Harry Potter Has Antlers
“Stop that, you’re making me itch,” Draco snaps one Tuesday morning over breakfast.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t even notice…” Harry replies, pulling his fingers out of his hair where he’d been absentmindedly scratching the side of his head.
“Harry, I swear to Salazar,” Draco growls ten minutes later when his fingers find their way back, worrying at the same spot on his scalp that’s been tingling for days.
“Sorry! I honestly don’t know that I’m doing it!”
“I think you need to go see…someone. A Healer, maybe. You’ve been picking at that spot for too long and I’m starting to worry that whatever you’ve got is serious.
“I’ve not got anything. And I don’t need to go see anyone, I have a live-in Healer! I’m just…stressed. Sorry. I’ll try to pay more attention.”
*
“Harry, I don’t think this is just stress,” Draco says one evening as Harry sits before him in the bathroom on a low stool. He has a comb in his hands and is carefully parting the hair around a noticeable lump under Harry’s scalp. When he prods at it with a careful finger it seems to push back out against Harry’s skin.
“What? What do you mean? What does it look like, I can’t see…” Harry’s voice is panicked and high-pitched.
“You’re seriously telling me you’ve been feeling this for weeks and it hasn’t occurred to you to do anything about it.”
“Do anything about what?! I don’t know, I’ve been so busy—the new school year, and McGonnagal’s curriculum reforms, and…” He lifts his right hand and begins picking at the same spot, but on the other side of his head.
Draco shifts around and begins to part the hair there. There’s a lump on this side, too, though it’s much smaller than the first. “Harry, something’s…happening. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Seen anything like what?! Draco—you work on the curse damage ward, you’ve seen literally everything!”
“Not this…” Draco trails off as he spins Harry around and hands him a small mirror.
“What…the fuck,” Harry whispers as he brings the lump into view. The hair on top of it and around it has fallen out, leaving it bare. He can see where his skin strains, pale around whatever is underneath. When he looks closely, he can see delicate threads of magic zapping across his flesh like a shimmery spider’s web.
*
“ARGH! Merlin, fuck!” Harry jolts up in bed, sending Draco, who had been sleeping peacefully on his chest, toppling onto the floor with a loud thud.
Draco groans and rubs his shoulder, “Whassit? Harry, w’appened? S’nightmare?” He asks, sleepily.
“Draco, I think something’s wrong.” He’d been woken from a deep sleep by a sharp, shooting pain, and now his head is throbbing. He carefully pokes at the larger lump on his head. His flesh is tender and hot, and his fingers come away damp.
“Lumos,” Draco mutters, and the blood on Harry’s fingers glimmers in the low light. He feels a warm bead of it begin to trickle around his ear.
“That’s it. Mungo’s. Now.” Draco hauls himself off the floor and begins to pull on trousers and one of Harry’s old Canons sweatshirts.
Harry struggles into a pair of Draco’s skinny jeans and an old Weasley jumper, even the gentle brush of time-worn wool against his scalp unbearable. Underneath the warmth of swelling around the wound is a different kind of heat—something magical. Another drop of blood rolls over his scalp and down the side of his face. He starts to feel woozy.
*
“You have NO idea?!” Harry paces back and forth around the small St. Mungo’s examination room.
“Dear, for the hundredth time, have a seat,” Draco says, impatiently.
“Well, we’ve never seen anything like this, Mr. Potter.” The nurse flips frantically through Harry’s substantial chart, like he might find the answer buried in there somewhere.
“I find it very hard to believe you’ve never seen anything even close to this. There has to be a…a bone growth curse, or maybe I took a tainted batch of Pepper Up, or…”
“I know, I really am sorry, Mr. Potter, but trying to diagnose you would be irresponsible of me. I don’t have enough information and none of the tests are showing anything besides a slight magical anomaly-”
“-slight magical anomaly?!” Harry drops into the chair next to Draco.
