369Summary:
Harry discovers Metamorph abilities early in life and hides them. When he meets another of his kind years later, he's in for a rude awakening. His abilities could mean his death. Thief!Harry.
Disclaimer
I don't own Harry Potter in any way. JKR has those rights
*Author's Note *
This will be a long-term side project for me. I have an outline for it that's barely been touched, but the initial concept is there, and I have HiroJiyuNaka's story "Shifted Dreams" to thank for that original bit of inspiration.
Chapter First Published: 2013-03-24
Chapter Last Update: 2013-03-28
Chapter 01 – Previously on…
Flashback – Age 5
Harry felt himself yanked out of his cupboard for an unknown reason. It was past dinner, so Harry had no idea why he was taken out of his room. Usually after he had cleaned the kitchen, he was locked in the cupboard for the night and told to be quiet… or else.
He felt himself lowered onto a chair, and a low sound buzzed from behind him.
"What going on?" he asked in broken English in his quiet tiny voice.
"You start school tomorrow, Freak," Petunia said in a nasty voice. "Stupid neighbors just had to see you walk out the front door last year," she muttered to herself in an quiet voice.
Whatever buzzed was pressed violently into the edge of his head and started to move upwards. He saw his messy hair fall from his head down on the ground. When he finally dared to look up instead of at his feet, he saw himself reflected in a mirror in front of him. His Aunt was cutting his hair, but she had left a patch an inch wide on his forehead to fall down over his forehead.
"Auntie, you missed a spot."
Smack.
"No I didn't, Freak. It's to hide that hideous scar of yours."
He was thrown into his cupboard after that comment, bits of hair still all over his over-sized shirt. He knew he looked ridiculous by the way Dudley laughed at him from the other room. If he was actually going to school tomorrow, he just knew everyone else was going to make fun of him. He couldn't let them make fun of him. It was his first chance to finally leave this house, and he didn't want people to laugh at him. He wanted friends. He wanted people to like him.
'Why does my hair have to be cut off? Why couldn't it look like it always did?' While he thought of this, he pictured the way his hair was before the haircut, wanting nothing more than for it to go back to the way it was.
In the morning, his Aunt unlocked the door and told him to prepare breakfast for the family. While he cooked the bacon and stood on a stool in front of the stove, he heard a sudden frightened shriek.
"What have you done, you freak?"
Harry was now in a full-blown panic. He had no clue what his had scared his Aunt, only that this tone of voice usually meant he would be left beaten by her or his Uncle.
She dragged him to the bathroom, and shoved him in front of the mirror. He looked up, to see that all of his hair had grown back overnight and it looked exactly the same as before.
-o0o0o-
Flashback – Age 6
Uncle Vernon had decided to take Dudley to an ice cream parlor that particular summer afternoon. Unfortunately for him, the man always had an unnatural fear of Harry alone and unwatched in the house. With Aunt Petunia out at a tea party, it meant Harry had to come with him. With one of the rare opportunities to be out of the house at his fingertips, Harry followed the two quietly and submissively while he kept his head down and tried not to be noticed.
As they reached the local town square, an incredibly attractive blonde woman walked by. Dudley loudly commented, "Is that a pretty bird, Dad?"
Vernon stops, and turns to admire the woman's shapely arse as she walked away, "Why, yes Dudley. That is a very attractive bird, and one day, you'll get one just like that."
He sees Harry turn to see what the fuss was about. The fat brute angers immediately at the idea of the boy's possible future happiness with a woman, "But not you, Freak. You'll never touch a woman like that. Freaks like you don't touch other people, especially women. Bad things happen when freaks touch women. Do you understand me, Freak?"
Vernon grabs Dudley by the shoulder, who couldn't help but snicker at Harry, and guides him away. As they continue on to the Ice Cream store, Vernon could be heard muttering in a low voice, obviously not meant to be loud enough for Harry to hear, but the malnourished young boy always has had good ears.
"That'll teach that Freak. He'll never breed anymore Potters."
