Harry saw it for the first time when he was four years old. Well, the more appropriate term would be "glimpsed". He glimpsed it in the Dursleys' TV.
The door of his cupboard under the stairs wasn't latched properly so he was able to sneak out and investigate sounds coming from the living room. It didn't surprise him that Vernon let Dudley watch, even though Dudley was completely terrified. Vernon probably wanted his son to be mentally prepared for anything that the little freak under the stairs might ever throw at them.
Harry just took one brief glimpse and returned to his cupboard quickly again. It was all he needed because he had a good memory and what he saw once, he could examine later through his inner eye. The brief scene (about a second long) depicted a strange humanoid monster advancing on a fear-frozen, screaming human. The creature was hideous, black, and slick. Torrents of saliva poured from its mouth. It was beautiful in Harry's eyes.
To be fair, Harry's opinion was skewed and not entirely based on outer appearance. What mattered was what the creature was doing, what it represented. To his knowledge, people were evil - the bad guys. The creature hunted humans. Ergo, the creature was a force of justice.
Justice - for the first time in his entire life, he actually understood what the word truly meant. If he was older, he would say that it finally gained any solid meaning for him. Justice wasn't the way his "family" was treating him. Justice wasn't when their neighbours lived their perfectly normal, shallow lives and ignored anything nefarious even though it was happening right under their noses. Harry knew that Petunia and Vernon were trying to hide the way they were treating their nephew. In fact, they were even attempting to hide the fact that they had any nephew at all. The justice was when creatures such as the one he admired hunted the wicked humans - a group in which Harry did not belong (at least according to his relatives).
He dreamed about the creature that night. The dream was quite vague because he knew almost nothing about it and he was unwilling to theorize at that point. He knew that the creature was both bipedal and quadrupedal. It seemed that its main means of offence were its claws (when it was standing on its hind legs) and its tail. It also had a big jaw full of razor-sharp teeth but its head was probably nowhere near as agile as its claws or tail. In the dream, he saw the creature roaming through a place similar to the one he had seen in that one, short scene. There were some faceless people running around in panic, getting killed by the creature one by one. Each death relived Harry of some of his stress and tension. It wasn't until the end of the dream when his perspective started to merge with the creature's perspective.
When he woke up next morning, he felt better than ever before. Of course, he wasn't stupid enough to show any defiance. He kept lying low and earned only one sharp slap across his face that week. But the creature always remained in the back of his mind and came out every night when he was falling asleep and when he was dreaming. The dreams were always from first person perspective but he wasn't just watching the dream through the creature's eyes - he was the creature itself. Gradually, real people started to appear in his dreams. First the Dursleys and then, as his hatred grew, neighbours as well. The surroundings changed from futuristic corridors to Privet Drive.
Time passed and Harry became five years old. Both he and Dudley started to attend primary school. For Harry, it meant seeing the world outside of the Dursleys' house. What it didn't mean was new friends or any significant change in his life. None of the teachers cared about (or seemed to notice) his skinny figure and oversized second-hand clothes. To be honest, Harry never expected anything good from the humans at school. The only thing he truly desired was to learn more about the creature.
And learn he did. Snippet by snippet, glimpse by glimpse. A poster here, a stolen magazine there, the holes in his knowledge about the creature started to fill. For example, he learned that the creature had a second, smaller, tubular mouth inside its big jaw. He didn't learn how it all worked but he was able to deduce. He watched a spider eat a fly once and thought that maybe the creature fed similarly. Logic told him that the outer mouth was used for apprehension while the inner one penetrated the prey and fed on its internal organs, leaving its outer flesh or exoskeleton alone. He had an errant thought that such a way of feeding would be especially useful for sucking out someone's brain. Subsequent research confirmed that the creatures actually did that sometimes. That made him wonder whether there wasn't some deeper reason for that. Yes, there were a lot of vitamins and minerals in there but so was in other organs. So, what if there was something more that the creature was getting? Maybe it was actually getting knowledge and memories of the victim as well. But how would that work? Memories weren't just the brain-matter itself but also the way it was wired together - something which was destroyed in the process of brain-sucking.
Of course, Harry realized perfectly well that the alien creature was purely fictional. Every single aspect of its physiology was created to have maximal fear effect, not to be practical. Hence, the only reason why it had a second mouth was because it was creepy. Still, Harry had to admire the way the creature was designed and (though unbeknownst to him) he wasn't the only one who appreciated the artistic beauty of the monster. There were a lot of details which spoke on a subliminal level to the audience and increased the feelings of undefined uneasiness which the sight of the creature evoked. For example, the way in which humanoid features were melded into the monstrosity or how the creature seemed to posses both feminine and masculine aspects.
