"WHAT?!"

Dudley Dursley stared at us. We stared back at Dudley. He was 5'7" and weighed a hefty 21 stones, but otherwise an ordinary human boy. We were a massive metal dragon, bordering on 130 feet long and 500 tons, by the latest measurements. It took a constant trickle of magic for us to simply stand on anything softer than solid rock without sinking in. Simply resting the weight of one of our claws on his body — not even pressing down — would likely have killed him.

"I said, I want to ride on your back!"

And yet this tiny, human child had the gall to demand that we carried him around. Just a few months ago, he'd happily chased us with his friends for one last game of Harry Hunting, and now he demanded to ride us in the same tone he demanded more toys from his parents!

"NO! YOU WILL NOT!"

"But I want to! I want to ride a giant monster!"

Where on Earth had his cowardice gone? Had it been so overwhelmed by his greed that he was willing to argue with us?

We weren't entirely sure how this came about, to be honest. It started down in the chamber, where Petunia had broken down in relief and Dumbledore had looked quite pleased with how things turned out. Then we'd carried Petunia and Professor Dumbledore back up to the grounds and waited while they tracked down the rest of the Dursleys. Dudley had been easy to find, having somehow discovered and charmed the house-elves into feeding him, but Vernon had disappeared somewhere.

Now Dumbledore was off searching for Vernon, Petunia was sitting on the outside steps overlooking the grounds, we had tried to start sunbathing in peace, and Dudley had apparently decided that we were the newest toy to obsess over. Knowing him, he'd be bored of us in ten minutes; it was just a matter of tolerating him until he did. We were just confused as to why we needed to tolerate him at all.

Tolerating him was proving to be a challenge, as Dudley had decided now was the perfect time to start being athletic. His first feat of strength? Lifting his lard while attempting to climb up our body.

"Diddykins! Please stop! Mummy doesn't want you hurting yourself!" Petunia called out, going back to that overly sweet tone she always used with him.

Grey and Green exchanged glances. With a whispered incantation, Grey caught Dudley in his magical grip — the same spell we used to hold books without our claws — and lifted him up off our claws. Dudley screamed a bit, but then cheered up when he realized he wasn't falling. Grey turned back, as if to place Dudley on our back, which made our cousin even happier.

"Do you remember the ssslide at the park?" Green asked with false innocence, moving in close to Dudley.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to try sssliding down our body?"

"Yes! Sweet!" Dudley fist-pumped.

Suddenly, Grey shot upwards, extending his neck as far as it could reach, tilting his head back for every extra inch. Then he opened his jaw as wide as it could go, leaving Dudley hanging in mid-air over his cavernous maw.

"Ready to ssslide down our throat, Dudley?" Green teased in that same faux-innocent voice.

"AAAAAGH! NOOOO! GET ME DOWN FROM HERE!"

"No! Dudley!" Petunia screeched in terror.

Grey snapped his jaw shut, deliberately missing Dudley's toes by inches. He smirked, then brought Dudley safely back to the ground.

"You're alwaysss welcome to ride in our ssstomach, Diddykinsss~!"

The rest of us except Grey chuckled.

"I BET YOU TASTE LIKE A PORK CHOP!"

"If we cooked him, would he self-fry in his fat?"

"Maybe. He would be tasssty."

We chuckled some more.

Grey, meanwhile, shot Petunia a meaningful and not-at-all amused look.

Petunia grabbed Dudley and pulled him back. She grabbed both of his hands and pulled him so that he was looking her in the eye. "Dudley, listen to me. Your cousin is very big and very dangerous right now. I never thought I'd have to say this," — and we could hear the double meaning in that — "but please don't make the dragon angry. Let's go inside now, Diddykins."

Seriously. Our cousin had no bloody sense. I mean, what kind of person — besides an idiot — needs to be told not to upset a dragon?

'Though, there is the school motto,' Blue silently thought to the rest of us. 'So apparently that includes every wizard and witch in the last thousand years to attend here?'

Not one of us could argue that point.

Petunia practically dragged Dudley back inside the castle; despite him readily complying, her long legs easily outpaced Dudley's fat waddle. We let them go without another word and laid our heads down to rest.

The warm sun really felt nice on our scales.

It was a very exhausted and shell-shocked Vernon that Dumbledore eventually located, and he apparently hadn't even been able to find our uncle without Dobby's help. From what we understood, he ran afoul of some of the castle's lesser-known defenses. Whatever they were, they left him pale, clammy, and shivering, but also looking about wildly and jumping at every little noise.

