One of my constantly reoccurring thoughts over the years is a Harry Potter plot. Yeah, yeah. Hear me out.
Little Lion raised by snakes.
Harry Potter, at a young age, has accidental magic. He already has a problem with being kept in a small cupboard and treated like an animal. One day, his accidental magic acts up. He wants to escape. Wants to be smaller so he can hide or escape or scratch and attack back. And suddenly, the world is a whole lot bigger, and he is a whole lot smaller and uncle is looking down on him in shock and rage. So he runs.
Surely he will transform back at some point. Right?
He is hiding, just a small black kitten on the streets. There is so much danger at every turn. He forages and hunts, and that’s how he comes across his family. Someone who can speak to him. The other animals don’t make sense, but he happens upon a snake, and the snake seems pleasantly surprised that he is what it calls a speaker.
Years pass, and he gets a little bigger, but not by much for a cat. And he is still stuck as a kitten. He has learned from the snakes how to hunt, how to survive, and eventually finds out about a secret place where funny looking humans exist, and they have funny looking creatures that they keep. Harry quickly learns to stay on the safe side and avoid the owls, since he looks like a bite sized snack to them, just like the snakes warn him about. But he slowly comes to realize that perhaps, with some of these odd people’s help, he may be able to transform into a person again! It’s been so many years, part of him has begun to forget what it was like to have two legs and hands and to speak human speech instead of the language of hissing snakes.
And the people here, with the funny hats and odd dress ,seem to like him as a black cat, rather than condemn him as a bad omen like they do elsewhere. Some even try to keep him, calling him a ‘familiar’ or some such. He is quick to escape the overly grabby humans.
It’s during one such trip where he is exploring areas in this new and separate world from what he had known, that he ends up in a place where the street sign reads ‘Nocturne Alley.’ There are a lot more spiders to pounce on, but also a lot more suspicious looking people, a few of the nastier ones try to shoot lights at him with vicious sneers and laughter.
It’s while he is hiding under an empty crate after a particularly vicious attack that he hears her voice. Clearly she doesn’t know he can hear what she is saying. Hissing about what a delectable snack he will make as she slithers closer. Talking about squeezing him and enjoying his struggle before she bites him. It’s just as he is turning around to tell her off that he realizes just how BIG the owner of that voice is! Sure, many things are big compared to a kitten, but she is bigger than all of the much more common snakes that he has seen before. She is probably bigger than he is if he ever turned human again!
She doesn’t seem to care that he noticed her, probably because he is in striking distance even if he decided to run. And he has seen snakes striking speed. And her jaw is definitely big enough to end his already far too long and miserable existence.
He does his best, using his knowledge of the pride of snakes from those he has known in the past to charm her. To praise her beauty and size and intelligence. Speaking to her about how he is much too unworthy of a meal for one of her magnificence and beauty. Talks about how he is but a poor, orphaned kitten that has lived on the streets, and no doubt has diseases that would upset her stomach while digesting him. He offers to hunt for her, and bring her only the best treats he can steal from the stupid humans to pay tribute to her. This silences her as she watches him, and he hopes against hope that he has charmed her as he slowly steps back, only to realize that she, while he was talking, has completely encircled him with her long, thick body. To the point he won’t be able to escape with how little room under the container there is, and how thick her coiled body is.
It is just as he has resigned himself to his fate that the creature states that she already had an unusual hatchling, but he is grown, and boring, and doesn’t seem to appreciate her greatness like he should anymore. He will surely regret not paying her any interest when she replaces him with a new hatchling. Not to mention her old hatchling is much larger and able to protect itself, while Harry is small and pitiful and weak. And if it ever decided to leave her or replace her as his queen, she could easily eat him for his insolence.
Harry, rather terrified, agrees to become her hatchling and follow her back to her nest where her other, grown and rather ungrateful hatchling resides.
A hatchling that, he learns, is a human. A human that is arguing with other ‘lesser’ humans (as his new den mother informs him). And is honestly sort of terrifying. He decides quickly that he probably shouldn’t let this human know of his speaking skills until he can trust it, and his snake, not to kill him. After all, some of the things he just heard him talking to those other humans about he probably wasn’t meant to understand. And if he were to find out Harry were also a human stuck as a kitten… he’s probably as good as dead.
Meanwhile, Tom Riddle is somewhat annoyed by his snake, who seems to have brought her snack home with her and has decided to toy with her food rather than eat it. The kitten looks ragged and rather unappetizing and quite honestly petrified with fear. Which is somewhat amusing. Nagini, clearly trying to make him jealous, announces that she found a better hatchling that actually recognizes her beauty and strength. It’s cute, so he plays along and listens to her while the kitten tries to slowly escape before her coils wrap around it and nearly cover it till it lets out the most adorable panicked mew.
He decides to get the kitten the best food, and find a good cleaning charm for pets. At least when she decides to eat the creature she won’t get too sick and will actually be provided with some nutrition. He tells her as much, speaking with her indulgently. It’s rather odd how the kitten clearly starts acting more and more terrified as he speaks. Almost as if it knows what he is saying. Which is silly. It’s just some silly little black cat. Too young to be a predator yet. Just the right size to be prey. He much prefers the feel of smooth scales beneath his fingers, but he can see himself enjoying the kitten fur while it lasts. However long that may be.
Meanwhile, Harry is terrified. But he is sure that if he sticks around in this place long enough, he may learn a few things about this magical world. Specifically, he may find out how to transform back into his human body! If such a thing is even possible. It just kind of stinks that the first human he has ever met that might somewhat understand him he can’t even consider asking for help. Because he has a strong suspicion this human doesn’t like surprises. And the more he stays (the kitten food is amazing and the best stuff he has eaten in a long time. Along with what scraps he steals from the human), the more of the man’s plans for world domination he learns. And people don’t just walk away from finding out stuff like that. Perhaps it’s for the best he stays a kitten.
Idk when or how Harry eventually transforms. All I know is when he does, he is still scrawny, but much bigger than he was. Almost an adult size. Was he stuck as a cat for that long? His speech patterns are odd. It’s hard for him to speak human language because he has become so accustomed to snake language, and when he does remember to speak people, he is much more blunt and to the point and unsettling to normal human speakers. Snake speakers are much more simple to converse with considering he was raised by them.
Meanwhile, Tom is beside himself because he has been housing his enemy that he assumed was dead and created reforms because of for quite some time. After all, if he couldn’t kill the brat, how dare some muggles be the reason his equal died?! How can he just announce to the wizarding world and his followers that the kid who’s death he created his platform on to rebuild himself as a dark lord is alive and was chasing butterflies in a field as a cat for most of his formative years!? And the level of latent magic this kid had to maintain an accidental animal transformation for that many years because he felt unsafe to turn back is outrageous! How does this oblivious little Lion exist, much less how did he survive to his magical majority?!