The flying car landed, the doors opened, and Harry stumbled outside. He almost couldn’t believe it – he had really escaped the Dursleys!
In the dim morning light, he couldn’t see that well, but what he could see was wonderful. In its own way, the Weasleys’ house seemed as magical as Hogwarts. Much smaller, of course, but the parts seemed to be held together by just some wood and magic.
And it was wonderfully chaotic, something that always made him feel safe in a strange way – it meant that no Dursley could be near.
Looking around with wonder, he barely heard what Fred was explaining. “... wait until Mum calls us to breakfast ...”
Breakfast. Harry’s stomach growled. „Um, when do you usually eat breakfast?“, he asked. He could last two more hours without breakfast, but he somewhat hoped they ate really early.
“They sent you to bed without dinner?” Ron sounded horrified. Harry wondered what he would say if he knew Harry hadn’t had a decent meal for three days.
Fred started digging around in his pockets. “Wait – I think I might have a toffee here, one of our experiments, your hair might turn blue, but nothing too bad ... we eat breakfast at eight, that’s a couple of hours ... here.” He handed Harry some sweets, wrapped in plain grease-proof paper.
“Thanks” Harry slowly put one toffee in his mouth, trying to not appear too greedy. He was so hungry.
The last thing he noticed was that the world seemed to grow larger and larger.
Ron stared at his best friend in horror. Harry shrunk and shrunk, his face and body morphed, until all that was left was a tiny bird with mostly fluffy white feathers plus a mop of unruly black feathers on his head.
“Fred you idiot! That was our Chick Confectionary!”
“I thought it was Tinting Toffee!”
“Turn Harry back!”, Ron yelled. “I don’t care if you get into trouble for doing magic, you can’t let Harry stay a chicken!”
Fred shrugged, looking sheepish. “Er, well, the thing is, we don’t really have perfected the antidote yet ...”
“What?!”
“Change of plan”, George said gloomily. “Fred, you take care of the car, we go inside and wake Mum immediately.”
The Harry-chick cheeped unhappily.
“I stay with Harry.” Ron dropped to his knees in front of the chick. He wished he had been more interested in chickens before now.
All he knew about tiny chicks was that they were very fragile. Fred had stepped on one, once, and it hadn’t been a pretty sight.
Could he risk grabbing Harry? Or would he break him?
He held out his palm. “Harry? You remember me, right? Come here, sit on my hand.“
Yet Harry-the-Chick ignored him in favour of a fat brown hen that was approaching them.
He waddled towards her. “Cheep?”
Ron had a sudden, uneasy feeling in his stomach. Somehow, this didn’t seem quite right.
It should feel right. Harry was a chick now, he would follow the hen, and Ron could grab the hen and carry her into the house, Harry would be safely away from the gnomes and the Jarvey and other nasty creatures, problem solved.
So why did he have this feeling of impending doom?
The hen stared at Harry with her reddish chicken eyes. The next thing Ron saw was the hen’s beak rapidly approaching Harry’s fragile little chick head.
Before it could make contact, two things happened.
A silent, snowy-white predator descended from the sky and grabbed the hen.
A dark shadow swooped down from the garage roof.
“Hedwig!” Thank all gods and goddesses, Hedwig still remembered who Harry was.
Or she was just very, very hungry and had decided she wanted a fat hen for breakfast, not a tiny chick.
When Ron looked at Harry again, the black chicken that had come from the garage roof was standing between the tiny chick and another brown hen that had approached.
The cold stare the black chicken gave the brown reminded Ron of something, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint of what. It spread its black wings in a threatening manner.
Finally, the brown hen backed down.
Harry-the-Chick didn’t make a sound, he looked rather panicked, but perhaps that was just Ron’s imagination.
He put his hand between the black chicken’s beak and Harry, just to be on the safe side.
„Cluck.“ The black chicken placed one of its wings over Harry.
Ron eyed it sceptically. This chicken acted more like it should, but he would remain wary, after the murder attempt Hedwig had prevented.
Hedwig seemed to share his opinion. She had perched on a nearby tree, the offending hen nowhere to be seen.
“If this is another one of your pranks, George, you will be grounded until school starts again, and then some!”
Mum! “It’s not a prank”, he said quickly. „You have to help Harry! One of the damn chickens almost murdered him!”
„It’s not a prank“, Fred said, emerging from the garage. “Look, here’s Harry’s school trunk and his broom, and his owl must be here somewhere, too.”
“Then where is this chick you turned him into?”, his mother demanded.
“Right here – I think the black hen adopted him, that’s really lucky, I think the other one wanted to kill him”, Ron explained.
That got him a glare. “The black hen is a rooster. As you would know if you didn’t always find excuses to get out of feeding the chickens.”
“Ginny likes feeding them! Anyway, he’s somewhere ... there.“
The black chicken lifted its wing just enough so they could see the chick.
“Yes, there, look, he even still somewhat looks like himself.”
“Alright then.” Mum sighed. Ron had the sinking feeling that she wouldn’t be able to help. “Fred, George, you write a letter to your Professor McGonagall, tell her what you have done and beg her for help. I will not turn up at St. Mungos and tell them I have a chicken that used to be Harry Potter. The poor boy would never hear the end of it.”