However, it didn't matter to Harry that the creatures didn't exist. Even though they were make-believe, there was at least one which was real enough - the one inside him. That didn't just mean that the creature existed in Harry's head - that wouldn't make it any more real than the ones which existed in fantasies of millions of fans of the franchise. No, Harry's specimen had a special tinge of solidity to it. This solidity was fed by Harry's hatred, anger, fear, and will to survive. Once again, Harry doubted that he was the only one who felt that way. And yet, he believed that his case was special. Harry could feel it his bones - a strange heat and even stranger connection to the phantom creature.
Harry's dreams grew more defined. While there were still holes in his picture of the creature, those holes were no longer covered by a shroud of vagueness - the dreams simply evaded them. As expected, the crowd of his victims was joined by people from school: Dudley's friends, other students, teachers, the school nurse, and such. To keep his list organized, he started to recite the names every night before going to sleep. "Vernon, Dudley, Petunia, Marge and her dogs, Mrs. Robinson and her family, Mrs. Johnson and family, Mrs. Figg..." The list went on and on and it took several minutes before he said all the names. Torrents of blood was the reward he was given for his trouble, even though he only dreamt of them.
In many ways, Harry outgrew the version of the creature which was publicly known. He stopped seeking bits of information about the franchise and relied more on biology textbooks in the school library and his own sense of logic. He knew that the creature could walk on walls and survive without oxygen (at least for some time). So the next obvious question was how the creature oriented itself. When crawling on a ceiling, it would have to think in terms of two perspectives: its own and that of the planet (and, consequently, of the prey). In other words, there would up and down as defined by gravity and "up" and "down" as defined by the current position of the creature. Simple enough to describe, much harder to abide by in praxis. Harry was sure that most people, even if they somehow gained an ability to crawl on walls and ceilings, would be completely unable to make any use of such a tactical advantage simply because they wouldn't have a sufficient spatial imagination.
Movement (and combat) in water would be different. Harry started to consider how. "If I let go of a ceiling whilst in a usual environment, I will fall down..." Harry stopped in his tracks. He realized that he thought about the creature in first person. He wasn't sure if it was the first time. He shook his head and continued his pondering.
In water, up and down wouldn't be different, there wouldn't be any up or down at all. Yes, the gravity would be still there but it would have no meaning (at least not for Harry). The only directions would be forward and on the left, right, behind, ventral, dorsal. Of course, since Harry would be able to rotate quickly around the forward-behind axis, the left, right, ventral, and dorsal would be prone to rotate a lot. Harry also believed that his agility would enable him to change his direction quickly enough as well. Perhaps the only manoeuvre that would have a noticeable delay would be a 180-turn. In the end, the only coordinates that would matter would be the direction and distance to his target and positions of the bottom and the surface.
Next logical step was to consider space and zero gravity combat and movement. He realized that such a question was irrelevant (he wasn't dreaming about killing the Dursleys in space) but he wanted to be thorough. Unlike in water, there would be no gravity at all and the only "solid" points would be the heaviest objects in the area (or walls, if he was inside a ship). He knew that the greatest problem with training of pilots during the Great War was their inability to grasp the fact that they were in 3D space. As a result, they could spot enemies coming from front or sides but often neglected to look up, down, and behind. Navigating in space was as different from piloting an air-plane as piloting of an air-plane was different from walking. While there would be no "down" defined by gravity, there would an entirely new "down" - the direction in which Harry (or anybody else for that matter) was moving (or rather falling). There would be no "forward", such a term would cease to exist (unless one decided to call "down" so). In normal circumstances, various amounts of energy had to exerted to keep moving forward. However, there was no such thing as moving forward in space - there was only falling (down). Whenever anything gains any momentum, it keeps falling in the direction of the momentum until it crashes into something. That is, unless it has its own propulsion and uses it to change direction but Harry was thinking about living beings rebounding from walls and objects. Once again, all of that sounded pretty straightforward and Harry was quite sure that there were science fiction authors out there who exploited the issue but he was convinced that the actual experience of such a thing would cause heavy disorientation and nausea to most people.
Not to waste the time spent by his analysis of the problem, Harry used first convenient opportunity to write an essay on the matter. It was in his second grade and he was six years old. At first, there were two problems with what he did: his English teacher (a middle-aged stern lady) couldn't believe that Harry was able to write such a complex text and she couldn't understand what was the text about in the first place. Harry could tell that she was even irritated a bit and believed that he had cheated. Then she sat down with him and a physics teacher (an older gentleman). Harry wasn't taught by him yet but he seemed like the right person to consult.
