Unexpected Arrivals


Finally withdrawing from feeling Remus' presence, Harry refocused on his
surroundings. Looking down at his scaly hands, he remembered how he had
managed to shift from his demoness form to a female Harry form. Did he
still possess that capability?

He almost dared not try, not sure what he would feel, what he would do,
if he had lost that last link to his humanity. He pushed past his fear,
and focused once more, chanting the words that should have reversed his
animagus transformation, and picturing himself as he was.

He felt his wings retracting, his fangs widening and flattening in his
mouth, an odd itching on his head. His heart fell, however, as he
realized that he did not feel any shrinking sensation, nor did he feel
the stutter of his tail receding, and the columns around him remained
oddly smaller than his memory said they should be.

Looking down at himself, he realized that he was apparently still
half-basilisk, though his scales were now green. What about his teeth?
Had he not felt them flattening? He once more conjured a mirror, though
what had been a full height mirror for him but a short while ago, now
served him as a hand-mirror.

He bared his teeth, and saw that what he now had was a mixture of a
normal human dentition, combined with a pair of hollow fangs, that
though they initially lay back against the roof of his mouth, as he
opened his jaws wider, sprang forward. He noticed as well that his
tongue had turned a dark blue, gleaming oddly in the reflected light, a
strange shade against the ruddy pink of the rest of his mouth, and it
had forked in the front.

He studied his face in dismay, as he realized that even here, his skin
had become green scales. He was grateful, after recovering from his
displeasure at his new appearance, that his nose, though green and
scaly, was still present, and still human in shape. He did not know what
he would have felt, how he would have dealt with it, had he looked into
a face with a mere two slits for nostrils, such as Voldemort possessed.

Still, he was not ready to give in. Abandoning his chant, Harry closed
his eyes, and focused even harder on just the image of his female form
as it had been. He felt something, suddenly. It was as though he was
pressing against a metal band, that was bending and creaking, trying to
hold him in. Summoning all his will, he threw himself against it,
forcing it outward, pressing it to bend, until finally he felt a great
snap, and his mind, enlarged as it was, shattered and fell into pieces.

Opening his eyes in confusion, his head whipped back and forth. There
were twenty of him, twenty normal sized female Harry's whipping their
heads back and forth, looking at each other, all nude. One of them
looked down at herself, and suddenly her skin darkened, and reddened, as
wings burst forth from her back, and a tail from her enticing rear, and
horns from her head.

This was the first time he had seen his transformation from so many
angles, so it took him a minute to realize what was different. For the
most part, he realized, as he came together, surrounding his demoness
self, who whimpered softly, as hands began to caress her, to touch her
hair, and feel her wings and her skin, she was the same, but eventually
he realized the difference was that she had horns, large, curved, and
looking wickedly sharp.

Demoness-Harry collapsed to the ground as her knees gave way, but she
was caught by dozens of hands, and gently lowered. Harry was in a frenzy
now, as her human forms were unwittingly exposed to an untrained
succubus' allure, even as their own slightly more muted allure washed
over the demoness.

Hands were everywhere caressing her, sliding over firm smooth flesh,
fondling her newly magnificent horns, still sensitive despite their
size, playing in her hair, rubbing the skin of her wings, cupping her
firm breasts, tugging at swiftly stiffening nipples. Tongues pressed
against heated flesh, human in form but stretching to inhuman length in
response to their wielder's desire, piercing her mouth, her nether lips,
laving the wicked point at the tip of her tail with heated moisture.
Fingernails scraped lightly across sensitive skin, eliciting wriggles
and gasps and cries.

Heated desire brought about a flurry of experimentation that Harry might
otherwise have been weeks before trying, or perhaps never thought of at
all. Some Harry's joined the first in returning to succubus form, to
gain more sensation. Another found that she could return to her
half-basilisk form without absorbing the others, or regaining that
immense mass, becoming a human-sized half-snake, and wrapping heated
coils around another Harry, squeezing her gently, while kissing her
passionately.

