Chapter Two

"We listened for a voice crying in the wilderness. And we heard the jubilation of wolves!" - Durwood L. Allen.

The days following his arrival in the strange forest passed in a hazy blur of sights and sounds and pungent scents and the sharp bitter tang of acid creeping up the back of his throat. His stomach felt like it was folding in on itself in a constant rotation and he had thrown up, little more than bile and saliva, more times than he cared to count until he was dry heaving, the retching motion only increasing the insistent pounding in his head. It felt like someone was taking a piece of two by four to his skull, and he whined as he curled up on himself, muscles and joints protesting painfully as they twisted and knotted. His skin felt like it was trying to crawl off of his bones.

Somehow, though Harry didn't understand or remember how, he found himself lying by a small stream of water at the bottom of a shallow crevasse. Instinctively he tried to fight past the violent shaking every hour or so to venture a sip of the water, but it rarely stayed down. His skin temperature was fluctuating between convulsive shivers and a burning heat, and as he slowly turned red from overheating, Harry pushed himself into the stream, fully-clothed, his mind not pausing to think of the consequences, and not caring, even when the shivers set in and he couldn't find the energy to pull himself from the stream into the chilled night air.

As he lay there, whimpering and crying out inarticulate syllables, with the ghost of comforting emerald eyes floating behind his eyelids, Harry started to see things. Dark shadowy creatures with horns and boiling hot skin joined him in the water, steam rising around them. They cackled and hissed and Harry screamed ... or would have, had his throat not felt like it had been scratched raw by a sand-paper wielding Mr. Universe.

Then, and without warning, his surroundings changed. The stream morphed into lava - enough of an incentive to get his muscles cooperating - and Harry gasped as he looked up and found nothing but fire and brimstone, and a horned man seated on a throne made of human skulls and thigh bones before him. Blazing red coals met Harry's own eyes, and then the chanting started up around him, the man's forked tail swishing two and fro in curiosity.

"Audite lupus ululatus. Animadverto luna dico. Sentio sarcina astrum. Vires. Volo. Voluntas. Vox. Donum. Fatum. Vomica ... mutatus. Testis lupus parvulus ortus. Quisnam est fatum perimo Atrum Unus. Vir. Proeliator. Spes. Vomica Unus. Venator Unus ... Donum Unus. My child."

The voice that echoed around his head as it repeatedly called out the chant was smooth, comforting, and familiar as the images of hell faded from young Harry Potter's mind and he found himself still sitting in the stream, propped up by it's crumbling bank. Harry blinked, and then hesitatingly called out, "M-mom?"

Silence.

Tears rolled unchecked down his cheeks as he scrambled frantically out of the water and quickly scanned his surroundings. He found nothing and let a panicked cry tear from his throat. "Mom? Mom! P-please! Don't leave me! Mom! Don't leave me ... please ..." His voice was husky and raw and he fell back down to his knees as his vision turned on it's axis and exploded into starry pixels. He sobbed into the earth as no answer came. "Mommy ... don't leave me."

His limbs finally gave up supporting his weight and he toppled over onto his back, curling his arms and legs into a tight ball as his racking sobs slowly but surely deteriorated into miserable and pained shudders, and his vision once again faded to black.

When he came to, a ball of quivering muscles and shivering skin, night had fallen in the forest. As he stretched out, muscles protesting and a whimpered groan slipping from his lips, a thin sheen of pale moonlight, filtered through the canopy above, played across skin that was equally as pale. Sitting up, Harry was surprised when the world didn't spin and his brow furrowed. His mind was almost painfully clear after the days of fuzziness, and there was no sharp stabs shooting through his consciousness. His vision, on the other hand, was anything but clear and his brow furrowed further as he took note of the finger-like line crossing from one side of his vision to the other, but not trespassing on the boundaries of his peripheral vision.

Curious, as he could feel the familiar comforting weight of his round, old-fashioned glasses on the bridge of his nose, Harry tentatively reached up towards his face, over-reaching. His fingers bumped into worryingly cool skin instead of metal wire, and Harry's fingers scuttled along the side of his face for a few seconds before coming into contact with the wire frame. He pulled his glasses off and blinked as the world swam into focus.

Confused, Harry quickly put his glasses back onto his face and watched as everything blurred. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. Harry screwed up his face in bewilderment as he gently trailed one finger along the hair-line crack in the right lens before looking hesitantly around at his surroundings.

He could see the world around him in varying shades of black and white, as was standard for your average human's night vision. But he could see everything in so much more detail, from the rush of the stream only a few feet away from him, to the texture and lines of a single petal on a single unidentifiable flower that was growing in the dirt fifty feet further down the bottom of the crevasse. He blinked again, forcing his eyes down to the dirt by his feet, not wanting to focus on his ... abnormalities any longer. He knew it was stupid, but he was scared. Terrified. Uncertain. He could feel a pang of panic being born deep underneath his skin and it was getting harder to breathe as tears pricked his eyes: his heart seemed to have taken up permanent lodgings in his throat.

