A Real Shocker

Back out in the sunlight, Harry, Dr. Grant, and the Murphy children were trekking across one of the park's larger, wider range paddocks, moving on an uphill slope.

Although he was used to walking through this kind of mountainous terrain at Hogwarts, Harry's hand was still clutched by Lex, as it appeared she was getting tired from all this walking.

The same could be said for Tim as Dr. Grant placed a hand on his shoulder while consulting his copy of the park map.

"I'm tired," Tim panted. "And I'm hot…"

"I'm dirty," Lex moaned. "My legs hurt…"

"The Visitor's Center is just about a mile over that rise there…" Grant exhaled.

"How can either of you even stand up straight right now?" Lex cried.

"Let's just say I did quite a bit of this when I was smaller," Harry grunted as he pulled her up.

"Come on," Grant insisted. "Just keep…"

"Look!" Harry gasped.

He gestured ahead at a stampede of squiggles flocking down the rise, causing the ground under their feet to rumble. He stopped to get a better look, noticing almost forty members, all of which had bodies like a plumper velociraptor with long, thin necks and legs like an ostrich.

"Tim," Harry requested. "What are those?"

"Can you tell us what they are?" Grant added.

"Ga… Galla…" Tim stuttered. "Gallimimus."

Lex's attention was also fixated on them, but she followed her first instinct to latch onto Harry's arm, causing him to freeze with her.

"Are those meat-eating…" she whispered. "Meat-a-sauruses?"

The Gallimimuses' appeared to be turning downwards in Grant's direction, but Harry watched in disbelief as Grant took a step forward, clearly thrilled with his discovery.

"Well, are they?!" Harry reiterated.

"Look at the wheeling!" He gasped. "Uniform direction changes just like a flock of birds evading a predator!"

"Dr. Grant!" Harry called.

"They're… They're flocking this way," Tim added.

He too was smiling, but only just as he stepped back more than Grant had forward. Lex started backing up even more as she tried pulling Harry along with her. But his quicker reflexes were about to pay off as he reached out his other hand for Tim's.

"Tim! Dr. Grant!" Harry called again. "Grab onto me, you'll thank me for this!"

He was already ahead, but Grant waited to get a close view of the leader before backing up. Harry sighed, as he knew this was something Hagrid would more likely do, but it didn't take long for Grant to grab him.

Harry began running at an usually high speed for someone trying to carry three extra weights. But the Gammilimuses were faster as they were all careening in and out of his path once they'd caught up to him.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to let you pull us along?" Tim questioned.

"Less talking, more running!" Harry ordered.

But even if he weren't caught in a stampede, Harry wouldn't have noticed three dots circling several tens of feet above his head.

Up in the air, Sirius Black and Hagrid were watching the whole scene by way of broomstick as Hagrid peered through his brass binoculars, turning some of the dials and knobs, which shifted his view in different directions.

"There 'e is!" he cried. "What does 'e think 'e's doin' in ther? He'll b gettin' 'imself stepped on, 'e will!"

"Hold on," Sirius interjected. "He's heading for a white spot! Quick, give them to me!"

Hagrid dropped the binoculars into Sirius's hands, who was able to zoom in on a fallen, dead tree with a bend in the middle, lying on the spot he pointed out.

Back on the ground, Harry spotted the tree as some more Gallimimuses were close enough to headbutt him.

"In here! Come on!" He shouted.

Grant and Tim let go of his hands as they all jumped over the tree and crawled into the bend; Harry scooted to the far left, Lex squeezed next to him, and Tim curled up at her side.

Grant protectively threw his arms around the children as the Gallimimuses thundered over the tree, holding their heads down as chunks of bark flew everywhere. Aside from Hermione and Hagrid, this was perhaps the first time Harry ever felt himself in a familial embrace.