One splintered piece of her mind remembered her intense gratitude at
finding Lupin unharmed, and remembered that Hermione had been the one to
remind them to check. In its fragmented state, it did not remember that
there was much they did not want Hermione to know, and when it checked,
it discovered that in her dismay, Hermione had fled the dorms, against
the rules as everyone was still in lock-down whilst the professors
futilely searched the school, and crept to the Room of Requirement, and
was sobbing quietly there to herself, anxious with fear for her best
friend.

Desiring to express the gratitude they all felt, that Harry became
Hermione in form, and without even understanding what he did or how,
reached out and drew Hermione in to himself, to experience what his
body, now Hermione's, experienced.

As soon as Hermione's form appeared, the others descended on her, all
feeling that intense gratitude, and the need to express it.

Hermione felt a mental embrace, the feeling of Harry surrounding her,
and was about to try to speak to him, when she felt suddenly as if she
was falling, with Harry wrapped all about her, and then she landed.

She had no time to think, no time to realize that she was suddenly
naked, before she felt heated mouths on her skin, felt a warm mouth
wrapped around her nipple, suckling gently, while warm fingers teased
her other breast, and felt someone licking her labia, laving first one
side, then the other, then slipping between.

She gasped and in that moment, a mouth met hers, and she looked into
brilliant green eyes. Of course, in truth, this was not her body, though
it was her form, and she was not going physically from zero to sixty,
for that Harry's body had already been heated and intensely horny.
Mentally, she might as well have gone from zero to a thousand, as she
was plunged into a sea of hormones, and felt the strength of nineteen
succubi's allure.

Her own body lay where it had been, where she had been lying on the
couch, trying to read through her tears, trying to get her mind off her
missing friend. Though her mind was not present, her body continued
autonomic function, continued breathing and living.

In spite of her over-heated, over-aroused, and overwhelmed state,
Hermione saw those green eyes, saw the lust and passion and love in
them, and screamed into his mouth, "Harry!," as she reached up and
grabbed him, pulling him firmly to her, displacing the mouth on her
breast as she sucked hard, pulling his tongue into her mouth, pressing
fiercely as she tried to convey her passion, her love for him, her best
friend, betimes her savior. Never had she thought herself unworthy of
him, but never either had she thought he would look on her with passion
in his eyes, not on her, the bushy-haired one, the bookworm, books and
cleverness and buckteeth. But now he was kissing her, and everything
felt so good, so wonderful, and she was never going to let him go.

She felt an explosion in her mind, as her body succumbed to the mass
assault, and her brain, though temporarily not her own, nor even hers
alone, as Harry was still in the body with her, experiencing all as she
was, feeling her love for him in a way never experienced in that world
before, joined her body in a paroxysm of ecstatic joy.

She cried out as Harry pulled away. Her shocked eyes had barely a moment
to realize that the intensely green-eyed, black-haired creature drawing
away from her was undeniably Harry, and yet powerfully feminine, before
her lips were claimed again from the other side, and this too was Harry,
but now the intense green eyes were set in a glistening red-skinned
face, and curling up through her hair were these wicked black horns, and
over her back, were those wings? This Harry's tongue invaded her mouth,
and she felt an intense surge of heat pass through her, making her
nipples and clit ache, as Harry's tongue wrapped around her own,
squeezing and tugging.

A moment later that Harry was gone, to her breast by the feel of the
suckling and the warm, moist something that was wrapped around the base
of her breast, squeezing lightly, while her mouth was stolen by a new
Harry, with green scales and a cute, tiny pair of points on the tip of
her green nose, while her tongue was tormented and tickled by this
Harry's split tongue.

She tried to engage her mind, to figure out how there could be so many
Harry's, and how they could be so different, and why they were all so
female, and why they still turned her on so badly, and what his animagus
form could possibly be, when she suddenly felt an embrace, inside, not
on her skin, but on her very mind, as another Harry wrapped himself
around her, and whispered in her metaphorical ear to let it go for now,
to just feel and let him thank her, let him show her how grateful
he/they were, for her steadfastness, for her support, for her reminding
him of what was important.

