Before we begin, a few notes:

The first book of this series is complete. I wrote it all in a rush maybe a year or two ago, and readers from the site where I originally posted it say that it's actually a surprisingly good story despite the weird premise and roughness of the first draft. However, I am now in the very slow process of edits and rewrites. Please be patient—as I said, the story is complete, it's not one of the many WIPs that I've abandoned over the years, it's just going to take some time to post.

I have an obsessive knowledge of Harry Potter, but haven't read Animorphs since I was a kid. Wikipedia is helpful for technical details but not so much for detailed characterization. So if I screw something up, I do apologize in advance.

Pairings are mostly undecided, but a few will be non-canon and may include het, slash, or fem-slash at my whimsy. As of the first book, however, there are no pairings (they're only eleven-years-old, after all). And whatever the pairings turn out to be, there shall be no explicit sexy-times at any point in this series.

The only thing that may bump up the rating is the violence, because… yeah. This is about a bunch of young magic-users transforming into wild animals in order to fight a guerilla-style war against a race of alien parasites. Despite the goofy-sounding premise, the story is played completely straight. We're talking horrific injuries and death dealt to and dealt by children, with all the psychological trauma that implies. If you saw the title and thought this would be a tongue-in-cheek parody, sorry bub but this ain't it.

Most importantly, feedback is not only welcome but encouraged! Good, bad, tell me I suck and my mother dresses me funny, I don't care, just please share your thoughts if you do decide to read. Comments are my writer drug.

Anyway, I think that's all for now, so please enjoy. Thank you for reading :)

My name is Harry Potter.

Not very long ago, though it seems like something out of a past life now, I lived with my uncle Vernon, my aunt Petunia and my cousin Dudley. I had a fairly normal life I suppose. I went to school, didn't have any friends, was bullied by my cousin… not necessarily a happy life, but it was normal.

My aunt and uncle despised me, just like they despised my parents. They favored Dudley and treated me like a troublesome pet most of the time, the type of pet that would tear apart the house if they left it there alone and unsupervised, but could embarrass them at any minute if they brought it with them. Of course, sometimes strange, unexplainable things did happen when I was around: Dudley's ugliest hand-me-downs would shrink to toddler-size if I didn't want to wear them, and my hair would grow back overnight after particularly bad haircuts. If I was being chased by Dudley and his gang, I would suddenly find myself somewhere safe with no memory of how I got there… On one particularly noteworthy incident a zoo, I spoke with a Burmese python and the glass covering its habitat suddenly vanished, allowing it to escape from its captivity.

As stupid as it sounds, I honestly thought they were just unusual coincidences. I thought I was the same as all the other children at my school. Strange things happen all the time, after all. It wasn't my fault that they kept happening around me.

But then the letter came.

All my life, I had never been sent mail before. But about a week before my eleventh birthday, a letter addressed to me arrived at the house. Uncle Vernon took the letter and destroyed it before I could read it, but the next day there were more copies of the letter. And the next day there were still more. No matter what uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia did, no matter where they took us, the letters still came.

Finally, a man was sent to deliver the letter personally. I had never seen anything like him. He was a mountain of a man, nearly twice as tall as a regular man and roughly five times as wide, with a face covered by a thick, bushy beard and wild black hair, hands the size of rubbish-bin lids, and feet the size of baby dolphins. He said that his name was Hagrid, and he told me that I was a wizard.

He told me that he worked for a special school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where my parents learned magic when they were my age. And by that time, Hagrid had started a fire in the fireplace using magic and cursed a pig's tail onto my cousin Dudley, so I knew that magic was real. Unsurprisingly, I agreed to go to Hogwarts.

In the wizarding world I learned that when I was only one-year-old, my parents died trying to protect me from an evil wizard called Voldemort, who had been terrorizing the wizarding world for years. I also learned that I was famous because I had somehow survived when Voldemort tried to kill me, reflecting his curse back and destroying him instead; the only mark Voldemort's curse left on me was the lightning-bolt shaped scar on my forehead. Everyone in the wizarding world knew my name and who I was. At Hogwarts, I found where I truly belonged. I found friends.