Harry has no idea what this means, only that somehow his real family makes his Uncle angry. The idea plants a tiny thought in his mind. If Harry is to ever have a family, he'll need to touch people. Many people. In his innocent mind, it doesn't mean anything of a sexual connotation. It simply means a finger glanced across on an arm, or a slight bump of hands as they pass on the street.
The next day in class, those words still echoed in his mind. As he sat there, he realizes the class is about to get up to go to recess. He's been touched by many people in the past, especially when Dudley and his gang tries and sometimes succeeds to beat him up, but he has never touched someone else on purpose.
Even at the age he is at now, he has learned it's always good to have an excuse for why something happened. As the students leave the room, they crowd around the class exit in their attempt to get outside. Girls have cooties so he avoids them for now. He purposefully pretends to trip, so that he is forced to hold onto a boy who normally sits on the other side of class and Harry has never talked with. As he grabs the outstretched arm to avoid falling down, he feels a slight tingle go through his entire body at the contact.
It's hard for Harry to describe, but he feels like he gained something from the quick touch of the first new person other than the Dursleys in his life. He asks the teacher if he can go to the bathroom, and the teacher, with a sneer, reluctantly lets him go.
Inside the bathroom, he immediately stands in front of the mirror. He does not know why, but as he concentrates on that tingling feeling, he realizes he can picture that boy perfectly in his mind's eye. He allows himself to focus completely on that image of his classmate, and suddenly, right before his eyes, Harry transforms into that boy.
Harry holds out his hands. The rough calluses on his fingers are no longer there. They've been replaced by the soft skin of the boy in his class who has obviously never had to work hard a day in his life just like his cousin Dudley.
The realization comes, that if he can change into the boy, he should be able to change back to what he normally looks like. With a vision of his own body focused within his mind, Harry watches as his form immediately shifts back into the familiar visage of Harry James Potter.
Being an extremely curious child when he is left alone to his own devices, Harry immediately tries to shift back to his classmate, and back again to himself. He repeatedly changes back and forth half a dozen times, only to suddenly realize that his knees have become a bit weak and his legs suddenly can now only barely support him.
He figured the change is like a muscle, something that must be practiced, so Harry stops there. He decides to keep this ability a secret, since it's just another freaky thing that would earn him cause him to be beaten while at his relatives' home. He vows never to tell anyone what he has just done.
That night, while in the cupboard after dinner, he tries to turn into someone else. He realizes he cannot turn into any of the other people in class except for members of Dudley's gang, the one student he touched today, and his Aunt and Uncle. Knowing now that he has to touch someone to change into them, he quietly figures that he should touch every person in the class that he can, even the teachers. A task that is accomplished within a few days.
The bathroom became his practice ground from there out, on the few occasions the Dursleys allowed him to take a cold shower. While doing this, he noticed that there are differences between boys and girls. He notices the differences are even more noticeable when he changes into the male teachers vs. the female ones. His six year old mind ultimately decides that women are just squishier than men. Some of the adults have hair in weird places on their body, but others don't because it looks like it has been removed.
The major problem his young mind couldn't wrap his head around was why his... thingy was missing while transformed into one of his female teachers. The lack of a thingy unnerves him. To alleviate this feeling, he morphs his own penis onto a full grown woman's body. The act makes him realize he can change his body from one person to another and then tweak small things about them afterwards. Knowing that this sort of thing will take information he doesn't have, he decides he'll need to get some books on bodies to understand what each part is.
Sometimes he's disgusted by the ability to change. Only twice in his life has he ever changed into Uncle Vernon. The first was on the first night he realized he could morph, and he didn't stay in the form for more than a few seconds since his Uncle was way too big to fit inside the cupboard. Then he did it again, when he decided it was high time to find a way to prank his Aunt. But he was so disgusted by his Uncle's naked form he didn't change again for a month. Harry's mind couldn't even stand thinking about how fat his uncle was before a nauseous feeling overcame him.
-o0o0o-
Flashback – Age 7
Harry once again was subjected to the bullies of his class at school on this particular day.
