Inspired by a request, Napoleon (an old movie of a dog who escapes to the outskirts of Australia in a balloon basket) and of course, Harry Potter, I give you: Faolan's Grand Adventure. This story will consist of several short parts that I will try to update weekly as long as it doesn't interfere with the other updates. I have been working on this for so long and it's nearly complete and I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Napoleon (ideas taken from the latter)
Harry watched as his father inflated the final balloon, tied it, and let it float up to join the others. It was finished. His very own balloon basket. He had seen so many hot air balloons in the sky lately that he begged his father to let him make one. Severus had finally agreed, and together, they built a basket, blew up several large balloons, and attached each one to the basket. The basket was tethered down by two ropes coiled around heavy rocks. Boulders really. Harry excitedly jumped up and down as he stared at the colorful masterpiece before him, Severus smiling down at his five-year-old.
"Can I try it?" Harry asked. "Please, please?"
Severus frowned and studied the balloon basket. "Honestly, I don't know if it'll hold your weight. Perhaps as Faolan . . . I've an idea. Go ahead, get in."
Harry squealed and clambered over the side of the woven basket, Severus lifting the boy slightly to put him in safely. Severus untied the ropes. As the man predicted, it didn't rise, even with three hundred magically filled balloons. Harry's forty-two pounds plus the weight of the basket kept the object firmly planted on the ground. However, Severus was sure Faolan's mere nine pounds would have the basket flying off and far away.
"Remember, Harry," Severus said, "you are only allowed in this basket with my supervision and aid and you are not allowed in it as Faolan, understand?"
"Yes, Daddy." Harry nodded then jumped in the basket. "Can I fly now?"
"Settle down, let me see what I can do. And do not jump around like that in the air. Honestly, what is wrong with a regular broom?"
"This looks more fun."
"Wingardium Leviosa," Severus muttered, pointing his wand at the basket. He kept a foot down on one end of a rope as the balloon basket began rising up in the sky slowly. Severus picked up the rope from under his feet as the balloon went over his head and held it firmly in is hands, turning his levitation charm to a hover charm once the balloon was a good twenty feet in the air.
"Daddy, look how high I am!" Harry said, looking down at his father, then around. "I can see the town from up here. There's the fountain in the park."
Severus smiled, but that smile faded when the wind began to pick up, pushing against the basket. Severus tightened his grip as he was forced to slide a bit on the ground from the force. He let go of the rope with one hand to pull out his wand. Slowly, he lowered the basket back down to the ground.
"Aww," Harry whined as the basket hit the ground. "I didn't want to come down yet."
"It's getting windy, son," Severus said as he tied the balloon down to the ground with the ropes, tying the thicker rope to a tree trunk. "We'll try again tomorrow. The balloons are charmed to not deflate for at least three days, so they will be fine. Remember, so not enter it without me."
"Yes, Dad. But we spent all afternoon on that." Harry's lower lip puckered out.
Severus sighed after he finished staking the basket to the ground, ruffling his son's hair. "How about we play as Freyr and Faolan, huh? We'll that make it all better?"
"I guess," Harry sighed.
Severus smirked before shifting down into his tiger animagus, Freyr, a large Siberian tiger. He chuffed as he gently knocked his son to the ground, Harry screaming then laughing. The boy shifted into his tiger form, a small tiger cub, roughly the size of a large house cat. The little ferocious cub snarled at his father, then charged the big cat. Freyr allowed himself to be wrestled to the ground by his son's overly large paws, the cub's baby teeth like needles piercing his ear.
The two wrestled for a while before the hot sun wore them out. Freyr yawned and stretched out on the porch, happy to take a brief nap, glad when Faolan curled up next to him. He wouldn't sleep too deeply, Freyr thought, just enough to rest his muscles . . .
Soon, Freyr was deep in his nap, purring in his rest. Faolan had moved down a step away from the larger tiger, lying down and waiting to see if Freyr would notice the lack of warmth against the cat's side. Freyr didn't even open an eye.
Faolan huffed. He just wasn't in the mood for a nap. He wanted to play. He wanted an adventure.
And the basket was looking very temping.
Faolan looked up at his father, at the basket, then again at his father. What would happen if he climbed in? The basket was tied to a tree, it wasn't going anywhere.