I also found enemies.

"This is servants' work. I cannot believe they're making us do this," Malfoy drawled. Draco Malfoy is another student at Hogwarts in the same year as me. He has a pointed face, pale skin, sleek golden-blond hair, and pale grey eyes. Like me, he's rather short and skinny compared to most people our age, but that's pretty much our only similarity. He's rich, very spoiled, and a huge snob, so of course he hadn't stopped complaining all night.

We were in the Forbidden Forest, which is apparently far less forbidden than the name implies, because we were there to serve a detention. Hagrid is still one of my good friends at Hogwarts, and it was by trying to help him that I got this detention.

Hagrid loves magical animals. And as far as he's concerned, the more ferocious, dangerous and aggressive the animal, the better. He won a dragon egg during a card game a few months ago, and though keeping dragons as pets was illegal in the wizarding world, Hagrid had always wanted one.

Well, the little dragon that came out of the egg didn't stay little for very long. Did you know that Norwegian Ridgebacks learn how to breathe fire earlier than any other dragon? And did you know that Norwegian Ridgebacks have poisonous fangs?

So obviously Hagrid wouldn't be able to keep the dragon a secret very long. After my friend, Ron Weasley, was bitten by little 'Norbert', another of my friends, Hermione Granger, and I smuggled the dragon out of the school.

Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones who knew about the dragon. Malfoy knew we would try to smuggle it out that night and he attempted to go after us. When he was caught by a teacher, of course he ratted us out. Professor McGonagall didn't believe that we were really getting rid of a dragon, but there was no avoiding the fact that we were all out of bed long after hours.

The three of us, as well as another student in our year, Neville Longbottom, all received detentions. Neville was caught out after hours because he had heard about the dragon and attempted to find and warn Hermione and I that we would be in trouble.

All things considered, you can see why I wasn't in the mood to deal with Malfoy's complaining. "Give it a rest, Malfoy. This is your fault anyway."

"My fault?" sneered Malfoy. "I wasn't the one wandering around with a dragon, now, was I?"

Neville looked between us, confusion on his tear-streaked face. He had been crying most of the way down to the forest. Neville is a round-faced, pudgy boy with dark brownish-blond hair and hazel eyes. Shy, forgetful, and more than a bit of a loser, he's considered by most of Hogwarts to be a crybaby and even a bit dim-witted. Many considered it a mystery how Neville got chosen for Gryffindor house, which was known for students who were brave and daring. "There really was a dragon?" he asked timidly. "But Professor McGonagall said you were lying to trick Malfoy…"

"Of course there was really a dragon, idiot," said Malfoy. "Weasley didn't get that bite on his hand from a schnauzer."

"You don't have to be mean about it," Hermione admonished. A fairly plain-looking girl, Hermione has lots of bushy brown hair, brown eyes, and prominent front teeth. But Hermione is probably the smartest, most knowledgeable person I know. She loves to read and study in the library, and she gets better grades than anyone in our year. You would never guess that her parents were Muggles—that is, people who can't do magic.

"No, but being mean about it does make things more fun," said Malfoy. He put his basket of plants and fungi on the ground and sat down on a fallen tree. "This nonsense is intolerable. First they send us out in the forest in the middle of the night—to punish us for being out of bed after hours, no less!—to find potions ingredients with that oaf, Hagrid, who probably couldn't tell dittany from Devil's Snare—"

"Lay off him, Malfoy," I said angrily, "at least he isn't a prat like you."

"—after it was his dragon that started all this in the first place," Malfoy continued, ignoring me. "And now he's gone and left us here in the middle of the forest to go God knows where…"

"He said we wouldn't be able to go any further if he didn't take care of something first," said Hermione.

"Right," Malfoy said incredulously. "What he's really done is probably snuck off to have a drink from that flask of his. I can't believe they haven't sacked him. He's not even a proper wizard, and he's a drunk."

