Chapter Text
Harry spent the morning riding a couple of the rollercoasters he had decided on the day before, deciding to skip the VIP lines and go through the regular lines so he could see all of the “story” related stuff they had along the paths. Sitting in the strange little carts as they careened down the twisting, turning tracks actually reminded him of his journeys through Gringotts in their mine carts, though much safer with the restraints, and he left both of the rides with a wide smile, his hair a windswept mess, and looking in markedly better condition than most of the other riders, many who made sudden dashes to the nearby restrooms with their mouths covered.
Noticing the time, Harry headed back to the hotel, spotting Zara standing off to the side. Making his way through the crowd, he looked around for Claire and the Dursleys, growing concerned when he didn't see any of them and wondering what his relatives had managed to do to cause problems this time.
Looking up from her watch, Zara saw Harry and smiled. “Hey, Harry, the others should be here soon. Apparently, the Dursleys decided to have a long lunch and Claire went to collect them.”
Harry rolled his eyes, “Of course they did.”
“Ah, Harry, good afternoon! Did you have fun this morning?”
“Oh, hi, Mr. Masrani...Simon. I did, thank you. The two rollercoasters I went on were amazing! I can’t wait to try them again.”
“Good, I'm glad to hear it. I had been told you had a fondness for things that go fast.”
Harry laughed, though he was curious who had given Simon the information and exactly how much he knew. “Yes, sir, you could say that.”
Vernon’s obnoxious voice reached them before anything else could be said. Harry looked over to see Claire leading his relatives towards them, a carefully blank expression on her face.
“...don’t understand why you had to interrupt our meal!”
Harry could see Claire roll her eyes, most likely having responded to his complaints repeatedly already, if Harry knew Vernon.
“As I told you already, Mr. Dursley, we are on a strict timeline today. I told you this morning when I notified you of the very special arrangements we made for Harry and your family to see one of our enclosures, that is not open to the public, that we would be leaving at 1:30 and your family was to meet us by no later than a quarter after. It’s now 1:45, putting us quite behind schedule as we still have to get to our transportation. If you had told me this morning that you were not interested in the special arrangements that we graciously invited your family to, we would have left you to your day.”
“Muuuum, I want to see the dinosaurs! Why should the freak be able to go and I can’t?!”
Harry watched as Petunia rested a hand on Vernon’s arm, her attempt at stifling whatever abuse was about to spill out of his mouth.
“Of course you’ll get to see the dinosaurs, Duddy. I’m sure they’ll understand that the subpar service at the restaurant made us run late.”
Harry met Claire’s gaze, and it was probably a good thing she wasn’t a witch because he was pretty sure the Dursley’s would have been turned into toads or something by then. As Claire joined the three of them, the Dursleys’ pace restrained by Vernon’s slow waddle, Harry couldn’t help muttering, “Sure we can’t just drop them off in the T-Rex pen instead?”
Zara coughed to cover her laugh as she saw the wicked grin that Claire suddenly sported.
Simon covered his mouth as he snorted a laugh at Harry’s not-quite-innocent question. “Yes, well, the dinosaurs are all given a very specific diet, we wouldn’t want to disturb that, I’m sure.”
“Right...their diet.” Harry gave his relatives an annoyed look, so past ready to be rid of them. “If you three are quite done inconveniencing literally everyone else, maybe we can go. I, at least, appreciate the opportunity the park has given me to see something not available to the public. Instead of bitching about your meal being cut short, that the park is paying for, I might add, which you should have planned to eat earlier, maybe you could thank everybody for extending the offer to you three as well.”
“Listen here, boy…” Vernon finally noticed the strange man standing next to Harry and stood upright, pointing a finger at him. “And who the bloody hell is this? If this is supposed to be such an exclusive opportunity, what’s this foreigner doing here?”
Simon merely raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the blustering man, completely understanding why the ladies and Harry were so eager to get rid of the lot of them.
Harry’s eyes narrowed and he had to resist the urge to swat Vernon’s hand out of the way. “For one thing, you bloody bigot, in case you forgot, we’re all in a foreign country, we’re the fucking foreginers. And secondly, this is Simon Masrani, the owner of the fucking park and the one that paid for your entire trip.” Harry watched gleefully as his words struck home and Vernon went suddenly pale and quiet while Petunia flushed in embarrassment, trying to stammer out apologies.