"Hey freak," said his cousin's friend Piers Polkiss loudly as the teacher moved papers around on her desk.
"We're so going to kick your butt today at recess before you get to the security officer. No way is that useless old man going to help you today."
A half-dozen barely washed boys nodded dumbly along with the threat, which made nearly every child in the class nervous. These threats to Harry's health were blatantly ignored by the classroom's teacher. The woman was an old friend of Petunia's and believed all the lies that Petunia spoon-fed the neighborhood at their tea parties about what a ruffian Harry was.
A massive spitball was formed by one of them, and thrown at Harry from behind. Being as quick as he was, he instinctively ducked, and it whizzed by most of the class and splattered right in front of the teacher's feet.
The teacher instantly blamed Harry for it, who saw Harry dodge the spitball. The blame was on Harry because she'll have to clean up the floor rather than just send the delinquent to the bathroom to clean himself.
"Detention, Mr. Potter for throwing a spitball right in front of me. There will be no recess for you today."
Something snaps in Harry. He heard the laughter from behind him, and saw how no one in the class dared stand up to the bullies to defend him. His anger grows inside him, and he wants nothing more than… something to happen to the foul bitch his Aunt always told lies to.
His prayers are mysteriously answered, when suddenly the teacher's hair turns blue. No one notices the moment it happens, because most of them still stared at Harry while he glared at the women at the front of the class.
Suddenly, a snicker breaks out from the head of the class, which is a place where normally laughter does not originate. Everyone turns forward, only for more laughter to start. Finally the teacher sees people begin to point at her and whisper. She turns her head, to see if something is behind her on the chalkboard, only to see some of her hair whip around and attract her attention.
Her blue hair.
The mortified shriek attracts teachers from four classrooms away in every direction.
That night at home, Dudley is eager to tell how something freaky happened in class that day. A profound silence is heard from the kitchen table while Harry serves his relatives their food.
"What happened, Diddy-Dum-Kins?" his Aunt asked in a polite, yet cold voice.
"The teacher's hair turned blue after she gave Harry a detention for someone throwing a spitball at him."
Mt. Vernon erupted. He backhanded Harry as he was carrying a saucepan of soup towards him. The hot soup exploded upwards, drenching Vernon in the near boiling liquid. In his rage, he storms to the fireplace and grabs a fire-poker. He raises it above his head, takes a great swing, and whacks the inattentive boy who was crying on the ground after being drenched in the liquid as well.
A distinctly loud snap is heard as the iron fire-poker hits Harry, which broke the bone of his upper arm cleanly in two. The boy tries to retreat, but his attempts to scurry away are foiled since his arm could no longer support his weight since its bent at an unnatural angle away from his body.
Vernon picks up his nephew by the scruff of his neck, and bellows in rage as he violently launches Harry into his cupboard headfirst before he shut and locked the door.
Knocked out by the violent impact inside the cupboard, Harry awakens later that night and instantly realizes something is wrong with his arm. With just the slightest touch, he feels the extreme pain around the area where his arm was hit. From his studies on his own, he realizes his Uncle has broken his arm, and without being set first before a cast is applied, it likely will never heal right, which would cause him problems for the rest of his life.
He realizes his only way to fix his arm is his morphing ability. He concentrates on the bone, gritting his teeth through the mind-numbing pain as he forces his arm to slowly revert to its original shape that was envisioned within his mind. He experiences pain beyond anything he's ever felt, but he doesn't dare scream out.
When he's finally done, his arm is perfectly straight. Exhaustion sets in, and he belatedly realizes there were probably better ways to morph his arm back than he had used, and that he would need to ponder those for the future. Simply shifting to another person and back would have probably fixed everything quicker and with a lot less pain.
He quickly morphs the burns from the scalding soup away from his hands, and settles in to sleep for the night. He fell asleep slowly while he was preoccupied with ways to get back at the bitch this all originated from. The knowledge he had the ability to turn someone's hair blue if he tried hard enough was not worth the pain of a broken arm and burned hands.
