I do not own nor possess any right over Harry Potter and World of Warcraft, all rights belongs to their rightful owners.
A violent and throbbing pain were what welcomed Harry back into the world as he woke up from the darkness he had been lost into. It took a moment for his mind to start up again and he slowly opened his eyes, only seeing a red blur somewhere in front of him.
His mind was completely jumbled, random ideas and memories flying everywhere along with the pain that was quickly subsiding, leaving him with a minor headache in less than a minute. It was only then that he started to have coherent thoughts again and he started to feel his body lying on a hard yet warm ground.
"Where am I?" He asked no one in particular.
He stopped briefly at his voice, noting how different it was than usual, far deeper but also higher and, if he wasn't wrong, echoing through his body. Putting this on the account that he was still not fully aware, he pushed those thoughts aside and tried to remember what happened.
A flash of red swarmed his mind, and he recalled it all: Luna's invitation, the orb, the flames. All of it came back in a single second and he was overwhelmed, feeling like his body was on fire again only for it to instantly disappear. Feeling relieved, he heard a low rumble around him that brought back his awareness, expecting a monster to jump at him at any moment.
Looking around, he didn't recognise where he was. It didn't seem to be the room he and Luna found the orb in, but it was some sort of old building made from dark grey stone, with a dozen strands of smoke coming out from a few cracks in the ground. The light came from a wide opening outside of his vision, right behind a corner but it was sort of dimmed, like if something in the air made the light darker.
"What did I get myself in this time?" Harry wondered before being disturbed again at the sound of his voice.
Now that he was more awake, he could recognise the voice as feminine yet charged with tremendous power and sort of echoing along with a slow rumble. This prompted him to stand up, fearing what might have happened to him.
As he did so, he felt something very wrong: he couldn't stand up. Not that he was lying on the ground, but his arms and legs were forcing him to walk on all fours. Praying for nothing too bad, he looked down at his arms and instead of light pink skin and hands he was welcomed with a pair of beefy arms covered in black scales and ending up with very four sharp claws. There was also the fact that his nose was longer and blacker than he remembered.
"W-what happened to me?!" He screamed as his voice boomed and echoed in the room he was in.
Forced to stand up on all fours, he rushed outside even if his movements were far more restrained than he remembered, and his body kept feeling more wrong by the moment. Each of his steps made the ground tremble and as he crossed the corner toward the light the rear end of his body slammed into the wall, showing that he was bigger and taller than before.
All his fears and worries about him died as he saw what was outside the small place he was in, for his eyes could only see the purest form of desolation before him.
A barren land, completely grey and covered in ashes. Rivers of lava slowly moving around. Clouds of gas and wind carrying ashes darkened the sky. Everything around him was either in fire or already burned. A few old buildings made from the same stone that the one he was in were crumbled everywhere, a few big metallic machines had been left in abandon and burned husks of trees covered a few parts of the land.
None of this made any sense to him. How could he have gone from the small cave he found the orb in to such a place? Why did the land look like this when he knew that there was no active volcano in England? Yet a bit further away was a massive volcano spewing lava like a real river that crossed the land.
"How?"
As soon as he spoke this single word, he was reminded that something was very wrong with him too. Now in the light of the sun, albeit slightly dimmed, he could see himself better, but he still needed a mirror. He tried to summon his wand, but nothing happened. Not only did it scared him at the perspective to be in a lost place, stuck as some strange creature but without magic he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
For half a minute he tried to call upon every way he remembered to summon his wand, but nothing worked. Desperate, he turned back in the hope that it might be laying where he woke up but stopped when he saw his back.
Because yes, his neck now seemed flexible enough to allow that. Presented with a perfect view of his body, his mind blanked when he realised that he was not just a weird and unknown creature but a massive black dragon.
A large pair of wings with an orange membrane, a strong body covered in black scales that seemed to shine and absorb the light at the same time, two hind legs which bore the same powerful claws than the ones on his arms and a tail that was almost as long as his entire body and finishing with a club-like shape with four spikes on each side and a last one at the tip.
Both shocked and awestruck, Harry just couldn't fathom what happened to him since he picked the orb except that it seemed to have change him into a dragon, one that he never saw before. As well as sending him somewhere else, leaving him lost into an apparent world of ashes and lava.
"This doesn't make any sense!" He roared in frustration, his voice echoing through the land far more than he expected.
The sudden burst of anger freed him from his shock but also allowed him to think about what happened. But first, he had to look for his wand. Going back in the cave, he looked at every tiny spot, feared that the elder wand might have fallen into one of the cracks that glowed with magma beneath. Yet after ten minutes he had to face the truth, either his wand didn't appear with him or it burned into one of the cracks. And based on his new appearance and where he was, the first option was the most plausible one.
It is shoulders sagged and head down that he exited the cave, only for his eyes to contemplate again the destroyed land before him.
"What am I supposed to do now?" He sighed, hearing again his voice as he was starting to realise another very troubling fact.
"And I guess I couldn't just end up as a dragon but as a female dragon. Stupid Potter luck!" He, now she by scientific standards, swore as she slammed the ground with her claw.
Fuming, Harry looked around once more in search of anything interesting or helpful. And a few things did stick out like the small paved road crossing the land that seemed well maintained, the massive stone constructions at the entrance and the top of the volcano, indication that someone appeared to have lived inside at some point and by squinting her eyes she could even see a small camp of crude tents at the base of the volcano.