"Well, I can't blame him if that is what he's doing," I said. "Being around you would drive anyone to drink."

"Funny, I was just about to say the same about you," Malfoy replied.

"Would you just stop complaining for two seconds?" I asked. "If you've really got such a problem with this then you can just go back up to the castle and pack your things. Frankly, school will be a lot better after you're expelled."

Malfoy looked down his nose at me and said, "Potter, I would never do anything in order to make something better for you."

Something rustled through the brush nearby. My heart lurched with surprise. Neville let out a startled cry. Malfoy sat bolt upright, instantly on alert. Hermione drew her wand.

"What on earth was that?" Malfoy hissed. He stood so he could be closer to the group.

We listened intently for several minutes, but we didn't hear the sound again.

"This is insanity. Where is Hagrid? Why hasn't he come back yet?" Malfoy demanded, as if any of us had the answers. "I've had enough of this. We're all going back to the castle and that's that, they won't expel all of us."

"But Hagrid told us to wait here," said Hermione worriedly.

"I wonder where he is," I said. "Should he be taking this long?"

"You don't think something could be wrong, do you?" asked Neville.

I cupped my hand to my mouth to try calling out to Hagrid, but Malfoy grabbed my arm. "Don't! Are you trying to advertize our whereabouts to the wild animals out here? I heard there are werewolves living in this forest."

"But what if he is in trouble?" I asked, reluctant to admit that Draco Malfoy of all people had a good point. I looked in the direction Hagrid had gone. After a brief moment's consideration, I knew what I had to do. "I'm going to look for him."

Neville's eyes widened with fear. Hermione looked half worried about what might happen to me and half exasperated by my apparent death-wish. It was a familiar expression. "But Hagrid told us to—"

"I know what he told us," I said, brushing her off. I set down my basket of plants and drew my wand.

"I'm getting bored of just sitting here," said Malfoy. "I'll go with you."

I grumbled a little, but to be honest I wasn't eager to go into the forest alone. Even if Malfoy's company wasn't exactly enjoyable, it was better than the alternative. "Fine," I said. "I guess if we get attacked by a werewolf, I'll have time to get away while it's eating you."

"The bravery and nobility of Gryffindor house is truly worthy of legend," Malfoy said.

Malfoy is not a Gryffindor. He's a Slytherin, the house known for ambition, cunning, and stuck-up snobs. Gryffindors and Slytherins have been rivals for generations—we were only the latest in a long line of them. Sneaky, underhanded, and generally slimy all around, the Slytherins still like to think that they're superior to the other houses.

As I led the way in the direction Hagrid had gone, Malfoy smirked at Hermione and Neville over his shoulder. "See you later, then, assuming the werewolves don't eat you while we're gone."

"Why do you have to do that?" I asked as we walked easily down the trail Hagrid left behind.

"Did you see Longbottom's face?" Malfoy asked with a grin. "I thought he was going to wet himself. He's just too easy."

I rolled my eyes and decided to ignore him, focusing on the trail ahead. Without an audience, Malfoy eventually gave up talking as well. The forest was dark and more than a little bit spooky beyond the glow of our wands, with thick brambles, inky black shadows, and swirling clouds of fog obscuring anything that might be lurking in the distance, watching us.

We had been walking for a while when Malfoy nearly stumbled over a tree root. That caught my attention and made me look back at him. I had never known Malfoy to be particularly clumsy. I found that he was looking wide-eyed at the forest around us instead of paying attention to the path. He was clearly more frightened of the dangers of the forest than he liked to pretend.

"Scared, Malfoy?"

"You wish," Malfoy sneered.

"Oh, really?" I said. "Not at all afraid of those werewolves you keep talking about? Then what were you looking for?"

Malfoy smirked and arched one of his pale eyebrows at me. "I thought you didn't want to hear what I had to say?"

"I don't, but if you keep looking out there instead of at the path, you're going to trip and break your neck," I said.

"How touching, it almost sounds as though you care," Malfoy said.

I sighed. "Again, I don't. But I'd be the one who had to drag you back to the school."