While Dumbledore tended to Vernon, Petunia fussed over him, and Dudley sulked off to the side, a little pop caught our attention. Dobby stood on the back of one of our hands, his big eyes not meeting ours and his hands fidgeting. "Masters Harry Potters, Sirs... Dobby... has a confession to make."

"Dobby, what did you do?"

"Dobby... Dobby knows you asked not to save your life. Dobby wasn't breaking his promise. But Dobby wanted to help make things better." The tiniest hint of a smile cracked through Dobby's visible shame. "Dobby punished bad Uncle Vernon. Dobby had Hogwarts make Harry Potters' bad uncle get lost."

Honestly? We should have been at least a little mad, but Vernon deserved it. We weren't even annoyed; quite the opposite, we found the idea of Uncle Vernon helplessly running in circles rather amusing.

Green chuckled, and even Grey cracked a smile. Green whispered to Dobby, "I do think he needed the exercissse. Good job."

His ears perked up a lot. "Oh, thank you, Master Green Harry Potter, Sir!" He did a little happy dance.

"Hey, Dobby, while you're here," Blue inquired, "mind telling us how you came to work at Hogwarts? I would have thought you'd have gone... well, I'm not sure... Do you like working here?"

He squeaked happily and bobbed his head so fast we thought it might fall off. "Yes, very much! Dobby didn't have a family to care for, but Hogwarts is like a big family! Dobby loves cleaning and cooking for nice children. Dobby also looks forward to cooking and cleaning for Harry Potter, and now there is five of Master Harry Potter to care for!"

We all smiled, even Grey. Yellow spoke, "We're glad that you're happy. Are the other house elves treating you well?"

His ears drooped a little. "They is thinking Dobby is strange. Dobby is a free elf and Dobby is wanting to be paid. The Headmaster does pay Dobby, but the others don't like it."

We quickly had an internal debate. We didn't like that Dobby was upset and shunned for being himself. It reminded us too much of ourselves.

Blue looked at Dobby. "Hypothetically, would either of these be better? If you had access to some money and were ordered to get whatever you need to be comfortable so you can work better? Or if your boss happened to give you gifts at random, regardless of how much you work?"

"House elves are not supposed to be accepting gifts. We is supposed to be humble." He turned and very deliberately stared at Dudley.

Which explained why asking to be paid — basically a periodic gift to people who already were willing to work for free — was upsetting to the other house elves. If we were understanding the subtext right, he was comparing asking to be paid to Dudley's rather extreme selfishness. That was one hell of a stretch in our opinion, but who's to say how exaggerated it felt to Dobby?

Our left arm moved to our right shoulder, where we scratched off a few mithril scales that were already coming loose. We set them in front of us. "Dobby, I'd like to invest these in the upkeep of the school and the comfort of its staff. And if I may request what they're used for, I'd like my scales to be used to make the house elf staff happier, however they see fit to best use them to that end. After all, if the school is cleaner and runs better, my brothers and I will have an easier time learning, yes?"

Each of the scales was about the size of Dobby's head, but the house elf quickly hopped off our hand to pick them all up. He stacked them as if they were dishes and balanced them on his head. The little elf beamed up at us. "Dobby will be making sure we house elves use them well!"

And then he popped away, his laughter persisting in the air for a moment even after he was gone.

The least surprising thing to happen that afternoon was Vernon insisting that his family all go home at once. He'd had had quite enough magic for one day, thank you very much, and was chuffed to bits when Dumbledore readily conceded.

His fear of the castle was still visibly inferior to his fear of us.

The second most surprising thing was Dumbledore's offer to set up regular meetings with us and Petunia. Now that we could go to Hogsmeade this year, it would be a similar arrangement to what other students did some weekends. Part of our surprise was that we were considering his offer. Even if our reasoning was only to keep an eye on Petunia. We had to know if she really were going to change her ways.

But the most surprising thing that happened that afternoon had nothing to do with the morning's chaos. Instead, we think it had everything to do with the scales that we'd given Dobby.

We inferred a lot of this initially by smell alone, and then would only learn a possible reason for why it had happened later in the school year. What happened was this: we'd gone on a flight to sort out our thoughts and get a little something to eat after the Dursleys had left. When we'd come back, we'd descended into the Chamber of Secrets to retrieve that tome McGonagall had given us, only to find that the entire chamber had been scrubbed utterly spotless, with only the scents of a few hundred house elves to explain it.

Even Little-Green, our plushie dragon, had been washed and mended to perfection and set among our (newly cleaned) makeshift bedding.