Once enough of the Gallimimuses were gone, Harry noticed a split between two branches large enough to crawl out of;

Harry went first, followed by Lex, Tim, and Grant, as each of them hid themselves on the other side of the tree. But as they peered their heads over the top root, they spotted exactly what the Gallimimuses were running from;

Stomping through the foliage off to their right was the T-Rex, smashing a smaller tree with its three toed foot. Some Gallimimuses close to the tree made a run for it when they saw her, but the Rex caught ahold of the one closest to her nose, trapping its neck within her jaws, shaking it around until she'd broken it completely, at which point, it fell perfectly limp. The dead Gallimimus slipped through the Rex's teeth, yet a portion of its skin was still torn out, as evident by the blood on the Rex's muzzle.

Harry, Grant, and the Murphy children couldn't take their eyes off all the carnage, but still, Lex threw her arms around Harry's shoulders, though he seemed too fixated to notice.

"I wanna go now!" she panted.

Harry snapped out of it when he heard her voice, but he noticed Grant and Tim were still transfixed on the Rex.

"Look how it eats!" Grant instructed.

"Please!" Lex pleaded.

"I bet you'll never look at birds the same way again," Grant added.

"Yes," Tim exhaled.

"Not really," Harry murmured.

"Go now!" Lex insisted, tightening her grasp on Harry.

"Okay," Grant sighed. "Keep low. Follow me."

Harry got back on his knees and crawled away from the scene, as Grant had ordered. Lex following, but not before tearing away Tim, who was still frozen.

"Look how much blood!" Tim gasped.

Back on the broomstick, Sirius let go of the binoculars, nearly dropping them as he'd become quite tense, before giving them back to Hagrid.

"That could never have been close enough!" he exhaled. "It's a bloody good thing he found that tree, it shows he's following my suggestions."

"What suggestions?!" Hagrid bellowed.

"I mean, at least he's got a feeling of where I want him to go!" Sirius rephrased. "I mean, how would you feel if you were powerless to help someone you loved very much?!"

"Hey Sirius…" Hagrid warned.

"Not this again, Hagrid," Sirius fired back. "Don't you even think of it. It was your word that cost me my godson in the first place. But now, I'm going to do whatever it takes for him to get to know me so I can get him out of here. So I suggest you hand those things back to me."

Looking impressed with Sirius's backbone, Hagrid presented him with the binoculars. Once he had them, Sirius shifted his head around like an owl to survey the whole zone. But eyeing his movement was enough to make Hagrid break into a look of nausea.

"I reckon ye'll wan'na survey the place again, right?" Hagrid grumbled.

But Sirius was now scanning ahead, in the direction of the rise. It went about as far out and high up as any one of the surrounding mountains. But slightly off to the back right end in his field of view, he zoomed in on the ridge of a concrete moat with a high-rise perimeter fence over the edge.

"No," Sirius replied. "Hagrid, where do you keep that pink umbrella of yours?"

Hagrid casually removed said umbrella from inside his shirt, but started mumbling to himself when he realized what he was doing.

"Have you every heard of skywriting?" Sirius asked,

He noticed Hagrid shaking his head before stopping to nod it, as if he couldn't make up his mind n how to answer. But Sirius shrugged as he readied himself to kick his broomstick into gear.

"Good," he concluded. "Now then Hagrid, if you'd give us a Smokescreen Spell, Harry will think it's some sort of cloud."

The broomstick took off in the direction of the fence like a rocket, with Sirius leaning forward and Hagrid struggling to hold on as the tip of his umbrella emitted a trail of white smoke like the foam out of a fire extinguisher.

Back on the ground, Harry was continuing on the path Dr. Grant was pointing out for him, Lex, and Tim. But as he walked, he couldn't stop looking back, eyeing the T-Rex as she chased the Gallimimuses into the jungle.

As hard as Lex tried pulling him, he needed her familiar voice to snap him out of it.

"Don't keep staring at it!" she cried. "Haven't you had enough already?"

"I couldn't even stop that from happening," Harry muttered.

"What, with that gift of yours?" Tim snickered.

"I've seen snakes bigger than the ones at the zoo!" Harry cried. "What we had there had to be 50 stone! These things would have been no match for it."

"A few more tips," Grant interjected. "If one can talk to snakes, he must stick his tongue out a lot. You might see that in an iguana or a Komodo dragon, but never a crocodile. Low crawlers like them all drag their tails across the floor for the same reasons. And when was the last time you've seen snakes travel in flocks?"