Maybe if he ran through the school naked tomorrow in his teachers form, he could get her arrested…
-o0o0o-
Flashback - Age 9
School had just let out, and Dudley's gang has decided to escalate their three-year-old game of 'Harry-Hunting' to the next level. Half of them are carrying cricket bats, and the remainder both have knives.
The future hoodlums run through the streets, passing dozens of people as they go, who say nothing about the children running with knives in their hands chasing another child. The propaganda campaign the Dursley's have wrought against the Potter child has been successful. No one will stop the hoodlums as they chase down 'that' child, even though none has ever actually witnessed the thin bespeckled boy ever do anything wrong.
Harry ducks into an alleyway. He knew this particular one bordered his school and has a partially broken gate he can easily slip through to escape down another street. But, to his absolute horror, when he reaches the gate, he realizes that it's been fixed. He prays Dudley's gang has not seen him enter the alleyway, and hides behind a dumpster.
Through a gap behind the dumpster, he sees them enter the alleyway and slow down. They shout taunts and jeered as they slowly start walked towards where they believe Harry to lay hidden in fear.
At that moment, he wants more than anything in the world to be anywhere else. He looks up at the sky, sees a bird and wished he could fly. He glances at a familiar exhaust stack from the school kitchens overhead angled away from the roof, and wishes he could be right there at that exact moment. He had seen the place the previous year when he had been lost with some other students in a fire drill and wound up on the roof.
He lost himself in a fantasy and concentrated on that roof. If he pretended that he was there, far away from his cousin, he could believe the violent beating his cousin was about to inflict upon him wouldn't be as bad as it could be.
Suddenly, a squeezing sensation filled him, and he fell on his arse. He opened his eyes and found that he was on the roof, just as he had remembered it from before and just as he pictured it in his mind.
Quietly and cautiously, he slipped over to the edge. A quick glance down found Dudley and the gang exactly where he had been seconds ago. They loudly turned over boxes and looked into the dumpster, enraged their prey found a way to escape.
Harry pulls back and slides down the wall to sit on the ground. He breathes a deep sigh of relief as he continues to lean against the outer wall of the roof. A roof where none of those weapons would be used on him today. He had been hit with a cricket bat multiple times before, but the knives were a new addition he wanted no part of.
Finally calm enough to think about what just happened, he realized the ability to teleport to the roof must be another ability similar to his morphing ability. This also means it's repeatable, just like his ability to swap back and forth between forms after he has touched someone.
He mentally went over what he thought about when he did teleport. The desperation he felt. The absolute desire to be in that spot and away from where he was. The single-minded way in which he envisioned and pretended he was at the exact spot he landed.
Suddenly, he found himself back in the same spot he had originally teleported to across the roof. He smiled to himself and did a little mental jig, since he had just found another amazing secret ability. Without hesitation, he teleports across the roof two more times, before he realized that he is on top of a locked roof, and won't be able to inconspicuously sneak down.
Thinking of places close to the Dursley's home he could teleport towards, he realizes the park down the street from them has some bushes that offer some cover. He's hidden there before from Dudley's gang while they terrorize others in the park. The same feeling of focus envelopes him as he concentrates upon those bushes, when suddenly, the hard surface of the roof under his feet is replaced by the softer feeling of grass. The only difference this time from the sensation in the alley and roof was a slightly longer squeezing sensation.
From there, Harry walks home and smiled to himself nearly the entire walk, since he now knew he'll beat Dudley by a wide margin to his relatives.
-o0o0o-
Flashback – Age 10
Harry sighed deeply after listening to his Uncle storm away from his cupboard. Of all the times for a new ability to reveal itself, it just had to be today. Not only did he somehow talk to a snake, he was able to vanish a thick pane of glass and then make it reappear.
The problem was, he was caught in the act of one. Dudley's friend Piers saw Harry as he talked to the snake through the glass, and promptly mentioned it to Uncle Vernon on the way home.