“Professor McGonagall will think it was a prank! Why don’t you write the letter?”
“Because you have pranked me one too many times. I will not make a fool of myself. Write that letter. Now. I am sure you can convince her you are serious.”
“And what about Harry? It is no prank, I swear, Mum!“
“Harry seems to be safe for the moment. Happily adopted, by the look of it.”
“But you said that’s a rooster.” And now Ron remembered that Mum had often had hens with chicks in the kitchen to keep them away from the rooster for fear he would attack them. Or perhaps she had also said the other hens might be dangerous? Ron wished he had paid more attention.
“He must be one of this exotic breed Pandora said she wanted to get. She gushed over how protective the roosters of that breed are of their chicks ... I guess one of them decided to visit our chickens.”
She took some kernels of wheat from her apron pocket and held them in her hand. “Come here, that’s a good boy, just a bit closer ...” She threw some of the wheat to the floor.
The rooster followed her, paused over the wheat, pecked at it once, moved a bit further, waited, followed her some more. Occasionally, Ron heard a quiet sound made by Harry-the-chick.
After repeating the process three times, the rooster and chick entered the house.
Ron carefully closed the door after them.
“What now?”
“Now I prepare some food for those two. You make sure no one steps on them.” She left for the kitchen and left Ron in the sitting room.
Ron sat on the floor and watched. The black rooster was giving him the creeps. It didn’t peck the floor or crow or do anything chickenlike. It just stood there and glared at him with its entirely black eyes.
Even its comb was black, which was why Ron hadn’t noticed it was a rooster before. He wasn’t that clueless!
After what seemed like an eternity, the rooster finally moved, and Ron could see Harry again.
He held out his hand. “Come on, just sit on my hand, you’d be safer there.”
“Cluck!” The rooster had managed to throw one of the threadbare cushions from the sofa and now sat on it like it was some kind of nest.
“Cheep?” Harry-the-Chick hurried towards him and vanished beneath the black feathers again.
Ron walked towards the cushion and very, very slowly picked it up and carefully placed it on the sofa again.
The rooster just glared, but didn’t attack.
Before long, Mum returned with a small dish full of some kind of mash with orange and green pieces in it. “Ron, they’re not exactly safer on the sofa.”
“Where was I supposed to put them? The table?”
“Yes. Accio.” An empty cardboard box floated towards her, she put it on the table, put the dish with the chicken feed into it, and then pointed her wand at the cushion.
It hovered in the air and landed inside the cardboard box.
“Tuck!” The rooster took some of the feed in his beak and let it fall again.
Ron supposed he didn’t like it much.
Harry-the-Chick came out from under his wing and pecked at the feed excitedly. He must still be hungry.
“What a well behaved rooster. I wonder if Xenophilius will let me keep him.”
“He’s kinda creepy, don’t you think?”
“Just because he’s black?”
“Black feathers are all nice and good, but that the rest of him is black too ... you can’t tell me that’s normal.”
“It is perfectly normal for that breed.”
“And he doesn’t make any sounds.“
“Don’t be silly, Ronald. He made a sound just now.”
“But only one! Normal chickens are always noisy! And what kind of rooster doesn’t even crow at sunrise?”
“They’re probably a rather calm breed. He is, of course, not a normal chicken, Pandora would never have been content with run-of-the-mill chickens. She was always experimenting.”
Ron felt vaguely uneasy, not knowing what to say. He remembered when Mrs. Lovegood had died. Mum had gotten an owl and gone all pale and quiet, and then she had gone to the Lovegoods to help – though Ron wasn’t entirely sure why they needed help. Perhaps she had had to teach Mr. Lovegood how to cook, considering they had eaten three slightly burned meals that week before Dad had figured it out.
“Oh, the rooster hasn’t eaten anything. I’ll get more.“
“Why don’t you just put him outside with our chickens, Mum? Now that we have Harry here and all.”
“I do suppose it would be safer”, she agreed. “But I’ll have to look up the chick warming spells Pandora gave me – he looks like barely a few days old, they can’t keep themselves warm at that age - and Harry might be lonely without any other chickens here ...”
Fortunately, Mum also remembered to feed Ron, and when she next returned from the kitchen more feed for Harry and the rooster, she also brought some food.
Before long, Ginny entered the kitchen.
She stared with wide eyes when Ron explained that the chick was Harry.
Then she climbed on the table to have a better view. “He’s so sweet!”, she gushed. “Much nicer than our rooster, Mum, can we keep him?”
At least she wasn’t talking about Harry. Still, it was embarrassing. They said people who were transformed into animals didn’t remember being animals later, but what if that wasn’t true, or if Fred and George had managed to invent something that changed that?
Ron really hoped Harry wouldn’t remember Ginny.
“He doesn’t eat anything, is he sick?”
“Let me see, dear.” Mum peered into the cardboard box. “He’s still trying to get the chick to eat more.”
“Harry must be very hungry. His relatives sent him to bed without dinner.”
“That sounds more believable than George’s story about them putting bars on Harry’s window.”
“Well, they were there!”
“Where?”, Ginny asked.
Chapter 2