A brief conversation with Harry confirmed that he truly understood what he had written. Of course, there was no telling whether the essay wasn't inspired by experiences of actual astronauts or even by a work of science fiction (there was actually a new book which contemplated zero-G combat in detail) but the physics teacher had a feeling that Harry had reached his conclusions on his own. The physics teacher was pleased and the headmaster got involved. The headmaster was a bit slow but once he was assured that Harry was a little genius, he was delighted.
And that was the point where the real trouble began. The headmaster and the physics teacher wanted to call Harry's guardians. Harry strongly voiced his disagreement. The English teacher took it as a sign that Harry did have something to hide - that he had not written the essay.
"No, Mrs. Hutchinson, I would merely like to avoid getting beaten for displaying my intellect," retorted Harry coldly.
The physics teacher shook his head and argued, "Harry, while being a bookworm won't make you popular in this school, not that you have that much friends anyway..."
Harry's head shot up. So he wasn't as invisible to his teachers as he had thought. "I'm not talking..." he interrupted.
The teacher raised his finger and interrupted him in turn, "Talking with your aunt and uncle is the first step of getting you to another school, more suitable for you. But to get to that another school, you would have to work much harder."
Harry took a breath and resolutely stated, "It's not the other students I'm afraid of. I was talking about my so called family." There was no reaction from the three adults. "I will be punished for showing off. After that, they will lock me up in my cupboard where I will be left to starve for a week or two. They will call that I'm sick and can't go to school, just wait. They have done it before but never for that long."
The others were staring at him in incomprehension. "What are you talking about?" asked the headmaster. He did not like the direction in which the conversation was headed. Not because he was sympathetic to Harry but because such allegations would mean extra work for him.
"Why do you think I'm so thin or why do I wear such shabby clothes all the time?" elaborated Harry and lifted his T-shirt to show his belly.
Mrs. Hutchinson raised her hands and declared, "Look, if you say that Mr. Potter has not copied the essay from somewhere, then I believe you. That doesn't mean he's going to get an A - I still have to grade his work properly. As well as the works of all the other students. Now, if you excuse me." She took Harry's paper and left.
The boy raised his head and spoke, "This is happening too soon. I always knew that something like this would happen but I'm not prepared yet. You don't believe me and because of that, there will be blood."
"Mr. Potter!" exclaimed the headmaster. "I advise you to tread carefully here - this may easily land you in an orphanage."
"Oh, that will be a pleasant change - if I live long enough to see it!" barked Harry back. "You have betrayed me and whatever happens to me will be your fault!"
The headmaster stood up quickly enough to overturn his chair. "That's enough Mr. Potter! You are giving us no choice but to deal with this properly, whatever it is. And if you are lying, you will be getting into another school indeed - just not the one where they will appreciate your intellect, if you have any to begin with."
The physics teacher sighed and rubbed his forehead. He truly did not need so much drama. Due to his old age, he was no longer able to concentrate on what was being said.
The headmaster called the Dursleys' house. Petunia wasn't very pleased about having to walk to school (Vernon was at work and couldn't drive them there) but she realized perfectly well that she had to behave as normally as possible. The headmaster was rather vague about what happened but she had a bad feeling about it. As soon as she put the phone down, she started to seethe. She suspected that Harry was messing with them somehow. She called Vernon to let him know that she was going to the school.
Harry wasn't allowed to go back to his classes and remained in the office. The physics teacher had some tests to grade but he felt tired and decided to remain behind. The headmaster asked him whether he did not have any classes. The physics teacher explained that he would feel better if he remained around for a while. The headmaster asked both of them to wait in the antechamber. Harry told him that he had more to say but the headmaster was out of his patience with him. Harry decided to obey for the time being because his best chance was for Petunia to make a blunder.
Once in the waiting area, he tried to calm himself by focussing on his inner creature. There was the familiar warmth and the strange connection to the idea of the creature. Harry was surprised to notice that there was something else in him, something which was as black as the armour of the creature. He suspected that the dark something was awakened by the danger he was in - and he was truly in danger because it was a risky game he was playing. Finally, he realized that his scar was getting warm. That befuddled him somewhat.
"I know why are you still here," he told the teacher.
The teacher stopped rubbing his temples for a moment and asked, "I'm sorry?"