The beatings had ended the previous year, because Harry had managed to display some cunning when mentioned he heard what child protective services were. He casually discussion about how they were based in London, and not in Surrey where Uncle Vernon somehow held political sway with the local magistrate stopped all forms of physical abuse within the house.
But that didn't stop them from what Harry now assumed to be a week locked in the cupboard without food or water. A punishment like this had not happened in years. But he wasn't too worried. Through repeated use of his morphing and teleporting abilities, he had become a rather accomplished petty thief. He didn't steal valuables or other things of value though…
He stole food.
All around Little Whinging, Harry had stockpiles of non-perishable food stored in places only he could reach through teleportation. On rooftops under old buckets. In alleyways behind loose bricks. They were his salvation after school when he knew his Aunt and Uncle would never feed him enough despite the fact Harry cooked their food.
As he sat now in the cupboard, slowly growing hungry after a few hours, the desire to be a bit reckless grew in his mind. He knew the Dursleys had no intention of giving him food or water anytime soon. It was currently summer and school was out, so the threat of discovery from his absence from school wasn't there, so he would have to get food himself.
He teleported quickly to a park and promptly changed into one of his teachers. This was one of the few times wearing Dudley's old clothes helped, because even though they were extremely tight in an adult form, they still didn't rip.
He was about to teleport inside a local convenience store he knew would be closed at the current ungodly hour, before he realized someone might recognize the teacher. Having no real desire to get that particular teacher in trouble, he quickly modified the teacher's hair length, color, made his body shorter, and darkened his skin.
Morphing had become an art form to him, with as much time as he practiced in front of mirrors each day. Five minutes here, two minutes there. Any chance he had alone where he knew with absolute certainty he wouldn't be disturbed, he morphed and tried new things.
Without a second thought, he teleported inside of a grocery store and quickly grabbed some food from the deli section freezers before he hid in a corner and teleporting back to the park. He knew many places had security cameras, and he did his best to never be seen using his powers. Above all else, he had no desire whatsoever to see 'vanishing thief' on the local news station. Once back at the park, he hid in his favorite spot behind the bushes and made a quick meal of fruit, a sandwich, and some juice he had taken.
Finishing his food, he laid back and stared at the stars in the sky. Once more, his relative's efforts to starve him were thwarted and they had no idea it had even happened.
-o0o0o-
Flashback – Age 11
He had arrived at Hogwarts.
The excitement still flowed through him. He knew now that his abilities weren't freaky. HE now knew there were more people like him in the world, and his relatives had simply been jealous that they weren't special like him and his parents. But, despite this excitement, his own natural paranoia set in. It seemed many of the kids here couldn't do the things he could already do. He had asked a prefect if there were any abilities taught to them that did not utilize wands.
The older boy had mentioned apparition, which he now knew was the proper term for teleportation. The stuck-up fifth year ginger had mentioned that students learned how to Apparate in their sixth year, and would be licensed to do so legally at the age of 17. There were heavy fines apparently for anyone who apparated without a license, and it was mainly used as a deterrent since it was uneducated children who often did it. An incorrectly performed Apparition could lead to a splinching, which meant pieces of the person were left behind and had to be taken care of by the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad.
Once at Hogwarts, he performed his standard procedure when around new people and touched every possible person he could. The library was a great bit of information, but he could find nothing about his morphing abilities in the regular section. He refused to ask help from the librarian, given how famous he was. Harry Potter asking Madame Pince about morphing would be tantamount to an announcement to the world that he had met someone who could morph. There would be questions, and Harry had no desire at all to answer them.
Eventually he realized that if there was any information about his ability in the library, it would be in the mysterious 'Restricted Section'. Only teachers and students with magically signed forms could enter the Section and remove a book from the shelves without alarms going off. He wondered if he posed as a teacher, whether the alarms would go off for hm.
He wrote down the names of every teacher and staff member of the school, and figured out who would be the best to impersonate in order to enter the Restricted Section of the library during the middle of the day. His attention was immediately drawn to their Astronomy teacher, Aurora Sinestra. She was a shapely woman of African descent, who apparently slept in the day and stayed awake at night to do her classes and Astronomy research. If he used her as a morph, it would allow for the perfect alibi, since it was incredibly rare for her to appear in the day.