She melted, and all thought fled, as she gave herself over to pleasure.
She would never have pictured herself as a selfish lover, but she could
not get a single moment to bring her thoughts together enough to try to
reciprocate, there were too many hands rubbing her, too many lips
kissing her, too many tongues tasting her, too many to resist.

Though she desperately wanted to know what was happening with Harry, she
could find no opportunity. When Harry's stamina finally wore thin, and
the onslaught slowed, her spirit was the first thing he lost hold of,
and she found herself back in her body in the Room of Requirement,
unmolested, untouched, her mind free of the endorphins that had gripped
her mind in a fog so very recently. She wanted to know, but she was not
going to reach out to him again, until she had at least managed to think
about what had happened, and work out how she felt about it.

She had certainly been loved, but she had never expected her first
sexual experience with another person to be a sapphic orgy with her best
male friend. Was it rape? Perhaps technically, but not in her mind. She
had made no clear protests that she could remember, but she had not
really been given the opportunity. Then again, it was clearly not about
power, nor had her actual body been touched.

She had managed to gain at least a little awareness of what was going on
around her. It made her wonder, what do you call an orgy of one? Had
that been incest? Masturbation? Narcissism? Or just the instincts that
Professor McGonagall had warned them about?

Given Hermione's intelligence, it was a quick, short step from wondering
whether what had just gone on was due to the instincts of Harry's
animagus form, to putting together at least a few of things she had
seen, and coming up with an answer. It did not explain everything, but
it explained a lot--certainly it explained Harry's fear of her reaction,
why he had not sought help, and why he had hidden himself away. It
failed to explain why there had been more than one of him, how he had
stolen her from her body . . . and worst of all, it failed to explain
whether his feelings for her were a result of his form, or genuine but
previously hidden and only being exposed because of those instincts.

That mattered to her, she realized, more than she ever would have
expected.

---

To say Fudge did not take the report from the Department of Mysteries
well would be a grave understatement. In point of fact, it so riled him
that his reaction, to Algernon Croaker's eyes, was a child's hissy fit,
and Croaker felt a sense of doom as once again, he realized that though
British Wizardry were certainly the most direct descendants of the great
Merlin, it was equally British Wizardry that were going to play the
villains of this prophecy.

Only by pointing out rather forcefully to Fudge that his was not the
sole stone, and that the other countries would not be slow to find the
source of the prophecy's trigger did he finally stir the abominable
little man to action.

So it was that he was following a force of twenty Aurors, a snot-nosed
brat of a suck-up, the Fudge, and the Fudge's pet Toad across the lawns
of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, towards the castle.

He was somewhat surprised to note that there did not appear to be any
activity outside, neither near the half-giant's hut, where he understood
Care of Magical Creatures had tended to end up, nor in the visible
greenhouses, nor was there any sign of activity around the distant hoops
of the Quidditch Pitch.

Unlike Fudge, Croaker was an intelligent, and above all, a competent
individual, so he was unsurprised when they entered the great doors to
find Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall waiting for them,
and ushering them up to the Headmaster's office through empty halls. He
rightly guessed that the event that triggered the prophecy had generated
some form of visible or tangible evidence, and not knowing the cause,
that Dumbledore had undoubtedly canceled classes in favor of locating
the cause.

No, that was not in question at all in Croaker's mind. What was, was
where Dumbledore would fall in this. Would he be a counterweight to
Fudge? Could he turn Britain away from a role as the prophecy's villain,
or had he already ensured it? If the target of the prophecy was the one
he feared, the outcome was not in much doubt, as the damage had already
been done. Of course, if it was, that would still be better than
Voldemort being the one, as some had feared in recent years. He had
rarely been more grateful than when his efforts to localize the
disturbance targeted Hogwarts.

Unfortunately, though Dumbledore had obtained advance notice of their
arrival somehow, it was obvious from his expression, much though he
sought to suppress his reaction, that he had not had any warning of
what the Fudge was going to walk in demanding. He was surprised to see
Croaker with Fudge, Algernon noted. Though the old man had an
impressive ability to control his reactions, and Algernon would not be
surprised if Fudge had completely failed to notice, he himself was a
practiced observer, and was sure of his read.