But even staring at the ground it was impossible to ignore his newly heightened senses.

A owl swooped over head, silent as the night to the human ear, but as clear as if the sound was a voice spoken directly into his ear to the young boy who flinched away and snapped his hands over his ear lobes. However, as he gingerly relaxed, the flapping of the owl's wings fading into nothing, it became apparent that his hearing wasn't limited to the air - he could hear scores of animals bustling about through the undergrowth. He could hear the rustling of the leaves above his head and all around him. The panic swelled and blossomed larger and deeper.

As he breathed deeper - some instinct hidden deep within the recesses of his mind aware that hyperventilating would do little to help and yet ineffective as it clamoured against the rest of his mind - Harry breathed in clean scent with the faintest traces of something metallic underlying. His eyes shot open as he tried to understand the signals his brain was sending him, and he glanced, with a trembling lower lip, in the direction that his brain was prodding him in. His eyes, shining with unshed tears, landed on the stream. He could smell the water.

The panic festering in his gut exploded and suddenly everything changed.

It hurt, that much Harry was aware of, but in so many other ways it felt like a relief. A release. His muscles were still sore and protesting, but he felt comfortable in the forest now. Safe. At home. The smells and sounds and sights suddenly made sense and he relaxed, content to give way to the feelings of warmth shooting through him and then he tensed, suddenly suspicious of his new perspective.

Wobbling precariously like a newborn foal, Harry stood and made his way on four legs to the edge of the stream, completely oblivious to the paws and muzzle and fur that he suddenly possessed. Once there, Harry peered into the reflective surface of the water, and familiar emerald green eyes blinked back at him in shock.

Only the green eyes bobbing in the rush of the stream belonged to a small 29lbswolf instead of a small seven year old boy. The wolf's fur was the exact same shade as Harry's unruly locks, and stuck up here and there and all over the place in the same runaway fashion. Peeking through the thick tufts of black that rested between the wolf's perked ears was a streak of crimson fur, shaped like a lightning bolt. Harry blinked, and the wolf copied him in perfect unison. His eyes widened, and suddenly the expression on the pup's muzzled face copied his own feared and bemused expression. Inch by inch. Detail by detail. The wolf was him ...

With this realisation, Harry let out a small sound that was half an alarmed bark and half a panicked yelp. He hastily scuttled backwards, paws scrambling as he darted away from the water's edge. In his haste, Harry didn't notice his tail - unfamiliar as it was - set low to the ground, and with a bit of incredibly unlucky scrambling, Harry stomped on the longer fur on his tail and tripped, tumbling head over heels, backwards and away from the steam. He landed back on the compact dirt with a light thud and a surprised whimper. His lower muzzle hit the ground, promptly cutting him off.

With the human part of his brain stunned and knocked for two for the time being, the wolf side of his brain, suppressed by human logic and thought processes up until now, took the opportunity and surged upwards, beating back the reluctant human consciousness with one swipe of it's metaphysical paws.

Almost instantly, a feeling of comforted playfulness washed over Harry, and the almost painfully thin wolf cub bounded to it's feet, muscles all but humming with a contained energy that Harry hadn't even been aware he had. The sights! The sounds! The smells! Harry darted around the small crevasse, all but prancing and darting here and there, small paws skittering on the hard ground as he sniffed at the air and the plants and the water, and then howled a squeaky challenge up at the moon.

Needless to say, the silvery sickle didn't howl back. Harry snorted out through his nostrils, sounding as though he had been expecting the moon to rise to the challenge and disappointed that it hadn't.

With what could almost be described as a nonchalant, dismissive shrug of his shoulders, the wolf darted over to the side of the crevasse, and launched itself onto a small ledge a few feet up. Harry miscalculated the jump, and would have slipped back to the ground had it not been for the nails in his forepaws digging into the rocky edge of the platform, his hind legs wind milling in the air as he tried to pull himself up. He finally managed it, and rested for a moment on the ledge, breathing in and out deeply before yipping lightly in victorious delight, and then immediately throwing himself forward onto the next ledge just a little higher up, this time with a great deal more success.

It wasn't long before Harry was out of the crevasse. For a moment, he just stood there, cocking his head and pricking his ears as he surveyed his surroundings curiously. There was a thin layer of misty fog covering the ground, and Harry wasn't quite tall enough to see over it. The air smelt damp, and stunk of something musky and dark and unidentifiable that set the wolf on edge. Harry growled, an involuntary vibration, and his stomach followed suit, with a rumble loud enough to make his warning sound as pathetic as if it had been emitted from an ambitious mouse.