“I will pass your chart along to the Chief Healer and they can do some research, perhaps.”
“What do we do about the open wound on his head in the meantime?!” Draco has one hand curled posessively around Harry’s forearm.
“Right, yes. Of course, Healer Malfoy. Well, we can clean it up and put on some salve and bandages before we send you home. If it doesn’t seem to be healing in the next week or so, you’ll have to come back in.”
“Bloody hell,” Harry says. The throbbing in his head hasn’t lessened. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
*
Draco examines Harry’s head every morning and every evening before he leaves for Hogwarts. The salve the Healers gave him helps prevent bleeding and decreases the swelling around the wounds. Wounds, plural—because now the lump on the other side of his head has decided to open. If he takes a pain potion regularly, the throbbing is bearable enough that he can muddle through his lessons and stagger back home through the floo in his office.
He’s started wearing his tall, pointed hat every day to hide his strange growths. Draco teases him every evening about how much more of a disaster it makes his hair.
The situation is…progressing. Although the pain is beginning to fade, the lumps—which seem to be getting larger by the day—have begun itching again. Badly. Scratching them with his fingers isn’t satisfying at all, and now that they’ve begun to sprout a fine layer of soft fuzz touching them turns his stomach.
“‘Arry? S’at you? Are you arright?” Hagrid asks in a worried tone as he crashes through the undergrowth at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
Harry freezes, bent at the waist with the side of his head pressed firmly against the rough bark of a tree. As he straightens, he can’t help but scrape the lump on his head firmly against the tree again, shuddering at the relief it gives him.
“H-hagrid, I…” Harry fumbles for his hat, which slips through his fingertips and onto the forest floor. Hagrid watches, his face screwed up in concern and curiosity, as Harry leans down then tries to tug his hat back on.
“I just came ter bring you this,” Hagrid finally says, “saw ye come out here and I figured, well, I didn’t want ter embarrass ye, but I think this will help yer, eh, furry little problem.” He passes Harry a small tin with something scrawled on the top.
“Antler salve?” Harry stares down at the little tin with a dumbfounded look on his face.
“Use it on the jackalopes every spring. Takes the velvet right off their pedicles, stimulates the growth an’ all.
“Takes off the velvet…” Harry whispers, still staring at the tin.
“That… s’what you need, right? Why you’re out here scratchin’ against the trees? I see it every year, the ‘lopes do the exact same.”
“I have…ANTLERS?!” Harry yells.
Hagrid pulls off Harry’s hat that is now sitting jauntily perched between the two lumps on his head.
“Well, yeah, y’didn’t know?”
*
“Harry, Draco and I think we’ve found something.” Hermione is seated on their office floor, ensconced in a fortress of books, most of which look centuries old.
“You think?”
“Well, we have but…with magic this old, it’s hard to be sure of the origins of different theories and almost impossible to cross-check sources.”
“Reassuring.” Harry idly rubs at the base of his left antler. Hagrid had been right about his antler salve. After Harry got over himself and fished it out of the bottom of the drawer he hid it in, it soothed his discomfort and helped his antlers harden and lengthen rapidly. Now, they’re each about a foot long. The left antler has two small tines and the right antler has a single tine that’s quite pointy on the end and has nearly caught Draco in the eye on more than one occasion.
Draco and Hermione share a private glance, and Draco strides across the office to take Harry’s hand in his own.
“Harry, love, we think it has to do with your father.”
“My…my father? What does it have to do with my father?”
“Well, Harry, you know your dad was an animagus,” Hermione starts flipping through a large book as she speaks.
“Yes…”
“Well, we did some digging—”
“—and talked to Mcgonnagal—” Draco interrupts.
“You talked to—” Harry starts, face twisting into an angry frown.
“Harry, the day that your father and his friends completed the animagus ritual,” Hermione interjects loudly, “is also the date of a statistically significant astronomical event. That night, in addition to a major lightning storm, there was a total lunar eclipse and the first appearance of a new periodic comet visible in the sky over Scotland.”