Apparently, when properly motivated, house elves attacked dirt the way locusts attacked crops or Dudley a buffet. They'd even cleaned the water pools and, as we later figured, had either charmed the pools to be self-cleaning or otherwise cleaned them so religiously when we weren't looking that we couldn't tell the difference.

Our research would later reveal that our "investment" in their working conditions was something of a cultural loophole in the honor-code of house elves. Payment and gifts were (usually) seen as insulting because accepting implied that they needed those things. But investing? That sent a completely different message. It meant, "I am raising the standards I will be holding you to, but I also supply you with tools to help you meet those standards. The rest is up to you." In other words, it was a gift they could accept because the primary benefit wasn't for them. It also was an honest challenge that their pride wouldn't let them fail.

We'd thrown down the gauntlet, metaphorically speaking. The house elves had more than risen to the occasion. And when we, via Dobby, informed them that we were perfectly willing to keep investing in the school as much as it needed, well, we won ourselves an army of zealously loyal house elves that day.

"I am proud of you, Harry," Dumbledore said. "Forgiving your Aunt despite your history with her was a very mature thing to do."

We smiled on the outside, but internally we cringed. The lie of forgiveness tasted like bile on our lips right now. He genuinely seemed to believe we were making amends with Petunia; in reality, it was a ceasefire enforced by threat of dragon and nothing more.

Oh, we had no doubts at all that, should we ever set foot back in Privet Drive, we'd be treated like tyrant kings. They would bow to our wishes but would hate every last minute of it.

Even if, by some divine intervention, Petunia became the perfect mother we'd never had, our dragonhood would hang over everything like an oncoming storm. She'd never be able to fully separate her "love," no matter how real, from her fear. And in that same way, we'd never be able to know for sure if an action was motivated by love or the imitation of it.

But nothing in life was ever certain. We would genuinely extend the olive branch when the time was right.

"Thank you, Professor," Grey said through Yellow's mouth and with Yellow's voice. The lie was disgusting, but it slid off the tongue so easily when Grey was the one saying it. "We wouldn't want to disappoint our mum, and at our size, we can't afford to be a prat either."

"I have had many worried nights since you arrived in the care of Hogwarts," Dumbledore confessed. "You have put a bunch of them to rest today. I am proud of you all."

We died a little bit more on the inside.

Before we knew it, it was the very last day of summer break. Or so the calendar said. In actuality, the five of us were in human form and in the transfiguration classroom, all furiously working on essays for professor McGonagall. Each of us had been given a different-but-related topic to write on, and while the book we'd been studying had contained enough to form basic answers to each, she wanted us to elaborate using knowledge from other sources. It made those essays so much harder, and she wanted two feet of parchment at minimum from each of us.

Thankfully, we had read a lot over the summer; practically all of it was on human transfigurations. This stuff was fresh on our minds. And given that we were so hyper-focused on this one subject, a lot of the texts we'd read in the last few days had been NEWT-level Transfiguration topics. At least theoretically, we felt really knowledgeable about this one specific subject, although we'd reached that point where we also knew just how much more we still had to learn.

On the flip side of the preparedness spectrum, we hadn't done any of our Potions homework for the summer. If we're not mistaken, we may have accidentally eaten it back when we first started changing.

Whoops.

We finished our essays and then sat patiently while Professor McGonagall graded them. It was a long process, as she couldn't multitask like we could. But, after nearly an hour, she stood, walked over to us, and smiled.

"Well, boys, you passed."

"YES!" "Haha!" "No sssurprissse there." "..." "We studied hard."

She held up a hand. We quieted back down.

"It is also my pleasure to say that Albus and I have finished our work on preparing the altered animagus ritual."

"IT'S READY?!" Red yelled excitedly. "YES!"

"I admire your enthusiasm, Red, Harry, but I strongly advise caution and care," McGonagall replied. She summoned a notebook to her hands, then offered it to us; Blue took it and began looking through it. The rest of us continued to listen as McGonagall added, "While Albus and I will be watching over you every step of the way and time is of the essence with this, it would not do to rush things and make careless mistakes. Do you all understand me?"

"YES, PROFESSOR MCGONAGALL!" We all chorused together, idly noting after the fact that we'd unintentionally hit a perfect five-part C-Major chord.

"Good. Study the first section of this tonight and then speak to Professor Sprout tomorrow morning. Tomorrow is a full moon, and you will have to have your mandrake leaves ready by sundown. It'll be a bit tight to work around the Sorting Ceremony and the Feast."

