As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, Harry noted that his right ribs hurt as well, and he shut his eyes tight, trying to remember what had happened. He drew a blank.

"Boy! You'd better be up in there! It's already a quarter past six!" Aunt Petunia's shrieks were almost enough to do his throbbing head in just then, and Harry wondered if he were somehow hung over. He didn't drink, but after Sirius had died last year, he had considered it briefly.

Standing on what turned out to be shaky legs, Harry made his way down the hall to the bathroom where he turned on the shower to wash some of the mysterious grime off. Removing his shirt only served to startle him however, because he found several open scratches and what appeared to be bite marks on his side and back. He stared as the mirror fogged up, and tried again to remember any detail of how he'd come to be in such a state. He would have ventured a guess that uncle Vernon had gotten mad at him, but these definitely looked like an animal had attacked him.

At a shriek from his aunt to hurry up, Harry got into the too hot shower and gingerly washed away the dirt and blood, taking into account the many new bruises covering his body. Maybe uncle Vernon had gotten hold of him after all.

Harry left his filthy torn clothes in a heap on his bedroom floor after the shower and made his way downstairs. He was feeling so disoriented this morning that he risked telling aunt Petunia about his injuries. Generally she laughed at him if he asked for help or to go to the doctor, but not this morning.

"I think an animal attacked me last night," Harry said weakly as he sat down at the breakfast table. Dudley was still asleep and uncle Vernon had not yet come downstairs. He put his head down on his folded arms on the table as aunt Petunia scoffed, "You think? How can you not know stupid boy!?" When she got no response she looked over to see Harry's head down and came over. "If you think for one minute you can trick me into letting you out of chores-" she started, but paused, mouth open when Harry lifted up his shirt on the injured side.

After a long silence she asked in a hushed voice, "An animal you say?"

"I can't remember anything," he replied weakly. "I don't even remember going out last night."

They heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs, and aunt Petunia said hurriedly, "Go lay down on the couch. And don't get blood anywhere!"

Harry felt sluggish as he moved out of the kitchen just in time to miss uncle Vernon as he came in. "Where's that good for nothing boy?" he asked when he looked around and could not find the newspaper Harry was supposed to bring in every morning.

"Vernon, something's wrong," Petunia said quietly.

"Well punish him then."

"No, I mean... well, you'd better take a look." Irritated eyes rose to meet hers, but he rose to follow her into the living room regardless.

Harry lay on the couch in a fever, eyes unfocused and unaware that anyone else was with him.

Petunia lifted his shirt just enough to show the injuries and Vernon raised his brows.

"What the hell happened to him?"

"I don't know. He says he thinks an animal attacked him. What kind of animal could we have in Little Winging? It could try to attack Dudley!"

Vernon grunted. "Stray dog probably. I'll call the pound and tell them to make a run through the neighborhood."

"What about him?" Petunia asked, nodding towards Harry with a half worried, half disgusted look. "He might have rabies!"

Rolling his eyes, Vernon said, "Slap a bandage on him and send him to his room. But God help him if he doesn't do double chores tomorrow for the ones he misses today."  With that he moved off to find his paper and eat breakfast, leaving Petunia to quickly bandage Harry's side and rouse him from sleep to send him to his room.

* * *

Something was happening to Harry, although he wasn't quite sure what yet.

His fever had broken days ago and he'd resumed all of his chores, but life at Privet Drive had seemed to take a turn for the mysterious.

For starters, Harry kept having flashbacks, but he'd had no luck yet piecing them together. He often woke three or four times in the night with what appeared to be memories of running through the fields and thickets outside of town. He could remember feeling terrified, but as he turned in his dreams, he could never see what exactly it was that chased him.

While Harry did an endless amount of chores during the day to make up for the one's he'd missed, he had flashbacks of limping and sometimes crawling home in the darkness, and finally of dragging his damaged body up the stairs and into his bed.

The fragmented memory was not the only thing. His body was changing too and he wasn't sure if it was all part of the normal growing process or something that had to do with magic.

His eyes for instance no longer seemed to require glasses. They made his vision quite blurry in fact if he put them on, although he wore them anyway so that no one would notice anything was different. Aunt Petunia seemed to be keeping an unnaturally close eye on him after she'd patched him up, and once he heard her telling Dudley to stay away from him in case he had gotten rabies. He didn't know if rabies gave you better eyesight, but was resolved to go into town the first chance he got and research it in the library.

