By LastCrazyHorn
Word Count: 105891
Rating: PG-13 for brief language, violence, and depictions of abuse
Summary: A disabled Harry comes to Hogwarts story. Everyone expects him to be like his dad, but how can he be with such a different past? A Slytherin Harry takes on Hogwarts in an unusual way.
“You take Harry, I’ll take on the ol’ crackpot,” Moody said quietly from behind him.
Severus opened his mouth to argue, but then decided better of it. He wasn’t actually certain who had the better deal.
Thoughtfully, he reached into his inner robe pocket and pulled out a pair of dragon-hide gloves. Putting them on, he skirted around Dumbledore and slowly approached Harry. Giving himself a brief moment to study Harry’s dragon form, Severus tentatively guessed that his son had transformed into a Siberian Snarltooth. No other dragon—at least in the known world—had such brilliant silver scales as those Harry-dragon was currently sporting.
On his hind legs, Harry-dragon was a good three or four feet taller than him. He was more than a little impressive for a dragon that was clearly still in its youth.
Harry-dragon eyed him as he warily made his way closer, smoke streaming from his nostrils. Behind him he heard Moody growling at Dumbledore, but he pushed it out of his mind.
“Do you know who I am?” He asked when he was within a few feet of the angry dragon.
Harry-dragon reared back and roared in warning to him, but Severus refused to run.
“Come down here, little snake,” Severus ordered, looking him right in the eye.
Harry-dragon’s wings flapped several times in agitation and smoke streamed more prolifically from his nostrils at Severus’ words. Severus was about to raise his shield and escape when suddenly Harry-dragon dropped to all fours.
No longer raised up, Harry-dragon was now level with Severus’ face. For once, he was glad that Harry was small for his age. Typically a Snarltooth Harry’s age would have been at least a foot taller than him, but Harry’s treatment at the hands of his relatives had stunted his growth, even as a dragon it seemed. Still though, a six foot tall dragon was certainly not a laughing matter. Fortunately, Severus was wearing his teaching robes, and they were spelled against fire.
Fat lot of good that’ll do my face, Severus thought.
Opposite him, Harry-dragon suddenly snorted. Severus raised an eyebrow. Was it possible that Harry-dragon could understand his thoughts? He knew that dragon handlers like Charlie Weasley found ways to communicate with their charges, but as far as he knew, he hadn’t actively been projecting his thoughts toward his son.
Bright green orbs stared back at him from Harry-dragon’s face. They sparkled with an intelligence that seemed to project down toward him. Suddenly Severus felt a foreign presence press into his mind. A strong sense of possessiveness emanated from it and without thinking, he smiled.
“Do you know who I am, Harry child?” Severus asked again, tentatively encouraged.
Harry-dragon stomped his foot and snorted once more.
. . .
Looking down at the dark furred man in front of him, Harry-dragon cocked his head to the side and tried to remember why he seemed so familiar. Impulsively, he pushed his nose into the man’s chest and sniffed.
Herbs. Smoke. Spellfire. He smelled each of these in quick succession as he moved his head from one side to the other.
“Must you really sniff my armpits, Harry?” He heard in his mind.
Surprised, he jerked backward and stared at the man across from him. That was the same voice that he had heard before. Still thinking, he nosed the man’s shoulder and was delighted when fingers began to scratch under his jaw.
“Do you know who I am, little snake?” That voice said in his head again.
Little snake. The words evoked strong feelings in his heart. Without warning, a series of images began to scroll past his mind’s eye in quick succession.
Robes with a snake emblem. Green and silver ties. Warm arms holding him as he cried out his heart’s sorrow. Bubbling cauldrons and children standing around him. A grey haired man’s laughter.
His brow furrowed as a name came to him. Sire. This man was his sire.
He groaned aloud and dropped the rest of his body to the floor with a soft thump. He had nearly set his sire on fire. His sire.
He smelled his sire a moment before the man himself kneeled down next to him. His sire—Severus! He thumped his tail happily on the floor, unaware of the great amount of dust it raised in the corridor. For some reason, this caused his Severus to quickly turn and glance at something behind him. He tried to do the same, but Severus’ hand on his head restrained him.
“Can you hear me, little one?” He heard in his mind. It had to be his Severus talking, and Harry-dragon rumbled appreciatively at the realisation.
“I can, sire,” He answered.
In front of him, his Severus snorted with laughter and he cocked his head to one side in confusion.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Harry, please call me Father. That’s what you call me, do you remember?” His Severus—no, his Father said.
Oh.