"I'm not sure about that last bit," Harry sighed in defeat.

"Consider my observation back there," Grant clarified. "You'll never look at birds the same way again."

"So we really were running from nothing more than a bunch of seven-foot turkeys?" Harry reasoned.

"Not the first time I've heard that comparison," Grant chuckled.

"That's what I was trying to talk about with Dr. Grant," Tim began. "You know, before the tour was supposed to start."

"If only I could say the same about a fire-breathing dragon," Harry whispered to himself.

His head shot toward the sky, as he thought he'd heard what sounded like a fire extinguisher. Finding a white cloud speeding over the rise, he ran back, grabbed and shook Grant by the shoulder.

"Dr. Grant, look!" he gasped, motioning to the cloud.

"What is that?" Grant muttered.

"It's no pterodactyl…" Tim clarified. "I mean, uh, pteranodon"

"It's headed in the direction we're going," Lex observed.

By now, Harry no longer felt Lex clutching his arm, so he ran after the cloud. He knew there was no reason not to follow it, but it seemed curious that his luck started turning.

"Maybe someone came to rescue us," Harry pondered.

"You can't always trust your luck," Grant reminded him. "They're flying pretty low for a rescue unit. I don't see a vehicle either."

"Maybe that cloud's covering it up," Harry suggested.

"A plane or a helicopter would be a little bigger than that," Grant reminded him.

"Do you think we should follow it?" Lex asked.

She hadn't noticed she'd let go done until Harry started running after the cloud.

"Forget I asked," she resigned.

Back above the cloud Hagrid was producing, Sirius Black was leaning over the edge of the broomstick, still peering through Hagrid's binoculars with the zoom dial turned all the way up.

"That's my pup!" Sirius laughed maniacally. "Come to Padfoot! Just like when you were a baby!"

Hagrid, meanwhile, had lunged into Sirius and was pushing him forward, almost to the point of crushing him. Once Sirius worked up enough strength in his neck, he looked over his shoulder at Hagrid, who was looking a bit sick, almost green in the face even.

"Are you alright back there?" Sirius exclaimed.

"Oh sure, yeh know, don' mind me," Hagrid croaked with a slight gurgle. "I mean it isn't as if we ought 'o slow up a bit, now is it? If we're talkin' babies, why not bring up somethin' 'bout heaving?"

"We won't have to," Sirius replied.

"Why?" Hagrid belched.

"Look over there," Sirius instructed. "I've found a lovely stopover for all four of us."

He held the binoculars to her eyes as he gestured to a torn section of fence near the top of the rise.

"Keep the cloud going, Hagrid," Sirius ordered.

"I'm doin' it for Harry and no' un else!" Hagrid bellowed.

The rise extended into another mountain, which didn't take long to reach the top of when traveling by air. They only needed travel a few more metres before reaching their destination, as Hagrid's feet ended up being the first to touch the ground.

The broom was still caught between his legs, which left Sirius to dangle a few extra feet off the ground.

"Sorry 'bout that," Hagrid apologized.

He squeezed legs to keep a tight hold on the broom as to allow Sirius to dismount feet first. Hagrid then laid the broomstick on the ground before waving his umbrella again, cancelling the Smokescreen spell.

"Hagrid, no!" Sirius cried out.

"Wha'?" Hagrid mumbled.

As the end of the cloud poured from the umbrella tip, it created an even larger cloud, surrounding both of them, at which point they were holding their arms over their noses and mouths, trying not to inhale as the smoke rose into the sky.

"Sorry," Hagrid muttered. "Don' wanna try that again, do we?"

Sirius huffingly picked the binoculars back up, keeping the zoom dial where it was as he spotted the last thing he wanted to see;

The four dots were nearing the top of the rise, stopping in front of an intact section of fence. Sirius now realized he'd taken himself and Hagrid about a mile from where he got his initial view of the scene. He tried jumping and waving, but it was no use. Without the binoculars, he saw they were standing too far away and were more concentrated on their obstacle.

Harry, Dr. Grant, and the Murphy children climbed out of the ferns growing out of the mountaintop, where a 10,000 Volts sign didn't need to tell them twice about what they were up against.