From what Blue was already reading, we could understand why. The normal animagus ritual — which we'd studied in preparation for this — needed you to simply hold out a mandrake leaf under the light of the full moon, and then stick the leaf in your mouth to hold there for a month. This ritual on the other hand had about a dozen spells that needed to be done first, multiple times throughout the night as the moon rose, and not one of them had an incantation shorter than seven words. McGonagall's scribble in the margin explained how she didn't dare simplify the spells, as doing so would lessen the guidance the words imparted on the spell, thereby making it more prone to failure.

The leaf also needed to be dipped in a potion first, though the potion itself looked relatively easy to brew. It basically was a fire protection potion, something we'd learned last year, but it was modified a bit to be unaffected by the addition of mandrake leaves. A good addition, seeing as we were a dragon.

With Professor McGonagall's blessing, we headed off to get started studying the notebook.

It felt a bit weird, knowing that the Hogwarts express was departing in about five minutes and yet for the second year in a row, we weren't on it. Our feelings on the matter were entirely trumped by two other emotions: excitement about finally being able to transform on our own, and anticipation at finally seeing Ron, Hermione, and the other Gryffindors our year again.

There was also the sorting to be looking forward to. We knew basically how it was going to go — everyone to the house their color matched — but we were still dreadfully curious about which house would have the misfortune of being stuck with Grey.

'and here i thought you prats had finally stopped picking on me...'

"Sorry, Grey. We'll try to be better."

Interesting side note: we'd sort of stopped yelling at Grey for his miserableness without consciously choosing to do so, and then we'd all immediately started feeling better about life in general because of it. Old habits were hard to break, but having our internal fears and self-loathing turned external made it really easy to notice when we were dragging ourselves down.

Anyway...

As breakfast was done and we'd returned from our morning flight, we assumed human form and went to visit Professor Sprout at her greenhouses. We hadn't been there the entire time we'd been a dragon mostly because we were worried about sneezing. But now, we needed to risk it, for the ritual insisted we pick our own mandrake leaves.

Our approach slowed as we heard conversation. "...restrictions, I will need extra shrivelfig grown this year. Will your class be able to provide, Pomona?"

"Yes, yes, of course, Severus. I already took into account the budget being a little tight. I told you about the extra greenhouse I was setting up, yes?"

"You did."

"Well, I found a better spot for it the other day, a bit bigger. We've got enough extra room for two or three more species. Let me know what you need and I'll handle getting seeds."

"I will have that list by day's end, Pomona."

"You would have done well with my Badgers. Go on now. Shoo."

Snape exited the greenhouse and immediately assaulted our noses with the scent of a dozen different potions. As a human, that would have been nauseating. As a dragon, well, it was a bit like being assaulted with cake, ice cream, tarts, chocolates, and other wonderful treats, plus as much bacon as you could eat.

Snape stopped in front of us. "Potter."

"Professor Snape."

"Professor Dumbledore informed me of your condition and how you will be attending classes. He seems to think it best to treat you as separate people, and I will abide by that for the most part. However, if one of you should be enough of a dunderhead as to earn a detention with me, you will all be serving it. Control yourselves." He sneered at us.

"If that wasss your attempt at intimidating usss, sssir, then perhapsss you ssshould attempt it when you don't sssmell like a buffet. A treacle tart isss more intimidating than you right now," Green mocked, finishing it off by picking at his teeth and looking entirely disinterested.

If we'd fazed him, he didn't show it in the slightest. "Arrogance doesn't suit you, boy."

Green looked Snape up and down. "Of courssse not. arrogance'sss more your sssize, and you wear it ssso well. We, on the other hand, have a about five hundred tonsss of healthy pride in our abilitiesss." He blew a smoke ring at Snape. "Sssee you in classss, Sssir."

Green turned and walked past Snape. The rest of us followed quickly behind. Though we didn't speak aloud, there was much laughing and hollering in our minds. Because, as Green had said, Snape wasn't intimidating any more. He was just a man who smelled like good food.

Our stomach rumbled. We needed to go hunting again soon.

Potion coated leaves in hand, we walked out to the school grounds. The sun had set, the last of twilight was fading, and the moon was just starting to peak over the horizon. It wasn't quite time to start the first incantations, but it was pretty close.

It was nearing eight o'clock. The moon would be completely visible over the horizon by then. At that point, we'd cast the first spells on the leaves. We'd repeat this every seventy minutes exactly until roughly two o'clock, when the moon was fullest. If absolutely needed, we'd use a device McGonagall had called a Time Turner to ensure we got it perfect every time. As for the interval itself, seventy minutes was seven (the prime number at the heart of the arithmancy for this ritual) times five (the five of us) times two (for the two forms we desired).

