Chapter 3

Don't own Harry Potter or Firebreather

Harry tried to scream. Where the other transformation had felt natural, this one felt like it was tearing his very body and soul apart.

While the transformation before had felt right, natural even, this one felt like one his body was trying to cross a bridge not meant for mortal men.

If anything, it definitely wasn't one mean to be started when you're a deer.

Rather than the painless melting and cracking of the animagus transformation, this one was likened more to being hit with a mortal truck. Or maybe a couple of bashings from the whomping willow. Either way, it felt like his bones were being broken with unimaginable force. Heat was gaining force in his stomach, it made him feel like he wanted to be sick. He could only freeze as his body betrayed him.

It started with his arms and legs. They buckled and bent, arms returning to long limbs, hooves to fingered hands, but his legs only became bipedal. Claws sprouted from the tips of his fingers, ridges along the sides of his arms and up his shoulders, even down his back. He could only lie there and bang his head against the floor in an attempt to distract himself from the pain, but he just couldn't, couldn't make it stop. His clawed hands dug gullies into the wood, every thrashing kick of his legs left abrasions, and scattered trash about the room. In front of him, something struck the mirror and it broke.

The shards rained down on him like glittering snow, he couldn't feel it.

The burning… THE BURNING- the FIRE. It wanted out.

Skin thickened, gained a dark reddish-purplish hue. Power echoed in the air, dark fire exhaling from his mouth in every frantic pained breath. His already unruly hair fluttered around his shoulders, black tresses fluttering in the different eddies created around his body due to the unnatural heat. Something to his left caught fire.

In an anguished scream, silent, he twisted into the flames, body twitching in pain. Not from the heat of the flames, but in a way how good it felt compared to the seemingly cool ground that surrounded him. It was everything else that was too cold, even the fire felt like it burned cold. It needed to be warmer, it needed to be hotter, molten, like lava. Anything else, and he felt like he would freeze and die. He could feel the power draining from him, the woosh as the curtains caught flame. Plastic melted, glass cracked and broke, wind rushed in, fanning the flames to an even higher height.

More fire blistered in his throat, and a full bodied roar exploded where all there had been the crickle crackle of burning, of destruction. Something worked its way through the wall of instincts protecting him from the outside world, and brought him to his senses.

"Bang BaNG, BANG"

Pounding on the door, heh, it echoed the pounding in his head.

Vaguely he could hear words… "Brat! Brat! What're you doing in there?!"

He could hear a yelp as the door knob rustled and turned.

And then footsteps. The door slammed, and the sound of the car engine starting, and it drove away. Then silence. And he mercifully passed out.

Some Time Later

Who knows how long later he woke up, it couldn't have been too long; the house was still burning around him. Here and there, he could hear the fire making the house collapse. The air rippled with heat. Breathing in the smoke, he realized he felt pretty good. For all of the pain earlier he thought that he would be a simmering pile of goo on the floor, but it seems that that isn't the case.

He tried to get up, but he kept falling back to the ground. His legs, something was up with his legs. This spur of panic managed to get him up, just for a second before he fell back to the ground with a groan. He felt like a fledgling unable to stand on his own two feet.

Something cracked, the walls and floor shook, and he decided it would be a good idea to get out of the soon to be condemned building.

Crawling he got over to the cracked and melted glass in front of him. Looking into it he could only see pieces of the whole. A golden eye here, the edge of a fanged mouth there, distorted by the unevenly melted surface.

"Breeerrrrrrrrr" a fire engine'salarm resounded outside, if he heard correctly, from a few streets away. It would undoubtedly be coming here.

He crawled towards the wall, trying to gain his footing, it felt all wrong like he wasn't meant to be standing on two legs, but as he got up, he felt them change to something similar to human legs. Normal ones, and he hurried to his feet, and limped towards the door. Grabbing the handle he found it pleasantly warm, but when he opened the door, it wouldn't budge.

They couldn't have. They wouldn't, would they? They wouldn't lock it from the outside knowing that he wouldn't be able to get out, they wouldn't leave him to die, and no matter how much they hated him, wouldn't they?

"THOSE BASTARDS!" He screamed hoarsely at the empty house, it came out like a roar. "How could they?!" He needed to punch something, to hit something, to get rid of that feeling of hopelessness and anger that he had been feeling much too often in the past months.

He punched the wall next to the door, it trembled. The door rattled in its sockets. Soot and crumbly insulation drifted down from the ceiling in amalgamated clumps. His eyes watered in irritation. It was in his throat, a couple of coughs later, he was breathing faintly face flush against the door, sweat seeping slowly from his hairline.

One last anger desperate anger punch later, had the door flying off its weakened hinges and hitting the wall in the hallway opposite. Moments later had him out of the house, sprinting awkwardly through the house where he spent the majority of his miserable childhood. Once he was a couple houses away, he turned to look back, there he watched as the roof collapsed as if in encore to the arriving police and firemen.

Flames spiraled into the night sky, only to fizzle out in the summer night air.

One house collapse later:

After the house had completely collapsed, he had snuck his way past the gawking neighbors, those in for fame, those who cried foul, "It was horrible! I wake up in the middle of the night to that horrid sight! There is no water anywhere, because of the drought, what if it had spread to my house?!"

Or "I bet it was that nasty Potter boy, he never did fit in with no one else. Never trusted him around my son, 'specially after what Petunia told me. Never turned my back on those shifty eyes. Wouldn't surprise me, officer if he staged this to steal the wealth right out from under their generous noses."

Harry shouldn't have been surprised, he knew the Dursley's spread lies about him throughout the community, but even so, he didn't expect people that he had never met to have so much against him.

But there was nothing he could do, it'd be better to just disappear, to go find Ron or Hermione, Lupin, someone who he knew could help with his present situation. Or Dumbledore. Anyone. Maybe Ms. Figg still lived by, and he could send for help through her.

He stuck to the shadows, he blended in with his new skin. As much as it freaked him out, it helped, and he didn't have time to dwell on it. A flash of color caught his eye, a man in robes walking down the street, glaring in disdain at those he passed.

Not good. They were after him, whether it was the ministry, or Voldemort. It was all the same. He really had to get going. Forsaking the safety of the dark alley, he full-out sprinted once the man had passed. He could feel Voldemort stirring in the back of his mind, and he knew someone much more powerful than either of them was coming, and he didn't want to be around innocents when he did.

Dedicated to the hazel-eyed bookworm