Disclaimer: Standard stuff (I don't own anything, I won't be making profit, any resemblance to previously published content is purely coincidental, JK Rowling is the coolest, etc.). If I make any legal errors regarding copyrighted material, inform me and I will correct them immediately.
Harry Potter and the Lightning Scar
Annie walked down the stairs toward Harry's room, after bathing and then napping for a few hours. It was nearing 11 AM, so she figured Harry would probably be game for an early lunch. As she approached his room and raised a hand to knock, she heard a yelp of surprise and a loud thunk from inside. It had sounded like a body hitting the hardwood floor.
"Harry?" she called, concerned—it had been a rather loud thunk, after all. "Harry, are you okay?"
She was relieved to hear what sounded like a grunt in the affirmative, followed by footsteps moving toward the door. The door opened, revealing Harry, clad in a tee-shirt and shorts and rubbing his elbow.
"What happened?" Annie asked.
"Ah, well, I was taking a nap—I'd set my alarm for noon—but I had another animagus dream. It was pretty...intense. Something happened, and it surprised me awake, and I fell out of bed. Gadsden wasn't happy that I woke him up, too, but I gave him a mouse and that pretty much got me back on his good side, even though he thought I was making a huge mistake by not being a snake animagus. He doesn't seem to get that I didn't have a choice in the matter, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that if I did, I wouldn't choose to be a snake," Harry finished, rolling his eyes.
Annie giggled, which gave Harry a warm feeling in his chest and a fluttering in his stomach.
"Well, now that you're up, want to go grab lunch?" Annie asked, satisfied with the explanation; though she remained a bit curious about the details, she would wait until he brought it up himself. "I'm practically starving. Breakfast was big, but it was still the only thing we've eaten in two days."
Harry agreed, and they walked to lunch hand in hand, stopping once for a brief snog-and-grope session in a small nook on the second floor. Once Annie had rehooked her bra and Harry had readjusted his shorts, they continued on downstairs, and spied Andy and Carla leaving the inn; apparently, the two older teens both had part-time jobs, and had to get to work. At "their" booth in the back, Annie and Harry carefully restrained themselves despite their hunger, not wishing to subject the other patrons to another Ron-like display of savagery like they had perpetrated at breakfast. There wasn't any hurry, anyway; after eating, their discussion turned inevitably toward their animagus forms.
After her bath and nap, Annie had realized that Harry had given only the scarcest details about his form during the Jeep ride; in her excitement about her form (and her preoccupation with trying to satisfy her leftover lust by grinding herself against Harry's lap), she had overlooked the fact that Harry had evaded or deflected most of the questions aimed at him, and now she was overwhelmed with curiosity.
Harry saw no need to keep his form from her; his discomfort with the topic earlier had been related to the intensely violent nature of the dream. After all, he had spent most of his second year at Hogwarts being shunned by the students and staff for an aspect of himself that he couldn't help (in that case, his ability to speak to snakes); however, his discussion with Morris had quelled his fears that anyone here would repeat that performance about his violent and destructive animagus form. He related to Annie the contents of his discussion with her father, and she had a similar look of triumph in her eyes.
"I kind of thought—hoped, really—that you might be a thunderbird animagus, ever since my dad told you that he would talk to you about your scar," she said, explaining why she wasn't particularly surprised by his form. "I think this makes you only the second thunderbird animagus who wasn't from a tribe. It is a great responsibility, to have that kind of power."
"Who was the other one?" Harry asked. His lack of knowledge about his own family had given Harry a great interest in any detail about himself that could lead back into the past, and this was already an interesting topic anyway.
"Benjamin Franklin. That story they tell kids about him flying a kite in a storm was true, but they leave out the magical reasons for it; he was trying to understand electricity to try to figure out how to cast lightning spells. The only reason he didn't die when the kite conducted the lightning through him was the fact that it "woke up" his thunderbird, which protected him—that's why my dad thinks that Killing Curse didn't work."
"That's awesome," Harry breathed, thinking that Godric Gryffindor might have some serious competition for the title of Harry's favorite historical figure. Then, he began remembering some of the times he had been in danger at Hogwarts, and realized that perhaps the thunderbird within him had recognized the possessed-by-Voldemort Quirrell as the foe who had tried to strike him down as an infant, and reacted accordingly. That would be a much more reasonable explanation for why his touch had roasted Quirrell—the thunderbird must have been channeling lightning through him. Dumbledore's claim about purity and love driving off the evil wraith had always sounded like a bunch of bullshit to Harry. He suddenly realized that he had been staring off into space and drawing out a pause in the conversation, and hastily continued speaking. "I wonder why they don't have an exhibit about that at the Franklin Institute?"