That we had a comfortable amount of time to attend the sorting and feast between castings was a pleasant bonus.

The first and last times we cast, we would need to be in our true form; every other time, our disguised forms were fine. Because of that, the plan was to do the first and last casting out on the grounds. After we did the first round, we'd place the leaves in a glass case and fly them up to the astronomy tower on brooms, rather than by wing.

The weather didn't look to be disagreeable, but we had contingencies in place for that too. The problem was the dementors. They'd been here for a while now, but with us having mostly stayed away from the castle or deep inside the Chamber, they hadn't really bothered us before. Now that we were outside, they and the fog they could bring were concerns — small ones at this distance, but concerns nevertheless.

McGonagall and Dumbledore were out here, but so were Flitwick, Sprout, and Snape, interestingly enough. He stood well away from us and attempted to look disinterested in what was going on, an attempt that utterly failed considering his presence here was optional.

We think he just wanted to see us.

For this, rather than using five wands for five casters, we were only using one: Red's. It fit us, as a whole, the best of all. He would be the one guiding our hands, though all five of us would be speaking the incantation.

Four of our bodies vanished. The fifth walked out into the grassy field and transformed. We made sure to look right at Snape, and his reaction would be burned into our minds forever as one of our all-time favorite memories.

The moon was rising. With great care, we first took Red's wand and slipped it into a groove we'd carved in our right index claw. We had a similar groove in each claw on that hand, each meant to hold the wand of the corresponding dragon head, but tonight, only Red's groove contained a wand, one of dragon heartstring and Redwood.

With equally great care, we took the prepared leaves from McGonagall with our other hand. Five leaves for five heads.

Then we reared up, ascending until we stood balanced on our hind legs, our tail serving as a tripod-like support. We held out our left palm towards the east, exposing the leaves to the light of the rising full moon. With our right, we began to weave the magic, waving our wand through a series of motions. Each motion bore a specific meaning, together forming a poem out of rhythm.

We opened our mouths and sang. Five minds, one soul; we sang the incantations, a slow and steady melody of magic in perfect harmony.

It was over before we knew it. Yes, we'd sing the same song of magic five more times tonight, but in the moment, we wished this song hadn't needed to end. Other than a little glow around the leaves, nothing much had visibly happened, but between our sense of smell and the sensation of our own magic in our very soul, we knew we had just performed something profound.

We returned to the ground. The case was ready, so we immediately dumped the leaves inside. After a quick flick to free our wand of its slot, we shifted back to human form once more.

McGonagall and Dumbledore came up to us, bright smiles on both of their faces. A little further back, Flitwick and Sprout were clapping and cheering. And even further back, Snape was simply watching with an unreadable expression.

"Harry, all of you, well done!" Dumbledore exclaimed. "That was perfectly cast! Fantastic job!"

"I hadn't even considered harmonizing your voices," Professor McGonagall remarked. "A brilliant touch. This should help the magic take hold much more smoothly. You have good instincts."

"Minerva," Snape called, a subtle shake in his voice. "Potter's heads were literally in the clouds. Must his ego be raised higher?"

Professor McGonagall huffed and spun about. "As I happen to recall, a certain student of mine earned extra credit for inventing brand-new spells of his own volition. You could at least show some empathy for someone else experiencing new magic for the first time."

Snape grunted, but conceded. He turned to us, nodded curtly, and then spun around and swiftly stalked off.

McGonagall turned back to us. "Pay him no mind. What you did deserves real praise."

We shrugged. Yellow remarked, "Meh, we're not offended. It was actually a little funny."

Our transfiguration professor allowed herself a sly smile at her colleague's expense. "Yes, I suppose it was a touch amusing. Well then, the night is young and the upper years should be congregating soon. Shall we go and join them?"

A/N #1: Holy shit, this story now has over 100k views and 1k followers! Thank you all for the love you've shown me with this little project! I'm so happy you all are enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it.

A/N #2: JKR is known to goof things up, but the start of year three one serious plot hole. See, the Hogwarts Express leaves on September 1st every year, without fail. Lupin was on said Hogwarts Express on said date. September 1st, 1993 was also a full moon. Do you see the problem here?

So, in this story, Lupin didn't ride the train and the Trolley Witch was the one that cast the patronus to ward off the dementors that tried to board the train. Without Harry himself on the train, the Dementor wasn't drawn to Ron and Hermione's compartments, so they've never actually been directly exposed to a Dementor before.