KEEPER: Jurassic Park
Word Count: 1,605
Uncommon word used
Gammerstang: A tall, ungainly or awkward person. Emerged in the late 16th century from Scottish and northern English dialects. The insult is usually applied to a woman – from gammer short for grandmother and stang meaning "pole or stake".
000
It was just another day in the Dursley household. Well, almost. It was the seventh birthday of none other than Dudley Dursley, an oversized, mean-tempered pig of a boy. This meant one thing for the other boy who lived in the Dursley household, and that was disappointment.
This year, Dudley's party was dinosaur themed, and Harry hated it. Watching Dudley play with the large plastic dinosaurs made him feel worse than he'd ever felt before. He loved dinosaurs, had loved them ever since that field trip to the museum back during his first school year.
That night, as Harry lay on his old cot with his lumpy mattress and ratty blanket, Harry wished harder than he'd ever wished before that he'd have some dinosaur toys like Dudley's to play with, maybe even be his friends. He wished they'd protect him from the Dursleys and Harry Hunting and all the mean, scary people he'd been told about at school that liked to do bad things to little boys and girls. He also wished they'd be able to talk with and understand each other like real friends, because Harry knew dinosaurs most likely didn't know English; he had no clue what language dinosaurs spoke.
He knew he'd most likely wake up disappointed, but he couldn't help hoping that maybe this time, this wish, would be different. Harry fell asleep wishing and promising and hoping with all his heart.
Harry's magic, a symbiotic entity inside him that usually focused more on keeping Harry alive and mostly well rather than fulfilling his wishes, immediately latched onto this latest wish. Fulfilling this wish would make it easier to keep Harry safe, and was fairly easy to grant. Just some animation, some loyalty, some Intelligence, maybe some other things, and BOOM! Wish granted!
Mother Magic, often called Circe, Hecate, Trivia, and more, saw what Harry's magic was attempting and smiled giddily at the opportunity that was presented to Her. Her Child was meant for more than such a pitiful existence! Albus Dumbledore had made one too many mistakes concerning Her Child. Reaching out to Harry's magic, She gently infused his power with Her own. He'd have what he wished for and more, She'd have nothing less.
In the living room of Number Four Privet Drive, the partially animated toy dinosaurs Dudley had left out after bedtime began to change on a molecular level. Plastic became living tissue, rudimentary intelligence evolved to being-like levels, sizes and colors and proportions changed according to the rules of science and magic, and each species represented was cloned and modified to allow for one male and female each, minimum. In a scene like something from a cheap horror film, the once-plastic dinosaurs, in unison, came to life with a shudder and turned to face the cupboard under the stairs. Their thoughts held only one thing.
"My Lord…"
000
When Harry woke up the next day, it wasn't to his aunt's shrill cry of, "Wake up!" Instead, it was to her shrill cry of, "Vernon!" It was also louder and more of a shrill shout than a shrill cry, and it disturbed more than just Harry.
"Leave our Lord alone, you gammerstang!" A raspy voice cried.
Aunt Petunia only shrieked louder in response to the voice, while Harry rubbed his eyes in sleepy confusion. His cupboard door was open, his aunt wasn't demanding he get up and make breakfast, and he wasn't shivering from the cool morning air. Oh, and can't forget the strange voice that seemed to be calling his aunt strange names.
"What's going on?" Harry asked, causing his aunt to shriek even more.
"My Lord! You're awake!" Another voice, more gravelly, cried from his left, seemingly ignoring the first voice that had started calling his aunt names anew.
"Your Lord? Who's that?" Harry asked, reaching for his glasses so he could see better.
"You're our Lord, milord," a third voice said from near his feet. He got the impression this voice was a girl, while the other two were boys.
Finally, Harry found his glasses and put them on. What he saw both shocked and excited him.
Dinosaurs, little dinosaurs about the same size as Dudley's toys were sitting all around him. There were triceratops and stegosaurus; velociraptors and T-Rexes; parasaurolophus and sauropods; there were even minima and pterodactyls! One of the velociraptors was the one calling his aunt names!