"You want to have a clear conscience when this is all over but you won't lift a finger to help me. You don't even care that what happens now will determine both my future and its length. In the best case scenario, police will get involved and they will search the house. They will find my sleeping mattress in the cupboard under the stairs and maybe that will count for something. I don't actually know what the laws have to say on the matter but I do know that my guardians don't want anybody to know how I'm being treated. In the worst case scenario, the whole case will be dismissed, I will be returned in their care and they will get rid of me. I won't be expected to return here anyway so it won't raise any alarms."
The physics teacher wasn't paying any attention. It wasn't his fault, he was simply too old and tired. Harry saw that he was wasting his time. That wasn't entirely true - in the days to come, the old teacher was going to remember everything and give a testimony in Harry's favour.
Harry started to focus on the creature again. He didn't understand the things he felt inside him and after the whirlwind of events, it was all more jumbled than ever before. He tried to make sense of his feelings but then Petunia arrived. She made sure to control herself when she saw Harry in the waiting area. The physics teacher noticed something in her look though and doubt started to gnaw on him. Luckily, he did not see the gaze of hatred that Harry gave his aunt. Petunia felt a brief chill.
Harry got up and followed his aunt to the office. When the headmaster saw him, he resolutely said, "Please, do wait outside Mr. Potter. I believe you've said more than enough." He asked the old teacher to wait with Harry a little longer.
It was in that moment when Harry saw that the chance of things turning for better was very small. He had to get away. He measured the old teacher and estimated that he would be able to outrun him. Then he glanced at a big clock on a wall and noticed the time - next class would begin soon. True enough, the bell rang at the moment. The old teacher started when he realized that there were pupils waiting for him.
"Excuse me, Mr. Potter, I need to give my students some independent work," he told Harry. "I'll be right back, don't go anywhere in the meantime."
As soon as he left, Harry's ear was glued to the door. He heard Petunia say, "I wouldn't go as far as saying that he's insane. Your colleague is actually right - our Harry actually is a genius, from a certain point of view."
"What do you mean?" asked the headmaster.
"Well, a better word is an artist, I think. He inherited his talent from his mother, I believe. Our parents were convinced that she was an intellectual but looking back, I can't agree with their decisions. They gave her too much freedom, you see. They let her read anything she wanted. When do you think she read the work of Marquis de Sade?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Take a guess. I haven't read it myself, of course - but I do know the name from school."
"Well, fifteen?"
"Seven!"
"You must be joking."
Petunia probably shook her head at this point. Harry heard her continue, "My parents supported her intellectualism and sent her to study literature later. There she met other so called geniuses, including Harry's father. The rest is history." Harry had to admit, Petunia was showing a startling level of intellect herself.
"Well, Mrs. Dursley, I understand. What does this have to do with Mr. Potter's allegations though?"
"I'm getting to it. Harry was showing signs of high intelligence from young age. We decided to support him but in the right direction. When he learned to read and subsequently become unsatisfied with the books available in our house, we made sure to let him read only the books which were about children. For example The Lord of Flies, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Carrie, and such."
The headmaster got a coughing fit at that point and expressed his incredulity over Petunia's gullibility. Harry did not need to listen any more - it was obvious that Petunia succeeded in weaving her web of lies. She was probably going to say that Harry was living out some kind of a fantasy, doing a happening, or even collecting material and inspiration for his own book. But there was something in Petunia's story that caught his attention and seemed to hit at the truth - the mentions of his parents, his mother especially. Could it be that Petunia was jealous of Harry's mother? Maybe it wasn't just intellect - maybe it was something else, something to do with his "freakishness".
Harry thought briefly about barging in the office but that wouldn't convince the headmaster of his trustworthiness. No, he had to get away. He needed to get out of the school first and then decide where to go next. He looked around and didn't see the physics teacher anywhere yet but he suspected that he was on his way. There was no time to waste. Harry started running to the nearest fire exit. He saw a fire alarm switch along his way and, stricken by a sudden idea, pulled at the lever. A shrill noise filled the building. Nothing happened for a few moments and then the corridors filled with panic. Harry guessed that even greater panic raged inside the classrooms. It was as if they didn't have fire alarm drills twice a year.
When he was out, he started running away while thinking about what to do next. He considered going to police but he was convinced that it wouldn't do any good. No, he needed time and a secure place to think and make a plan. There was only one such place he could think of: the house of Mrs. Figg. He proceeded there as stealthily as he could. Soon, he was knocking on her door.
"Oh, hello dear. It has been a while!" she gushed over him when she saw him. She was literally beaming. It made Harry sick - he contemplated that maybe she would end up in prison if there was a way to prove that she knew about his living conditions and if there was a judge willing to apply the laws literally on an old, crazy, cat lady. "But, shouldn't you be at the school at this hour?" she added.