Another change was that when he went to replace the bandages on his wounds, the wounds were gone entirely. There was not even any tenderness in the area to indicate he'd been bitten or scratched at all.

Harry sat down on the edge of his bed, unused new bandages beside him. His head was spinning with the strangeness of it all. He didn't need glasses any more, and his gruesome scratches and bite marks had healed in a matter of days. This was definitely going to be an interesting summer.

* * *

What was that? Harry narrowed his eyes as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Perhaps it had been because he was sick that he hadn't noticed the extra hair that had suddenly decided to sprout up on his chest. It wasn't that he hadn't had any to start with, but certainly not this much. Ron and some of the other boys in the dorm had a lot of chest hair, he reminded himself, and even Neville had started to grow some at the end of the last school year, so why should he worry over a little... a lot of sudden new growth? It itched like crazy too, and Harry wondered again if all of this could be attributed to a teenage growth spurt of some sort. He hoped so, because the other possibility that lurked at the back of his mind was something more sinister feeling. His real fear was that some sort of magical creature had poisoned him on that night he was still trying to piece together, and that he was going to sprout wings or a tail or something worse. He had been feeling more and more strange in his own body lately; more on edge than usual. He'd been so hungry lately as well, although that was part of growth spurts he reminded himself. Mrs. Weasley was frequently to be heard at meal times at the Burrow saying that if just one more teenage male sat with them to eat then she really would be eaten out of house and home.

There was one good change about the new way he felt, Harry discovered two weeks after he'd staggered home ill and confused. Aunt Marge had come to visit unexpectedly, but instead of Harry having to hide in his room for the remainder of her stay for fear of Ripper, her nasty dog, he'd been surprised to find the dog afraid of him. Interesting, was the first thought that came to Harry after the dog had scurried away to hide under the coffee table, and strange was the second. He hadn't even given the dog a stray look, knowing it was best not to look him in the eyes, but the dog somehow seemed terrified of him. Harry wasn't the only one to notice, which was the start of a long, and terrible summer for him.

It had started with a benign remark from uncle Vernon about Ripper looking unwell. Marge had seemed at a loss until Harry had been sent from the room to haul her luggage upstairs. While Harry was marveling at how light her luggage seemed and that she must not be staying long because she must not have packed much, Ripper had come out of his hiding place shaking, only to return with a simper when Harry returned to the sitting room for Marge's hat and coat. He was just on his way out again when Marge shouted, "Come back here boy!"

Harry turned to find her glaring down him down. "What have you done to my dog boy?"

He frowned. "Nothing aunt Marge."

"Don't you lie to me. Just look at him! He's terrified of you!"

"But I haven't had the chance to do anything," he tried then, and it was true. He hadn't been alone with the dog in the ten minutes since the pair had arrived.

"Oh, but if you got the chance you would do something to him? I see how it is. My ripper is as smart as they come, smarter then you'll ever be by the looks of it, and if he's scared of you then he knows you're about to do something to him!"

As far as Harry was concerned, the dog was as bonkers as aunt Marge was. It had always been this way. No matter how bad uncle Vernon, aunt Petunia, and Dudley were, aunt Marge and Ripper were always worse. For all he knew the dog had finally just gone completely senile. It was old enough.

"I wouldn't do anything to him aunt Marge," Harry said, trying to remain calm. The last thing he wanted was another incident with Marge floating away towards London and him being chased from the house by his uncle. The incident seemed to be fresh on Vernon and Petunia's mind as well however, because in the next moment, his uncle was telling him to get lost for the day.

With a huff Harry left the house, thinking that perhaps this was his opportunity to go into town and do some research in the library about rabies... or whatever it was that he had that was changing him.

Harry hurried past the thicket of woods that stood on the edge of the neighborhood where the Dursley's lived, feeling as though he was being watched, and then hurried into town. Luckily the library was not all that far away, but it did stand at the edge of the woods he thought he remembered from his flashbacks.

Inside, he asked the elder librarian for help finding books about rabies, and also about dogs, and she asked why he wanted to know.

"Just something I saw on the telly last night," he said, feeling nervous about the way she was looking at him. "You know, just wanted to know more."

"I wish I could help you young man, but a few nights ago someone broke into the library and tore apart every book we have on canines."

"Tore apart?" He raised his brows.

"To shreds," she said, looking affronted that it had happened at all.

"Did they catch the person?"

"No. The police are still searching."

"Oh."