But there wasn't a single sign of water, and the rest of the landscape was made of lava, small hills and bigger ones that hid everything standing behind them.
"I hate my life." She sighed one more time before she walked down the path that led at the foot of the small hill she had woken up in.
Left with no other choice but to go anywhere, Harry followed the path toward the small camp she saw earlier. And just by standing next to it she guessed that her head must have been standing between four and five meters high as he saw some of the tiny old fences on the side of the road or ruined buildings that he knew were too small for him to get in.
As she walked, a few sounds others than the bubbles of lava popping came from her left. In an exceedingly small sort of valley, a mere two or three meters deeper than the rest of the landscape, was a small group of trolls like creatures yet different from what she ever saw. Some of them wore heavy plates of armour while others only had loincloth, they were far beefier than the trolls she knew and lived in some sort of large huts made from stone, wood, and red silk.
They were being incredibly loud and kept insulting each other with a very dumb form of language even if it was far better than the trolls she saw before. Preferring to avoid any dangerous confrontation for now, she continued a bit faster until she was out of their way.
"What is this place? I haven't heard of anything coming even close to all of this." Harry wondered as more creatures kept showing up.
Some were normal ones albeit a bit bigger like wolves, but others were gigantic like scorpions and spiders that could easily come to a man's hip. The spiders were nothing new, she had seen bigger, but these scorpions and their darts dripping venom forced her to keep her distances. But then there were new creatures like some beings made of metal, the only word coming to her mind being 'golems' and some made of dirt somehow held together with a magical wind or even made of lava and patrolling the sides of the boiling red rivers.
The walk to the camp took a little while, a bit more than she expected. It didn't seem to have been that far, but the answer lied into the fact that her new body was larger and a bit slower to move around, not as agile as her human body but it was an easy compensated weakness by the strong muscles and claws.
Stopping a little hundred meters away, trying to lie down as much as a big dragon could behind a small hill so that only her head showed up, she took a better look at the small camp.
Her eyes scanned the four tents that were protected by a quite thick wooden wall, a few crates and barrels were laying around and a couple of people were minding their own business. Two were guarding the entrances of the camp, one man was standing near a tent, torch in hand and waiting for something to happen with a bored expression. But the most interesting one was by far the smaller one, standing at barely 1m50, and with a thick beard and black skin. Not black like a Black person but like dark ashes.
She wasn't quite sure what to made of him. Sure, she knew who dwarves were, but never did she heard of a dwarf looking like that, perhaps it was a custom thing, and he covered his body in ashes? But this didn't mattered. What did was what she should do now? Seeing how armed they were it made no doubt that they were trained and ready for battle, meaning they were expecting danger to show up. And she had no intention to appear as a danger.
Which wasn't helped at all by being a dragon and everyone knows that dragons are dangerous and must always either be killed or captured. But this was back in her world. She had no idea of where she was but she had a massive difference with the dragons she saw before: she could talk. And she could only hope that it would be enough to stop any kind of fight early on.
After a couple more minutes to watch the men of the camp, she chose to act and stoop up. It was not a decision she liked much but it was simply that there was no other option.
Her claws were quite loud, but her weight also made it extremely easy to hear her coming. So it was to no surprise that the men had seen her as soon as she passed the rocky formation she had been hiding at.
"Dragon!" Yelled the man with the torch, throwing it aside to take a sword hanging on a nearby rack.
"Wait! I don't-" Harry started before being interrupted by a gunshot to the cheek.
The bang was loud and for a second she thought that she would fall dead. Instead, her cheek was perfectly fine, she felt the bullet touch her scales and bounce off without doing any damage.
But this was enough to make her realize that there was no way she would be arguing with people armed with swords and guns. She was probably strong enough to kill them all in seconds with her claws and hard enough to take on any of their attacks, but she was not here with evil intention, attacking them would only made it harder for her in the future should she face people ready to talk like civilized persons.
By now they were almost twenty meters away from her except for the guard armed with the rifle that kept more distance, having already reloaded his weapon and aiming at her.
Not waiting for another bullet, she bolted around as a gunshot came from behind her, but the bullet must have missed her since she didn't feel anything. It turned out to not be as efficient as she thought, her massive body capable of big strides but not cut out for speed as the screams of the men were still right behind her.
A single glance told her that it was the case, but it also revealed something obvious that she had forgot. Her massive wings.
"I'm such an idiot sometimes!" She grumbled as she tried to make them move.
It was surprisingly easy to find the muscles responsible for the wings and soon she had them opened to their full extent. She had seen dragons take off before but doing it was an entirely different thing. A huge flap of her wing sent her two meters in the air, but she forgot to continue and smashed her legs in the ground, making the earth tremble as she swore. She had to repeat it two times before she managed to fully leave the ground and started to gain altitude as her wings carried her higher.
Thankfully, she received no injury from this small skirmish, but it proved her that entering in contact with anyone would be far harder than she hoped. And that she risked being shot at any moment just for being a dragon.
Pushing her wings to go higher, she came to be so high that she could see above the mountains surrounding the valley of ash and lava. And to her greatest relief it seemed that not all here was covered in lava, for what she saw beneath these mountains was a sea of green trees for kilometres as well as a massive city way further away in the distance.
"At least everything is not burned here." She said, noting how this was the second good thing that happened today.
The first one being that she didn't need glasses anymore.
AN: Please tell me if there are mistakes, I'll try to correct them as soon as possible. Don't forget to comment if I should release the whole story or parts of it.