"The school nurse sent me home," explained Harry and put on a sick face. "Aunt Petunia has got too much work at this moment and sent me here to ask you if you don't need something."
"But dear, if you were sent home then you are most surely not in a condition to do anything," protested Mrs. Figg. "Maybe you could just play with my... cats instead." As if to answer that proposition, the kneazle in her arms hissed at Harry. That was strange, they had never done that before.
They went inside and Mrs. Figg started to make Harry some tea. The kneazles kept hissing at him. What was even stranger was the fact that they were backing away from him. When he approached a group of them, they started to retreat until they formed a half-circle in front of him. Harry wondered if they were able to sense the alien in him. Or was it the darkness that set them on edge?
"What's wrong with them today?" wondered Mrs. Figg. Then the water started to boil and she went to the kitchen again.
Harry sat down on a couch and started to think. The most important matter was those strange powers he felt inside himself. He had a feeling that they had been there for some time, some longer than others. He decided to enumerate and describe them so he would have some order in his thoughts.
The first power, or whatever it was, was the strange heat he felt when he concentrated. He realized that it had been always there and that he merely forgot about it for a while. He realized that there were some hidden, half-forgotten memories connected with the warmth. Memories of incidents which had caused the Dursleys to hate him. Of course, Petunia's story betrayed that they had known all about it even before those. Finally, he remembered that the Dursleys had used starvation as means for suppressing those incidents and for making him forget. It was a lie that they had never made him go without food for longer than a week.
The second item of Harry's spiritual inventory was the creature. An idea of the creature lived in Harry. However, as explained before, it was more than just an idea - it was more like a phantom waiting to be given a body. The important thing about it was Harry's adoration of the creature. He didn't just love it with every cell of his being, he wanted to become the monster. He suspected that the strange warmth should be able to fuel... What? A change? Unfortunately, he had to admit that it wouldn't be enough, not yet.
The third thing was the creepy blackness he had discovered that day. He felt that it was alien, just like the creature, but it was also malevolent. Harry couldn't say the same thing about the creatures. In fact, the creatures were incapable of evil, objectively speaking. Greed, jealousy, lust, arrogance - none of it had any meaning to them. They were simply a force of nature. And yet, he wasn't afraid of the blackness - because it wanted him to survive. Why that was, he had no idea. Just like with the warmth in him, he believed that the blackness had always been there, out of the reach of his internal senses until it decided to manifest itself.
With his inventory complete, Harry concluded that these three things weren't enough. Maybe in time, he would be able to make do. Unfortunately, time was a luxury he couldn't afford. If he wanted to make the change sooner, something else was needed. Harry paused only momentarily when he finally admitted what his goal was. Yes, he wanted to turn into the creature, as crazy as it sounded. He had no idea what that missing element was and how he could find it. He felt like a guy who assembled all the necessary materials for a bomb only to get halfway through its construction and find out that he was missing a detonator.
"Aren't you going to drink your tea?" asked him Mrs. Figg kindly.
Harry looked at the table in front of him and saw a cup of tea. He had not noticed when Mrs. Figg put it there. He took a sip and set it back down. Mrs. Figg turned her attention to her cats and kneazles, their behaviour puzzled her. Harry watched her and it started to dawn on him what could be possibly needed. To lure the creature out of his mind into reality, maybe he had to offer it something to eat. And yet, if he was wrong, than his chances would be drastically lessened. But did it matter any more? He couldn't go back, he was past the point of no return. He connected to his inner creature and channelled its hunting instincts into himself.
An hour later, Harry was still planning his next move. Mrs. Figg was showing Harry some old pictures of her cats. The phone rang suddenly and the old lady stood up to answer it. Harry knew who was calling - it was the police or the school or the Dursleys. There was almost no possibility that it could have been anybody else because Harry was quite sure that Mrs. Figg had no other family than her cats. Well, Harry couldn't allow her to pick it up. It was either him or her. When her back was turned to him, he grabbed a statuette of an Egyptian cat. Of course, Mrs. Figg was much higher than him so he couldn't just bash her over her head. He thought quickly as he closed in behind her and when he got in range, he stroke at her knee with the statuette. The kneazles hissed in warning but it was too late. Mrs. Figg sank to the floor and whimpered in pain. Harry wasn't about to give her time to start screaming and hit her hard in the back of her head.