"I think they normally do, but it's a traveling exhibit, and it's at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. right now," Annie explained. "My class went on a trip to the Smithsonian at the end of this past year, and we saw it there. The US has a bunch of combined magical and non-magical museums that double as research institutes—the federal government, some of the larger state governments, and a lot of the universities that have magical studies departments partner with them for research projects."
They continued to chat for another few hours, before Harry remembered that he had wanted to call Remus and Sirius, to tell them about his form. The two teens made plans to get dinner at around seven, and with a quick, chaste kiss, went their separate ways for the afternoon. Harry went back up to his room, wrote a short letter to Healer Hopkins about his progress with the potions (his sight was now sharper unaided than it had ever been with his glasses, and he had grown another few inches and put on a few more muscular pounds), and sent Hedwig on her way, figuring that it would take her at least three or four days to make the round trip.
"Sirius, Remus, you there?" he called, holding the mirror. A few moments later, he saw the two wizards come into view, and grinned at the sight of them. "What's up, guys?"
"Not much, Harry," Remus said. "You're not wearing your glasses—I guess that means those potions are working out?"
"Yeah, I can see much better now, and I've grown a bit, too. Did your ambush work?"
"Yes and no," Sirius said with a scowl. "Wormtail sent a few of his old criminal buddies to the village instead of coming himself, the stinking coward. They weren't able to tell us where he is going, but we found out that he already met up with Voldemort's wraith, and is taking him somewhere. We're going to his last known location, in Norway, pretty soon—we were actually just about to leave before you called. He'll have moved on, since his henchmen didn't report back, but maybe we'll be able to pick up his trail again."
"Well, good luck, and be careful," Harry said, not wanting to hear the details of what had happened to the henchmen, fairly certain that their days of henching were permanently finished. "Before you go, let me tell you how the ritual went."
Remus and Sirius listened as Harry described the ritual, though he chose not to go into too much detail about the ritual clothing or the lust-fueled snogging afterward. They were flabbergasted to hear that he would be a thunderbird; magical animagus forms were rare to begin with, and to have such a powerful magical animagus form almost beggared belief. They were even more interested as Harry described Morris's theory about the thunderbird saving him from Voldemort, and his own theory about it cooking Quirrell at the end of his first year. This, of course, led to some serious questions about his dangerous adventures at Hogwarts, which Dumbledore had never explained to Remus during the year he worked there.
"Only you, Harry," Remus said. "Of everyone in the world, this is the sort of thing that would only happen to you."
"Well, this pretty much erases what little credibility Dumbledore had left when it came to your affairs," Sirius said. "You and I will have to have a serious godfatherly discussion when you get back to Britain, about how to avoid letting Dumbledore have any more influence over you. Remus and I had no idea how negligent he was being with your safety. A basilisk, honestly! I love a good prank as much as the next guy, but leaving that kind of thing for a student to deal with is nothing to laugh about."
"I hate to change the subject, but speaking of snakes, I want to introduce you to a new friend of mine," Harry said, suddenly remembering that he hadn't told the two about Gadsden.
"Come over here, and see my godfather and his friend," Harry hissed. "They're nice, you'll like them."
Sirius had never been told that Harry was a Parselmouth, so he was very surprised to hear him speaking in Parseltongue, and was even more surprised when the mirror showed the sinister triangular head of a rattlesnake.
"Hello, friends of my master," Gadsden hissed. "If you give me mice, we will have no problems."
Harry laughed, and related what the snake had considered a friendly greeting. Knowing that they had to get going, he bid them a fond farewell, and put away the mirror. He had a few hours before he was meeting Annie for dinner, so he decided to kill some time reading (he would have gone flying, but he was still tired and sore from the previous night).
The knock at his door a few hours later caught him at the perfect time—he had just finished reading the final page of Crane's On Combating the Darker Forces of this Earth and Beyond.
"Coming," he called, opening the door to find Annie standing there. "Dinner?"
"Dinner," she agreed.
The two teens went back downstairs, and Morris joined them for the meal. While they ate, the conversation was casual and light, but as they put down their forks, Harry brought up the subject of the animagus transformation.
"This morning, you mentioned that there was more to being a thunderbird animagus than just the form," Harry began. "Can you tell me what you meant?"
"Sure," Morris answered. "Thunderbird animagi were usually leaders on the battlefield during tribal wars and skirmishes. These "thunder-chiefs," as they were called, were virtually impossible to fight against with bows, and could be brought down by only the most powerful shamans and medicine-men channeling a great amount of energy, and even that was a bit iffy. The thing is, the thunderbird has a responsibility, a duty, to fight the great horned serpents—that was why I was a bit surprised to see that you had a snake companion. Anyway, it's believed that fate will always conspire to throw thunderbirds against their enemies, and the great horned serpent, or Misikinubik, is foremost among them. Sound familiar?"
