Chapter 12

Death Bites! (Ax)

My name is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill.

And I am an Andalite.

I am the only Andalite currently on the planet Earth, besides Visser Three. I am also brother to Prince Elfangor, who gave my friends the power to morph.

I was stranded on Earth when the Yeerks attacked the Dome Ship. The ship fell to Earth, in one of its oceans. There I remained until the Animorphs found me.

Now I am at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

I do not know what magic is exactly, but I do know that it feels wonderful. It makes my one human heart feel light and tingly. I asked my friends if this is normal, and they said yes, it is a good feeling. I am feeling this now, so I am guessing it is a good feeling.

I had just experienced this boy wizard (a magical person, I later found out) named Harry Potter flying on his cleaning instrument, by which humans call a broom. He had been quite agile, and I found the sport he played exhilarating.

We walked back to the stone structure called a castle. It was noon, for the Earth's yellow sun was almost directly overhead. I had learned to tell time by the position of this sun.

We were about to go up the stone steps, when Harry took a right and headed to a small, wooden house.

"Harry!" called Prince Jake, "Where are you going?"

For the first time, I realized he sounded different. He had when humans called an accent. In this case, it was a British accent. For that matter, all of my friends did, including me. They no longer had an American accent.

Harry continued to walk toward the house, but looked over his shoulder (a disturbing human characteristic, but necessary since they do not have stalk eyes) and yelled, "Hagrid's. He's the Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. Oh, and he teaches the Magical Creatures class. He's one of my friends. He's really tall, I should warn you."

Prince Jake jogged up to him on his two, wobbly human legs. Since he is my prince, I followed him without question.

Harry went up and knocked on the door of the house. "Hagrid! Hey, Hagrid, it's me, Harry!"

There was an amazingly loud bark that startled me into falling. Rachel and Marco caught my arms.

"Harry?" said a gruff voice from behind the door. The door swung open to reveal an alarmingly large human male. He was twice as tall as any other human I had ever met. He had a great amount of facial fur that was black. His two eyes sparkled like black stars.

Suddenly, a dog that was proportional to Hagrid's size leapt out of the door and on Harry. Harry was knocked off his feet and hit the ground with a thud, which forced the air from his lungs. The dog started to drench his face in saliva.

I moved forward to attack the large beast, but Tobias put a hand on my shoulder to stop me.

Once Harry regained his breath, he started to laugh. "Fang! Fang, get offa me!" he gasped, shoving the dog off him. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his robes and scratched Fang, the dog, roughly behind the ears. Fang rolled onto his back and allowed Harry to scratch his belly.

"Harry, who are yeh friends?" Hagrid asked, gesturing to us.

"Uuuum," Harry said, looking at us. "That's Jake, Rachel, Marco, Cassie, Tobias, and…" He hesitated when it came to my name. Humans tend to think that my name is strange. I do not know why, when their own names are quite absurd.

"Philip," prompted Prince Jake, "My cousin Philip."

"Philip," amended Harry. "May we come in, Hagrid? I haven't seen you all summer!"

"What? Oh, yes, yes, o' course!" Hagrid replied.

The large man ushered us inside. He busied himself with making tea, a liquid that had taste.

"So, Harry," he said, setting a teapot on the table and pouring it into cups, "Did yeh jus' finish Quidditch practice?"

"Yeah," Harry replied, taking a sip of his tea. His eyes watered and his faced scrunched up into the rather hideous look of human revulsion. His throat constricted. He slowly put down his tea. He wiped his watering eyes.

Hagrid started to pour tea into my cup, but Prince Jake's hand shot out and stopped it.

"Uh, Philip doesn't like tea. In fact, he doesn't like it because he's allergic to it." Prince Jake said quickly.

Now, why would he say such a thing?

"He doesn't like tea?" asked Hagrid and Harry at the same time, both ogling at me.

I started to make mouth sounds of protest, but Prince Jake kicked me from under the table. I fell silent and pouted, a movement in which the corners of the mouth turn downward. It usually meant resentment.

I watched as the other drank a sip of their tea and made expressions similar to Harry's. I noticed they did not even touch their tea afterwards.

What a waste. I would have had it.

We spent the rest of the day there. Every one hundred five Earth minutes, the others and I would go one at a time into the forest to demorph and remorph.

"Well, Harry, yeh and yeh friends better be headin' back to the castle now," Hagrid said when dusk fell, "Yeh know how things come out at nigh'."

We bid him farewell and left. It would not be a long walk to the castle. For this I was grateful.

I heard the bushes rustle. A stick, one similar to Harry's, came out and pointed at Harry. Before I could react, a voice yelled, "Crucio!"

A stream of scarlet light shot out of the end of the stick. It lashed out and hit Harry in the back.

Harry screamed an unearthly scream and fell to the ground. He writhed and thrashed wildly. His eyes bulged, but I could tell he could not see. Sweat suddenly stood out on his forehead. He clapped his hands to his strangely shaped scar.

Prince Jake bent next to him to see what was wrong, but Harry would not let him close enough for him to see.

Rachel spotted the stick in the bush. She ran to it and lunged. The stick wrenched upward.

Harry stopped screaming and lay, panting, on the ground. His robes were soaked through with sweat. He closed his eyes for a moment, but rolled over and got to his feet.

During this, I had begun to demorph. Once I had all four hooves and my tail, I lashed into the bush. My tail blade hit something and someone yelled. "Ax! That was my head!" Rachel cried.

Sorry, I said.

Harry fumbled in his robes for his wand. He found it, whipped it out, and pointed to the bushes. "Perfectus Totalus!" he shrieked. A jet of white let streamed out of his wand. A muffled shout followed almost immediately.