Mrs. Figg was still alive, as Harry found out quickly. That wasn't very surprising since he wasn't trying to kill her yet - he thought that the creature would prefer a live prey. He positioned himself above her and focussed. He concentrated on his inner creature and tried to perceive Mrs. Figg as food as best as he could. It didn't work and Harry had to admit that it wasn't going to help probably. He dragged Mrs. Figg to the kitchen, already planning how to kill her. He left her there and searched the house for money. He didn't find much because he wasn't willing to turn the place upside down.
Harry bound Mrs. Figg's hands and armed himself with a big knife. Then he started to make plans for a possibility that he wasn't going to change any time soon. He needed to buy himself more time - that meant that he needed more money. Fortunately, he knew where Vernon kept emergency cash. Unfortunately, that meant going back to the Dursleys' house. He waited for about a half an hour, using that time to plan Mrs. Figg's death. Then he went to the kitchen and made little rearrangements. Kneazles kept hissing in anger and fear at him but they kept their distance. When all was set, Harry spilt some milk on the floor and placed Mrs. Figg so it would seem that she slipped. Finally, he unbound her hands and stabbed her with a knife in her neck. He made sure to plant Mrs. Figg's fingerprints on the handle. It was a shabby job but better than nothing. For a moment, he hovered above the body and attempted to trigger the change. Nothing happened. In the back of his mind, he remembered that he was supposed to feel revulsion after his first kill. He guessed that it was just a myth because he didn't feel anything at all (apart from a small amount of satisfaction).
Harry wiped everything he had touched clean and positioned himself to allow for a quick escape if needed. The sun kept moving closer and closer to the horizon and when the sky darkened, he decided to set out. It seemed that he was in luck because the Dursleys' house was empty. They were probably at the police station, giving their testimonies. He stealthily crept in through the backyard, keeping his eyes peeled and a knife drawn in case he was wrong.
Once inside, he took a bag and packed some food and clothes. Finally he went to Vernon's and Petunia's bedroom and took a wad of banknotes. He stood there for a moment, considering his next move. Then he thought that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to look for some information about himself and his parents. He searched the drawers in the room for about ten minutes but he didn't find anything.
He was about to try the attic when he heard a car outside. He froze, listening whether it would pass. It didn't. The car parked in front of the house and Harry heard doors opening and slamming. It was obvious that the Dursleys returned. Harry raced to the stairs. He was about to run down when the door opened and Dudley came in. Harry lurched back and was barely able to avoid being seen.
He quickly thought about possible hiding places. The upper floor provided him with four possibilities: the master bedroom, Dudley's bedroom, Dudley's playroom, bathroom. There was also the attic but there wasn't enough time to lower the ladder. He could also jump out of the window but the risk of an injury was too high. He wasn't afraid but he simply couldn't afford to have his mobility lowered. In the end, he went to the unused room where Dudley's less favoured toys were stored. He positioned himself behind the door (they opened inside) and prepared his knife.
He heard movement and angry voices downstairs. The word "freak" dominated. Aunt Petunia remained downstairs to prepare some late evening snack. Harry suspected that she would notice the missing food soon. Vernon walked upstairs and Dudley followed. The burly man mumbled something about killing the boy as he went past Harry's hiding place. Strangely enough, Harry was calm. It was a cold calm of a killer.
Dudley stopped briefly in his room and then headed straight for his second one, for reasons unknown to Harry. The young animagus adept tensed and prepared for action. The door opened and Dudley walked in. Harry didn't wait for anything and pressed the door shut. Dudley turned around at the sound but Harry was already at him, sticking his knife in his cousin's stomach. Unfortunately, he underestimated the thickness of Dudley's lard layer. While the wound was fatal, Dudley was still able to cry out in pain. Harry's presence was given away.
Harry showed Dudley to a side, where he slumped against a shelf. Then he opened the door again and resumed his hiding position. He hoped that Vernon would assume that the perpetrator had already escaped. Moreover, he was likely to step into the room before spotting Dudley. Unfortunately, Vernon emerged from the bedroom soon enough to know that the attacker couldn't possibly escape yet. While he was worried about Dudley, he was also careful enough. Harry could tell that from the way Vernon moved.
The burly man looked inside and was shocked when he saw his son bleeding to death. Harry realized that it was his best chance to attack. He kicked the door with all his strength. Unfortunately, "all his strength" didn't amount to much. The effect on Vernon was almost non-existent, especially since he was still grasping the door handle. Harry attacked his uncle, brandishing his kitchen knife. There was a brief struggle, his uncle got a cut on his arm (which enraged him even more) and Harry was disarmed and sent to the floor with a punch to a side of his head. He didn't loose his consciousness though. Maybe it was a hint of things to come. Vernon was on him in a second and slammed him to the floor again. He wrapped his meaty fingers around his neck and reached for the knife with his other hand. Harry stopped attempting to pry the suffocating hand from his neck and grabbed Vernon's other arm with both his hands.