Malfoy glared petulantly at me. "You know, I may just break my neck out of spite."

"You would," I said.

I turned to continue walking, only to find that there was a tree right in front of me that I could have sworn wasn't there before. I stared at it for a short time. I turned around again to look where we'd come. The path was being slowly encroached by the crawling tendrils of a thorn-covered bush.

"The plants move!" I realized.

"What?" Malfoy turned around to look. "Well, yes," he said, as if it were obvious. "Of course they do. They are Walking Willows and Ambling Brambles, after all. Wait, did you not know that?"

"No," I said. "Should I have?"

"If you paid attention at all in Herbology, perhaps. Or weren't raised by Muggles," he said with a sneer. An expression of alarm appeared on his face. "Wait, do you mean you've been leading the way all this time and you didn't know that the plants here moved? How do you know where we're going?"

I gaped at him, mouth open. "I…"

"Please don't tell me you've gotten us lost!"

"Alright," I said, so I didn't tell him. That didn't stop him from figuring it out, though.

"How on earth have you lived this long and stayed so stupid!" Malfoy shouted.

"Well, why didn't you say anything?" I demanded.

"I thought you knew what you were doing," said Malfoy. "Obviously I won't be making that assumption twice."

"It's not that bad," I said. "We can climb a tree, find out where the castle is, and we'll just head straight in that direction."

"I bet I can climb faster than you," said Malfoy, heading for the tallest tree nearby.

"You'll lose that bet," I said, grabbing a hold of one of the tree's low branches. "I'll get to the top before you."

"I wager three galleons I get to the top, find the castle, and start climbing down before you can even get to the top," Malfoy said.

"You're on," I said. We stopped talking, putting all our focus in climbing as fast as we could. I had plenty of experience in climbing—if it wasn't Dudley and his gang chasing me up a tree, it was Aunt Marge's monster of a bulldog. But Malfoy was clearly no slouch, able to keep up with me and even get ahead of me once.

We reached the top at the same time. A tie still meant that I technically won the bet, but Malfoy didn't seem too annoyed as he handed over three shiny golden galleons. Galleons, along with silver sickles and bronze knuts, are the wizarding world's currency. One galleon is roughly equal to about five pounds.

Before I knew about the wizarding world, all those years I lived in that cupboard under the stairs, I never had any money besides the odd pence or two that I managed to squirrel away without the Dursleys noticing. Little did I know that my parents had left a fortune when they died, waiting for me in the wizarding world. I don't even know how much I have. For all I know, I could even be as rich as Malfoy's family. It certainly looked like a fortune the last time I saw it, piles and piles of gold and silver completely filling an entire vault of Gringotts Bank.

"Will we still be able to tell which way to go when we get down?" Malfoy asked.

I looked at the castle in the distance, then back down at the ground below us. I held up one of my newly won galleons. "If we have a marker."

Carefully, I lined the galleon up with the castle and dropped it. The coin landed softly at the base of the tree in a bed of pine needles and fallen leaves.

"Looks like we'll be able to find it easily when we get down there," I observed. "I can still see it all the way up here."

I started to climb down, but Malfoy nudged my arm. "Wait, let's just stay up here for a moment."

"Wear yourself out trying to keep up with me, did you?"

"Hardly, I just want to have a look around," said Malfoy. "I mean, look at that, Potter."

Gazing out over a sea of trees with mountains rising in the distance, I decided that it wouldn't be so terrible to enjoy the view for a while. Up there the light wasn't blocked out by the forest canopy, allowing us to see much farther and more clearly than we could down below. A far cry from the smell of damp and decay below, up here the air was crisp and cold. The swirling fog didn't seem so ominous and foreboding anymore as it floated over the forest like low-lying clouds. Hogwarts castle stood proudly, its windows alight and glittering; it looked to me much as it had the first night we arrived at the start of term.

And there above us was a sky full of stars, clear and unobstructed. After nearly a year of Astronomy classes it wasn't a new sight, but it was still a beautiful one.

