Chapter 1: Days of Summer

It was night time. The sun had long since lowered beyond the horizon and the moon was out. Millions of stars twinkled in the velvety night sky, sparkling and glittering like a sea of diamonds. It was a gorgeous scene, a view that many artists had tried to capture for years without success, and one that Harry Potter had seen many many times. Enough times that his memory had managed to pick out all of the constellations with nothing but a glance and could predict each star cycle for the next two years.

Of course, even he had never seen the stars quite like this. Sitting back on his hind legs, his midnight black fur ruffling in the stiff breeze that blew through the clearing in the cope of trees he had taken to hiding himself in, Harry Potter stared up at the night sky through the canopy of trees with glowing green eyes.

Suddenly, without warning, the young man turned jaguar took off like a shot. To any human it would seem as if his body had turned into a blur as he ran through the trees, deftly avoiding every object within his path with great ease.

He moved quickly, his four pawed legs propelling him forward at increasingly greater and greater speeds as he pushed himself far harder than he could as a human. Harry didn't know quite how fast he was going, but he had to be at least moving somewhere around forty, maybe fifty kilometers an hour.

It might not be as fast as his Nimbus 2000, but damn if it wasn't just as exhilarating.

There were many things Harry noticed about this particular animagus form that he took careful note of during this first test run of his newly acquired ability. His body, which had always been quite strong as a human, was nearly ten times more powerful in this animal form. He could feel his leg muscles as they worked on providing him with the propulsion to move forward. They were not even straining despite the incredible speed he was running at. His balance and reaction time was beyond top notch. He could react to anything at a moments notice, jumping over fallen logs, climbing onto trees and tree branches so he could move along the trees themselves without the slightest bit of effort. His sense of smell had been enhanced to the point that he could pick out all of the individual scents in the area and discern the direction they were coming from with ease.

Better still, Harry's vision was sharper than it had ever been. Even in the darkness of the night, surrounded by enough trees that only a modicum of the light from the moon and stars could reach him, Harry could see with perfect clarity of vision. Not even the fast pace he had set as he sped through the small obstacle course of trees changed his perception. There wasn't even any blurring that usually came from moving so fast.

Harry suspected that these intense increases of perception were not just due to his new form, but magical in nature. Magical beyond the fact that he was a wizard turned jaguar. While it was impossible to know just how powerful the senses of a jaguar were since there was no way to communicate with them, Harry did not believe that the species had senses that were this powerful.

Of course, now that he could transform into a jaguar at will, maybe he would be able to speak with jaguars. If anything such a conversation should prove to be interesting.

He did notice a few downsides. His mind, while still very much his own, was a little more animalistic than it was in his human form. It took a good deal more effort than normal to think in a logical manner. The problem was his instincts as a Jaguar were running interference with his much more logically thinking human brain. It created a bit of a problem at first, but Harry had learned that once he let go of his need to study everything about his animagus form, his ability to think became a bit more clear.

Harry stayed outside for several hours, testing his new found animagus form and relishing in the sense of freedom it gave him. There was something to be said about being able to turn into one of the most powerful and fastest felines in the animal kingdom. It was truly one of the most incredible thrilling experiences he'd had so far in his almost twelve years of life.

It wasn't until it was nearly one o'clock in the morning that Harry finally decided to call it quits. Calming his more animalistic instincts, the young Potter heir began to focus, willing his body to change back into his human one.

The event didn't happen slowly, but rather, all at once. His body rippled and morphed, shifting from his Jaguar form to his human one. His long torso became more compact, his legs elongated and his feet changed from paws into normal human feet. His arms and hands experienced much the same, morphing from their four digit paws to five digit hands and his arms into a pair of muscular human arms. The tail sticking out from between his hind legs shrank and moved back into his tail bone. The muzzle on his face became less and less pronounced, becoming more human in less than a second, and the thick, shiny black fur that covered his body disappeared and became a pair of black jeans and a dark green shirt. The transformation was complete.

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