Setting a careful hand on Harry’s shoulder, feeling how tense the boy was, Simon simply ignored the three and turned his attention instead to Harry and the ladies. “I believe we’ve had our schedule pushed back enough, perhaps we can get on our way now, yes? I wouldn’t want Owen’s training program to be delayed.”
Harry couldn’t stop the wicked grin that he knew he was wearing as the four of them turned and started making their way toward the parking lot at the back of the hotel, knowing that them blatantly ignoring the Dursleys would do more to piss them off than almost anything else he could say at the moment. Not to mention, listening to the three of them huffing and puffing along behind them, filled him with a sadistic glee. Merlin, Claire and Zara were in high heels and were walking in front of all of them.
~~
Once in the parking lot, it was quickly decided to have the Dursleys ride in one SUV with one unfortunate driver, who Simon made a note to give a bonus to afterwards, while the rest of them piled in another. As they made their way down the employee trails through the back of the park, Harry’s three...rescuers? Friends? Could he call them friends? He’d never really had adult friends before… pointed out some of the different administrative buildings they passed, explaining their functions.
Leaning back in his seat, Simon looked over at the excited young man in the front seat, staring eagerly at everything around them. “So, Harry, did Zara explain to you where we’re going?”
“Well, she mentioned we were going to see the Velociraptors, and how the exhibit isn’t open to the public.”
“Yes, and do you know anything about them?” As Harry shook his head, Simon tapped away at his phone before passing it forward to him, the screen showing basic information about the species. “All of our dinosaurs are special, just being what they are, but some, like Rexy, our grande dame from the original park, have a unique place in the hierarchy. The velociraptors...well, they have a… complicated... history with the park.” Simon stared out the window blindly as he thought of the best way to describe them. “The handlers from the original park, as well as Dr. Grant and the rest of the...survivors...all noted that they are incredibly intelligent pack hunters with an almost human-like grasp of logic and spatial awareness that none of the other species truly seem to exhibit, able to figure out how locking mechanisms and doors work. They’re quite amazing, really.”
Harry, unintentionally drawing parallels between things, couldn’t help muttering, “Terrible things, yes, but great,” at the same time as he thought of Aragog and its offspring. Scrolling down the phone as he read over some of their stats, he had to ask, “If they’re so problematic, why breed them at all? Especially if they’re not going to be open to the public to earn any revenue from?”
Simon blinked and looked at Claire and Zara who just kind of laughed and shrugged. They had told him about some of the ideas Harry had come up with, but to see in person the way his mind so casually made connections, was surprising. “Yes, well, we’re studying them, their abilities and their behavior. We’ve only bred the four so far, with Owen and his group in charge of their training and care since they were first hatched.”
“So you’re not really studying them, but how they handle being around humans?” Harry absently thought out loud, his mind far away, back to first year in a small wooden hut with a fire breathing baby dragon and third year with a hippogriff bowing back to him.
Simon started to disagree, off hand, but then realized the teen was essentially correct, “Yes, I suppose so.”
The passengers lapsed into silence, each lost in their own thoughts as they made their way down a forested path, Harry reading more about the creatures he was about to see first hand, thinking of the last time he was at an animal exhibit with the Dursleys, his luck with intelligent fantastical creatures, and wondered how exactly this experience was going to go wrong.
~~
Harry stared out the SUV window as they finally left the tree-lined path, ducking his head slightly to be able to see the top of the huge concrete walls that made up the raptor pen before them. “It’s huge!”
Simon nodded, “Oh, yes. With the four of them, they need plenty of room. With their logic abilities combined with an ability to jump quite high, we had to plan accordingly.
As the vehicles pulled into a parking lot filled with a motorcycle and several jeeps, Harry saw a man exit a side door, his skin as dark and beautiful as the polished ebony of some of the wands in Olivander’s shop. Exiting the vehicle, he looked around curiously as the others joined him, his head tilted slightly as he caught the faint sound of chirping layered over muffled voices, what he had to assume was the Velociraptors he was hearing.
“Ah, Barry, good to see you.”
