Chapter 2

Oh, shite! Oh, fudge! Oh, oddbodskin! How in the name of Merlin's left pinky toe did I become a snake? – Harry tried to move around in his bed. But with his transformation and strange physical appearance, he found it quite hard to do so. After a few minutes of writhing under his blanket, he stopped moving and laid there like a good little snakelet. He even called out for Vernon and Petunia, heck, he would even ask help from Dudley at this moment, but all he managed to do was hiss. He didn't think those hissing noises even penetrated his relative's unconscious minds amidst the rumbles that were Vernon and Dudley's snores. How could they sleep with that racket going on so near to their own ears? He tried to rub his chin in thought when the lack of his hands struck him anew – Right, think about being human again…Dursley snoring later.

Luckily, for him, he did read about the animagus transformation after the first time he went to the Transfiguration class with Prof. McGonagall, and, although his memory was not as prodigious as that of Hermione's, he could boast a good bit about that. He tried to close his eyes so that he could concentrate, but damn, he found that he didn't have eyelids anymore.

How do I think if I don't have eyelids anymore?

You are aware that thinking doesn't require eyelids, don't you?

But it helps with the process…

Whatever, just quit stalling and start thinking already!

Harry had a scathing reply ready when he realized that once again, he was arguing with himself. He shook his snaky head and tried to recall the passages from the tome that described animagus transfigurations.

"An animagus is a wizard or witch who has made the connection with his/her inner animal self and changed into that specific animal at will. Through the help of meditation, one first needs to find their animal spirit. It can be anything from avians to reptiles to mammals. There are even reports of individuals who have found their animal spirit to be of insects. The common belief is that the animal spirit reflects the nature of the person."

The book continued from there on about how the practitioners of animagus transformation, the British ones that were, took a considerable amount of time with meditation to find their animal spirits. After they had established a connection with the said spirit, they took a specially brewed potion that forced their transformation for a short time. The book even delved into the process of brewing the potion, which, from a first year's point of view, was beyond Harry's understanding. It told how afterwards, the witch or wizard needed to self-transfigure their body parts to hooves or claws or wings – what you may, to get their body used to for the process of changing shapes. As it required quite an amount of power and skill, Hogwarts students who had enrolled for NEWT level Transfiguration, underwent the process, and that was always under very strict observation of a Transfiguration professor.

The entire process took so long and so much of the innate power and skillset of the individuals, that only the gifted students of Transfiguration took the pain to become animagi. Often, people leave the training entirely after they found that their animal spirit was not that much to boast about. Harry snickered to himself imagining that Malfoy went through all the pain of meditation only to find that his inner animal spirit is a slug.

Even now, Harry couldn't help but laugh…er…hissing out loud with the image of a slug with Malfoy's face on it.

Not now. Harry chided himself, you can laugh about Malfoy's slimy self after you get your own hands and legs back.

After forcefully wrenching his mind back from the imagery of a slimy Malfoy carrying his mansion on his back and leaving a slime trail in his wake, Harry concentrated hard. More fiercely than ever in his life. Since animagus transformations start from extremities, he focused his mind on having his legs back. How his toes felt (How do one feel their toes? Not important), he focused with his entire being on the times he had bumped his toes in the furniture, at the corners, how it felt when he wiggled his toes in the thick carpet at the master bedroom (Whenever Aunt Petunia sent him there to clean the room, he always took off his shoes in that room because the first thing he did entering the room was to jump on the bed…of course, first he had to make sure that his aunt was downstairs). Next was his hands, how it felt when he made a fist with his hand. Just waving his fingers or wiggling them. Anything to do with human appendages.

After what felt like an eternity, Harry slowly opened his eyes. Wait a freaking moment, just a while ago he didn't have any eyelids. Now he could open them. Elated by that fact, he tried to move his hands. Yes! His hands were back where they belonged. He sat up and stared at his toes, which he was wiggling still. Harry brushed his fingers on his arms and legs, trying to be sure that they were indeed there. Was his skin always this smooth to touch? He shrugged and got down from the bed. He went over to the closet and opened it to look at the broken mirror which hung inside of it. Vernon had found the closet in a second-hand shop, along with the rickety desk and chair and the single cot with a lumpy mattress. Since they moved Harry into Dudley's second bedroom from the cupboard under the stairs, they didn't put anything else in it. The less they had to spend for the freak, the better.

