Saurian Song

HiddenByFaeries: Dinotopia/Harry Potter: Andrew/Harry, Parselmouth ability (making it reptile rather then serpents), Dinosaur T-Rex or Velociraptor "adoption".

I've only read Lost City by Scott Ciencin; so I hope I'm not making Andrew Lawton too out of character – but I probably did just that.

0o0o0

It is often asked: if walls spoke, what would they say? Yet more often than not, what is writ on walls is disregarded as fable and fancy. Harry Potter looked at what was written upon the walls of Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets… and he believed. Maybe it was only that he was twelve, and had survived something so many had not; he well knew the Dark Lord hunted him, that he had survived the bite of a basilisk, and the raw tears of a phoenix - but this could well have been his tomb, yet this chamber had given him a gift. His life, and the secret truth beneath lies – so much was the irony, that Harry found in the Chamber of Secrets.

It was not ending, a tomb, this Chamber, but an entrance – a gateway to a beginning. This was what the walls stated in words only Harry could see and understand. He saw the language of serpents, and understood it – just as he understood serpents. There was more. Fawkes had perched upon his shoulder, and when he sung, Harry heard him; heard in words as he had heard the basilisk.

"Child of Tears, Child of Venom, of the Forbidden you are. Come, let us go, and let me take you away to where we can be free. There they would welcome you." Fawkes had met him in Gryffindor Tower, had urged him to take up the Invisibility Cloak and follow him here; where the face of Salazar Slytherin looked down upon him.

"What are you?" Harry asked of Fawkes, who ruffled his feathers in a shrug.

"Phoenix to wizards, Archaeopteryx the Forbidden named me. Fawkes will do for friends." Fawkes nudged Harry as if sharing a jest. Harry caught his breath in his throat, that word; Archaeopteryx was the first bird, or rather - the fossils of it. If Harry had not had an education outside of magical means, he would never know that.

"And the basilisk, what was that?" Harry looked to the underside of his wrist, fingers barely brushing the skin there; the black basilisk venom flowed through his veins. They did not look like veins anymore; perhaps the blood that flowed through him was more akin to vines or roots.

It was like an art, but it was no henna painted upon the skin, no ink tattoo to mar the surface of the skin, it was deeper – an art that was his blood. It marked where flowed blood, where blue veins had shown, now was black basilisk.

There was a silver scar upon his arm, where phoenix tears had saved him.

It was the arm of the very shoulder upon which Fawkes perched, as a matter of fact.

"Basilisk is bad, Titanoboa he is named among we Forbidden folk." Harry licked his lips.

"How do I understand you? I thought parseltongue a Dark Art, to speak to serpents." Fawkes crooned soothingly, and Harry let himself be lulled.

"Nay, it is not as simple as they may wish. Parseltongue came from the breed of the Forbidden, out of the Forest. There is Dinotopia, where the races of eons speak in harmony; their tongue is ours." If Harry understood what Fawkes said, he meant that there were dinosaurs out there, dinosaurs that reasoned and spoke to people like Harry. That the language spoken between dinosaurs and people was the same that Harry was speaking now, was in fact reading.

"What do I do?" Harry asked of the empty and echoing Chamber of Secrets.

Salazar Slytherin's features upon stone looked down upon him. It was then that those hooded black eyes blinked, the fierce brows seeming to soften.

"My Heir…." Salazar's voice was a creeping hiss. "You must have many questions, and I have your answers. I have made many mistakes, in seeking this the Outside; I closed the Ways between Dinotopia and this, the Outside. Now there is but one way to return and it is here – this Chamber will open within the Forbidden Forest, where sits a circle of sunstones. Speak and the Forbidden Mountains will open the Way." Harry stood very still, wondering if this statue of Salazar was sentient – or merely a messenger.

"I hope, my Heir, that you can find a better life there then can be given to you here among the ignorant Outsiders." It seemed so strange to Harry, to be well wished by a man who he had been taught contempt for.

"Wise was Salazar of the Forbidden fen." Fawkes's voice rung out in the silence, least it lapse between them too long.

"You want me to leave Hogwarts?" Harry asked of the phoenix, startled and hurt.