Of course, Dumbledore was not the only target of his observation. His
Deputy, Minerva McGonagall, might appear to the students to be a stern
and controlled taskmistress, but Algernon was not unfamiliar with the
Scot's volatile temper. Though she did well at blanking her expression
when Fudge or one of his toadies was looking at her, Croaker caught both
her dislike of Fudge, and more importantly, that she was anxious and
concerned about something even before they arrived, and it was making
her impatient.

When Fudge demanded that all of the students be collected in the Great
Hall, he thought McGonagall was on the verge of exploding, and he was
quite surprised when Dumbledore acquiesced. "He knows something,"
Croaker mused to himself. That was odd, since the canny Headmaster had
clearly not known that the Prophecy had finally been triggered. Combine
that fact with McGonagall's apparent worry, and the absence of students
told Croaker that the event that triggered the stone must have had some
degree of noticeable effect within Hogwarts.

---

Hermione was lucky to have heard the noise of her dormmate's voices, and
instead of continuing to head to the library, she was able to slip
unnoticed into the flow of students from Gryffindor to the Great Hall.

She was quick to note the presence of Ministry aurors in the Hall.
Clearly, the teachers had not found what they were looking for . . .
unsurprising, given that she was pretty certain they were looking for
Harry, and he was in the Chamber of Secrets, which had been proven to
exist in his third year, but which clearly had not been searched yet.

It was less clear why they were being brought together. The teachers had
already sequestered the students in their dorms, and taken headcounts,
so that could not be the purpose. Perhaps they were moving them so that
they could then search the dorms?

Hermione had to suppress an inappropriate fit of the giggles when she
overheard some of the rumours floating around. As usual, in the absence
of any real details, everyone's imagination seemed to be on overdrive.
Almost all of the rumours focused on Harry, since of course it was the
Gryffindors around her that had first realized that Harry was absent. 
As the only student who knew where Harry was, she was not tempted to
join in. She knew that Harry had not faced a manticore in the corridors,
nor had he fought You-Know-Who on the Astronomy Tower, nor had the
castle survived an invasion of Veela . . . though, considering her most
recent experience of Harry, that last one was not too far off.

Hermione ducked her head to hide a raging blush, and felt absurdly
grateful that her robes were thick enough to hide the state of her
nipples. It had certainly been an eye-opening experience, and she wished
that she had been able to make it unnoticed to the library. She dearly
wanted to know what Harry could possibly have become that would explain
her being ravished by a seemingly endless procession of feminine
Harry's.

She knew that there were animals that reproduced by parthenogenesis, but
she could not think of one off the top of her head that simply had no
male sex whatsoever and yet had bat-like wings. There was a lizard
species that she remembered reading about that was wholly female, but no
bats, nor had any of the magical species she had read about come in
strictly female forms, much less multiple different female forms.

She had one particular idea, but it was difficult to reconcile with what
she knew of Animagi, and Animagus forms.

---

Both sated and exhausted, the Harrys lay in a pile, trying to come to
terms with what had happened. Two of them had fallen asleep, and the
rest were trying to deal with experiencing both their usual singular
consciousness, and an odd multiple consciousness that seemed to overlay
the first.

In a sense, each Harry felt that she was Harry, and the rest were her
copies, and yet, she could feel that same sensation in the others.
Without any discussion, the five conscious Harry's that had taken
demoness form simultaneously pushed it away, returning to their mere
human shape.

A slow progression began, as first one, then another of the Harrys
started to squirm, across stones, across other Harrys, to get to the
pool at the base of the statue of Slytherin.

Several Harrys worked together to drag the sleeping Harrys. One of the
two was the first that had taken demoness form, and experienced being
the focus of nineteen nubile young women. The other was the one who had
reached out and brought Hermione to them, and similarly suffered their
collective focus.

Both were slid into the water, supported all about, as the Harry's
cooperated, working through their exhaustion to clean each other.

Afraid to come too close to thinking about what they had done to
Hermione, and what her reaction would be, one of the Harry's stumbled
onto a different question.

In their attempt to cure Remus of his lycanthropy, they had apparently
absorbed the basilisk; but in the process, they remembered consuming the
wolf in Remus' mind.