“Oh! Because you adopted me!” Harry supplied. More memories were falling into place.
“That’s right,” Severus answered, momentarily forgetting to speak aloud in his mind.
Instead of not hearing his words at all, Harry-dragon had a very interesting experience. He heard them echoed distantly in his mind, muffled and somewhat indistinct.
“That’s right,” Severus repeated a moment later in his head. “I did adopt you.”
Nosing his Father’s shoulder, Harry-dragon asked curiously, “Say something else aloud.”
“Aloud?” Severus murmured with an appraising eyebrow.
Harry-dragon blinked in surprise as he heard the word in his mind, only slightly less muffled this time.
“I can hear your words!” He answered excitedly. In his joy, his tail thumped several times on the floor again.
Severus glanced back toward to Dumbledore exactly at the same moment Harry-dragon realised they weren’t alone.
. . .
The calm and placid dragon in front of Severus suddenly leapt to his feet and roared threateningly toward the man in the hideous fuchsia robes.
Moody cursed aloud as his chance at getting Albus to actually answer his questions suddenly came to an end. It wasn’t as if they had been getting anywhere, but the lack of rational response from his “friend” was galling. For the past few minutes, the old man’s mind had been on one thing and one thing only: Harry.
“Isn’t he glorious, Alastor? Most experts agree that it can’t be done. They say that a magical animagus form is impossible, but our Harry proved him wrong,” Dumbledore told him for the third time in as many minutes.
The headmaster’s mind seemed to be completely oblivious to the very real danger he was in, and Moody wasn’t entirely certain if he really felt like saving the old bastard anyway.
Harry-dragon roared again and Moody had just enough time to scramble backward before a furious silver dragon took his place.
They watched Harry slam one clawed foot into the centre of Dumbledore’s chest, throwing him bodily against the stone wall behind him. A scream behind Moody indicated that Minerva was no longer down.
“Protego!” The enraged transfigurations professor yelled out. She shoved Moody aside to get to Dumbledore as she pushed closer to the mayhem surrounding them and he grunted out painfully as he fell hard on his already bruised arm.
The shield charm rippled around them, but other than enraging Harry-dragon further, it didn’t seem to do a thing. A clawed forearm swung out to the side and dropped her to the ground just as suddenly. Inside Harry-dragon’s head, he was raging. Why had she tried to protect his prey and how dare she try and hurt his grandsire!
“Harry!” Severus’ voice bellowed out in the chaos as Moody crawled painfully to his feet.
His “son” made his way through the dust and smoke and reached out a hand to Moody’s grandson-turned-dragon.
“You’ve got him, child. You can put him down now.”
In Harry-dragon’s hold, Dumbledore wheezed and nodded his agreement. His horrid fuchsia robes were ripped and covered in dust and—Moody squinted—what could be blood. There was certainly a trail of blood coming from his nose, and it showed brightly against the whiteness of his beard and hair.
“No, don’t let go of him!” A new voice joined the midst.
Moody wanted to groan at the sight of a dirt covered Lupin, but managed to contain himself.
“He deserves everything Harry gives him and more!” The man growled out, his eyes glowing strangely amber coloured.
“We wouldn’t even be out here if it weren’t for yeh. So shut yer mouth!” Moody shouted instead.
“Both of you hush,” Severus snapped.
It seemed that Dumbledore was finally talking.
“You can’t hurt me, Harry. No more than you could hurt your own mother and father,” Albus was saying as they looked up at him.
Harry growled and twisted a claw deeper into his shoulder, causing the old man to cry out softly at the pain.
“Flap your lips all you want. I can’t hear you,” Harry-dragon said with a deep growl. In turn, his words were only heard by Severus.
“I’m your magical guardian, Harry. I’m as good as your father,” Dumbledore said loudly with what he seemed to think was a grandfatherly wink.
“Let go of the old bastard, Harry. He’s no good to us dead,” Harry-dragon heard in his head.
“I want him to suffer,” Harry-dragon answered silently, his lips twisting into a snarl.
“I won’t let him go free,” Severus promised. He rested a gloved arm resting on Harry-dragon’s flank and raised his wand with his other hand.
On one hand, Severus didn’t lie—hadn’t ever lied to him, but this was Dumbledore, the bane of his existence. How could he let him go when he was so close to tasting revenge?
“Please, Harry,” Severus asked. “Don’t let him escape so easily.”
Harry-dragon glanced at his Severus and the murderous glint in his eye softened slightly.