Up close, the concrete ridge had to be about four or five feet high, since Grant was able to climb it perfectly. By comparing his scale, Harry assumed the fence itself had to be over twenty feet high.

"It's a bit of a climb," Grant noted. "You guys think you can make it?"

"Nope," Tim immediately replied

"Way too high," Lex added.

"I might," Harry countered.

Lex grabbed Harry's hand again, both she and Tim stared at him like he was mad, but Harry still climbed over the concrete ridge.

He watched Dr. Grant grab a long stick before checking out a couple of warning light at the top, one in yellow, the other in blue. Both of them were out, but Harry's sheltered existence prevented him from realizing what that meant.

Instead, he saw Dr. Grant reach the stick out towards the wires, ready to poke them.

"No!" Harry cried.

Instead, Dr. Grant threw the stick at the wires, but not a single spark flew.

"Well, I guess that means the power's off," Grant sighed.

Harry still wasn't quite sure he bought it, so he kicked the fence a little before hearing a familiar girlish gasp. Glancing behind him, he saw Lex in all her bulgy eyed fright grasping her brother's wrist this time.

Harry watched Tim stretch his arm back towards Dr. Grant, noticing he was closely zeroing in on some of the wires. Harry felt the urge to crack a smile, but stifled it as he and Dr. Grant cautiously laid both hands on the nearest cable to them, tightly wrapping their fingers around them.

Harry waited for Lex's next reaction, but instead he felt his arms jerk he noticed the fence beginning to shake quite wildly. Naturally, he started screaming, to which he heard Dr. Grant scream along with him, before turning his head and realizing he was the one shaking the fence!

Nonetheless, Harry kept screaming, as he and Dr. Grant seemed to hear the screams of Lex and Tim behind them.

Upon stopping, both of them slowly turned around, Grant presenting them with a wicked smile, Harry finally releasing his urge to laugh.

"That's not funny!" Lex cried.

"That was great!" Tim giggled.

"You should… have seen… your face!" Harry guffawed. "If Hermione were here, she'd have gone off on me, then I'd be frightened!"

Once Harry got ahold of himself, he took a closer look at the wiring, which appeared to form repeating trapezoids.

"Hold on," he pondered. "Maybe if I could slip through this…"

Harry tried slipping his arm through, then his head, but he began struggling when he got to his shoulders, to which Dr. Grant had to help him back out.

"Not going to try slipping through a keyhole, Harry?" Grant teased.

But they were interrupted by the thunderous roar of the T-Rex in the not-too-far-off distance. Without a second's delay, Harry started up the fence, but not before helping Lex clamber over the moat, with Dr. Grant helping Tim before starting up the fence themselves.

Harry was already halfway up before the others were, but he knew Lex noticed it from what she was saying.

"Timmy, I bet I can I climb over the top get on the other side before you can even get to the top!" she teased.

"What would you give me?" Tim retorted.

"Respect," she answered.

"Come on guys," Grant scolded. "It's not a race."

"Sure," Lex replied. "Just don't tell Harry."

Harry was already waiting at the top when he saw Lex gesturing to him. Once she and Dr. Grant got there, Harry reached out his hand and helped her over, but saw Tim lagging behind a little.

In a few minutes, Harry would learn that he was being watched about a mile down the road. Through the binoculars, Hagrid was watching Harry help Tim crawl over the top of the fence. Sirius, meanwhile, was jumping as high as his legs would take him, trying to grab the binoculars.

"Hagrid, how far is he?!" Sirius demanded.

"Still goin'," Hagrid replied. "Still goin'."

After hearing that, Sirius stopped jumping and took a land on his rear to catch his breath.

"That does it!" he sighed.

He got up to the other side of the fence and began running in Harry's direction, which Hagrid didn't look to pleased about.

"Wher' are you goin'?" Hagrid called.

"Well, running doesn't exactly count as a violation of the Statute of Secrecy, does it?" Sirius called back. "Also, they were helping him! Come on!"

He waved Hagrid to follow, who shrugged before tromping along after, ignoring the baby dolphin-sized cracks he was leaving in the main road.