Harry looked at his reflection in the mirror, he needed to see that if there was any snaky-ness left in his feature. Nope, the same headful of messy, black hair; bright green eyes, a sharp nose, a pair of lips. He even opened his mouth to see if the teeth were the same, and they were. He stood a little back to take in the rest of his body. Two arms and two legs (thank magic), one scrawny body. Well, everything seemed to be back before he had accidentally performed his animagus transformation. Harry made a mental note to write to Prof. McGonagall in the morning.

He climbed back up on the bed and laid his head down. The storm had subsided a little bit by then, but it was still raining quite heavily. Harry closed his eyes and tried to sleep, the patters of the raindrops against the window made a funny sense of calmness.

Suddenly, Harry bolted upright, eyes wide with shock. Everything back to its place, he had seen it himself, in the mirror, with only the glow from the streetlamps in otherwise darkened room…without his glasses.

"Boy! Get down here!"

Vernon Dursley's dulcet blaring broke through Harry's reverie. Frowning, he dawned his tee and pants over the boxers he wore to sleep and got out of the room. Mind awhirl, he slowly got down the stairs and went to the kitchen. There, all three Dursleys sat, partaking in the first feast – er – meal of the day. Harry dropped unceremoniously down on the only empty seat available at the table. Body on autopilot, his hands grabbed an empty plate and a couple of toasts. Ever since the Hogwarts letters arrived, Petunia had relegated Harry only to dinner duties and garden works. Thank Merlin for small mercies.

How in the ever-loving hell did my eyes get better? Even if by some weird accident I have become an animagus, and as the theories went, some characteristics of the animal self carry forward to the human self, that still doesn't explain the sight. As far as I remember, snakes have terrible eyesight.

An impatient Vernon slammed his fist on the table making Harry jump.

"Did you hear what I was saying, boy?" The beefy man bellowed.

Harry did see his uncle's jaws moving, but he thought he was chewing his food vigorously. So lost in his thoughts that he didn't realize that the man was talking.

"Ssssorry…"

Startled by the sudden lisp, Harry clapped his hands over his mouth, eyes wide in shock. He had completely forgotten about the forked tongue, and sure as the day, he could feel two distinctively pointed parts of the tongue inside of his mouth. Vernon's red face turned purple.

"This is what I was talking about. You and your freakish behaviours. Marge is coming for a visit today. She will be here for a week and I will not stand it if you do this…this…freaky things in front of her."

Concentrating hard on not lisping, Harry slowly spoke out loud, "I could go away for the time, I don't have to be here for her…"

Vernon wiggled his meaty finger, "Oh no, you don't. She is expecting to see you here and here is where you will remain. I don't know why she would care, but my sister will get what she deserves. Do I make myself clear?"

Harry frowned - Oh sure, she should get what she deserves, a good kick up the…

Outwards, he nodded his head obediently, he did have something brewing inside of his head after all.

"Alright." He was trying his best to not utter any word with 'S' in it, "I do have a thing from my…from there for you to read and approve…"

"And what is this thing?"

"A-a form, we get to go to a nearby village at the end of the week in our third year. But we need guardian approval on the form for it…"

Petunia sniffed at hearing that, but Vernon's beady little eyes became even smaller by his cheeks pushing upwards because of the vicious smirk that formed.

"I will see to this…form of yours after Marge's visit. If you behave you'll get your form signed, if you don't, well…" He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't need to as Harry was nodding his head like an obedient, good, little boy.

Sighing in relief, he started to plan for his days for the duration of Aunt Marge's visit, and most importantly, that vicious, little piece of shit, Ripper. But his relief didn't last as scale patterns once again started to form on his skin before his horrified eyes. He jumped up to his feet, he needed to get out of there before he once again became a snake.

"Pleassse…exssscussse me…" He snatched the toasts from his plate and legged it from the kitchen.