As though scripted, a bush rustled to Harry's right, and his head snapped around to face the direction of the sound with a curious tilt. He sniffed the air, and evergreen eyes lit up as the wolf recognised the scent from some deep, instinctive store. Rabbit ... powered and directed by his stomach, Harry didn't waste any more time, and promptly charged the bush, pouncing and landing just as the rabbit darted from the bush and off down a forest trail that Harry hadn't noticed before. For a split second, Harry merely watched the rabbit go, tracking it's progress down the path, before he shot to his feet like lightning and bolted after his fleeing dinner.

The small wolf pup chased his lunch for a few minutes - completely oblivious to his surroundings as he raced past and through and under and over them, too busy peering through the fog - but wasn't having much luck. Rabbits, the wolf knew, were faster than they looked, and trickier, too. He had never hunted before, and the human part of his mind, hanging on for dear life, had little knowledge or experience to offer up beyond a short mental clip of an extract of a wildlife documentary in which a pack of lionesses unsuccessfully chased down a gazelle and David Attenborough's calm and oddly lilted voice commentated. The wolf pushed that oh-so helpful snapshot of memory to one side and concentrated on catching the slippery (and far too lucky) rabbit.

Just a little closer ... Harry stretched forwards as he closed in on the rabbit, ready to bring his paw slashing down on the back of the rabbit's hind legs and -

WHUMP!

- a huge, black ... something, with wiry fur hit the ground in front of Harry's muzzle, sending up a miniature tsunami of air and loose dirt. He scrambled backwards, but lingered when he would have - should have - run, his stomach and it's protests about giving up his quarry pinning him in place. The rabbit, blocked from his view by the moving bulk in front of him, squealed in terror and then pain and then nothing as it fell silent with a wet cracking sound. A cacophony of slurps and crunches followed, and Harry took the opportunity to back slowly away from the new threat, body low to the ground and ears pinned unhappily to the back of his skull.

He was nearly hidden in the tree line when his paw came down on a thin twig, which snapped with a seemingly deafening cracking sound underneath his weight. The slurps and crunches stopped, and for one heart-stopping moment, the entire forest seemed to pause and suck in it's breath.

Then the creature moved. It spun around to face the wolf and Harry, for the first time, got a good look at what this threat actually was. It was a spider, but much too big and much too fierce-looking to ever be a normal house spider. Harry's hackles rose, and he growled low in his throat, the hair on his back standing on end to give the already overly fluffy wolf a few more inches. But, even with the illusion of added height, Harry felt about as effective as a Chihuahua staring down a Rottweiler.

For a moment the small wolf and the large spider just stared at each other, the spider's pincers clicking and Harry sinking even lower to the ground, his weight spread evenly over his paws so he could dart away in any direction at just a moment's notice. He didn't dare to blink, fearful that if he broke the silent staring contest between himself and the creature regarding him as though he was main meal and dessert, then it would take it as an unspoken cue to attack. However, a quick movement off to the side of his line of sight, deep within his peripheral vision caught his attention, and the wolf's head snapped around before he could stop himself. He mentally blanched at the sight, and could have sworn he paled underneath his fur: surrounding him were columns and rows of spiders, some larger and some smaller than the one that had stolen his dinner out from underneath his nose, and all of them staring directly at him with disturbing fascination.

The world stood still, and the wolf part of his brain all too happily gave way to the human consciousness. Harry blinked, and shrank uncertainly back away from the spiders ... and then, in perfect unison, the wave of beasts burst into scurrying motion, and attacked.

Oh, look. Another cliffie. Heh ... oops? This chapter was originally meant to be longer, but then I kept getting more ideas and if I'd continued writing to the point I wanted to ... well, I don't want this story to end sooner than it needs to, and that was exactly what would end up happening. Besides that, I'm a little insecure with how I'm portraying Harry as a young wolf cub, and want your input on that before I go much further. Plus it's already a busy chapter and ... yeah. Chapters end when chapters want to end, and this chapter wanted to end here.

Something I wanted to clear up about this chapter: the wolf side of Harry's brain and the human side of Harry's brain aren't really separate, tangible things. It's more like I've used the term 'wolf consciousness' when his new animal instincts surge to the surface of his mind and supresses human logic and thought processes, which I've referred to as his 'human consciousness'. This chapter seems to suggest that the two are separate because it's so new to Harry, he hasn't had the experience required to control his instincts. Eventually, however, he will, and the two will work together much more smoothly. Secondly, the whole chant and visions of Hell thing will, no doubt, be cleared up in a later chapter, as will most of your questions such as 'Is Killer is Sirius and is the werewolf Moony?' Guess you'll have to wait and see.

I don't think the Canon Dursley's actually beat Harry in the books, probably fearing being found out by someone like Dumbledore. However, while the bruises and the way he's been treated don't play a huge part in this story, they will help with one of the things I want to include later, so ... yeah.

Huge glomps and muffins to everyone who reviewed. I hope you enjoyed this chapter just as much as I did writing it. Lol.