Written on September 1st, 2019

Prologue - The Shrike

The Shrike is something that all wizards and witches know about, a story passed down from parents to children, to their children, and so on down the line. Once common in the old days, they were hunted down until only a few flocks remained worldwide.

With a collective, shared memory, they learned from the experiences of the flocks that had fallen and learned how best to survive in a changing world.

The thing that is important to know about Shrike, is that they are drawn to misery and suffering, to adolescents in states of emotional distress or who are in uncomfortable situations and have been for a long time.

For some reason, they only ever seemed to go after muggleborn, or halfblood wizards and witches, out in the muggle world. Perhaps the wards around magical places deterred them, somehow, although if that was the case, then it clearly wasn't all wards.

Because five of them were currently sitting on the telephone wire outside of Number 4 Privet Drive, feeding there.

That's what Shrikes do, see. They feed on misery and depression, drawing it away, and replace it with hallucinations, as they do so. That was what made Shrikes so dangerous. Not the feeding, but what they used to distract their food.

That was why Harry James Potter, who was already a thoroughly unusual boy in spite of his ordinary looks, was currently running back and forth in his room. Jumping over and scuttling around Dudley's old broken toys, he stared at the door and then turned to scuttle over to the window to look out.

In his head he could feel a tail dragging on the floor, ears swiveling on the top of his head, whiskers twitching for any hint of a cat, or other dangers. His fingers curved and he saw a paw, which he raised to drag over invisible whiskers and down the side of his face.

He thought he was a mouse.

A very tall mouse, it must be said, but still a mouse all the same. And if he was a very tall mouse, then in stood to reason that there must be even larger cats around. The sound of thumping on the stairs as Dudley ran became the sound of an army of hammers marching up to get him and he could already see how it it would look when they swung at him.

His heart was pounding with pure, white panic as the door handle turned, and there, framed in the light stood a giant puppet, fists like gnarled, knotted branched, thin green moss on its head in the place of hair.

Spinning, Harry jumped straight out the window, thinking it was open, then started to run as the world kept shifting, morphing and changing around him.

The Shrikes followed, happy to have found a good food source.

The window hadn't been open.