(Female speaking)
(Younger Male Speaking)
(Older Male Speaking)

Info: for later chapters: each of the creatures can only mind speak when they are in there animal form, but if they are in human form they can both speak like a human and mind speak.

Chapter 4

Harry was, for the first time in his life, cooking his breakfast and enjoying it. Without the Three Terrible Three, as he called the Dursleys', hanging over his every move, he actually enjoyed cooking; kind of like potions without Snape. Sniggering, Harry could imagine Snape's face contorting in some sort of horrified sneer upon telling him that. The thought was almost enough to make Harry bold enough to tell him the next time he saw him--almost.

With years of practice behind his motions, Harry took the bowl of pancake mix and poured the right amount of it onto the pan, dipped a spoon into the container that said 'I Cant Believe It's Not Butter!', pulled a dollop of it and dropped it into the pan with the now browning pancake mix. The heat melted the butter, and it sizzled around the edge of the pancake. With an expert hand, he slid the spatula under the pancake and flipped it in the air, where it revolve three to four times and landed perfectly back into the pan with a perfectly golden top. After placing the pancakes onto a plate, Harry moved onto the pan that was slowly cooking slices of ham. He was about to turn off the stove when it happened. All of his senses went mad. He could feel the slight breeze in the kitchen, but to him, it felt as if sand paper was tearing at his skin.

The light that was streaming in from the kitchen window was blinding his eyes; and it was so bright that it was as if he was staring into an endless tunnel of light that he couldn't escape.

The smell of the food was so incredibly overwhelming that it turned his stomach. He could smell the meat of the ham, and it was like smelling burning flesh. Harry gagged, the acid from his vomit burning his throat and mouth. He kept on retching, even when there wasn't anything to throw up anymore. The smell that was amplified was so vile that he felt as if his nose was on fire. Gasping, Harry tried to push himself off the floor, but it felt as if the normally cool stone was freezing cold, and it was burning the palms of his hands. He fell to his face; what would have been normally mild pain felt like millions of needles and nails pounding into him. The smell of burning meat assaulted his nose; it was too much, it was killing him. He reached up and grabbed the pan to stop the smell of rotting and burning flesh, but the heat from the pan burned into his flesh, causing him to cry out and drop the pan. It fell to the ground with a clatter, and the deafening noise was like millions of chimes and bells ringing loudly in his ear. Harry clutched his hands to his ears to try and drown out the noise, whimpering and then rolling into a small ball.

He didn't know how long he was on the floor, but when it seemed that he was able to finally move, he slowly stood up to his feet. When his senses didn't immediately send waves of pain through him, he slowly cleaned up the mess that he created and threw away the breakfast he made. Amidst all his suffering, he had somehow lost his appetite. His muscles were sore and protested any movement he made. It was when he was washing the dishes that he noticed the embellishment that was engraved into the palm of his right hand. A snake was curled at the base of his hand, its head raised and staring at-well-him.

He could see what seemed like swirls of patterns on its back and face. Above the snake was a dragon that stood on its hind legs and seemed to be frozen in the act of breathing fire. Its wings were spread wide so that its tips reached the sides of his hand, Harry could see every muscle of the dragon move under its leathery skin. And over the dragon stood a phoenix that it stood proud and majestic, its wings by its side. Harry could identify every feather on its body. Its eyes were black and seemed to penetrate straight into his soul.

Shivering, Harry stuck his hands into the sink and scrubbed furiously at the pots and pans. His task completed, he went into the living room, turned on the television and gazed at it with inattentive eyes. He was trying to ignore what happened in the kitchen and what was on his hand. Unconsciously, he rubbed the designs on his hand with his other hand; they felt like they had been burned into his skin. Harry was just glad that his relatives weren't around to criticize and judge him.

Harry stared at the marks on his palm; he knew that somehow, their appearance was connected to that diamond-covered egg. He didn't know if this was a good thing or not, and he didn't want know either. He ran the tips of his fingers over them, knowing that they were there to stay. He didn't notice it at first, but pain was creeping its way into his hand. Harry realized that the markings were glowing red and pulsing. Grasping his wrist with his other hand, he watched as blood seeped out of the snake, dragon, and phoenix. It looked like someone had taken a knife and re-curved the design into his palm. Gasping with pain, Harry stumbled up stairs, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He didn't notice when he ran into a wall and a photo fell, nor did he notice when he reached the door to his room that light was shining from under it. Shouldering the door open, Harry stepped into a tunnel of blinding light. The pain in his palm seemed to get worse; it felt as if someone had directed the Cruciatus Curse right at his palm.

