chapter 1

Harry was terrified.

He was only twelve, going on thirteen. And shouldn't Madame Pomfrey been able to detect this and stop it while he'd been in the hospital wing?

Because seriously? This? This thing right here? It had to have been something to do with the Basilisk having bitten him.

He hadn't meant to make eye contact with Mrs Figgs' cat, but it had just happened! Thank god he hadn't been looking at Aunt Petunia when it had spontaneously decided to manifest.

Aunt Petunia had freaked and immediately shoved a pair of sunglasses at him, shrieking at him to send a letter to Those People to make them come and fix it and to not come out of his room until they did.

Harry could still hear the appalled squawk Hedwig had made when she had seen him.

This was five days ago and not only had no one come to help him, Hedwig was still in the wind.

He attempted to run a hand tipped in bronze points through his 'hair', only to be hissed at by his newest full-time companions.

It had taken only perhaps half a second to fully shift in a surge of magic, which was probably why Aunt Petunia had been able to identify what he was and take measures to protect herself so quickly.

Each of his new companions were about the width of his index finger and maybe between 16 and 20 inches long, though it was difficult to tell with how much they moved. Each had a slightly iridescent baby-blue strip down its spine with a matching belly and dark blue-to-black sides with scarlet columns. Each of the little heads were scarlet with pale blue bottom jaws and large eyes made up primarily of large round pupils with thin green irises.

Not to mention that he seemed to have lost all body-hair, including his eyebrows, eyelashes, and pubic hair. His eyebrows were now two lines of rough and ridged scales over his eyes in a shade of dark blue tipped in red, and the eyelashes had somehow morphed into lines of odd, thin mostly-transparent scales that were still curves out and up like his hair-based eyelashes had been, though oddly heavier and of the consistency of fish-scales. He'd been mortified by what he'd found down there, and aside from a quick peek to ensure there weren't any scales or anything else down there, Harry generally avoided thinking about or touching down there.

On the second day, Aunt Petunia had shoved a book through the cat-flap with his meal as he only left his room these days when everyone was asleep, or Aunt Petunia let him know she was going to be downstairs for the next hour while Vernon and Dudley were out. He usually used this time to soak in a bath of near-scalding bathwater since it was pretty much the only thing that could warm him all the way to the bones these days.

Back to the book. It was about snakes and was about the size of an encyclopaedia, going into depth about snake physiology, venom, diet, behaviour and habitats, as well as colour pictures and information on snake families and genus'.

By the time the book was shoved through, Harry had, against everything he knew about them, had to conclude that he was a Gorgon and cold-blooded to boot. The only three known Gorgons were the sisters Medusa, Euryale and Stheno and were most definitely female.

According to the book, the snakes upon his head, his Gorgon-Snakes, were a sub-species of garter-snake known as Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis - California Red-sided Gartersnakes. They weren't considered dangerous to humans, though their venom was described as 'unpleasant', and lived in a wide variety of habitats - forests, mixed woodlands, grassland, chaparral, farmlands, often near ponds, marshes, or streams. They were known to escape into water more often than not and ate anything they could swallow, including adult Pacific newts which were known to be deadly poisonous to most predators. They could also grow up to 55in', though the average was around 36in'.

They were quite cute and constantly squabbled with one another and asked Harry (" Papaa? What'sss that, Papaa?", "Papaa! He nipped me!") about everything they could get their cute little blunt noses into. Aside from the constant babble, the heavy shifting weight that had to have been alleviated by internal magic, he could 'hear' the little snakes' emotions at the back of his mind. They were mostly happy, curious little things, and Harry found himself grudgingly fond of them. Even if he now had to sleep on his stomach, against all instincts, so as not to crush them.

By the third day, Harry had succumb to curiosity, and, with the possibility of being like this forever, investigated down there. His 'Little Harry' had somehow become twins. With spikes. Harry stopped looking in that direction for a very long time, which was made possible as he had also inherited the snake digestive track, where he no longer urinated, but rather defecated once every so often. So far, he'd only gone once. It was surprisingly difficult and could be smelt for several hours, to Harry's eternal embarrassment.

The next day and a half was spent sprawled out in the patch of sunlight in his room, huddled in a nest of blankets and drowsing.

Harry pulled himself out of his musings, absently separating the Gorgon-snakes next to his left ear that were always squabbling (thank god all his snakes were male), when the doorbell rang. A moment later, Hedwig lit upon his windowsill, tired and oddly ruffled, but with an air of satisfaction.

Vaguely, Harry could hear Aunt Petunia talking to woman with a soothing voice laced with an odd accent. A minute or so later, there was a knock on his door.

Having been raised with manners (as opposed to Dudley) Harry stood and hurriedly kicked his nest under the bed. "Come in."

And that was another thing. His voice was, to his ear, both deeper and softer, vibrating in his chest at a level he suspected Aunt Petunia, the only one who interacted with him these days, could not entirely hear, but was also rough and raspy over the low rumbling. Harry honestly was a little embarrassed that that voice that should belong to a big strong man came from his scrawny pre-teen throat.

Apparently the woman on the other side of the door thought so too, because there was a pause before the door opened slowly.