“Mr. Masrani, ladies, it is good to see you again, my friends. And these must be our special guests?”
Simon once again, gently set his hand on Harry’s shoulder, wondering what had grabbed the boys’ attention, “Yes, this is Harry. And his relatives.” He waved his other hand absently towards the Dursleys.
Barry’s eyebrows winged upwards at the blatant snub, turning a questioning look on Zara who simply mouthed “later” to him. “Yes, well, since it was getting late, we couldn’t keep the girls from their training for too much longer, so Owen has already started. But if you follow me, I will take you up to the catwalk so you can observe.”
Claire turned a pointed look to the Dursleys, Vernon already looking like he was getting ready to bluster about something and Petunia who was resolutely not meeting anyone’s gaze, and gestured them forward.
Harry was once again having a hard time splitting his focus between the rich, accented voice of their guide and that of the dinosaurs he could hear better and better the closer they got to the pen. Too used to ignoring Dudley’s constant whining and Petunia’s placating coddling, Harry followed their guide through a hallway and up a set of stairs before exiting onto a metal walkway some distance above the ground, tilting his head back as the wind rushed around him, ruffling his hair, smiling contentedly for a moment before his relatives’ whining drew a scowl back to his face.
Zara and Claire, noticing the dark look Harry was getting as he stared back at his relatives, each flanked him and led him further down the walkway, forcing the others to follow or be left behind.
Keeping her voice pitched low, Claire stopped about halfway across the platform, pointing down towards the clearing below them. “Owen runs the girls through several different training routines, they’re probably out searching the grounds for something at the moment, but they’ll return here before too much longer.”
Barry chuckled quietly next to them, “Oui, this is one of the places we give them snacks from as rewards, so they know to return here now.”
“Food motivated, huh? Sounds familiar.” Harry gave his cousin an exasperated look as his whining kept getting louder and louder, sounding a lot like he did during their trip to the zoo before Harry’s eleventh birthday.
“Muuuum! I want to see the dinosaurs! They promised we’d see the dinosaurs! Where are they?! Dad, make them show us the dinosaurs!”
Before Harry could respond, Zara laid a gentle hand on his arm, “Let Barry and Mr. Masrani deal with it, Harry. It’ll be okay.”
Barry frowned and looked at the overweight teen acting like a spoiled toddler, “Young man, you need to keep your voice down or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“See here, who are you to speak to my son that way?! We were promised dinosaurs and all I see is a giant pit of dirt. Where are they?”
Barry drew himself up, facing off with the blustering, flushed man. “ I am one of the trainers for the raptors and your son is being disrespectful and loud. I told him politely to keep his voice down as it will distract the raptors from their training. If you cannot obey these simple rules, you will all need to leave.”
Harry, spotting something flash out of the corner of his eye, turned his head, watching as a tall, auburn haired man ducked under the slowly raising gate, his uniform shirt stretched tightly over broad shoulders and reminding him a lot of Bill Weasley with the easy confidence that seemed to surround him as he set a metal bucket full of chopped up meat next to the wall.
Zara giggled softly as she saw the interested look on Harry’s face, “ That’s Owen.”
Blinking, Harry tilted his head, watching as Owen noticed people up on the walkway and looked upwards revealing a very handsome face. “Oh. He is a nummy treat, isn’t he?” Harry didn't even realize he’d spoken the thought out loud until he heard Vernon’s unpleasant voice.
“...a bloody poofter?! Because you weren’t freakish enough already! Come along, Dudley, we’re leaving. Can’t believe they dragged us away from our meal to come stare at some dirt. It’s bad enough we’ve been forced to drag that freak along with us on our trip! Do you know who we are?!”
Harry, finally having enough of just everything, snapped, “You’re nobody ! That’s who you are. You three wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me. This trip was a fucking bribe to get you to give me a place to live for a month because apparently nowhere else in the whole of the fucking UK was considered safe enough for me. For me ! You’re just Harry Potter’s poor Muggle relatives. The only thing special about you is that you’re related to me !”
