored..." said Harry, leaning against the fence.
Talon, hearing his voice and recognizing the sound pattern of 'human tongue' as she called it, made a series of clicks. Harry replied in the same manner making a few odd click sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
It had taken little time to figure out how to communicate without having to make the same barking noise with his throat. That had nearly killed his voice for a week until he started to click with his tongue.
It meant he could still talk to them without worrying about accidentally dropping the clicking toy he had bought months ago.
Looking at his pack, Harry realized with some despair that there wasn't a chance in hell of him ever getting a date as long as he insisted on keeping his raptors. He would have to chose between a human female who would obviously be freaked out by Talon and Sickle, or his raptor pack.
What he didn't know was that Luna had broached the issue with the pack, and the two raptors had come to an agreement.
Velociraptor were notorious by this point of being problem solvers (at least on the island anyway), and Talon had been watching her Alpha shift forms repeatedly since he unlocked the ability. Especially when he shifted from Raptor to Human. And if Talon was anything, she was possessive of her Alpha.
There was also the fact that both velociraptors had been born and more or less raised in Hogwarts, a nexus of magical energy. Talon and Sickle spent most of their known lives in the forbidden forest, eating magical animals (mainly the spiders because those buggers were tricky to catch and eat) and slowly absorbing magical energy through their bodies. They came to full maturity inside the borders of three known leylines, most of which were used to power the wards.
As a result, it was really little surprise when, out of the blue that day, Talon decided to try shifting. Just to see if she could.
Harry heard something, turned to face his pack...and stared in disbelief at the girl who was clearly Talon standing starkers in the pen.
He was quick to take off his robe and put it around her, because February or not it was freezing in Scotland.
It took little time to bring her straight to Hagrid's hut, since he wasn't entirely sure she would be allowed in the castle...and because he wasn't stupid.
McGonagall was quick to come out, but rather than looked shocked she was more resigned than anything.
It was almost like she expected this to happen sooner rather than later.
"Professor?"
"It's fine Mr. Potter. To be honest I thought this would happen months ago. Your 'raptors' are unusually intelligent, and being raised in a magical environment and eating magical creatures on a regular basis would have an effect even on non-magical creatures. It was inevitable that they would either figure out how to shift into human form, or develop magical properties. It also doesn't help that a familiar bond often goes both ways."
Harry looked concerned.
"Does this mean they'll be classified as magical creatures?"
"Not at all. This will merely be recorded as a side effect of your bond with them. They're still legal to have in the muggle side."
If the muggles hadn't raised any protest at this point towards his pets, she was going to assume they were legal.
Harry relaxed.
"So what now?"
"Now we need to find out the extent of the transformation, and if we can't train them to speak proper English. In magical terms they would be declared 'squibs' at best."
It took them four hours to narrow down what Talon could do.
Outside of being able to turn into a human for short periods (she preferred her natural form and hated clothes), being able to see through magical barriers and already knowing a limited vocabulary of words thanks to Harry teaching her Morse code at an early age, she would never be a full witch. She was also immediately given a collar that would give the illusion of clothes and would cause muggles to ignore her if she suddenly turned into a human in public.
This was a necessity.
The teachers also made it very, very clear she was never allowed in the castle unless she was in human form, because they didn't want to tempt Sickle into entering the school unless she could transform as well.
Talon terrified the house elves and had to promise to avoid the kitchens. She resorted to having Harry make her orders.
It took little over a week for the students to get used to this new oddity...but McGonagall proved to be true. Apparently some of the older students had been wondering when this would happen. So much so the twins made a betting pool about it.
On the plus side, he never had to worry about getting a date again. Talon had firmly and unequivocally declared Harry "hers" and would gladly maul any idiot fangirl into pieces. An not a single witch was willing to challenge one of Harry's pack.
Hermione swapped out her usual 'weak' flask for something a bit stronger, and blissfully slept out her hangover in the hospital wing, merely asking Harry to keep her away from whatever new headache he had spawned.
She was still too young to engage in other stress relieving methods, and her head of house wouldn't begrudge her current method to deal with idiocy-induced migraines. After all, she generally had a shot of good scotch after the twins had set off another large scale prank. Again. For the third time that month.
