A little over one month ago, the human boy by the name of Harry Potter got himself chomped on by an utterly massive snake. Three weeks ago, as he was arriving back to Privet Drive, he started hearing voices — four of them, to be specific, and all of them also claiming to be Harry Potter. Two weeks ago, he forgot which of the voices was the original. One week ago, he ran away because his body was slowly transforming into something monstrous.

And, as of three days ago, he stopped existing and we fully took his place.

Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are Harry James Potter, and currently, we are a literal five-headed dragon.

"Who is monologuing in our common mind?!" Blue Harry asked, not so much annoyed as curious.

"Does it matter?" Yellow Harry retorted. "It could be any of us. It could be all of us together. We're still working this whole five-connected-heads thing out, Blue."

"Yellow isss right," Green insisted. "It would be for the bessst to figure thisss out asss fassst asss possssible." His tongue flicked out, giving us all the combined sensation of smell and taste. As we were currently flying, there wasn't much to smell aside from the overall smell of forest.

"it wasn't me..." the soft voice of Grey Harry muttered. "i swear i didn't do it."

"NOBODY WAS ACCUSING YOU, MY LITTLE GREY HEAD!" Red Harry bellowed. "WE ALL KNOW THAT YOU ARE THE LAST OF US TO CAUSE TROUBLE!" Our other three heads nodded along, each one curling comfortingly around our grey head.

Our common body, acting on instincts that we were sure weren't there before our mental split and physical transformation, banked to the right and started gently gliding towards the river bank below. About half a heartbeat later, we all fully recognized the smell that had lured us in that direction: rusted metal. Up until our transformation, we — no, Harry-the-singular — had thought that rusted metal had no scent. Our new noses begged to differ.

In fact, almost everything smelled good nowadays. Normal food smelled better, yes, but metal also smelled good in an entirely different way. That, of course, lead us to actually tasting it. Imagine our surprise when we found that our teeth could shear through metal with ease, and that it tasted nothing like anything we'd ever eaten before, yet was as good as candy.

Rusted metal, in particular, was extra tasty; it was like a sugar coating on a cookie, except not sweet. And as we descended, we found a great, big hunk of rusted metal. Once upon a time, it had been a car but now it was just the engine and body, partially submerged in the river.

We landed, checked that we were decently alone, and then ravenously dug into the automobile's frame. Teeth gnashing, claws shredding, jaws chewing — it was a sight to behold. And, having five heads on long necks, we could actually watch ourselves feast.

"Wicked! The tank still has some petrol left in it!" Yellow exclaimed, prying the tank free. Clamping his jaws around it, he hoisted it up using just the muscles in his neck and started drinking. We were all treated to that wonderful flavor and the invigorating feeling of the fuel entering our furnace of a stomach. Then, when the fuel was exhausted, Yellow chomped down on the tank itself, devouring the plastic with as much gusto as the rest of us ate at the metal.

We were always hungry, nowadays. During the first parts of the transformation, when we still looked mostly like a human, we'd tried to just hide it. It was our appetite that did us in. The more we ate, the bigger we got, and the bigger we were, the more we needed to eat. Two days ago, we were about the size of a cow; now, we were big enough to eat a cow and not feel completely full. Tomorrow, we'd probably be big enough to eat more than one.

"We have a point," Blue remarked, pausing in his eating to comment on the shared thoughts we were having. "Our rate of growth is ridiculous. How big are we going to get? The size of a lorry? The size of a castle? A mountain? And how would Hogwarts even feed us when we get that big?"

"why would they take us back? we're nothing but a monster... we're not a wizard anymore..."

The other three heads paused their eating, Grey's sobering words affecting all of us.

Blue and Red both looked at Grey, then each other. Both wanted to speak, but neither knew exactly what to say. Yellow merely nuzzled up to Grey, having nothing to say. Only Green found the words. "Do we know that for sssure? Are we truly not a wizard any more? Or isss thisss sssome sssort of weird animagusss-y thing, like Professssor McGonagall turning into a cat?"

Red grinned. "GREEN'S RIGHT! WE MIGHT STILL BE WIZARDS! OR, A WIZARD? WHATEVER! THERE IS HOPE YET!"

Blue nodded sagely. "Agreed, my loud compatriot. And even if we are not a wizard in the strictest of senses, is is quite clear that we are still magical. How else would we fly like this? How could we eat metal, drink petrol, and breath fire without magic?"