Meanwhile, around the corner and down another road from the Visitor's Center, something rustled in the grass that sounded like a cross between an eagle's screech and a cat's purr. Surrrounding a concrete trapezoidal shed with gray pipes coming out of it was a wire gate with a High Voltage sign.

The gate itself was closed, for now, as a muscular brownish dinosaur was trying to pry its way in. It was like a smaller version the T-Rex, but with much less bulk, a longer tail and limbs, as well as a more snakelike head and neck a slight gash near its ribs. Before the shutdown, there was only one paddock that hadn't been turned off yet; no doubt this dinosaur was a velociraptor.

Muldoon was right that they showed intellgence, since it clawed its way through the other side, while he guarded the gate front. Inside the shed, Dr. Sattler was listening to Hammond on a walkie talkie connected to a headset. She was at the other side of a wireframe door, where Lupin and Tonks, completely invisible, were standing guard themselves.

Sattler pulled open a gray metal power box, also labeled High Voltage, filled to the brim with switches and breakers, listening for Hammond on his walkie.

"Ellie, you can't throw the main switch by hand," he slowly explained. "You've got to pump up the primer handle in order to get the charge. It's a large, flat, and gray."

Sattler's hands came upon the largest handle in the box, which looked like a light switch about the size of a car brake. She grabbed the handle, panting as she pumped it several times, since it weighed about as much as any of the metal doors.

After the third or fourth time, an echoing ching was heard as indicator label above the handle switched from reading DISCHARGED to CHARGED.

"Okay, it's charged," Sattler exhaled, letting go of the handle.

"Now, under the words CONTACT POSITION, there's a round green button that says PUSH TO CLOSE!" Hammond continued. "Push it!"

Sattler pushed the button, setting off some loud, mechanical whirs as another indicator label above switched from OPEN to CLOSED.

Off to the left, a column of green indicator lights flicked on, each labeled for a different part of the park, lit up in white. But the bottom three were each covered in a yellow-black security border, the last of which read Perimeter Fence.

Back on the tour road, Harry was ready to climb down from the top, as he noticed Lex and Dr. Grant had already reached the bottom. He watched Tim follow, still at a slower pace, though he missed something below his left foot;

A much smaller hole formed by the wires, which he ended up slipping his foot into. As he lowered his right foot to take a step down, a loud buzzing sound caught him by surprise;

On his left, the yellow warning light flashed, causing him to let go of his hands and fall, but the wires tangled around his left foot, trapping it.

Harry heard another scream, though he didn't have to move to realize it was Tim losing his footing, almost falling off before regaining control with his hands.

Both Harry and Tim were still near the top when the buzzer rang, which Harry saw made Lex and Dr. Grant come running back, both of them with bulging eyes. He tried wriggling his ankle, but the wires had formed a tight grip and he couldn't pull his foot out of the hole.

"Harry! Timmy!" Grant called.

"Get down, now!" Lex cried.

"Boys, you're going to have to jump," Grant insisted.

"Are you crazy?! I'm not gonna jump!" Tim cried.

"And my foot's stuck!" Harry grunted.

Harry mustered whatever strength he had left from running and swung his top half up, tugging at the wires to widen the gap, moving them very little, eyeing Tim, who had frozen where he was.

About halfway up the road, wizard, half-giant, and squib were still running, though sweat was beginning to drip down the men's foreheads. Not nearly because of the heat of the climate, but because of the buzzing of the warning light.

"Keep going!" Sirius panted. "We're only halfway there!"

"What'evr you say, Black!" Hagrid bellowed with the same gurgle from earlier.

Back in the maintenance shed, Dr. Sattler was taking her next set of instructions from Hammond, all completely unaware of what was happening outside.

"Now Ellie, the red buttons turn on the individual park systems," Hammond added. "Switch them on."

Sattler found the red buttons directly above the green ones, pressing them one by one, top to bottom like buttons on an arcade game, all the way down to the Perimeter Fence button.

Back on the fence, Harry had to let go so that he could rest his arms and ease the sensation in his hands before trying again, noticing Tim was still not moving.

"Harry, Tim, you're taking too long!" Grant shouted. "I'm coming up to get you both!"