"Voldemort," Harry said, nodding.
"Right," Morris confirmed. "I doubt he's an animagus—he has these crazy ideas about magical superiority, so he probably wouldn't want to turn into something "less" than a wizard, but he is way into the whole snake motif, and he is another Parselmouth. Anyway, the Misikinubik is mostly just a metaphorical archetype, but there are literal examples as well."
"Yeah, like that basilisk in second year," Harry murmured to himself. At the Oshkosh's stares, he clarified, giving a brief overview of the events of second year, but leaving out just how large the snake had been. He figured that the story was already barely-believable, and telling them that the basilisk had been over sixty feet long would probably be pushing it.
"So," Morris concluded, "it's pretty obvious that there's a running theme between you and snakes, and it'll probably be an ongoing thing, at least until Voldemort and his followers are gone for good. The good news is that lightning works great at killing pretty much anything, so if you find yourself running into any more basilisks, Death Eaters, or Dark Lords, just blast the crap out of them."
"Well, that's good to know," Harry said dryly, and all three had a good laugh before Morris had to go attend to the bar. Harry looked at his watch, noting that it was only 8:30 PM, but due to the events of the last few days, he was already fading.
"I'm pretty tired, so I think I'm going to head back upstairs and get ready for bed," he said to Annie, who pouted, but didn't object; she was probably just as tired.
"Okay," she replied. "I could come by once I've gotten changed, if you want?," she finished shyly.
Harry grinned. "That'd be brilliant. I'll see you in a few minutes, then."
He practically sprinted to his room, and began tidying it up as quickly as he could while he changed into shorts and a tee-shirt (as he had changed into a pair of jeans for dinner). He had just finished brushing his teeth and telling Gadsden to hide and not interrupt, when there was a knock at his door.
Annie stood in his doorway, dressed in her regular sleep attire (which, while being a far cry from the ultra-revealing ritual clothing she had worn the previous night, still left very little to the imagination). In short order, the two teenagers were on the bed, and Harry had shot a silencing charm around the room.
Annie and Harry snogged for several minutes before she straddled him—like she had done in the wigwam—and took off her tank-top, which immediately became the high point of Harry's day. Several minutes after that, both teenagers had their hands in previously-uncharted territory (which certainly made for a new high point of Harry's day), and several minutes later, they were crying out in pleasure and moaning in satisfaction, finally gaining release from the pent-up lust that had held a stranglehold over them since the previous night. Panting and covered in sweat, both teens agreed that that was the high point of their day.
Once they caught their breath, they both realized that they were in need of some freshening up, and it became clear that their raging-hormone-driven lust had been the only thing keeping them from passing out due to fatigue. Now that it had been satiated—at least for the time being—they both concluded that they needed to get to bed and get some sleep. After some cleaning charms (which, slightly-embarrassingly, had to be aimed at each teenagers' shorts), Annie had her top back on.
"Goodnight, thunderbird," she said, kissing Harry deeply and letting her hands stray to his bum. If he hadn't been so tired, it would have been difficult, at that moment, to keep his hands off of her. As it was, though, he was practically dead on his feet, and it was taking some effort just to stand there.
"Goodnight, bigass cat," Harry murmured, sending her on her way with a quick kiss and a squeeze of her bum in return—turnabout was fair play, he reasoned. She giggled at the new nickname, and practically skipped out the door to the stairs. As the door closed behind her, Harry almost couldn't believe what had just happened. It had been so...well, it had been something great, that much was certain.
"Screw it," he muttered. "I can think about it in the morning."
With that final thought, he doused the lights and drifted off to sleep, a satisfied grin on his face.
Author's Note
Ukia Catdragon asked a good question about Quirrell, which I had planned on answering in this chapter anyway. Good to see we're on the same wavelength.
A general note on smut: I have no problem implying things (or even saying outright that something is happening, in nonspecific terms, as I have done in this chapter), but there won't be pornish descriptions or corny euphemisms for body parts in the narration. I mean, yeah, they're teenagers, and they want to (and probably will) have sex—14 is a common age for a first sexual encounter—but I'm not going to go into too much detail, because that would be weird. And kind of gross, actually, because they're not adults. This chapter is sort of a test for the amount of detail I will go into—I think it's enough to get the general idea of how Harry is progressing in his fledgeling relationship (which all involved know won't last past the summer), but still vague enough to be PG-13-ish.