Green Harry hummed and slanted his head to one side. "A thought occurssss. Remember when Dobby got usss in trouble? Well, if we do manage to cast magic, the ministry might notice. On one hand — or claw? — if we causssse enough of a racket, they might come and invessstigate. We could get the attention of ssssomeone who could help ussss." He paused, leaning his head the other way. "On the other claw, we might get into actual trouble. If we are to be punissshed, I would rather be sssussspended for being a dragon than for our own ssstupidity."

"Agreed," Yellow declared. "To be punished for trying to get help, for trying to help ourselves, that would be embarrassing."

"BUT TO NOT KNOW WHETHER OR NOT WE CAN STILL USE MAGIC?!" Red roared.

"That would eat at our curiosity like nothing else," Blue stated, finishing their shared thought. The other colors of Harry Potter nodded, including the still-drooping Grey.

"i wish we could write dumbledore..." Grey murmured.

"Mate, Hedwig will come back eventually. She will."

"but what if she doesn't?"

"STOP MOPING, GREY! WE ARE A DRAGON! WE CAN JUST FLY TO DUMBLEDORE!" When the other four heads turned to look at Red, he asked, "WHAT?"

"We can fly," Blue deadpanned. As one, we chorused, "WE'RE ALL IDIOTS!"

In our first year, we'd been so excited to make a new friend that we'd spent the whole trip engrossed in our conversation with Ron, unaware of just how many miles we'd covered. During our second year, we'd taken the flying car, which didn't exactly give a good sense of distance either.

It took a very long time, let us tell you. Four days, to be specific. Sure, we could fly pretty fast, but we got tired easily. Each day was definitely better than the day before, but we could never make it that far before we had to stop to rest and, more importantly, eat. Merlin, we ate a lot — mostly rocks (bland) and trees (gross), but we caught animals when we could.

Our new instincts helped a lot with the actual how of hunting, but nothing could have prepared us for seeing that deer splatter under the force of our claw swipe. It was a little hard to swallow — literally; it tasted great, but we kept wanting to gag as the mental imagery plagued us.

"Definitely sticking with rabbits and foxes for now," Blue muttered after we'd finished the carcass off. He had a point, too; we could swallow anything smaller than a medium-sized dog in a single bite now. It wasn't any more filling than a single human-sized bite was for a normal person, and perhaps it was even less filling. It was, however, our only option in terms of meat that didn't involve splatter or setting parts of the forest on fire.

By the time we'd made it to Hogwarts, we'd practically doubled in size. Proportionally, however, we were looking rather slim; whatever we'd been eating, it wasn't enough. Not by a long shot.

"There are giant ssspidersss in the forbidden foressst," Green mused, though there was a decidedly mean tone to his hissing voice.

"They did try to eat us," Blue agreed, bobbing his long head.

"LET'S SQUISH THOSE SPIDERS!" Red roared.

Yellow rolled his eyes. "Why don't we ask Hagrid first?"

Red, Green, and Blue glared at yellow, while Grey snorted disdainfully. They knew Hagrid; he'd never consent to that. Ever.

"Right. Forget I suggested that."

"Let'sss get to the cassstle now. I don't really want to ssspend any more time outssside than we have to," Green declared. At his declaration, the consensus driving our body shifted, allowing him to walk us towards the castle on the hill. "And if Dumbledore can turn usss back, I'd rather eat asss a human."

"True." "DEFINITELY." "Agreed." "allright, i guess."

Then Blue cocked his head to the side. If he'd been driving us, we would have stopped. As it was, we just slowed. "Does this mean we go back to having only one head? Do we all get crammed in there? Who drives? Or do we just go back to being just the single Harry? And if so, what happens to the rest of us?"

We came to a stop. Our other heads looked at each other. No answer came forth.

"I'm just saying, if it comes down to it, I don't want to die."

"NONE OF US WANT TO DIE, YOU MORBID PRAT!" Red rumbled, voicing our collective displeasure on the thought.

"I mean, I knew we were all on the same page there," Blue snapped defensively. "It just had to be said."

"None of us are going to die," Yellow stated firmly. "I won't allow it."

"i sometimes want to die..." Gray mumbled.

"NOBODY ASKED YOU!" the rest of us shouted.

"i'll be quiet now. i'm sorry i said anything..."

We started walking again. The castle was getting close now, and though we were more than a little tired and hungry at this point, we spread our wings and took to the air for the last little stretch. Though, at the last moment, at the nudge of a half-formed idea from Green (an idea not spoken but shared directly with our consensus), we adjusted course.