"It… It worked? My wish came true?" Harry asked.
The gravelly voice, which turned out to be one of the minima, tilted it's head to one side and said, "I suppose so, if your wish was for us to be free from the hands of the small fat one."
Harry heard a thump come from outside his cupboard at the same time Aunt Petunia's yelling and screeching suddenly stopped. Confused, he sat up a bit more and saw Aunt Petunia sprawled out on the floor looking very pale indeed.
"Do you think she'll be alright?" Harry asked no one in particular.
000
The months passed quickly for Harry and his new friends. From the morning after Dudley's birthday, where Aunt Petunia had a heart attack, on, the Dursleys started treating him better. That could have been due to his veritable army of mini dinos that were only loyal to him, though. They may be small, but they were intelligent and knew exactly what they were capable of.
They sometimes behaved like an army, too. Like those times those weird men and women in strange bathrobes came and tried to get rid of his friends. Penelope, Phil, Pansy, and Paul, his pterodactyl friends, would quickly take to the skies and divebomb the weird people, while Rex and Rexann, his two T-Rex friends, and Valerie, Vincent, Valdis, Victor, Violate, and Vadin Blue, the velociraptors of the group, would use their sharp teeth to bite their legs. His stegosaurus and minima friends (Sally, Sam, Susan, Sean, Sarah, Sebastian, Mary, Maxx, Marigold, and Memphis) would either help drive the weird people away or help his other friends make sure no one snuck up behind him. After a month of weird people showing up and being driven away by his friends, the weird people stopped coming. They probably didn't like being bit by lots of sharp teeth everytime they came.
(He'd came up with names for his friends by going to the library and looking at the names of the people who wrote the books. He was rather proud of himself.)
Harry didn't know why the weird people kept trying to hurt his friends or take them away, they didn't bother anyone unless they hurt him! The neighbors never complained, and neither did the librarians or the people at the store! His teachers didn't tell him his friends had to stay home when school started, and the teachers were very strict with who and what came into the school.
What Harry didn't know was the blood wards surrounding Number Four Privet Drive had been tweaked by Mother Magic while She'd been helping his magic grant his wish. They saw his dino friends as an extension of him, and thus protected them from potential harm. The only reason the "weird people" had been able to get through the wards is because they were responding to the report of accidental magic that needed reversing and didn't know what, exactly, they were supposed to reverse beforehand. Every time a group left with thoughts of informing others about the mini dinos, they'd promptly forget to do so once they left the wards. The wards themselves covered all of Little Whinging by the time Mother Magic was through with them.
000
It had been four years since Harry had gotten his dino friends. In those four years, Harry had been moved from the cupboard under the stairs and into what used to be the guest room, he'd stopped being forced to do all the chores, and he was finally getting enough to eat -for him and his friends. He and his relatives would never really like each other, but things were peaceful and he wouldn't change that for anything.
It was Dudley's eleventh birthday today. He was still a spoiled boy, but he no longer looked like a prize winning pig in a wig and clothes (having to feed forty growing mini dinos, twelve of which were mostly carnivorous and favored prime cuts just as much as the Dursley men, wasn't exactly conducive to overfeeding said Dursley men). The Dursleys were going to the zoo. Harry and his friends were going to the park. A certain snake in the reptile exhibit was going back to sleep.
000
A week before Harry's birthday, a peculiar letter arrived.
"What's Hogwarts?" Harry asked Vadin Blue, the velociraptor that always called Aunt Petunia names, usually from old literature.
"I know not, milord, for though my knowledge is vast, I am not all knowing," Vadin Blue replied.
"Potter -Harry… Is that… From Hogwarts?"
Harry looked up from the curious letter and answered his aunt with a simple, "It is."
Harry had seen many expressions on his aunt's face over the years, but never had he seen such a look of pure relief.
"Perfect. Pack your stuff, round up your… Friends. You're going shopping, and you're not coming back! You're their problem now!"
The Wizarding World never saw them coming.