The woman (at least, that was what he thought they were) was dressed in a full-length type of robe he knew was middle-eastern, but did not know the name of, complete with a partially-sheer full-face veil held down by heavy beads and a length of cloth over her hair.

Harry imagined that he must have been a sight to see; a teenage boy with white skin riddled with the scars he had received from Dudley's 'games', injuries from chores, and the many injuries that had scarred from his time at Hogwarts, clad only in baggy jeans, the better wrap-around sunglasses Aunt Petunia had gotten him, and a head full of slender, brightly coloured, excitedly writhing garter-snakes.

The woman swayed and leant on the doorframe faintly, a hand tipped in bronze nails coming up to hover around where her mouth would be under the veil. "Oh, my." She murmured faintly. "I didn't think it was true. This has never happened before…"The woman was suddenly in Harry's face running the almost clawed fingers along his jawline.

The face he can barely see behind the veil and through his dark lenses was angular with a sharp profile and large eyes of a pale colour, though her skin was darker than his own.

"You have his jawline and cheekbones. Do you feel the pull of the sea?"

Harry blinked at her rather odd question, absently wondering who 'he' was. "I've never been to the seaside. There is a large lake beside my school that I like to be close to, but I don't know how to swim and it is often too cold."

She hummed, an oddly thrumming sound, as the hand continued to caress Harry's face. "Your name is Harry, yes?"

Harry hummed his agreement and was both surprised and suspicious that his own hum was a deeper version of hers. "Harry James Potter. And you are?"

The woman finally took back her hands and folded them before her. "My name is Medusa, but you may call me Aunty Em."

Harry swayed back, eyes widening in surprise as she continued.

"We shall need to attend to Gringotts and see if we are closely enough of relation to transfer your guardianship to me, as well as figure out how your shift was triggered." The woman who was, apparently, a millennia old Gorgon paused and gave the impression of frowning. "Usually, when a child is born to a monster parent and a human parent, the child will either be fully monster or fully human, with no chance of middle ground. For a shift to be triggered, there would have had to be extreme circumstances. Did anything occur that you know about?"

Harry shifted back and relaxed a bit when Hedwig fluttered onto his left shoulder and began attempting to preen his snakes, who thought it was some kind of new game. "I was bitten by an ancient basilisk and healed with phoenix tears a few weeks ago. And some of the blood might have gotten into the wounds, but I would have thought it would have occurred weeks ago if that triggered it."

Medusa hummed again. It was a pleasant sound that caused Harry to relax a little more each time. "It was probably the phoenix tears and blood, though your venom is likely vastly more potent than any mere garter-snake's. After all, the phoenix is all about rebirth and immortality. It would have laid dormant while gathering power to fuel the change so as the shift would occur all at once, rather than leaving you helpless for an indeterminable amount of time. The basilisk blood might have linked your genetics more closely to my own while the tears were looking for something to 'fix' you by making you immortal, or at least long lived."

She appeared to tilt her head. "Do you wish to take anything with you or shall we come back for your belongings later?"

Harry hummed. "It would be best to take my belongings now rather than risk coming back and hurting my relatives. I don't like them much, but they are family. And Aunt Petunia has been pretty good about all this, considering."

Medusa hummed again and glanced around the room in a way that made Harry glad he was mildly OCD about his belongings. She appeared to wriggle her nose at his clothes. "Leave the rags. We will get you better clothing along the way."

The former wizard quickly wriggled under his bed to get at his hidden treasures under the loose floorboard and grabbed the two books he had out to read on the way back up and placed them in his trunk, where he grabbed a button-up school shirt and grey school slacks. On second thought, he also snagged his nest-blankets and stuffed them in before closing the trunk.

Then he turned around to find that 'Aunt Em' had disappeared. There was a moment of panic where he instinctively stuck his tongue out to test the air before he registered the sound of the monster-woman speaking to Aunt Petunia downstairs. Glancing around one last time, Harry departed the smallest bedroom with his beloved Hedwig on his shoulder, never to return.

On the way out, Harry absently picked up the slightly glowing iron statue of Mr Tibbles the Kneazle.

According to the Goblins, Medusa was Harry's great-great-great-grandmother through Chrysaor, who married the rain-nymph Kallirrhoe and had two children, Geryon and the lesser known watermaid Lorelai who laid claim to the River Rhine. Lorelai inserted herself into Scandanavia myth and had three daughters, the Rhinemadens, to Ægir, the jotunn sea god of the Asgardian Pantheon. Loralai later bore a fourth, mortal, daughter to a human sailor named Lynkin Holmes. The daughter, named Canna for the water flower, went on to marry Harold Evans, who had two daughters, Petunia and Lily.

Medusa admitted to being surprised that he hadn't got completely aquatic, though it was likely due to both the fire-based phoenix tears (and isn't that an oxymoron) and the grounding basilisk blood. Still, the inclination was there and Harry was already showing signs of water-talents. And unlike 'true' Gorgons, his blood was so completely of powerful healing properties as to be so poisonous that it had to be diluted in milk to stop it burning through the ritual bowl.

Before they left England for the warmer America, Medusa and Harry discretely used a ritual to change Harry's given name enough that just using Harry James Potter was no longer a recognised name in spells.

And that is how Harrier Jameson Evans-Potter avoided the multitude of tracking spells and the Tri-Wizard Tourney Contract.