What was worse was that voices were filling his head, spinning around him. He felt as if his body was being torn apart, and he didn't know what to do. It was too much: the blinding light, the voices, and the pain. Harry threw back his head and yelled. A wind seemed to have come out of nowhere, and it whirled around him, lifting him off the floor. He felt something under his skin, but he didn't know what it was. It was a part of him but somehow separated. Harry couldn't see that his body was emitting a light that was brighter then the one the egg was giving out, a light that could drive out all darkness and evil. Both lights went back to their original owners, then Harry opened his eyes just in time to see the plant emit a soft light and flash once, twice, three times then turn to ash. He watched as, out of the dirt, three creatures crawled out and stared at him. All of them had the same colored eyes: melting amber that seemed to pierce through his soul. Harry stared at them, took one stumbling step backward and said, "This is Fate's way of laughing at me."

Then he promptly lost consciousness.

Harry was awake, but he didn't want to open his eyes. He knew what he would see if he did: three creatures curled up on Dudley's old desk gazing at him with those watchful eyes. Harry continued to lie on the floor without moving; he twitched a little when he heard a soft thud as a small body landed on the floor and slither toward him. One of the creatures wrapped itself around his wrist so that its head was resting in his palm near the design that was burnt into his skin.

Now that he thought about it, the burn might not have been from the pan but from these creatures. Harry opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of his room. He never noticed, until now, how many cracks there were. He wondered how that spider web got into the corner of the ceiling. Harry continued to study the breaks in the ceiling when he heard two pairs of wings fluttering from the other two creatures; he ignored them and looked at the spider web. Where was the spider, was it dead or making its home in another place? A slight weight dropped onto his chest where the creatures landed, making his breathing just vaguely harder, like when he falls asleep with a book on his chest. It didn't stop his breathing, but it was bothersome nonetheless.

"Is he the one, is he marked?" one of the creatures on his chest asked as he shifted into a more comfortable position. He felt the creature curled around his wrist lift its head, probably to look at its fellow companions.

"Yes, he is the one, although reluctant to be it." Harry pretended to not have heard them as they spoke about him; so far he had counted over twenty-five cracks in the ceiling and still counting.

"Why is he reluctant?" Over fifty-five cracks in his ceiling, interesting.

"He just wants to be normal, feel his emotions not his power. You should be able to know that."

"He is pure in his heart and his mind."

He wondered if Vernon would lend him something to patch up those cracks.

"He is pure but his heart is much damaged. He will need our help to heal and our protection to lead him through many of his expeditions."

Harry, having decided that he had been on the floor long enough, stood up. The two creatures on his chest beat their wings to keep from falling to the ground, and the one curled around his wrist tighten its hold. He could hear the other two creatures as they followed him when walked out of his room, trying to ignore them. He grabbed his potions book and walked down the stairs, continuing to ignore the creatures, even when the ones flying landed on his head and shoulder. He wanted to grab them and throw them out of the house, yelling, denying that this was happening to him, but more than likely that would not go well.

Humming a song he heard on the radio, Harry went into the living room, lay down on the couch and opened his potions book to start to read. At least he could pretend to read. For a while no one said anything, and every minute or so Harry would flip a page in his book. The sound of flipping pages was oddly loud in the quiet room.

"Why do you pretend that we are not here? Do you not wish us to be here, do you want us gone?"

Harry turned a page in his book, not really reading it. "Because this is not really happening, three magical things did not just burst from some diamond-coated egg in some sort of tornado of light and fire. You all are just a part of imagination, a hallucination brought on from all the work the Dursley's made me do. In other words, you don't exist." Harry turned a page to the book he wasn't reading.

"Why do you believe us false?"

"Just because," Harry turned another unread page.

"Why?"

Harry placed his book down, his finger in it to keep his place, took a deep cleansing breath and looked at the three creatures. Well, two of them, one of them was still perched on his head.

"Because I refuse to believe that there is a snake," Harry lifted his wrist where the snake was curled around his wrist. She was most definitely not a normal snake. Her scales were each a different color, ranging from gold, brown, red, orange, bronze, and green, and each scale seemed to shimmer when it was struck by light, as if they were coated in a glaze of sorts. "A dragon," Harry pointed to his shoulder where it was promptly licked. The dragon wasn't like any dragon Harry had ever seen. In replace of his scales, this dragon seemed to have leather-like skin that gleamed and shined with each movement. He could see the muscles work as it moved its body. Its coloring was as odd as the snake's; silver, blue, and a soft yellow swirled together. It was like watching a colorful pensive. "And a phoenix," this time Harry pointed to his head, where said phoenix was tugging on his hair slightly. Unlike the snake and dragon, the phoenix actually had feathers like it was supposed to. But its coloring was more intense. Pure white feathers coated his body. It was like light was captured there, and his wings were tipped in ink, night black, as if Death painted it there himself. It was a startling contrast between the two, the white feathers as light as anything and the tipped black feathers as dark as Death, "perched on my person talking to me. I refuse to prove Rita Skeeter right; I am not insane. Thus, you so not exist."

Harry picked up his book and opened it to where he last left off and continued to not read his potions book.