Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, any of the fictional locations or characters from the Harry Potter series or any other authors work. This is a work of reworked fiction using the world of Harry Potter. However, I do own this plot and any original characters hence forth created for the purposes of this story.

Shifter

II

Harry-Hermione was still in 'his' room as he looked at Vernon's torn and broken body for a few too many moments and smirked at the dead man. He found that she didn't care much, even if Hermione would have bitched, Harry could feel that small vindictive part of Hermione believed Dursley deserved to die like he did. Harry sure thought that fat piece of trash deserved to die years ago.

"Time for you to pay up," she muttered as she pulled the man's wallet from his pocket. It wasn't like a dead man needed it. "Hmm, five hundred pounds," she commented as she counted the impressive wad of cash before placing it into her trouser pocket with his wizard money. She found Vernon's car keys and grinned as she walked out of the room with an idea, she felt content with.

He or she; he wasn't sure what to refer to himself as so was somewhat confused about that, walked into the kitchen, and turned on all the stove hobs, oven and grill. She took a breath to steady her nerves as the gas was making her a little dizzy; as she picked up the phone, she dialled 999.

"Hello Emergency Services! What service do you need!?" It was a woman the other side of the phone line. She was calm, and collected, as Hermione would have thought if she had really dialled the number.

"There's a fire…!" she called out in a panic. However, this time with his original voice and accent, which surprised him as he was still Hermione, but felt a small tingle in her throat. He had just thought that it would have been better for the call to come from him.

"Please help me!" he cried out trying to keep the panic in his voice and add in some hysterics even though he felt unreasonably calm. "The house is on fire! Please help me!" he begged again, adding in some fake coughing. "It's my uncle; he went crazy this time, nobody ever believed me! He tried to set m-me on fire!" he fake choked and hacked.

"Calm down, please," the woman replied. "I have the address here, and I have fire and ambulance rescue on the way along with the police!" she said in a calm manner. "Where is your uncle now?" she asked quickly.

"He's in the kitchen!" he said in a 'choking fit'. "He banged his head while attacking-!" he hung up and ripped the phone out of the wall, smirking. "Hmm… voice emulation, quite the trick!" he said with Hermione's bossy pants voice back.

She smirked, as she searched the cupboards. He wasn't surprised to find some lighter fluid as his uncle and aunt both 'secretly' smoked and knew his uncle had one of those fancy lighters. She grinned widely as she ran upstairs and poured some on his ratty old bed and on top of Vernon.

Hopefully the crime scene team would assume that it was what Vernon used to set Harry on fire, and got it on himself in the struggle, helping to hide Vernon's real cause of death, or at least enough that they couldn't tell a man strangled him to death, and hopefully nobody would notice the claw marks as the fire should hopefully cover up the dragon breathe, which would have likely killed him without medical attention, but it still felt great to throttle the bastard to death.

Harry-Hermione left the empty canister in his uncle's hand when something hit her foot, she smiled finding his invisibility cloak as he had almost forgot about it, which would have been a shame. That cloak must be worth a fortune as he he-she knew that it wasn't a standard invisibility cloak.

Giggling with some nerves, she walked back downstairs coughing a bit as the smell of gas thickened. She opened the front door and approached the car, completely invisible as she hid under her cloak. She opened the car door and took the handbrake off and set the car in neutral gear. He had listened and watched his uncle with the car long enough to know a thing or two about some of the ways it worked.

Placing the keys in the ignition, he or she, let it roll back into the road before heading back into the house. She had seen this neat trick once on TV while he was cleaning the lounge; it was done by a Kung Fu Navy cook, and it seemed more than plausible if there was enough fuel. She grabbed some metal cutlery and opened the microwave door and flinging them in she slammed the door closed.

Harry-Hermione smirked as she hit the maximum time it would stay on for and hit start. He knew that it wouldn't take more than a few minutes at the most for the fireworks, so ran, fast, leaving the house and closing the front door behind her.

Harry wished she was someone who was in better shape for running than Hermione, but honestly couldn't think of anyone. Funnily enough it didn't even cross his mind to become him again, which was a good thing as he couldn't be seen again if he could help it, and with his powers, he could. She saw the speeding fire engine as she fled, and they were followed moments later by two police cars and an ambulance: all with sirens blazing.

Harry-Hermione almost fell when the boom rocked the ground as the house exploded the other end of the street with flames blooming up to reach the sky with thick smoke. She paused to watch for a few moments hoping he hadn't hurt any innocent people in the process of his escape, or her escape, but he couldn't afford to dwell on that.

She calmed her breathing down as he didn't need to run from the explosion now it had happened, and he was still in one piece. He could still barely believe he blew up the house and that the microwave did the job, (hopefully the explosion completely destroyed the microwave to hide that piece of evidence).

It was invigorating to pay them back and take a step on the dark side of the force, but that wouldn't mean he would be anything like Voldemort and the Death Eaters, and what he did was technically self-defence – well the murder was; the fireworks were just him winging it.

Though, killing to defend himself or not, he had a feeling if he hadn't just faked his own death he would be sent to Azkaban, and Dumbledore would likely lead the charge. The senile old nutter did put him with those 'people' after all.

Harry-Hermione did not stop moving until she reached the local shops and pulled off her cloak out of the way of cameras, and hid it in her pocket. Grinning as she saw a taxi dropping off a fair, she charged over. Before the woman driving could say or do anything, she jumped in the passenger seat with a relieved sigh, wiping sweat from her brow as she was drenched from running so much, so fast as Hermione wasn't very fit physically.

"Hope you don't mind," chimed Harry-Hermione happily as she told the driver that she wanted to go to the record store that was located next to the Leaky Cauldron.

"Of course," she agreed with a smile as she pulled out into the street. "But where are your parents?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm meeting them there," she lied. "I'm just going home from visiting a friend, but my dad's car broke down," she rolled her eyes. "He's so silly, we can afford a new one, but he likes the one we have too much; something about it being a classic."

The taxi driver laughed. "Well that's men for ya; don't like throwing things away, especially a car they've grown attached too, and even if they could afford it; they don't think of getting a second to do the normal things."

Harry-Hermione nodded in fake understanding. He wondered whether Hermione was that good at lying or whether that was him when he remembered lying was his go-to response of self-preservation when dealing with the Dursley's, and anything Dursley related.

It didn't take long to get to the Leaky Cauldron, and waving the taxi off, after paying the lady and tipping her for having to drive so far into London, Harry-Hermione turned to the dirty old looking building with plans and schemes to get himself into Hogwarts as someone knew since he recently 'died'.

Harry-Hermione had chosen who he was going to be, as he knew he could become anyone he wanted now and create a new identity. He-she could become anyone and everyone, and as soon as she-he figured that out; his-her life would be golden.

To Be Continued…