“Yes, and what good has that done us? Forced to put up with your freaky ways, driven from our home. And after all we did for you, fed you, put a roof over your head…”
“Did for me?! Fed me?! A roof over my head?!” Harry didn’t realize his grasp on his magic had released and it was now flaring out around him, his eyes glowing and a strong wind buffeting everyone on the platform as he stalked toward Vernon, pointing a finger at him. “You fucking abused me, starved me for ten bloody years! You kept me in the cupboard under the stairs! YOU DID NOTHING!”
Zara and Claire were clutching onto each other and the railing as the whole platform began to tremble, startled gasps and tears following the words pouring from the boy they’d come to care so much for. Barry was watching wide-eyed as the small, quiet teen suddenly became the center of a storm, so much rage and hatred pouring from him as he confronted his relatives that he suddenly seemed larger than life.
Simon tried to go to Harry, to distract him in some way, but the winds kept buffeting him back. Giving up, he tried calling to him, “Harry! Harry, you need to calm down! Please, you’re upsetting Zara and Claire!”
“Muuum, make the freak stop! I want to see the dinosaurs! You promised!”
“Dudders, come on, we...we can see the dinosaurs at one of the other exhibits, we need to leave. Now.” Petunia was staring at her nephew, saw what her husband and son didn’t, the sheer amount of power pouring from the teen who carried nothing but hatred towards them, and realized how easy it would be for Lilly’s son to end them.
“No! I want to see these dinosaurs! It’s not fair! You promised! You promised!”
“Even those other freaks don’t want you! Tossing you away like the trash you are!”
“You’re right! I killed their dark lord, I walked to my fucking death for them, and they threw me away just like you’ve always wanted to. So now, you can all go rot together!”
For those watching the four family members, everything seemed to happen at once, a perfect storm of consequences brought on by years of abuse and neglect and, at the same time, overindulgence and an inability to say no.
Vernon raised his hand to slap Harry just as Dudley tugged on Petunia’s frail arm, trying to get his way as he always had. Harry’s magic reacted, throwing Vernon backwards into the solid metal door hard enough to knock him out briefly, making Petunia startle and tumble backwards into the railing on the shaking platform. Dudley, who was still tugging at her arm, lost his grip and tumbled backwards, against the rail, over the rail, and onto the ground below.
The flash of movement he caught out of the corner of his eye, quickly followed by Petunia’s scream, drew Harry’s attention away from Vernon’s collapsed body, finally noticing the commotion going on around him as lights and a siren went off and people with guns started pouring onto the platform. Looking down where everyone was pointing, Harry spotted Dudley on the ground. “Bloody hell!”
Grabbing the railing, he launched himself over it, hearing Zara and Claire’s screams now echoing along with Petunia’s as he threw a wordless cushioning charm at the ground just before he landed in a crouch, wand falling into his hand as he stood protectively over his cousin, flashbacks to the dementors in the tunnel picking at his mind and making his gaze dart around frantically at the slightest motion.
Hearing the chirping/voices he’d relegated to background noise growing closer, he glanced down at the hysterically crying Dudley, somehow completely uninjured barring some minor scrapes and cuts from landing on the coarse dirt and rocks. Shoving the useless lump with his foot, he hissed down at him, “Get up, you useless piece of shit! You’re not even injured! The raptors are almost here, move!”
Unfortunately, that just sent Dudley into even more hysterical tears. Gritting his teeth, Harry glanced down at him, “Get up, get up, get up! Get up before I leave you here for their dinner!” Vaguely, he could hear Petunia’s screaming get even worse after his threat, but now he could hear the four separate voices clearly, could see the flash of color, the shine of an eye or a claw, darting around in the bushes surrounding them. Pack hunters, Simon had said, almost human intelligence. Throwing his hand out, he watched a shimmering shield form around them.
Harry ignored the pleading voices of Zara and Claire, the frantic voices of Simon and Barry and another male voice he didn’t recognize, his focus solely on the single raptor that stepped out of the bushes in front of him, chittering excitedly. Just like with the babies, it took a moment for him to be able to understand what the dinosaur was saying, the “dialect” just enough different from snakes to make it more difficult to understand.
§"...squishy? Not... AlphaSire. Squishy food? Squishy bring noisypigfood for packsisters?”§
Harry snorted as he watched the raptor hop excitedly from foot to foot as she stared down at Dudley. "You really should have kept to your diet, Dudley, they think you're a pig what with all the squealing you're doing. Apparently they really do think you’re dinner.”