Four solid thuds signaled our arrival at Hagrid's hut. If anyone was going to be friendly-on-site with us, it was the massive Gamekeeper. After all, he had wanted to care for a dragon of his own; if anyone would help us, it was him.

"Hey, Hagrid!" Blue shouted. Of the five of us, he still had a voice that sounded reasonably close to our human voice, though much louder. "Are you in there?" There was smoke coming from his chimney, so we'd assumed he was.

Sure enough, the door to the hut rattled, then opened. Hagrid froze for an instant. "Blimey, yer a beauty."

All five of my heads cocked to the side. "Uh, thanks?"

"And ye can talk too!"

Blue shook his head. "Hagrid, it's me, Harry Potter." All five of our heads angled themselves to highlight the same lightning bolt mark on each, directly above each of our right eyes. Our eye color and that scar were the only things we had left of our human form. "We got turned into a dragon."

"Harry? How in the world did you manage that?!"

"Dunno. We figured coming to you wouldn't hurt, though we were hoping to see if Professor Dumbledore was here," Blue explained.

Hagrid chuckled, then sighed. "Well, the headmaster isn't here — he's always at the Ministry and overseas durin' the summer months." The gamekeeper scratched his chin. "Come to think of it, I think he's been in Australia for the past few weeks. Chief Warlock business."

"Oh. So that's why Hedwig's taking so long," Yellow remarked.

"she must be so lonely, flying over the ocean by herself. we didn't mean to make hedwig work so hard..."

"WHEN HEDWIG RETURNS, WE SHALL PREPARE FOR HER A FEAST OF ALL THE BACON SHE COULD EVER EAT!" our loudest head proclaimed.

Hagrid's eyes darted between our five heads. "Err, are you all Harry?"

"Yes. Yes we are. We all answer to Harry, but you may address us by color as well. I am obviously Blue, and these are Red..."

"HI, HAGRID!"

"...Green..."

"Greetingssss."

"...Yellow..."

"A pleasure."

"...and Grey."

"why am i always last?"

"Becaussse, you are the pathetic head," snapped Green.

"Shut up, Green! You're hurting Grey's feelings!"

"He hurtsss hisss own feelingsss every five minutessss. Grey isss ssso depresssing." A puff of smoke in escaped Green's nostrils, floating in Grey's general direction.

"Ignore them," Blue instructed Hagrid. "Anyway, are any of the other professors here? As much as we like being a dragon—" "IT IS JUST AS BRILLIANT AS YOU THINK IT IS!" "—we really do need to get back to being human." "Or at leassst human sssized." "And we broke our wand. And most of our stuff." "AND THEN WE ATE IT BECAUSE WE WERE STARVING!" "Oh, bloody hell, I just realized, we ate our homework." "BWAHAHAHA!"

"Err..." Hagrid uttered, clearly trying to wrap his head around that absolute mess of words we'd dumped on him. "I think Professors Flitwick is here, working on his charms research. And I could see about floo calin' Professor McGonagall. Why don't you wait here while I go fetch them?"

We nodded, thought the pain of our empty stomach prompted Yellow to ask, "Sorry to bother you, but do you mind if we go hunting in the forbidden forest first? We're really hungry." "And Flitwick isss rather bite-sssized. We wouldn't want to sssnap at him." "You're not exactly helping." "I am explaining why it isss a bad idea to let usss go hungry!"

Twisting around, Blue shoved his head in between Yellow and Green. "So, can we?"

Hagrid smiled. "You can, yes, but, by the looks of you, you haven't had a good cooked meal and a bath in a while. I'm sure the house elves would love to help out."

True to Hagrid's predictions, when the house elves found out what we needed, they were more than willing to provide. Of course, that was after we convinced them that no, we were not invading the castle and no, we were not going to eat them. And, leading the forefront of the "feed the dragon" brigade was none other than Dobby, who had gotten work at the castle after human-Harry had freed him from Lord Malfoy.

We'd thought the food at Hogwarts was good before we'd become a dragon, but afterward? It was amazing. And we were ravenous. Whole chickens and turkeys vanished down our throat, dozens of pounds of beef and pork disappeared in single bites. At that point, we didn't care that we were eating like Dudley did (Ron's level of gluttony having been surpassed a while back); we were just so hungry.

While we were eating, the bravest of the house elves came and washed the mud and grime off of us — first by magic, and then with wet cloths around the more sensitive areas of our body. It was awkward, yet, but not unpleasant. And though we highly doubted they had ever washed a dragon before, they were doing a really good job of getting the grime out of places we hadn't even known existed, let alone had dirt in them.