“So, I’m growing antlers because my animagus dad had statistically bad timing?”
“Well, we think that’s part of the reason. Elemental magic, like the animagus ritual, is highly influenced by the moon and other astronomical phenomena.”
“Okay, so if that’s only part of the reason…”
“Harry,” Draco says, flicking away a small spider trying to start a web between the tines on Harry’s left antler. “We’ve also found writing from the early thirteenth century that suggests the power of the animagus ritual can be magnified exponentially if done by wix in pairs. Even more-so in groups. Your dad, he carried out the ritual with Sirius and Peter Pettigrew. They went through all the steps together, shared ingredients, probably used leaves from the same Mandrake plant, even. They likely ingested the final potion at the same time, and quite close to one another, physically. The concentration of elemental magic would have been…well…astronomical.” Draco chuckles quietly at his own bad joke. Harry can’t help but smile.
“Basically, Harry,” Hermione continues in a gentler voice, “the magic was strong enough to alter your father’s magical core to the degree that elements of his animagus form became heritable.”
“Elements like antlers,” Harry sighs.
“Elements like antlers,” Draco confirms. “The stars just happened to align for him, literally, to enable something that has a one-in-a-million chance of occurring. Seems to be a thing with you, doesn’t it?”
“So…” Harry screws up his face in concentration, “if Padfoot had ever had children…”
“Yes. They would have had an unnatural proclivity for big sticks,” Draco deadpans.
“This is mad,” Harry breathes, scrubbing his face with one hand. “What do we do about it?”
Draco and Hermione share another anxious glance. “Well, technically, we could remove the antlers, but they’ll most likely grow back next spring. Just like normal deer antlers do. And it wouldn’t be very pleasant.” Hermione’s looking at him like he’s a small, anxious child.
“There’s no way to…to cut them off at the root, or something?”
“‘Fraid they don’t work like that, love.” Draco is thankfully not looking at Harry like he might throw a tantrum at any moment.
“So…”
“So. You have antlers. Harry Potter has antlers. Harry Potter will always have antlers. So far as we know,” Draco says decidedly.
*
Harry’s antlers were nearly four feet across from tip to tip and they’d developed several more tines per side before the right one dropped for the year. His remaining antler has dulled down from a fresh bone-white to a flat, brownish yellow and has grown hard, but slightly porous.
Harry stares at himself in the full length mirror in his and Draco’s bedroom, fingers trailing almost reverently over his remaining antler. It won’t be long before this one drops, too. Draco’s already claimed them, convinced they’ll make an excellent spoon rack for his potions lab at St. Mungo’s.
He’d been so self-conscious about them at first, trying to camouflage them with hats and headscarves, but they’d grown on him over time, and eventually he and everyone else got used to the sight of an antlered Harry Potter strolling the halls of Hogwarts. Students certainly see weirder things in those corridors on a weekly basis.
“Uh oh, that’s the face of self-pity,’ Draco says, coming up behind Harry to wrap his arms around Harry’s waist and rest his chin carefully on his right shoulder.
“Not self-pity. I was just thinking that, sure, it’s…inconvenient to suddenly have antlers sprout out of your head, but they’re a part of my dad. I don’t have a lot of things that were just his. Good things.”
Draco presses several small kisses behind Harry’s ear. “Your godfather, too. I mean, it wouldn’t have happened if your dad’s friends didn’t care for each other so much that they’d invest months of their lives in some barmy ancient magic ritual that has a very high chance of failure. Your antlers happened because your dad was so loved and loved others so well.”
“Yeah,” Harry whispers.
“You’re just as loved, you know,” Draco murmurs, unfastening the buttons he sewed down the back of all of Harry’s shirts so he can undress without tearing his clothes to shreds or cracking a tine. He presses another cluster of small kisses into the nape of Harry’s neck.
“I know,” Harry replies, leaning back into Draco’s touch.