"You have been warned, boy," Vernon growled at his retreating back, "anything of your freakish sort while Marge is here and you will wish you were never born."

His heart hammered in his chest as he clambered up the stairs to his room. He could hear Vernon's curse from the kitchen.

"Bloody freak!"

Harry stayed in his room for the rest of the morning. Lying on his bed and once again concentrating to retain his human body was hard work, his mind drifted off time and again, but he persevered. He even gave himself a new nickname – Harry the Human, anything to help him in this weirdness, really.

He did hear when Vernon got out of the house and drove away to receive Marge. He was truly dreading her visit. Any other time, it would have been stressful just because of her sunny personality and her flea factory, but now, with this reptilian addition of his, it was sure to become the stuff of nightmare. Cursing under his breath, he leapt from his bed and tiptoed to his door to press an ear on it. By the muffled sounds that greeted him, he could discern that Petunia was puttering around the living room, dusting this and that in the midst of making everything spic and span. While Dudley had parked his fat arse in front of the telly as it blared some inane programmes that he loved to watch. Nodding to himself, Harry opened the door and slinked towards Dudley's bedroom.

Back in his pre-Hogwarts day, when he was forced to do every menial job that the Dursleys could think of, he often spent his time hidden away in Dudley's room pretending to be straightening the room. His aunt couldn't blame him if he took an inordinate amount of time there as she was well aware of Dudley's propensity of being messy. It gave Harry the window to divulge in what he liked to do best, messing about with Dudley's stuff. Although, he was always careful about which stuff he got his hands on, as the Dursleys wouldn't wait to blame if there was even a single thing wrong with the newly bought toys. It helped Harry with his normally curious nature as he tinkered about with the broken toys, often swiping off the less bent and broken things that could be salvaged with a little effort. This hobby made it possible for Harry to sell off those repaired things and garnered a small fortune (in contrast to what Dudley received as pocket money) for himself.

But the things that attracted Harry the most among Dudley's junk, were the books he never even opened but had to have because his friends did. No matter whatever one might think about the Dursleys, but it was true that they never baulked from giving their son the best the world had to offer. It was another thing completely that neither they nor their offspring had any idea what was best for themselves. They just had to appear in style and have what everyone else had, if not better.

Harry crept towards the never opened bookcases and ran his fingers through the spines, reading the titles. There, just as he remembered, a book, a kind of an encyclopaedia about the animal kingdom. Dudley whined at his parents for the book just before their ill-fated trip to the zoo on his eleventh birthday. Harry grabbed the book and hurried back to his room. He couldn't shake off the feeling that whatever was happening to him, was not normal. Well, not normal in the sense of including magic. The tomes that he read back at the Hogwarts library about animagus had warned the practitioners about not losing one's sense of self when they are in their animal forms, but it never mentioned anywhere, as far as he could recall, about the spontaneity of someone turning into their animal selves. Add to that, his sudden perfect vision, and you have a very weirded out, Harry Potter.

There, just like he remembered reading about them almost two years prior, most serpents, or reptiles for that matter, have poor eyesight, except for those day hunters and crocodiles, but those were a whole different mess altogether. Bottom line was, Harry didn't get his vision mended from being a snake animagus if that was what he had apparently become unknowingly. What the actual fudge was happening to him? How did he end up being one of the rare few individuals who can perform this advanced magic, without even his freaking knowledge?

He couldn't hide away in his room for much longer. For too soon in his opinion, Vernon had come back with his sister, Marge Dursley and her precious bulldog, Ripper. Sighing, he left his room for a week of utter hell.

Harry the human had become his mantra for the duration of Marge's stay at Number Four. Keeping his head straight as he went on to do the chores that had been missing from his daily routine since he was eleven, was quite helpful with diverting his mind from his recent serpentine dilemma. The Dursleys, in their bid to act 'normal' for their guest, thrown Harry into what they thought the deep end of the pond (once again) to appease the aged, spinster, opinionated dog breeder who thought in the same wavelength that of his illustrious brother. Which translated into being 'normal' – oftentimes forcefully pretending at it, and anything slightly offset from their skewed view of normalcy were need to be trampled on, as viciously as they could. Hence, Marge Dursley took immeasurable pleasure in pointing out what a misfit Petunia's no good nephew was.