Rachel shifted the bushes and uncovered a human garbed in a long, hooded robe. He lay facedown on the dirt. He jiggled from side to side, but his arms seemed glued to his sides, as were his legs.

"What did you do?" asked Rachel, awed.

Harry, panting, ran over. He wiped his streaming eyes. "It's the binding spell," he croaked, "I hit him with the binding spell. He can't move."

"What did he do to you?" demanded Prince Jake.

"He hit me with one of the Unforgivables. Sorry, I mean Unforgivable Curses. There are three. There's the Imperius Curse, which makes the victim bend to every order from the spell caster. Only a few people can resist it. There's the Cruciatus Curse, which he used on me. It… inflicts intense pain on the victim." He paused, then added, "It's not the first time I've got the Cruciatus Curse performed on me. I'll be fine in a minute or two."

"You said there were three," prodded Prince Jake.

Harry looked at him. The light that made his emerald eyes sparkle seemed to die out. Pain and hatred fill the benign eyes. "There is. The last one is the Killing Curse. Avada Kedavra," he whispered, his voice barely audible, "I've survived that one too. Twice. Once, when I was one, and Voldemort tried to kill me. That's where I got this scar. Twice, last year, when he came back to power and tried to kill me again. It's murdered my parents and other great wizards many times before in the power of Lord Voldemort."

Everyone was silent for a long time. They were speechless, as was I.

Harry leaned down and flipped the human over. The man's face was masked, so we could not see his countenance. Harry slipped the mask off and scowled at whom he saw.

"Macnair," he spit.

"Can you uuum… unfreeze him, Harry?" Prince Jake asked.

"Why? So he can kill us?"

"No. I have his wand. Ax can hold him, with his tail blade."

I nodded, one of the many human traits I've adopted.

Harry hesitated, but muttered a word.

Macnair fell limp, but quickly regained his posture and tried to scramble to his feet. I immediately pinned on the ground, with my blade tail at his next. I made sure that I slightly bit his skin. Red blood welled up under my blade and trickled down his neck. It would leave a scar.

If he lived that long.

"Macnair, I see you've fallen back into Death Eater ways," Harry said, with an air that resembled one speaking "small talk".

"Potter," hissed Macnair.

"Who else did you expect, after hitting me in the back with an Unforgivable Curse? Lord Voldemort? Dumbledore, perhaps? Hasn't anyone taught you about the rules of a duel?"

"I could've brought you to my Lord hadn't your friends attacked me! I could've been his right hand Death Eater!"

"That's too bad. I'm sorry, but being a Death Eater doesn't get you anything but trouble."

"No! It's gives you power! Lots of power! Had your parents joined us, they would not be dead!"

"Shut up!" Harry yelled, looking as if he might strike the man.
            "It's true! True!"

"How am I to know what you say is true if you aren't under the effects of the Veritaserum Potion?"

Macnair was silent.

"Tell us what you know of Voldemort's next attempted murder of my friends and I, and maybe—just maybe—I might let you live. One wrong move, though, and my friend will gladly remove your head from your body. You will be of no help to your master then." Harry spat.

Macnair considered this. "My Lord has arranged an alliance with beings from another planet."

Harry's normally tan skin became as white as a sheet. I noticed this same change in complexion happening to my friends.

"Yeerks?" asked Harry.

Macnair nodded. "He has an alliance with their leader, Visser Three. They both seek a similar goal: to reign over Earth. My Lord promised the Visser billions of host bodies if the Yeerks would help us. In return, the Yeerks will not infest us. We will triumph, Potter, and there is nothing you can do stop us!"

"You will not," Harry said, his voice hard.

"We won't, will we? They have all ready infiltrated the school. Their goal is to get you. You are a major influence in the wizard world, if you did not know. You could persuade quite a lot of wizards to become Yeerks. Too bad they can't use their host's magic. You know, they think magic is technology. Ha! Technology doesn't work at Hogwarts!"

Magic is not technology? I blurted before I could stop myself.

Harry smiled wryly. "No. It's… magic. There is no explanation for it, unlike technology. In fact, electrical objects don't work at Hogwarts."

Suddenly, Macnair started to fade. Harry's eyes widened. "No!" he yelled, trying to grab the disappearing leg. "No! No, no, no!"

My tail blade suddenly fell through his translucent neck. I recoiled and jerked my tail back. Blood still shone red on it in the moonlight.

"No! Not that spell, no!" Harry shouted furiously. He leapt to his feet, eyes ablaze. He looked down at the spot Macnair had previously been in and spat on it.

"What just happened?" demanded Marco.

"It's a spell. He's just been transported somewhere else," Harry said bitterly.

"Well, could you answer me this, then: What's a Death Eater? What's Veritaserum?" Marco asked.

Harry sat back down and rubbed his temples. "A Death Eater is one of the people who serves Lord Voldemort. There are a lot of them: Crabbe, Goyle, Malfoy, Macnair, Nott… just to name a few. And Veritaserum is a truth potion. One drop from it, and you'll be spilling your guts to anyone who's there to listen. You can only speak truth. Believe me, I've seen it used."

He rose and left the bushes to walk up the school, staring angrily before him.

There were many things about this Harry Potter we knew, and many things we did not. His world was a strange one. Somehow, I knew he was going to be a major help in our war against the Yeerks. I don't know how, but I did.

A/N: Dun, dun, duuuuun! Muahahaha, the plot thickens! Yes, I actually do have a plot for this story.  I'm sorry this chapter took so long. Things have been busy, with end-of-the-year finals and birthdays and whatnot. (Oh, by the way, thanks to anyone who wished me a happy birthday! Yay! I'm fourteen!) It's pretty long, compared to my other ones. I hope you enjoyed it! Stick around for the next chapter (hopefully out soon), "My Own Worst Enemy (Ron)"! Woo-hoo!