"It does the Outside no good to see the Forbidden, for they think it Dark. This too did Salazar Slytherin find; this did Tom Riddle deny, and now seeks to sway. Come away, Child of my Tears, with me you will find in the Forbidden a home and sanctuary as Hogwarts is meant to be among the magical of muggles." Fawkes sung, and soothed. Harry ran his hand through those fire bright feathers. Fawkes was warm and soft; Harry believed that the phoenix would never hurt him.

"What about the Dark Lord?" Harry felt wrong about that, as if he was meant to stay and finish something here. Fawkes nipped at his ear, playfully.

"Tom Riddle is a Child of the Outside now, you and I are of the Forbidden. The prophesy endures and promises, your paths will cross in this lifetime again, and again, until the test rings true. The Way will ready you." Harry nodded, as if the statue of Salazar Slytherin had sensed his resolution, the wall became a gateway.

Harry, one step at a time, followed Fawkes when the phoenix flew toward it with a glad song. Harry looked to the walls of the gateway, trailing his fingers against the smooth surface as he walked. Fawkes came circling back, to land upon his shoulder once more.

"It is as Salazar said; the Way is not far from here." Fawkes hummed the words, pleased with himself.

"How was this made?" Harry asked in a hushed whisper.

"I know not, Salazar Slytherin of the Forbidden fen had secrets, his kin came from the city that sunk called Poseidos. Such as they closed and opened the Ways. Outside calls you wizard and witches, and your gifts magic. Dinotopia knows you as Sentinels, and your gift is Light, and by that Light you led the Saurian into the World Beneath. Of the Sentinels, only Ogthar and Almestra led the Saurians to reclaim Dinotopia. The rest did not return. Now there are humans without magic, who know of your cities, but have not the Light. This we teach them as best as we can." Fawkes sounded saddened by this, his wings spreading protectively over Harry.

It was then that Harry saw the circle of sunstones which stood where the gateway ended, shining as bright as the sun above. Awed, he reached to touch them; they were as warm as they had looked to be. The glowed with power, a power Harry found echoing in himself, they were magic, these sunstones.

Harry walked to stand at the center of the circle, and felt there the currents of power, the ebbing and flowing of the Way.

"Open." Harry Potter asked, with the same declaration he had used upon the Chamber of Secrets.

The sunstones obeyed, and the light flared and flashed like lightning. There was no sound of thunder, only silence.

Where Harry Potter and Fawkes had been was now only air.

0o0o0

Harry Potter found himself waking, and he looked quickly around himself. He lay in a ring of sunstones, and the sun was rising – and Fawkes was singing something sweet and lonely. It had been what woke him. Harry listened to it, the soft notes of pain, and the hum of sweetness. There was only the song of the phoenix, and Harry realized that here – Fawkes was like Harry, the last of his kind upon Dinotopia.

It was only when the light of the sun lit up a path that Harry had been staring at without seeing, not until sunlight hit it did Harry see that they were sunstones. He sat staring at it, wide eyed and wanting.

The path of sunstones were like a river of magic that pulled playfully at his own, teasing Harry to follow, to see more of this land that magic promised was his very own, his home. Fawkes song had stopped, but Harry only knew that because Fawkes sat staring at him in something like worry.

"Child?" Fawkes crooned, soft and sweet.

"What is that?" Harry asked of Fawkes, hushed.

"It is the Way." Harry blinked blurred eyes, and realized that in staring so he'd caused his eyes to tear.

"Where are we?" Harry wiped his eyes on his robes, glad for the sweater and jeans he wore beneath the black robes.

"In Sacred Valley nestled between the Forbidden Mountains and the Rainy Basin, upon Dinotopia." Fawkes had looked to the rising sun, and his beak opening. It was then that Harry saw the sharp teeth there, and noted the wicked looking talons upon the phoenixes three toes.

"Is it dangerous?" Harry asked, eyeing those teeth for the first time.

"Carnivores do dwell here, but they would not more harm a Sentinel anymore then I would. You are sacred to us, perhaps more to us than to the rest of the Dinotopians." Fawkes chirped reassuringly, pressing his warm body against Harry. Harry's mind swam through memories of carnivore dinosaurs, the primeval predators – which had only seen pictures of. His imagination put things into quick perspective; those carnivores had to be huge.