“Fine,” He said, growling aloud. He released his hold on Dumbledore as promised, but did nothing to slow his fall to the ground a few feet down.
Dumbledore fell with a pained cry and in his moment of dazed confusion, Severus summoned all of his wands (three) and carefully placed them in an inner pocket of his robes. From there, he cast incarcerous, binding the old man with sturdy ropes, and further solidifying them with two more spells to dampen against wandless magic. With all of that done, he cast his Patronus to go and retrieve Poppy from the infirmary.
Harry-dragon watched all of this with interest, but the last part confused him. How could a deer that looked so much like a deer to his eyes not smell like one? He had slid both feet back down to the ground fully while watching his Severus, and was now looming over Dumbledore threateningly.
The old man seemed to be fairly unconcerned by the situation, despite the dragon and the three wands trained on him. A benign expression on his face had Harry-dragon leaning in with a snarl, even as the old man started muttering something incomprehensible.
“What’s he saying, Father?” Was Harry-dragon’s worried question.
“Obedite Patris, over and over,” Severus answered.
“What’s that mean?”
“Obey your father.”
“But I did,” Harry-dragon argued in confusion.
“He seems to think that he is your father—or at least your guardian. And magically, he may have been at one point, but we changed that, remember?”
Harry-dragon could almost feel his father’s smirk through his words. It gave him a warm feeling that spread from his chest all the way down to the tip of his tail.
. . .
Madame Pomfrey arrived soon after atop a broom; which Harry-dragon couldn’t help but goggle at.
“Merlin, Severus! I leave you alone for two days, and you manage this!?” Was her first comment to the group, which Severus helpfully relayed to Harry through their mental link.
Harry-dragon supposed he could learn to read lips again in his dragon form, and for a moment he wondered why he couldn’t already.
Maybe it has to do with practice, he finally decided. His dragon eyes were actually worse than his human ones, though his other senses were much enhanced. I wonder if they make glasses for dragons?
“Are you Harry, then?” She bustled over to Harry-dragon and looked imperiously up at him. Despite her small stature as a human, Harry-dragon still felt intimidated by her and tried to back up, only to nearly trip over Lupin in his haste.
The man—Harry-dragon turned sharply toward Lupin as he picked up on something new.
“Father, why does Lupin smell like a wolf?”
“Because he is one,” Severus answered simply.
“But—hold on,” Harry-dragon mentally stuttered. “He’s a werewolf?” He managed a few moments later.
“Ten points to Slytherin.”
From there, Harry-dragon watched in a daze as Poppy spelled both McGonagall and Dumbledore onto stretchers. His transfigurations professor seemed to be somewhat shell-shocked, and Harry-dragon found it hard to feel sorry for her.
Lupin was another story altogether.
“Why didn’t he just tell me?”
“He was afraid of your judgment upon him,” Severus supplied.
“Better to be a werewolf than a drunk!”
“I’m not entirely certain he would agree.”
Their conversation was halted then as Severus began to argue with Poppy over Dumbledore’s placement.
“I want him at St. Mungo’s. He’s a danger to the students; just look at Mr Potter!”
Severus cast a silencing spell around them before arguing further. He gave Poppy the evil eye for saying so much in front of the headmaster, and she had the temerity to huff back at him.
“And I want him close in order that we might keep an eye on him. He’s not going to get away without answering for what he’s done,” Severus answered with a growl reminiscent of Harry-dragon’s own. “I promised Harry that I wouldn’t let him escape.”
“Snape,” Moody interjected, “Let me get a team of aurors here. We can keep him under spell and wand ’til he owns up ta what’s happened, ta what he’s done.”
“Only aurors who don’t have any kind of pre-existing allegiance to him,” Severus argued, his dark eyes shining meaningfully at the other man.
“Aye, that’s agreed.”
“But in the meantime,” Poppy intervened threateningly, “I need to take precautions to ensure that he does not bleed to death from his wounds.”
“If you insist,” Severus answered, cancelling the silencing spell with a slash of his wand through the air.
“I’ll go with yeh. Snape, what about yeh?”
“Harry, what do you think? Want to come upstairs for some guard duty?” Severus asked Harry-dragon aloud for Dumbledore’s sake.
Harry-dragon thumped his tail on the floor several times for a visible response.
“Please,” He answered silently.
“I don’t think my infirmary was built for dragons,” Poppy sniffed haughtily.
“Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Severus answered with an evil grin toward Harry-dragon. “Oh and Lupin, I’m sure Filch would appreciate it if you could help shore up this corridor.”
A scowl was Remus’ only response.
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