Ancient Magickes

Harry Potter lay awake the night before his 16th birthday, curled into a fetal position on his ragged bed. His emerald eyes stared into the corner of the room, distant and overflowing with pain-filled grief. It couldn’t be two months after losing Sirius; the pain was just as raw and sharp as if he had died the night before.

The grieving boy had not eaten in several days, and had not bathed in a much longer time; his aunt and uncle had stopped trying to get into the room after several days of futile banging on the magically-reinforced door.

A letter lay a few feet from Harry’s face. A letter from Dumbledore, stating that he’d be there to pick Harry up the afternoon of his birthday. Harry didn’t even care. As the clock ticked towards midnight, the boy didn’t move a muscle, lost in his own misery.

The moment the digital clock flicked from 11:59 to 12:00, Harry’s body spasmed as he was hit with a wave of agony unlike any he had ever felt before. His mouth fell open in a silent scream as one wave after another of intense pain wracked his body. He jerked and clamped onto his ratty sheets, knuckles white under the pressure of his grip. The sound of ripping fabric cut through the room, startling the snowy owl in the cage by the window.

A high, keening note echoed through the room before suddenly being cut off. Though one could see the veins and muscles in Harry’s neck stand out as he shrieked in agony, there was no sound –as if he had been magically silenced by whatever force was causing him this pain.

To Harry, it felt like his body was being ripped apart. His skin rippled and muscles stretched as drastic changes were forced on his body. His jaw ached as new teeth formed and old ones changed shape. His fingers cracked and creaked as they lengthened, the skin pulling tight against his bones and his nails grew, curving and sharpening into claws.

His raven-black hair also lengthened, spilling out from its wild appearance into a slightly more feminine look as they eventually stopped growing as the new ringlets reached his shoulders. His ears stretched and pointed, growing a soft fuzz of black fur on them. His eyes slitted, though they remained the same brilliant emerald –if anything, their color sharpened and grew even more vibrant.

The last of the changes was not yet through, though. Harry threw back his head and howled as bones ripped through the skin under his shoulder blades, two new appendages emerging from the bloody mess of his back.

Brilliant white-and-silver feathers were hard to distinguish under the thick, clear jelly-like liquid and thinner red blood that covered them. Harry’s bones were being hollowed out as his new wings spread out for the very first time, blood and clear liquid dripping from them. His wingspan was three times that of his normal armspan, thus the edges of the wings brushed against the walls of the room as he lay on his bed, stomach-first.

Harry’s breathing was ragged and filled with soft whimpers –not that anyone could hear them. The only other occupant in the room was the afore-mentioned snowy owl, and as the worried familiar watched her master, space seemed to distort around the newly-transformed wizard. The room seemed to fold in on itself for a moment, blurring everything near and around Harry before the world righted itself, leaving behind nothing to suggest the young wizard had ever been lying on the bed in the first place. Not a drop of blood nor the wisp of a feather existed on the now-empty bed.

The snowy owl’s shrieks soon woke the other occupants of the house, but it was too late. Harry Potter –or what was left of him– was gone.