Harry thanked her and then moved off into the library, thinking that since he was already here he might as well read something. He had not been allowed to check books out since he was nine and Dudley had ripped apart one of the library books he'd brought home to read, but he hadn't been banned from reading in the library at least.

He walked from row to row in the quiet building and occasionally passed an adult sitting at a table by themselves reading or doing work.  Being a sunny summer day, he had not yet spotted anyone close to his own age inside, and why he he asked himself. They've no reason to be afraid to go out, not like me.

It was just a feeling he'd had since the attack, that when he went out he was being watched. With death eaters still on the loose and Voldemort newly returned to power, he was sure Dumbledore or any one of the Order would have a fit if they found out he'd gone into town on his own in any case, so it wasn't like he was without reason to worry. Aside from Voldemort, there was still some sort of animal out there, lurking, and Harry was sure it was waiting for him to find himself alone in the woods again, though he still could not remember how he'd ended up in the woods in the first place.

"Looking for something lad?"

Harry looked down at the elder male voice that had spoken to him and found a professorish type sitting alone at a table in the wide aisle he was in.

He shrugged. "Came to read about dogs but the librarian said all the books were gone."

"Wanting to learn to train one up are yeh?"

Thinking back to Ripper, Harry nodded, just so he wouldn't get another strange look then, and said, "Yeah. My aunt's dog is sick and I wanted to know more about it."

"I see." The man looked thoughtful then and said, "The dog books may be gone, but have you thought about any of the books on legendary beasts?"

Harry frowned. Legendary beasts? Like magical creatures? Surely this man was not a wizard.

"Legendary?"

The man raised his finger then and said, "Here, let me show you. I believe I saw one in the next isle."

Harry followed him, and after a few moments of browsing, the man had found his query and pulled down a dusty tomb. Here it is.

Harry took it and read the spine: European Beasts In Legend: Myths, Facts, and Speculation.

"What do I look for?" Harry asked.

The man smiled. "Whatever catches your fancy young man. The fact that you are inside on a day like today seeking knowledge says a great deal about you. I believe you'll enjoy this find."

Harry thanked him then and went to a table way at the back of the library and set the heavy book down. He opened up to the table of contents hoping to find something about dogs, but his heart caught in his chest at what he found near the end: Werewolves In Fokelore.

Wolves were a type of dog then weren't they, and Harry had already had experience with Werewolves, Professor Lupin in particular trying to rip Sirius to shreds and then running off into the night under a full moon.

Harry hurriedly flipped to the back of the book, heart pounding, and found the chapter he was looking for.

"Werewolves, also known as lycanthropes, from the Greek lukos, "wolf" and anthrōpos, man, is a mythological being with purported powers to shapeshift into a wolf or wolf-like creature." I'll say, Harry said, remembering how terrifying Professor Lupin had looked. "While this transformation is most often associated with the full moon, many ancient myths from the world over report that the transformation may also occur after being placed under a curse, or after making a pact with the devil." Harry pulled a face. None of those options seemed pleasant, but something else registered in the back of his mind as well and he tucked it away for later when he could get to a newspaper to see when the next full moon was.

"Lycanthropes are attributed as having super strength, speed, smelling, and eyesight. In ancient times people were said to be able to distinguish a werewolf from a human even in their humanoid form from several features, namely the coming together of the eyebrows above the nose, and irregular curvature of the fingernails."

Subconsciously Harry looked down at his fingernails and then heaved a sigh of relief. They, at least, appeared to be normal. The next sentence had Harry worried however, and he re-read it just to be sure. "In times past, normal people have sometimes been persecuted, burned, and decapitated because a spouse has reported that he or she has grown extra hair on the hands, neck, back, chest, or legs." As if to prove a point that Harry was desperately trying to ignore, his chest itched then from the newly growing hair and he slammed the book shut. Without replacing it on the shelf on the other side of the library, Harry stood quickly and strode towards the entrance of the library.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" the librarian asked him, and Harry practically screamed, "NO!" before he continued out of the building at a brisk pace.

What did the Muggles know about werewolves anyway? The old, hand drawn image of a werewolf ripping a person in half with it's bare hands that sat at the top of the page in the European Beasts book was burned into Harry's mind as he continued back towards Privet Drive. He would dig out his Care of Magical Creatures book, and maybe even his old Defense book from third year and see what they had to say about Werewolves. He was sure he was just being paranoid at this point, but as it grew darker, the paranoia grew worse as he felt the familiar sensation of being watched catch up with him again, and he broke out into a full run all the way back to the house.