The gambit worked, and a new section of the library was now open to him. It was on his second day in the restricted section, he found what he looked for. In a old magical abilities book, he found a description of what he was. He would be classified as a Metamorphmagus. They were incredibly rare, and he found it was very wise for him to keep his ability a secret.
Metamorphs were often apparently kidnapped upon discovery, and sold into bondage as sex slaves.
He did find information that didn't quite line up with what he knew about himself though. Metamorphs could apparently not change their gender. They could mimic another gender through morphs, such as a male growing their breasts out or a female stimulating the hair on her face to grow thicker. The greatest shock was to learn that functional genitalia of the opposite sex was something that was beyond their abilities.
Harry obviously knew this was untrue, because he was morphed into a female teacher at that very moment. He reached under the skirt he had borrowed from the school laundry and felt Aurora's vagina. Biology had been a passion of his for years, and he obviously knew from extensive research in school and public libraries that the clit he currently rubbed and gained pleasure from was definitely a female sex organ.
Another tidbit of knowledge about Metamorphs that he found that didn't lineup is the way their hair would often change with their moods. Metamorphs would train to suppress these changes through extensive study in the art of Occlumency.
'That's odd,' said Harry, as he thought about the root cause for needing to learn this particular magical skill. 'I've never had a morph fail on me or flicker. Once I've set it, it always stays permanently until I deliberately change it myself. There's no way for it to accidently slip on me.'
He had distinct forms envisioned in his mind of every person he ever touched for as far back as he could remember, and they were all defined as unique entities, and there didn't seem to be a limit to them. Every form was distinct in his mind, even the alterations he liked to use of each individual person. It was just as easy to shift to a tweaked version of person #104 as it was to shift to that person's base form.
Harry didn't understand why his forms didn't change after a morph, but he figured he should learn Occlumency anyways just in case. If nothing else, Harry found paranoia to be one of the most important things in his life, and it had served him well thus far. He found an old tattered Occlumency book that had seen better days in a dusty corner, but the content was obviously still relevant.
That night, while in bed, he began to follow the instructions of the Occlumency book that he hid in a far abandoned corner of the school. There was risk in going back constantly for the same book in the library, so he removed and hid the book, since he figured it was highly unlikely the librarian would miss or find the book where he had placed it. It was a part of his thieves mentality that had broke through, but he wasn't going to worry about that right now.
He cleared his mind as the book instructed, and began to work on the suppression of his emotions and the construction of his mental defenses.
Harry never puts another thought towards why he can turn himself into a girl for years, since he has not used that ability all that often and he has far bigger things to worry about at the moment.
-o0o0o-
Flashback – Age 12
Harry stood in the Headmaster's office as he waited for the old man's arrival. He sees a sickly bird on a perch off to the side of the ancient executive desk, and goes to pet the frail creature. The familiar tingle that Harry gets as he touched someone encompasses his body, and Harry suddenly knows that it's not just people he can morph into.
The bird gets incredibly excited, and obviously knows what has just happened, but calms immediately upon seeing Dumbledore enter the office. Harry takes an involuntary glance back at the bird before he turned to face the Headmaster, and while he looked into the bird's eyes, he gets the message that he should never tell anyone about his abilities.
The bird gave Harry the sense that most of those with Harry's abilities are caught long before they reach the age Harry currently is. The Second Year Gryffindor also gets the vague impression that his ability puts his life in grave danger.
Dumbledore immediately begins an interrogation of him focused upon the Chamber of Secrets. Harry hasn't trusted any of the teachers after last year. He was present when Granger and Longbottom told McGonagall that the Stone was in danger, and she blew them off without even the slightest investigation into their concerns. This year was worse, when nearly the entire school turned on Harry and calling him a murderer and future Dark Lord. He had been at the sight of the first three Petrifications, and students had quickly linked into that fact.
Not one teacher had lifted a finger to dissuade the rumors.