"I'm going to cut you up!" snarled Vernon, his spittle dropping on Harry's face.
What happened next took less than a split of a second. And yet, great and incredibly complex things can happen in such a short time. The final piece of the puzzle manifested itself. Harry's magic, his undeveloped animagus ability and the shard of Voldemort's soul were joined by the residual energy from Lily's protection. All four pieces wanted one thing: Harry's survival. The first two named were oriented that way because they were part of Harry's subconsciousness while the last one was specifically designed for that goal. As for the Horcrux, Harry's death would mean its destruction as well. When the situation became critical, there was only one option: the four pieces had to cooperate.
Vernon cried out in pain when the little hands grasping his arm turned into claws. He was no longer squeezing a delicate neck of a child. In fact, what his hand was doing could no longer be defined as squeezing because his fingers were no longer able to wrap effectively around what used to be Harry's neck. Vernon shrieked in horror. His wrist crunched and the knife clattered on the floor. Harry grabbed his uncle by his neck and lifted him in the air. His outer jaw opened slightly, in preparation for the inner mouth to strike. Then he changed his mind and closed the outer jaw again. He threw his uncle against the wall, knocking him unconscious.
The Harry-creature looked up and saw Petunia standing in the doorway. Her mouth was opened in a silent scream. Harry moved and was almost instantly in front of her, seemingly without making a single step. He grasped hear head so his palm was against her mouth and his fingers held her in place. She didn't even struggle. Harry resisted the urge to kill her and started to salivate. He burrowed his claw in a wall and mixed a bit of plaster dust in his saliva. He used the produced solution to bind and gag Petunia.
Harry took all those actions without thinking too much. For example, he didn't think, "Let's see if my saliva will solidify." Instead, he simply went ahead and did it, because he already knew the answer. When he passed a mirror, he wasn't startled by his terrible visage, including an elongated smooth head. He also didn't wonder how he was able to see himself in that mirror when he had no visible eyes. That being said, the world was actually much more colourful after his change because his vision spectrum broadened considerably. The same went for his sense of smell and hearing. In addition, he was equipped with entirely new senses.
Harry sneaked his tail over Dudley's torso and turned him around. He was dead. He turned his attention to the two adults. The only reason why they were still alive was because he wanted the contents of their heads. And that was where he was at loss - because he had no instinctual knowledge of the mechanics involved. Obviously, the first step was to use his internal mouth to penetrate a skull. How was he supposed to proceed afterwards though? After a brief contemplation, Harry surmised that Petunia's mind was more valuable to him and that it was thus advisable to start with uncle Vernon.
He walked over to him and lifted him up. Vernon started to come around. The first thing he saw after opening his eyes were Harry's razor sharp teeth clamping around his head. Incidentally, it was also the last thing in his life he ever saw. Harry's pharyngeal jaw extended in a quick thrust and penetrated Vernon's skull. Harry started to feast of the brain while trying to search what he was eating with some mental sense which he wasn't even sure he possessed. It wasn't until the very end of feeding when he saw something - a brief flash of memory. He saw Petunia holding a basket with a child. That was it. Also, the image was very blurry.
And so Harry was faced with a dilemma. It seemed that he truly had an ability to read his victims' memories but he had no idea how to control it and how to use it efficiently. He couldn't risk killing Petunia in such circumstances - he needed to train first. Harry walked over to a window and opened it. He couldn't see either of the neighbouring houses from his position so he concentrated on his other senses. After a while, he concluded that all the members of the Robinson family and the Johnson family were present because he could hear their heartbeats. Judging by the sound, most of them were asleep or in bed already.
Harry moved Vernon and Dudley in the cupboard under the stairs and crept out of the house the same way he came in. He sneaked in the number five through an opened window. He heard the parents talking quietly about the day's events. Apparently, police was searching for Harry at the moment. He went after the children first, making sure to be as silent as possible. When they were bound and gagged with their own clothes, he turned his attention to the adults. He walked in their bedroom and subdued them both without much hustle. He carried all his captives back in the number four and briefly considered eating their brains right away. He changed his mind and, after fastening all the binds and checking on Petunia, visited the number three first, bringing everybody in from there as well.