Being clean was a remarkable feeling.

At one point, as the flow of food started to slow, Yellow noticed that the house elves were staying back more than they had been a minute ago. "Hm? What's going on? Why are you all back there?"

The elves glanced at each other, then collectively turned to look at Dobby. Dobby swallowed and then walked towards us. "Maters Harry Potters, sirs, Dobby and the other house elves... we are glad you are enjoying our cooking, but... and please don't be mad, but we can't give you any more food."

All five of my heads froze in place. "Did... did we just eat everything in the castle?"

Dobby shook his head. "No, but we have to keep enough food for everyone else before the next delivery comes, Masters Harry Potters."

We let out a collective sigh of relief. "at least we didn't ruin everything. sorry, dobby," our depressed head muttered.

"But we are ssstill hungry!" Green hissed. 'Dobby, can you bring usss junk? Garbage, ssscrap metal, broken thingsss, thingsss nobody would misssss? We can eat anything." The rest of us bobbed our heads in agreement.

"Oh!" squeaked another house elf, one near the back of the Great Hall. "Let us feed them the Room of Hidden things!" Almost in perfect unison, the great, big eyes of every house elf blinked. Then, with the noise of a dozen firecrackers going off, the elves popped away. Barely thirty seconds later, they returned with all sorts of interesting (and tasty) things.

Chairs, desks, books, cauldrons, wands, jewels, ink, gold, parchment, clothes — we devoured it all. We found that a lot of the enchanted things had a much better flavor, especially the stuff that the house elves said felt "dark." In fact, we one particular item, a crown or tiara-thingy, was so dark that it's flavor made us pause just to savor it.

It was heavenly.

Then, while we were feasting on the junk — specifically a pile of busted cauldrons at the moment — Hagrid returned with our diminutive charms professor. By unspoken consensus, Blue head took the speaking role, rising above the rest of our heads. The others continued their voracious eating.

"Evening, Professor Flitwick. Sorry to intrude, but as you can see, we have a bit of a problem."

"My word, Mr. Potter, do you ever," he stated. "There are many, many questions I'm asking myself at the moment, but the one that stands out at the moment is: why are you eating cauldrons?"

"Becaussse the elvesss ran out of ssspare food," Green smugly replied. Of all of us, he was the most proud of our gluttonous appetite.

"AND IT WOULD BE RUDE OF US TO EAT ALL THE FOOD IN HOGWARTS!" Red roared, shaking the windows and making Hagrid and Flitwick cover their ears.

"Please, not so loud, Red."

"ɪ ᴀᴍ sᴏʀʀʏ. ɪ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴛʀʏ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ǫᴜɪᴇᴛ."

"And so eating cauldrons and other non-food items is your solution?" We all nodded and collectively gave him a thumbs up. We then explained how we could eat just about anything. "I see. Truly, that is quite remarkable. I would love to know how that works."

"We just want to be... well, not back to normal. There are five of us now, and we are not sure which of us would survive going back to being the singular Harry Potter. None of us want to die," Blue explained. "But we do want some semblance of a normal, human life. We're not even sure if we can still use magic like a wizard."

"I am assuming you didn't attempt that on your own?" We told him that we hadn't, and that we'd broken our wand. "I see. Well, now that you're here, shall we give that a test?" He drew out his wand and, holding it by the tip, offered it to us. "My wand's a very agreeable fellow; it works decently for just about everyone who picks it up. We might not get spectacular results, but you have bigger problems if it doesn't work at all."

We gratefully and very carefully took the wand, cradling it out of fear that the slightest twitch would snap it like our own. Immediately, we felt a surge of energy through our body, though nothing like what getting our original wand was like. Rather than an overwhelming flood of power, it was more like six rivers of power. The first, yet smallest, river went from our heart to our claws and into the wand. The other five roared down our spines from our head to our chest, where they mixed, then shot back up to our heads and our mouths.

"WHOA!" "Umm..." "That was..." "Weird." "i was going to say scary..." "SCARY? THAT FELT GOOD!" "Volume, Red." "sᴏʀʀʏ."

"Mister Potter?"

We weren't exactly listening. Under Blue's lead, we raised the wand and gave it a flick. "Lumos!" Blue exclaimed.

To our short-lived delight, light did appear at our command. We were still wizards! Our delight turned to bemusement when we realized where the light was coming from: Green's mouth. "Why isss my tongue glowing? And why can I tassst ssshiny?"