We sat for a time, just silently taking in everything around us. Of course Malfoy was the one to break the silence, though for once he didn't seem as annoying as he could have been.

"There I am," he said, pointing up at the sky.

"What?"

"Do we also need to add Astronomy to the list of classes you pay no attention to?" asked Malfoy. He leaned closer so I could more clearly see where he was pointing. "See, it's the constellation Draco. My stars."

"Oh," I said. It seemed obvious now that he said it that Malfoy had the same name as a constellation, though it hadn't really occurred to me before. I imagined the dragon coiling around Polaris before our eyes.

Because we were both looking up at the stars, we saw another light suddenly appear in the sky. Small, bluish-white and glowing, it looked like a comet at first. But as we watched, it began moving very oddly. It flew one way, then listed to the side, spiraled in yet another direction, and veered wildly in a circle.

"What is that?" Malfoy asked.

I squinted up at the strange object. The more I looked, the more I thought I could see straight lines and forms in the center of the glow. "It doesn't look like a shooting star."

A shiver went up my spine.

Malfoy became very tense beside me. "Potter? … I think it's shooting towards us."

The object was growing larger very quickly and losing altitude. My heart leapt up in my throat. As Malfoy screamed and quickly started to climb down the tree, I remained frozen where I was, unable to move.

"Potter? POTTER!" Malfoy yelled. He reached up and yanked on my hand, finally pulling me out of my frozen state. We scrambled down the tree, putting the speed of our earlier climb to shame and earning more than a few scratches and bruises due to panicked carelessness.

Mere seconds passed before I could feel the massive object's approach pounding through the air. We jumped the last several feet, free-falling as the object crashed into the top of the tree. The tree snapped as easily as if it were a toothpick, not even slowing the object's descent as it ploughed its way deeper into the forest, engulfed in flames.

We hit the ground below, hard. Then we could only cover ourselves as best we could and hope we wouldn't be crushed by the broken trees falling all around us.

After several seconds of chaos, the ground stopped rumbling beneath me and the hail of debris began to slow. I carefully uncurled myself from my defensive posture and looked around.

There had clearly been many close calls. A huge tree had collapsed only a few feet away from where I was crouched. I took a few shuddering breaths and looked myself over for injuries. Beyond a few scrapes and bruises, I seemed alright.

"What was… Malfoy?" I looked around again. Hadn't Malfoy landed right beside me? Where could he have gone? "Malfoy? Where—"

I found him lying motionless on the other side of the fallen tree, blood on his forehead. One of the branches of the tree had clearly struck him as it fell.

"Malfoy, wake up." I shook his shoulder. "Can you hear me? Wake up."

Malfoy groaned and began to move sluggishly. "Head hurts."

"I can't imagine why that would be," I said, relieved that he wasn't dead. "Can you move?"

He started pushing himself up, needing only a little help from me despite seeming wobbly on his feet. Wizards are capable of surviving injuries that would kill a Muggle, and Malfoy was no exception. He wiped some of the blood from his forehead with the back of his wrist.

"Did I fall out of the tree?" he asked.

"It's more like the tree fell on you, really."

Malfoy looked at me with a confused expression on his face, then up at the broken top of the tree. His eyes widened as his attention returned to me. "Where is it? What was that thing?"

We looked at the trail of destruction the strange object had left behind: trees snapped in half or torn right out of the ground, small fires burning throughout, and a trail easily twenty feet wide ploughed through the ground. We couldn't see the object itself, but its bluish-white glow stood in stark contrast with the darkness around us. It would be easy to find.

"Are you alright? Do you think you can walk?" I asked.

Malfoy nodded. "I think so."

Though he staggered on the first few steps, he was able to walk normally before long. We slowly made our way, following the trail left by the falling object. As we went, we found bits of warped metal debris that must have fallen off of the object.

The trail led us to a large gully that might have once been the site of a river. The glow seemed to be coming from there. Carefully, uncertain of what we might find, we approached the edge and looked down.

Crashed into the opposite wall of the gully were the crumpled remains of a spaceship.