At least they suspected him simply due to his proximity to some of the victims. He couldn't imagine the consequences if he had used Parseltongue in front of the entirety of the Great Hall during the Dueling Club. He held his tongue when he saw the snake move towards Justin Finch Fletchley. Snape had almost been a second too late as he vanished his own Godson's errant conjuration. Afterwards, he looked expectedly at Harry, as if he knew Harry was a Parselmouth and was annoyed Harry had not just outed himself to the school.
The escort to Dumbledore's office for an interrogation was simply the final straw.
After Harry had consistently denied any involvement or knowledge about the matter, Dumbledore finally asked, "Do you have anything you wish to tell me, Mr. Potter?"
As the Headmaster stares into his eyes, Harry immediately feels a pressure in his mind, and pushes back, which ejected Dumbledore from his mind. In physical reality, the aged man stumbles and nearly lose his balance from the magical backlash. All respect for the Headmaster gone, Harry flees from the room, and never looked back. He vows to never allow himself to be alone with the Headmaster lest he try that again.
Dumbledore looks at Fawlkes, and clearly sees his familiar is very disappointed in him. The waves of scorn and disgust the ancient phoenix sends to his bonded nearly make the old man sit down and clutch his chest in agony. The old man quickly realized the legendary bird is deeply fond of Harry, and that he should drop any inquiry with Harry about why he knows Occlumency and the Chamber.
Later that night, in the privacy of his enclosed four-poster bed, Harry turns into a Phoenix with little effort on his part. From there, he transforms into his mail-owl Hedwig. A brief thought enters his mind about why he had never noticed the tingle around animals before, but chalks it up to being distracted the day he received Hedwig. The only other animal he had consistent contact with over his life with his Aunt Marge's dog Ripper, and that dog had been tormenting him for years before he learned how to consciously morph.
Harry realized then and there though, he's not a Metamorph. Metamorph's can't be Animagus.
He had looked up that phrase when he had seen it in original book he discovered about Metamorphs. Everything he knows about his abilities directly contradicts the known knowledge about Metamorphs. He's even more glad now that he's never told anyone of his abilities, especially after the phoenix in the Headmaster's office warned him to not tell anyone about his abilities.
He must be something else. Something even more rare than a Metamorph. Something apparently that could cost him his life if it were publicly known.
With this latest revelation, Harry realized he now much touch more animals to gain more forms. He also thought about the abilities that random animals could offer him, such as the weight lifting, healing, and flame travel powers of the Phoenix the Headmaster had described to him before the mind-rape attempt. He eventually decides the first he should pursue are the rats found around the castle which would be good spying tools. He decides to avoid the annoying Weasley boy's pet rat, since the poor thing was missing a toe and that would be far too distinctive a thing to copy.
-o0o0o-
Flashback – Age 14
Harry felt his feet slam into the ground after the unexpected portkey. He had thought he had just won the Tri-Wizard tournament. The maze had gone rather smoothly, with the exception of when he stumbled and rescued the unconscious Veela and prevented a hedge from eating her. He had also run into Cedric in the process of being Crucio'd by an Imperious'd Victor Krum. He had left Cedric with the unconscious and bound Victor, since the older Hufflepuff could barely move after he had endured the ruthless torture curse.
An instant after he arrived in the graveyard, his vision was filled with a red light, and he knew only darkness.
Harry woke from the stunning spell as he heard the familiar voice of Peter Pettigrew as he loudly reviewed the steps for a ritual he was apparently about to perform. The traitorous rat's back was to Harry, but he could still hear Peter's voice as well as the unmistakable high-pitched whine of the Dark Lord.
"Recite the phrases one more time, Worktail. I want no mistakes with this ritual. It has taken too long to acquire the materials, and we will not easily get a second chance at this."
"Bone of the Father unknowingly given. You will renew your Son. Flesh of the Servant, willingly sacrificed. You will revive your master. Blood of the Enemy, forcibly taken. You will resurrect your foe," said Peter in a shaky voice." (From Goblet of Fire)
"Again, Wormtail! There must be no hesitations."