The children from number five were eyeing Petunia fearfully, the adults were still knocked out. It seemed that one of the children recognized Harry for what he was. If Harry had been still human, he might have taken pity on them. Alas, all he was driven by in his new shape was cold pragmatism - they saw too much, they had to die. One by one, they died by his hand (or inner mouth, to be precise). He tried different techniques, such as penetrating a skull without killing the person and then merely sinking the teeth of his inner jaw in the surface of the brain. He tried sucking a brain while the person was unconscious and while the person was fully aware - it made no difference. Little by little, he learned how to consume not only the brain itself but a part of the memories stored within as well. He wagered that some kind of a telepathic connection was established when he sucked the brain with his inner mouth.
Finally, all the humans were dead with the exception of aunt Petunia who started to regain her consciousness. Harry approached her and his hatred towards her surged within him, eliciting an angry hiss. Almost immediately, he realized that it would be ill advised to give in to human emotions and calmed himself down. Petunia started trashing but the compound of Harry's saliva and plaster held her tightly. Harry contemplated his chances of successfully retrieving everything he wanted to know. He considered going out and practising more but he loitered in the area for way too long already. Another option was bringing Petunia with him but Harry was still rather smallish and he couldn't afford to be slowed down by a burden. No, it was time to cast the proverbial dice.
Petunia couldn't scream so she just trashed her head from side to side. The solidified compound was partially blocking her airways and she started to suffocate. Harry grasped her chin with his claws and positioned his "face" in front of hers. His inner mouth shot out and struck Petunia between her eyes. He ate her brain slowly but he didn't savour the taste because he was quite full at that point. He paid much more attention to Petunia's memories.
Apparently, there were more people like him - to some extent (Harry was quite sure that he was no longer one of them). His parents had been wizards. There was a whole magical world hidden from the eyes of public. The last thing Harry managed to read was the memory of the morning Petunia found Harry on their doorstep. There was a letter and it told Harry what he needed to know the most. His parents were killed by a person who called himself Voldemort. The person who was responsible for the previous five years being a hell was named Albus Dumbledore.
And that was it, there was nothing more for him at Privet Drive. He searched the house to be thorough but he found nothing of importance. It was time to clean up. He visited the garage first and took a canister of reserve fuel. He spilled it throughout the house. Then he went to the kitchen and pulled the stove away from its position. Gas started to leak from the torn plumbing. Finally he put one of Petunia's magazines about gardening in a toaster and ran out. He was well away when the gas exploded and the house started to burn.
There was no time to admire his handiwork though, he had to get as far away from Little Whinging as he could. He started to run, keeping to shadows. He reached the nearest edge of the village in two minutes. Then he continued at full speed southward. It was his best bet since that direction would take him to less populated areas and he was also going to reach sea soon. It was much better option then trying to tip-toe around London and going for Thames.
Sleeping countryside sped past him, interrupted by occasional forests. Harry travelled through more difficult terrain on purpose because that paradoxically allowed for greater speed (he didn't have to worry about being seen as much). The sky was getting brighter when he approached the coast. He had to be careful again and avoid urban areas. The necessity to run over an open area and a highway before jumping in the sea troubled him but the only other option was to hide in Brighton sewers and wait till next night.
Harry shook his head. No, he wasn't going to wait - not when the ultimate freedom was so near. After all, dawn was probably the best time to do it anyway. In broad daylight, his black exoskeleton was quite conspicuous. He was quite invisible during night but a passing car could illuminate him and his slick carapace was quite shiny - then he would become quite visible against the black background of a night. It was the time right before a dawn when he could go out into an open space and remain unseen. Moreover, there was a high chance that he would encounter somebody in the Brighton sewer system and he wanted to avoid killing because he didn't wish to give Dumbledore anything to track him by.
He moved from cover to cover until he was near the coastal drive. When he spotted an opportunity, he shot out from his hideout, crossed the asphalt and vaulted over an edge of a cliff. He was in luck, there was nobody near on the walkway under the cliff. He went over the boulders under the walkway in two quick strides and dived into the waves. When he swam a few meters away, he instinctually realigned his body and disappeared under the surface. He wasn't even surprised when he found out that he could breathe underwater. His upper limbs flattened against his torso to improve his aerodynamics. His tail became his main propulsion while his legs served only for stabilisation and steering.
He swam away from the coast, keeping to the bottom. After a while, he steered to the south-west because his plan was to hide in the depths of Atlantic. Above him, the sun started to rise and Britain woke up to a shiny new day. That didn't apply for many inhabitants of Little Whinging who were only then going to sleep, exhausted by the eventful day and night. Some of them weren't even that lucky.