The workload, on the other hand, had helped Harry in his quest to not be an animagus, if that was what he was. The sheer tedium of the chores such as vacuuming, pruning rose bushes, painting fences were enough to put him in a stupor. Harry had found in his quiet time that if his mind drifted off for even a second towards his transformation, the changes triggered. So, it was better this way if he was too tired to even think about it. Besides, he had already trudged through six days, only one more remained for that harpy to leave his summer jail.

Harry had noticed a peculiar thing, whereas the Dursleys never wanted him around themselves, apart from the times that he was needed to be in the same room with them while he was carrying out his chores, Ripper's mother, on the other hand, needed him to be present in front of her at all times. She seemed to have a perverse pleasure from each taunt or barb she sent his way. Harry wondered if her putting him down actually worked kind of a sleeping pill.

That night, he laboured before the oven and created culinary masterpieces for the Dursley's feast. After setting the table for four, he took his own plate to the kitchen counter and set it aside. He didn't even need to call out for them to come and eat, the smell of food that wafted out of the kitchen door, dragged them in by their noses. Vernon was inhaling everything in his vicinity; Marge was giving him a close competition; Dudley didn't pay attention to what he ate as long as it was plenty and he was left out of the meaningless chatters to enjoy his telly; Petunia, while pretending to be on a strict diet and couldn't eat much, packed quite an amount of food away in her skinny frame. Harry raised his eyebrows as he caught on to Petunia's tactic – her lips were lamenting about the weight she was gaining while her hands were busy to take smaller portions on her plate in a sneaky, roundabout fashion. In that way, her plate always appeared to contain very little food on them, but in reality, she packed away about the same amount of food as her husband or sister-in-law. He couldn't stop himself from snorting when he came to realize her scheme.

Uh oh!

The Dursleys bar Dudley, had stopped their conversation and turned to look at his way. Their eyebrows had risen up in various degrees as if they were struck stupid by the sheer gall that he had dared to laugh in their eminence presence.

"You find something funny, boy?" Marge growled at him.

Vernon, hearing his sister's tone, scrambled to refill her wine glass, "More wine, Marge?" as he already started to pour a healthy amount in her glass.

Marge smiled at him indulgently, "Just tad more then, Vernon, there's a good lad." She took a sip from her glass and once again turned to glare at Harry, "Now, as I was saying, boy, you have some nerve to disrespect your betters. This family took you in when your own got themselves shafted."

Got themselves shafted? Such language from the so-called civilized Dursleys!

Calm down, Harry. Remember, Harry the Human?

She just badmouthed my parents, Harry!

I know, Harry. But you need to remain calm. Else your slithery friend may decide to take a peak. We are still not sure if it is a basilisk or not. You don't want to kill them all, do you?

Could she die? Just a little?

No!

While Harry was having a conversation in his head with his own self, the Dursleys had continued with theirs, or to say, Marge had.

"This Potter, what did you say his job was?"

"Nothing, he was unemployed."

What?! Just wait a minute…

"Figures. A layabout vagabond who got himself blown off. And don't mind me for saying so, Petunia, but your sister doesn't seem all that bright either."

Not all that bright? Lily Potter!? The Brightest Witch of her generation?

The glass in Marge's hand shattered. Broken glass bits flew everywhere. Vernon and Petunia jumped on their feet. Marge blinked at her hands owlishly. Dudley turned his head at the table to see the reason for the commotion, took a look around, shrugged his shoulder and turned back once again towards the telly.

"Marge! Are you alright?"

"Oh, yes, I am. Don't worry, Vernon, darling. I have a very firm grip."

"Boy, go to your room! Now!"

"Not now, Vernon. You, clear the broken glasses! And don't you dare to cut yourself and bleed all over Petunia's floor…"

"Maybe he should just…"

"Nonsense, Petunia. I say you are way too soft in handling this one here. St. Brutus' sounds a perfectly fine establishment to take in such individuals. Just one look at him and anyone could tell that this one here is always up to no good. It is in his features."