There was a sudden bout of splashing as the other Harrys quickly pulled
away, as Harry reached into herself, and found the wolf and brought it
forward. They watched in startled horror and fascination, as Harry
thrashed in the water, her face stretching, fur sprouting. Painful as it
looked, it was not Cruciatus level, and she managed to keep from crying
out.

When her thrashing began to subside, the others tensed, ready and
waiting, in case she lost her mind. Their fears were thankfully
unfounded, however, and they could clearly feel her, and no sign of a
wolf-mind, or surge of insanity, or any such effect.

The thrashing awoke the sleeping demoness Harry, and as she awoke, she
slipped back into human form, without apparently giving it any thought.
She looked beside her, a bit disturbed to see her sleeping other-self
still in Hermione's form. Another Harry on the other side of the
sleeping Hermione-Harry met her eyes with a wry grin, and shrugged.

Three Harrys slogged forward and gently helped the lupine-Harry from
the water. Almost as soon as she was out, an uncontrollable urge hit,
and the other Harrys cried out and jumped away as she shivered and
shook violently, sending water flying.

It did not seem to matter that they had just been in the water, avoiding
the spray was a reflexive action. Once they realized what they had done,
however, all three joined in the others' laughter. The laughter awoke
Hermione-Harry, and she quickly shifted back to herself.

Harry looked around at herself, then pulled out of the water. Warming
charms flashed from one of her to another, along with drying charms. In
spite of her satiation and exhaustion, she still found it difficult to
resist the allure of so many bare feminine forms. Looking about the
chamber, she spied enlarged clothing, limp, in a pile on the chamber
floor. 

Remembering the mirror, a flurry of conjuring followed, and soon
everyone was dressed. This did not help as much as she had expected, for
her prior experience with clothing was with thick robes and ill-fitting
hand-me-downs. None of her wanted to conjure Dudley clothing to wear,
and all of them had taken the opportunity to have clothing that actually
fit.

Any ordinary hormonal teenage boy, walking into that chamber after they
had dressed, would probably collapse from blood loss to his head.

Unwilling to rejoin and lose their more familiar size, even if it would
regain a singular state of mind, but also recognizing the danger of
continued proximity, Harry split up to finish exploring and mapping the
chamber. Though Remus had not managed to complete his explanation, Harry
had picked up enough to make a start on mapping. It might not end up as
sophisticated as the Marauder's map, but then, he did not need that
level of detail or animation. He merely needed accurate maps.

The two most tired Harry's remained together, resting. The one that had
taken Hermione's form now found it impossible to resist considering her
reaction, and the former demoness-Harry found herself with an armful of
crying Harry.

She felt like crying herself, of course, but she focused on comforting
her other self, and trying to help the others by attempting to muffle
the sobbing Harry's mental link with the others.

As she comforted herself, she also paid attention to her other selves,
tasting their experiences. Harry found the pipes the basilisk had been
using, when she first heard it, and found that her half-basilisk form,
with its ability to readily apply pressure all around the circumference
of the pipes, was the ideal shape to use to climb them, as she learned
their network.

Harry found actual rooms, even a bedchamber, though the bedframe was
rotting, and the mattress barely still present, and abandoned her
mapping in favor of practicing mending and cleaning spells. No more
sleeping on cold stone floors!

Harry climbed into the Founder's gaping jaw and examined the
basilisk's sleeping chamber, which oddly reminded him of a lab-rat's
cage. There was another pool in here, this one seemed to have water
constantly circulating. A large flat raised stone in a corner, when
pressed by Harry using a banishing spell, caused a startled deer to
suddenly appear in the chamber.

Though tempted to take one of her more feral forms and hunt it down,
Harry managed to resist the urge, and in the process, realized that her
eyes, at least in her normal form, did not have the basilisk's
lethality. She would have to find a way to get the deer back to the
forest later. A slide in a corner of the smaller chamber was
surprisingly fun; though landing in a remarkable pile of bones at the
bottom was not so pleasant, it explained a lot about the relatively
cleanliness of the basilisk's lair.