Harry realized they needed his blood for some reason. The bound champion surmised by the incantation the rat spoke the goal of the ritual, which was likely to give Voldemort a body back, and Harry's blood was going to somehow be included in the 'stew' which was brewed in the cauldron a bit further beyond where Peter currently stood. Harry himself was curious whether it was specifically for his blood as an enemy, or the magical protections that Dumbledore said his Mother's death had granted him.
The knowledge he was about to have blood taken gave him an idea. Over the past four years at Hogwarts, Harry had experimented with his abilities. He had turned into Muggles and attempted to use a wand, only to find that not only did the castle wards suddenly disorient him, he had lost all abilities to use his wand. For some reason Apparition continued to work, but not his normal magic. It made him actively think about whether what he did was Apparition if he could continue to perform it as a Muggle. He pondered more and more whether it was like the phoenix's flame travel, but he had no idea what else it could be.
Whatever the reason Voldemort wanted Harry's blood, Harry knew he couldn't get it. He switched his body out for one of his classmates back in Surrey, and immediately morphed that base form to look like Harry. Despite the outward appearance of Harry, this body wouldn't have an ounce of magical blood in him.
As the incantation began. Harry watched as Pettigrew floated a bone from a suddenly open grave into the potion. This act was followed immediately by the gruesome sight of Peter slicing off his own hand. Afterwards, the traitor stumbled towards Harry, as he stifled the sobs of pain he endured to resurrect his Master. The former friend of his Father plunged the knife into Harry's arm, gathering blood on the dirty blade. The instant Peter turned around, Harry was healed as he switched back to his real base form.
The thought occurred to him that his continued presence for whatever the Dark Lord planned wasn't in his best interests, so Harry quickly morphed with a rat and moved forward, which caused the ropes to fall slack to the ground. The transition back to his base 'Harry' form was so quick that it looked as if Harry had simply walked through the ropes. He had practiced speed morphing for years, and it was moments like this that it paid off. Anyone who had seen the transition would not have been able to easily see what transpired.
Surrounded by crumbled gravestones and monuments, it was easy to pick up a large rock and club Pettigrew over the back of the head with it. Unfortunately, Peter had already added the fake-Harry blood to the potion, and whatever process it was to initiate had begun.
Suddenly, Harry heard a hissing to his right, and barely dodged an incredibly large snake as it dove for him. The snake made a second strike which he couldn't avoid, and Harry felt the burn of venom that was injected into his upper thigh. The last laugh was Harry's though, as he immediately morphed his arm into a Hippogrpyh's claw, and slashed the snake open from its head to its tail, which caused some sort of magical black fog to emit from the obviously magically enhanced reptile as its innards spilled upon the ground.
Barely thinking about it, Harry morphed his body quickly to the newly acquired snake form and back, which neutralized the poison coursing through him. He reached to the unconscious former friend of his Father's and grabbed the Holly wand that Pettigrew had stolen from him. The thief's mindset took over, and Harry plunders the man's shabby robes and finds two more wands hidden there. One is a beat up and heavily scuffed wand, which obviously belonged to a slob like Peter. The other, was a bone-white ornate wand adorned with numerous runes that was obviously crafted with financial means far beyond someone like Peter to possess.
This had to be Voldemort's wand.
Harry looked up at the potion, to see something was definitely forming in the depths of it. He realized time was short, and he definitely needed to get out of there. He took Voldemort's wand and hid it in his sock, while he placed Pettigrew's in a visible pocket of his own robes.
From the research he had done into Portkeys, he knew that it was highly likely that the portkey that had brought him here would be enchanted to return him back to Hogwarts. He reached down to grab a hold of Pettigrew's unconscious form just as a body started to physically manifest in the cauldron and take shape in front of him.
Filled with a sense of panic, Harry quickly Acio'd the Twi-Wizard cup, which teleported him away with his parent's betrayer just as Voldemort's newly formed head turned towards Harry with hate filled dull-brown eyes which stared at his form as it vanished.