When Dudley just managed to squeal and start snottily crying even more, Harry shoved him a little more firmly with his foot. “For Merlin’s sake, shut the fuck up. Seriously, you’re not even hurt. I’ve gotten worse injuries from my fucking Defense teachers.” Turning his attention back to the raptor that was steadily creeping closer, his gaze darting around at the suspiciously still bushes around them, he pointed his wand a little more directly toward the creature. §”Please back away, I don’t want to hurt you. Honestly, you don’t want to eat the noisysquishy, he’s all fat, your stomachs will just hurt afterwards anyway. He’s already making my head hurt. And angrysquishies up there will probably shoot you.”§ Harry pointed toward the platform with his wand where the armed men were aiming towards them.
The raptor, a bright blue streak running down either side like racing stripes on a car he’d seen in one of Dudley’s magazines, chittered angrily up at the platform, making the men shift nervously and the grip on their guns grow tighter. §”Angrysquishy have painsticks. Want to eat them. AlphaSire says no.”§
Harry laughed as she almost seemed to sulk at that last bit, §”Eating squishytwolegs makes other squishies angry. They’ll try to kill you and your packsisters. AlphaSire would get in trouble. AlphaSire feeds you? Lets packsisters hunt?”§
§”Yes, AplhaSire and SquishyBeta feed noisypigfood, let us hunt the small things, give us dead scavengemeat.”§
Harry figured she meant the random small creatures living in the forested pen and the bucket of meat he’d seen Owen carrying earlier. Finally noticing how absolutely quiet it was outside of Dudley’s ridiculous crying, Harry cocked his head, smiling as the raptor did the same. §”Where are packsisters? I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to take noisyweakling away. Make sure angrysquishies don’t attack you. My...packsisters...are scared for me.”§ Harry wasn’t quite sure how to describe friends, but he guessed Zara and Claire were kind of maybe like older sisters?
The raptor in front of him gave a trilling chirp and the bushes rustled around him once more as the other three raptors came prowling out of the bushes, terrified feminine cries echoing overhead. As they lined up all in a row, Harry risked letting his wand drop to his side as he bowed slightly, memories of Buckbeak once more floating back to mind. §”Greetings packsisters. You are most stealthycunning. May I take nosiyweakling away now? I will tell AlphaSire and SquishyBeta to give you real noisypigfood instead.”§
§“You come back? Speak more to packsisters?”§
Thinking of everything that happened in the past few minutes, Harry smiled sadly at the greenish one that had asked. §”If squishy packleader does not drive me away, I would like to.”§
The four chirped agitatedly at each other for a moment, too fast for Harry to understand what they were saying, their next words though had him laughing, a tinge of hysteria creeping into it.
§”We eat packleader, you stay, be packbrother. AlphaSire will feed you too.We teach you how to hunt smallthings.”§
§”I am honored, packsisters. You are kind to notpacksquishy. I will remember.”§ Leave it to Harry’s luck to have a pack of murderous dinosaurs be nicer to him than his own relatives. Speaking of…
Dropping the shield around them with a wave of his hand, he tucked his wand away. Kicking Dudley’s leg, he pointed behind him towards where he’d seen the gate earlier. “Get up, you useless waste of space. They’re letting you go, they’d rather have a real pig. Good thing you managed to get rid of that tail Hagrid gave you after all. Of course, if you don’t fucking move I can fix that!” A nasty smile, totally worthy of his late potion’s professor, tilted his lips as Dudley yelped and skittered backwards towards the gate, one hand trying to cover his ass.
With his attention on Dudley’s cowering form skittering backwards and the raptors’ chirping behind him as they laughed at the noisyweaklingprey, it took him a minute to realize that the gate had opened and someone had stepped through until Dudley scooted his way right into a set of sturdy, denim encased legs. Harry let his gaze slide up from solid looking thighs, a flat stomach, and broad shoulders to a warily curious green gaze darting between Harry and the raptors behind him. Owen. AlphaSire if what the raptors were happily chirping behind him was right. He was even better looking up close. “Oh. Wow.”