"I WANT TO TRY! COLOVARIA!"

Yellow promptly vomited red onto Green, staining his scales to match Red's.

"Gah! What did— bloody hell, I'm hideousss! Change me back!"

"NOW YOU'RE A PROPER GRYFFINDOR DRAGON!"

"Please don't make me spew even more colors."

"What the hell is going on?!" Blue demanded, hoping someone, anyone, would explain.

Over the noise of the continued debate between Red and Green over the merits of red and green, respectively, Flitwick remarked, "I do believe that you're completely bypassing my wand in your casting. Do you mind if I...?" He motioned to the wand still in our claws.

We returned the wand, internally relaxing once the fragile and valuable tool was free from our grip. "Now," Flitwick instructed, "Could you try casting again? Just do everything you would do if you had the wand."

"Colovaria!" Green hissed angrily. Unfortunately, the green came out of Grey's mouth, which was closed at the time. Grey spluttered and spat, trying to wipe the unexpected flavor off his now Slytherin-green tongue.

Our charms professor chuckled and waved his wand, dispelling the color-changing charms from us. "I do believe this is the most spectacular misfiring of that charm I have ever seen. On the bright side, it seems you have somehow completely surpassed the need for a wand."

"Not completely. It was much easssier with the wand, even if we did not ussse it," Green hissed.

"Is that so? Interesting. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about wandlore to explain why that might be. We should ask Mr. Ollivander when we have the chance," Flitwick replied. With a wave of his wand, he conjured a simple chair for himself, which he placed directly in front of where we were lounging.

"We do not want to ssspeak with him," Green said. "We are hesssitant to ssspeak with anybody we don't really need too. We can cassst ssspellsss. Why bother?"

"I can understand your hesitation, but frankly, I do not know what happened to you, nor have I even heard of anything even remotely like this," Flitwick explained. "In order to research your condition, it behooves us to know as much as possible."

"I SAY—" Red paused, then restarted at a lower volume. "ɪ sᴀʏ ᴡᴇ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ. ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇsᴛ ᴏꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʟᴇᴛ ᴛᴏᴏ ᴍᴀɴʏ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ sᴏᴏɴᴇʀ ᴏʀ ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ, ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ɢᴏɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴏᴜᴛ. ɪꜰ ᴡᴇ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ ɴᴏᴡ, ᴡᴇ ᴀᴛ ʟᴇᴀsᴛ ɢᴇᴛ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀᴅ sᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴ ᴀɴsᴡᴇʀs."

"either way, this is going to end badly," mumbled Grey.

"There's no rush," Professor Flitwick commented. "Think about it. Meanwhile, while we wait for Hagrid to get back with professor McGonagall—"

"I'm here!" the Scottish witch herself declared from just outside the Great Hall. "Now let's— Sweet Merlin, Potter! Hagrid," — The giant entered the hall just behind her. We hadn't noticed that he'd left again after bringing Professor Flitwick. — "you failed to mention just how big he was."

"I think he's grown a few inches since I've been in the room, Minerva," Flitwick quipped, much to our surprise.

"That fast? That's faster than we were expecting."

"We don't have much of a frame of reference," Green replied. "But what did you expect?"

Blue chuckled. "I don't think we're going to fit into the Gryffindor tower anymore, Professor McGonagall.'

"Fitting inside is the least of my worries," she said. "I'm more concerned that you'd accidentally inhale a first year."

"And the furniture," Flitwick added. To demonstrate, he levitated one of the broken chairs brought in by the house elves in range of our mouths. Red gleefully snapped it out of the air with a wicked crunch.

"Oh my."

"Ya sure you should be feedin him that, Filius?" Hagrid asked.

"ɪᴛ ɪs ᴀʟʟ sᴏ ᴛᴀsᴛʏ," Red replied instead.

"We ate a rusted car the other day," Blue added. "Not even the petrol caused us problems."

"Anyway," Flitwick began, "Harry, please help me explain to Minerva your concerns about any possible solutions we find. Then she and I can start researching a solution."

"How long do you think that will take?" we asked through Blue's mouth.

"Maybe a day, likely a week or two, and possibly never. It all depends on what we can find. And until then, you should probably stay with Hagrid, out on the edge of the forest. We can construct a hut for you to stay in."

"Actually, I have a better idea asss to where we can sssleep."

"why there, green? why?"

"The sssnake'sss ssstill there."

Grey perked up ever so slightly. "Objections withdrawn."