Harry's hand tightened on his wand, and he felt something like laughter choke him.

"This is Sacred Valley, it is forbidden here to do harm. This is a place of meeting and mating, of nesting and hatching; the teaching ground of the predators. They protect it so that others who are not carnivores do not know of it." Fakes breathed against him, slow and steady, and Harry felt his own breathing calms to echo it.

Harry sits amongst gritty sand and sunstones. He sees now the nests of earth in which eggs lay, they are covered in dirt and warmed by earthen things; eggs that are pale white and about the size of his hands fisted together. If he reached out he could touch a nest which holds a clutch of uncounted eggs.

He saw too, as his eyes became unfocused and blurred, that there was something watching him in turn, to still to be sleeping. It watched him with great big golden eyes, and a snout that sharp teeth could not hide.

"I mean no harm here." Harry spoke, soft and reassuring.

"Peace, Sentinel, I have eyes to see though coming here your Light near blinded me." Her voice was a low growl; the head peeked up from her hiding spot, eyeing him with open appraisement. Cat like, her tail swayed with her curiosity.

"I am Harry; this is Fawkes – what is your name?" Softly, she snorted in something like contempt.

"Only the Sentinels named us at our hatching, we carnivores kept that custom, since Salazar Slytherin parted the Way here, there has been no naming. In this way, the nameless predators mourn the passing of Sentinels. It is something the grazers have forgotten, they take names from the foreign dolphinbacks and forget the magic and mystery of a Sentinel's true naming." She stood as tall as Harry now, approaching him as she spoke, until she hovered over him, her snout nuzzled into his collarbone. He felt embraced rather than attacked, and brought his arms up to hold her head. He didn't know if he would – or could – have push her away if she had wanted to bite, but it was nice to feel her leather-like skin against his fingers.

"I...I'm sorry?" Harry did not know if he was apologizing or asking.

"Do not be. You are here now Sentinel, you will name." At that, she was content, and breathed in the scent of him in. Harry was for the first time sure of one thing, that she was right; and he would name those predators that had waited so faithfully to be named by a Sentinel.

"Would you like a name?" Harry asked of her, and she peacefully exhaled, and nodded her head tightly.

"Majesta." Again she exhales, in a sigh, and Harry realizes that is her sign of being pleased with him. She straightens proudly, and calls for her pack with a barking screech. They come swiftly, yelping and chirping in howls. Harry would have been frightened into running away if not for Majasta standing over him protectively.

"Light be blessed, a Sentinel has named me Majasta." She tells the pack of them, and Harry counts ten and gives up because they do not stand still, they gather around, weaving in out and around each other in a snake like fashion. Heats turn towards him, some staring straight at on, others tilting in a bird-like fashion either left or right.

"We are honored, from which Sentinel kin do you descend?" Harry licked his lips, but dared not look away from their gazes. It was a male's gravel tones that had asked, and there upon his head was a crest of crimson feathers that crowned him.

"I am Hair of Salazar Slytherin; Outside I was named Harry Potter." The male's nostrils flared, scenting Harry, his sorrows and regrets.

"Child of Tears, Child of Venom, and this Heir is Blessed - his blood is basilisk, his tears will heal us. A Child of Prophesy to the Outside, they name him the Boy Who Lived when others died with a Word of the Dark." Fawkes trilled out, bright and clear. Harry could have groaned – as if being a Sentinel here weren't enough, Fawkes would sing his praises from the Outside too.

The male that had spoken drew suddenly back, so startled he might have been struck out at.

"A Word of the Dark was used against this Sentinel ? They dare to taint the Light of the Sentinels? Does the Light not call to Light? Had he no one to protect him, to be his fangs and talons?" This was a hissed demand by the male, and the others yipped and yelped in outrage and fury. Not waiting for answers to questions.

"None would dare, there this Sentinel would stand by his Light alone, or fall to Dark." Fawkes whispered, full of quiet and creeping fury, and Harry saw it for the first him. This was an outrage that Fawkes had hidden and buried, a burden he had not shown to Harry until they reached here – where it was safe to show.

"Heir of Salazar Slytherin, we will not call you by a name of the outside. As Sentinels once named predators, carnivores would honor the newborn of Light with a name. So we ask this old honor of you, may we name and be named by you in our old ways?" This was the asking of a female, her hide was a dull shade of camouflage, but her eyes were a warm golden brown.