Another Harry found outlets from one of the chamber's side tunnels into
the wider cave system, covered over with rusting iron grates, strong
enough to stop the basilisk from escaping, with surprisingly narrow
openings, yet allowing air, water, and rodents to move freely. She
passed through via the simple expedient of turning intangible.

Finding herself in a confusing labyrinth of un-hewn stone, shaped by
water into fantastic forms, Harry sought a way to comprehend it, and
remembering her earlier ideas about what her form might be, tried to
turn into a bat, to use their improved instincts and echolocation
abilities to make sense of the caves.

She succeeded, but not in the way she intended. Instead of transforming
into a bat, she dissolved into a cloud of bats, her mind fracturing as
she did. Across the Hogwart's underground, Harry's stopped in their
tracks, as their minds sought to deal with the mind-fogging influx of
information.

"Don't do that again without some warning," the former demoness-Harry 
said, and the Harry's again stopped, processing the fact that all of 
them had heard and understood that statement. The former 
Hermione-Harry in her lap looked up with a sudden grin. "Hermione 
would go nuts for the study potential in this," she commented 
wistfully.

"No doubt", the Harry holding her responded, "no doubt." Even as she
said this, a cloud of Harry-bats boiled out of an opening into a rock
formation in the Forbidden Forest, and Harry, transforming into
half-basilisk form again, slid back up the chute, determined to take the
deer to the exit, now that she knew the way.

The pipes had been invaded by several of the eighteen roaming Harry's,
and as they entered the castle proper through the pipes, each of them
recognized the risks in retaining a form that might yet have lethal
eyes, if they were influenced by his emotions, or hunger, or something
of the sort, and having just experienced Harry's success in taking on a
form that was neither his animagus nor human form, and only peripherally
connected to his forms and the powers he had absorbed, now sought, and
succeeded, in transforming into moderately sized snakes, of a variety of
species. One Harry went for a constrictor, and managed to transform
without dividing into pieces; the others went for various smaller
snakes, and as a consequence dissolved into a small collective.

One Harry collective found themselves just beneath a grating in the
floor of the owlery. Unwilling to come out, given that owls are
predatory birds, Harry pushed into intangibility, and successfully
pulled himself together, and back into human form, before passing up
through the floor.

Looking around at the owls, Harry realized that here was a means by
which he could keep an eye on some of his friends. That realization was
unfortunately muted by an immediate reassertion of reality; he could
become an owl and so see Hermione with no one the wiser, but no-one kept
their owls with them.

The only other pets allowed were toads and cats, Hermione had a cat, and
Crookshanks would probably be perfectly willing to consume any toad that
sought to come between them. Still, surely there was something they
could become that would suffice?

A memory from his second year surfaced, Cornish pixies in Defense
against the Dark Arts; a pixie would be small enough to conceal itself,
had wings for avoiding predation, and guided by the larger mind,
was potentially capable of writing for communication.

In spite of this realization, Harry was slow to attempt it. Not out of
worry about the reaction of the owls, but out of simple fear of the
repercussions. So far, he had become simple non-magical creatures, bats
and snakes, and the few magical beings he had become, aside from the
initial transformation into a succubus, had been due in some fashion to
his absorbing them. That left potential limits, within which he might
hope to eventually understand all of his powers.

If he could become a magical creature without ever having absorbed one,
however, would that expand his boundaries indefinitely? Would that
essentially bar him from ever learning his form well enough to make the
reverse transformation, and restoring himself to his normal shape?

Several Harry's stopped what they were doing to contemplate this with
her, but the two Harry's still in the Chamber by the pool had had little
to do but think, and the former Hermione-Harry was quick to point out,
"It doesn't matter. Either we can, or we can't, and if we can, well, I
expect it makes no difference if you never try, except that if we have
the power and don't explore it, we are guaranteed never to regain our
form."

Torn between hoping for success and failure, Harry slipped out of the
Owlery, and making sure no-one was around, focused on her memories of
the pixies. Within moments, to her simultaneous delight and dismay, she
dissolved into a cloud of three and four inch tall winged pixies, every
one of them female, and on a tiny scale, beautiful.