"Hang on!" Harry interrupted. "I think I've got it!"

He felt his foot sink to the bottom of the hole, where he noticed it felt a little freer. Swinging back, he grabbed the wires and tugged with all his might, panting all the way.

"You've got it Harry?" Tim exhaled. "Okay, I'm gonna count to three. One…"

"Almost…" Harry whispered.

"Two…" Tim continued.

"Got…" Harry added.

Just as he was able to pull his foot out, he'd heard a loud electrical hum, followed by some shrill, frightening buzzes. Sparks shot from the wires, at which point, Harry realized his hands were still upon them.

He felt a nasty jolt course from the wires into his body, which signaled his hands to let go. He was thrown nearly two stories to the bottom, not seeing Tim let go of the fence and fall the same way.

Actually, Harry couldn't see anything, as he felt all his impulses freeze and his view switch to dark. These type of accidents were normal to him, but his recovery would definitely be out of the ordinary.

But in the maintenance shed, the banks of fluorescent lights above Sattler's head turned on, one by one, powering the corridor back up.

"Mr. Hammond, I think we're back in business!" She giggled into a headset, standing triumphantly.

But she wouldn't be laughing anymore, as through a set of pipes behind her burst the head of a muscular velociraptor, screeching hungrily.

Sattler backed away screaming as the raptor struggled its way through, whence she found herself leaning against a wireframe door, guarding the panel. Once she felt it open, the raptor was out of the pipes, but in the next second, what looked like a couple of tiny flecks of blue began to glow as a soft hush was in the air.

They shot towards the raptor's snout and shoulder, blasting it backwards, into the wall, where it landed on its head.

While the beast was disoriented, Sattler could have sworn she felt something brush past her. But it wouldn't be long before the raptor was up again, causing Sattler to dash out the door, slamming it on the raptor's claws.

Being curved, the claws were able to pull on the door, but Sattler slammed it back in with her feet, clicking it into place. As the raptor tried prying its way open, she backed into one a corner, where a black arm inexplicably grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Oh, Mr. Arnold," she sighed in relief.

But standing up, she found it was completely dismembered, a sign that Arnold had perished judging by the blood coming from the shoulder joint.

She backed into the door again, screaming in horror, until she heard another reptilian screech, reminding her the raptor was still there. Its claws were tearing through the mesh, which signaled Sattler to rush back down the corridor, up a flight of metal stairs, where the main shed door seemed to fly open for her.

She ran back through the main gate, but hadn't heard all the clicking and clacking behind her, or the louder footsteps in the grass, or even noticed she hadn't locked the gate properly.

As Sattler got up and started back down the road, she heard yet another pair of boots rustling. Through the foliage off to her left, she barely made out Muldoon, standing at the ready, his air rifle still loaded.

Sattler watched Muldoon slowly creep through the brush, a lighter rustling preceding him as he noticed something gray creeping through the ferns ahead of him. Sattler backed away when she saw it was the eye of another raptor, but felt something or someone ram into her back and past her arm.

She jostled around a bit, but found no one beside her and was already a couple of metres away when Muldoon clicked his rifle into place. Except he realized the raptor wasn't moving, and instead, another velociraptor hungrily poked its head clear through the brush past Muldoon's left ear.

He cocked his head in pure astonishment as he heard the raptor panting.

"Clever girl," Muldoon whispered.

Before he could even whip his rifle out, the raptor lunged for his midsection and the last Sattler heard from him was a scream. The sound of his intestines being spilled needn't tell her any more as she kept running before the other raptor could even see her.

While she was running another couple of blue sparks ignited, which blasted across the raptor's teeth and tail, knocking it on its back. It was too late for Muldoon, but not the other raptor, as it too heard something soft in spite of having no visible ears.

"Obscuro," whispered a masculine voice.

A black blindfold appeared over the raptor's eyes, which sent it into a screeching fit, shaking its head about until the sound of a nasally puff filled the air.

The raptor hadn't seen Lupin and Tonks reappear in the foliage, dashing after Sattler, and neither did they see that the raptor was vibrating its nostrils. But the raptor felt something clawlike slip across the side of its head, pulling the blindfold off its eyes.