"Yes." Harry answered, for what else could he say and survive?

"Sentinel Lightlord kin Slytherin, we name you." Harry nodded slowly and thoughtfully.

"Are you a mated pair?" Harry asked of the crowned male and the golden brown eyed female. They glanced at each other, fondly, and bobbed their heads in joined agreement.

"Jove I name the male, Juno the female." It was right, Harry thought, that he name them after the Roman gods and goddesses, whose people had spoken Latin, the root language of magic, which here they called the gift of Light.

"You would name us all?" Majasta asked, and it was clear then that Harry had not been wrong in naming her, here among her pack, she ruled.

"Yes." Harry answered, for there was no other answer.

0o0o0

There was something Andrew Lawton was looking for. He didn't know if it was truth, or lie, but he did not -yet -dare look alone. The edges of the Rainy Basin were neutral grounds, between the carnivorous predators and the herbivorous. Still one had much to be wary of. It was not worth finding out the truth or lie of that something if he lost his life.

"This is crazy." Ned Lawton muttered under his breath, perhaps thinking his younger brother wouldn't hear.

"Is it?" Andrew asked of him, curious and worried. The looking wasn't worth it, really, if he had no one to look with, to share in the discovery of truth or lies.

"It's just a story, 'Drew. It wasn't meant to be taken so seriously." There are stories, Andrew well knows, and then there are stories.

"It is better to know, than not to know." The Troodon warrior Arri, an Unrivaled of Halcyon spoke softly, but sure. Andrew was glad to have one of his companions on his side.

"Only think we're learning out here is how tempting a target we can make before we can get eaten." Ned grumbled, not in the least shy of showing his displeasure. He wasn't the only one that kept a wary lookout; Arri glanced about in a highly agitated manner, looking every which why that he could with paranoid intensity.

It wasn't that there was nothing out there to see, occasionally Andrew caught those shadowy shapes and blurred movements. They were watched and warded, almost herded, but none of the three of them knew why.

Andrew knows he is hard on his friends, and that if worse comes to worse and they are attacked – Arri, warrior Unrivaled of Halcyon or no – would stand no better chance against a natural predator than Andrew or Ned. No respective training in weapons can truly compare to the raw hunger and fury of teeth and talon. It may startle them into pausing long enough to get a word out, and that was what they hoped – but stop them? No.

The shadows grew longer with every step they took, and Andrew Lawton looked for a way stations shelter. They stood as the Sentinels pact; no predator would attack one, for the hearth fire stood for a peace treaty in these parts. The predators were told to be the protectors of the pact.

It was what the pact was that Andrew Lawton had heard so many stories about while growing up. No one truly knew, and the only ones who might were the predators with their long memories and sharp teeth. It was a very good reason why no one was inclined to get near enough to ask them; for such fear that they might not be in a reasonable mood – or understand words. They did not, to Andrew's knowledge, often speak the language that Dinotopia's humans and dinosaurs shared. They had words of their own, so Arri had told; words that only another dinosaur could hear and understand.

Ned, walking ahead of the path, called out a sighting of a way station. Andrew Lawton picked up his pace, no matter his self-claimed questing; he had no desire to linger in the midst of the carnivores after dark.

Their way station was not empty. Light flickered through the windows from within it. The brothers shared a glance, even as Arri showed no such reluctance, coming through the threshold with a knock for politeness sake. Andrew and Ned followed after, and found Arri standing very still just within.

There was no fire at the hearth – the light came from a boy, who sat watching them calmly. He did not look very intimidating, there was a good sized egg cradled in his arms, but he was certainly not enough to shake Arri so.

What gave them pause was that there was a wicked looking Archaeopteryx perched upon his shoulder; it had deadly sharp looking teeth and talons. They had been expected, it was obvious from the unsurprised expression on the boy's face, and the light – coming from, Andrew saw but did not quite believe – a sunstone cupped in his hands.

The Archaeopteryx's beak gapped open with a hiss, and Arri slowly bowed very lowly.