Harry the Human! Harry the Human!

Try to turn just your eyes! No one will know! They will think she croaked because of a heart attack!

No! Harry the Human! Harry the Human!

"Your parents should have taken a firmer hand with this Lily. Just as I always tell the Colonel – if there is something wrong with the pup, you can always find its source back to the bitch…"

"Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!"

"Dudley," Petunia screamed, "get out of here!"

"Boy, your room! NOW!"

"Oh no, Vernon, let him say what he wants to say, it doesn't matter anyway. And you, boy, well, listen carefully…"

Animagus transformation always starts with the extremities. The limbs change first, and then the torso, ending with the head.

Marge's raised finger started to swell up. Not in the way it would if it had been hurt, no, it swelled up like a balloon, started from the tip, reaching the knuckles and then the palm. The other fingers followed as well. A ripping sound came from underneath the table. From Harry's crouched position, he could see that Marge's feet swelled too, ripping the shoes on them apart. The nylon hose that enveloped her already bountiful legs, declared their defeat in containing the additional girth and started to rip from the seam. The buttons on her dinner jacket were next to lower their flag as they shot off from her person like low powered bullets, one of them even hit Vernon right in his eyes. Harry would have cheered at that if he was not fuming. Dudley had jumped from his chair and taken cover behind it. He raised his head fearfully to take in the pandemonium in their kitchen. But sadly, (of funnily, depending on your view) that was precise the moment Marge's throat swelled up and the cheap bead necklace that she wore, burst apart, quite the same as her buttons and shot off in different directions. Dudley too was hit in his eyes by one of the beads. Petunia let out a screeching wail and dove after Dudley, shielding his body with hers.

It was that very image of a terrified Petunia in front of a moaning Dudley nudged something loose inside of Harry's head. He didn't even know that his eyes were brimming with tears as he kept his gaze steadily on his aunt and cousin.

"Lily! It's him! Take Harry and Run! I'll hold him off!"

"No! Not Harry! Not my son! Take me, Kill me Instead!"

"Step aside, you foolish girl…"

"No! Please, spare him! Kill me!"

"AVADA KEDABRA!"

Harry jerked back as if he was slapped hard. There was a maelstrom going inside of the Dursley's kitchen. Howling wind buffeted each and every one. A buoyant Marge Dursley was bobbing near the ceiling. Vernon was trying to leap up and grab hold of her, but the winds kept pushing him away. Harry scrambled up on his feet and ran out of the room.

He skidded to a halt in front of the cupboard under the stairs. Behind its locked doors lay his school trunk and all of his magical possessions. Vernon had forced him to leave everything in there the moment he set foot inside of the house after his Second Year at Hogwarts. He had thought about breaking in there and retrieving a couple of books and his homework assignments, but he delayed doing that, thinking there was still plenty of time. Then he turned into a freaking snake and from then on, he was busy trying very hard not to turn one again.

Harry wrenched open the doors and dragged his trunk outside of the cupboard. He kicked it open and rummaged inside for his wand. It didn't even register in his mind that he had actually broken the metal locks and unhinged the doors with a single pull.

"You freak! Get back here and set her to right!" Vernon had rushed out of the kitchen when he saw Harry legging it from there. He put his meaty hand on his shoulder and turned him around.

"Get your fucking handsss off me!" Harry snarled at the man, he had his wand pointing straight at his heart.

Vernon halted, his face turned from raging purple to fearful ashen in a moment. When did the boy stop wearing his glasses? Did his eyes always appear such…luminous?

Harry heaved the trunk over his shoulder and marched out of the house, leaving quite chaos in his wake.

A.N. - This will be the second story that I will continue to post primarily at Pat-reaon. So far the two HP stories are only two chapters in due to some personal problems, but it will soon change and I will continue these two along with the GoT/ASOIAF one in tandem.

My Pat-reaon link is: [pat...reon].com[slash] lamonserga

Guests, Gauravsilentreader, Ru99: Thank you.

lurveseunot: Not quite, all will be revealed in the future.