Andrew had known Arri for a very long time, it was not too surprising that the Troodon warrior would bow in a meeting; it was a show of respect all Unrivaled of Halcyon practiced. This though was very careful show of uttermost respect and certainly more deferent, almost reverent. Arri's belly rested on the wooden floor, head tucked to the side and away from direct eye contact with the boy and the Archaeopteryx.

"Arri, what…?" Ned asked, frowning and crouching down to Arri's side as if to check him for an injury.

"Sentinel Lightlord kin Slytherin gives us his greeting." Arri spoke softly, as if he did not dare raise his voice.

"A Sentinel! Him?" Andrew Lawton could not help but stare, wide eyed at the other boy. He could not be any older than Andrew himself.

"Fawkes did not know if we would understand each other. I am glad that we can." He sounded like any other boy would sound like too. He smiled, and Arri shyly raised his head up at those words.

"They named me, after I named them. It is something of an honored tradition, as I understand it. My name, if you would use it, is Harry." The boy Sentinel, Harry – or Lightlord, smiled and in the light of the sunstone it felt warm and strange to Andrew.

"How are you a Sentinel?" Andrew asked, eagerly. If this was his only chance to find out the truth or lie in the stories, he would not waste it. Curiously the boy looked to the Archaeopteryx and hissed in a questioning way. The Archaeopteryx, who Andrew now gathered must be Fawkes, seemed to understand for his head nodded and he hissed right back.

Andrew knew than that he was hearing and seeing the oldest language which only the predators spoke, perhaps out of defiance and deference to the long lost ancient Sentinels.

Or, perhaps, one had been at last found.

"Fawkes found me and I opened a Way between the Outside and Dinotopia, and came here." Harry reached a hand toward Arri, who stretched out his head to be touched. There was a look of awe at that show of trust that Andrew did not think Harry would ever loose.

"We are pleased to meet you, Sentinel Lightlord kin Slytherin – er - Harry; I'm Ned Lawton – and he's my younger brother, Andrew – we travel with our friend, Troodon warrior Arri, an Unrivaled of Halcyon." Ned made swift introductions, Fawkes feathers smoothed, where Andrew had not noticed them growing ruffled in upset. Andrew glanced gratefully at his brother, for that had been well done of Ned.

"I know. You have been watched since coming near the Rainy Basin, for what reason do you come here?" Harry seemed to speak with more curiosity than authority – but Andrew was not fooled into thinking that he did not possess some. Nor was he uninterested in the question he asked, for all that he seemed to fuss with the egg. Andrew had to wonder what was in it, for he had never seen one so large.

A true Sentinel or not, it did not matter if Ned and Andrew did not believe – Arri clearly did, and others would if Harry's claim was backed by the carnivores of the Rainy Basin. What that could mean, Andrew did not dare guess. He swallowed uneasily, but answered.

"It's funny that you should ask, being what you apparently are – I wanted to find out how much truth there is between Sentinels and the Saurians." Harry frowned and looked up at him, tilting his head in something like curiosity.

"I can not say what there was, but what will be...? I will do my duty." The egg in Harry's hands shook under his touch as if straining to be free and agree. It clicked than, that Harry was hatching the egg – no, that it was hatching, right now. Andrew had only a vague idea how hatchings usually went, but this surely wasn't it.

"What…what kind of Saurian is it?" He couldn't help in asking. There was something almost wickedly playful in Harry's green eyes.

"Tyrannosaurus rex, their eggs are rare, and the lady Magna Mater gifted it into my care, as is – I was informed – the most ancient trust custom." Harry sounded far too amused to be so burdened. Andrew and Ned shared a wide eyed look. No one ever saw so much as a hatchling Tyrannosaurus rex, to see an egg was almost unbelievable.

"Why did you meet us here?" Ned asked shakily, knowing it had been no accident of happenstance.

"I am obviously on my way to the Hatchery; will you not come with me? The way will be long, and I am sure there will be time enough to ask all you can think of – and perhaps I will have my own questions to ask and be answered, so, what do you say?" Harry, for all his obvious oddity and strangeness, seems sincere and lonely.

Andrew Lawton only hesitates in the time he needs to get his breath.

"Yes!" He states, firmly, almost afraid Harry will take it back. Their shared enthusiastic smiles only make Ned sigh and roll his eyes.

0o0o0