"I'll just take a look," Faolan decided aloud, "besides, the basket is tied down."
Faolan leaped off the stair and trotted over to the basket, sniffing for an easy way in. His father had lifted him into it when he had been human, but that wouldn't work now. He would need a more innovative way to enter the basket now.
"I could climb it . . ." Faolan tilted his head at the vertical structure. It was a long way up at his current height. And he wasn't sure he had his climbing skills down to a science, not with these over-sized paws. Maybe there was another way.
Faolan sniffed around, then spotted the tight rope tied to the tree trunk. The rope was tied to the side of the basket, a thicker weaved portion in the center. It was a short rope compared to the second rope lying in the grass attached to the bottom of the basket, the one Severus held on to while Harry was flying in the basket. Faolan smiled. The rope was his answer, all he had to do was balance his way to the basket, then leap up and over.
Faolan, carefully tested the sturdiness of the rope tied to the tree. He hoped on, wobbling on the rope, the wind throwing him off a bit. He crouched on the rope until he found his balance, his tail flicking. Once he was steady, he inched his way forward, his sharp claws digging into the rope for grip. His balance with these paws wasn't much better than his climbing skills.
Unbeknownst to him, his claws ripped at the thick rope, thinning it more and more as he worked his way up. Finally, he was in front of the basket. He leaped up and over the edge and tumbled to the scratchy floor. Shaking himself out, he smiled as he looked around his surroundings, realizing he couldn't even see over the top of the basket like he could as a human. His smile disappeared.
This wasn't fun. He needed to at least see over the basket. Faolan sighed as he realized he would have to practice his climbing skills after all. He backed up slightly, then ran forward and jumped, clinging to the side wall. His leap got him halfway, now to climb the rest of the way.
As Faolan climbed up, the small stakes in each corner of the basket loosened, the movement the cub caused allowed for the held down sections to wiggle free. The movement also caused the shredded rope holding the basket to the tree to rip more.
Faolan finally reached the top and walked the length of it, enjoying his new view, even if it was only of his yard.
"Wow," he purred. "Everything seems so different now that I'm Faolan. This is weird."
As Faolan circled around on the ledge of the basket, the rope shredded itself more, then snapped. Faolan fell back from the force of the basket pulling free from the stakes in the ground and soared up to the sky.
"Ahh!" Faolan cried, quickly jumping up and climbing up the side once more. Once at the top, he looked over the basket, clinging to the side still and sucked in a breath. He was flying higher and higher away from Snape Manor. "Dad!"
Freyr's head snapped up and the tiger's eyes widened at the sight of his son flying away in the balloon basket. He leaped off the porch and chased after the end of the long rope dragging on the ground, trying to pounce on it.
"Daddy!" Faolan mewed louder as a strong gust of wind shook him off the side again. He hit the bottom of the basket with a grunt but jumped up once more to climb up again. Looking down, he saw he was even higher up.
Below, Freyr continued to chase the rope as more of it rose. He saw a strange creature in the grass out of the corner of his eye, too late to realize it was a firethorn flicker – a rat-sized, spiky dragon that usually surrounded itself in the firethorn trees, eating the fruit and flowers the plant produced.
The dragon hissed at the tiger that nearly trampled it before stabbing Freyr with its stinger tail. Freyr let out a pained yowl and stumbled to the ground before lying motionless in the grass as the basket flew higher over the trees. Glancing up, Freyr gave a weak roar as the fuzzy image of his son in the basket drifted further away.
"Daddy!" Faolan cried, wondering what had happened to his father. And what would happen to him.
Faolan clung to the basket with all his strength as he watched his house disappear. He sniffed, a couple tears leaking from his eyes. He rested his head on the ledge, his ears flattening in fear, his amber eyes big and wide. "Dad," he whimpered, the basket floating among the clouds and gliding off with the wind, far away from Snape Manor and the small town Faolan called home.
So, I tried searching for the perfect beast to stop Freyr from saving his son but could not find one in the Harry Potter universe that would work for my story, so I used an original creation from a novel I am currently working on (very slowly developing as we speak). We will learn more about the Firethorn flicker, which is actually a wingless drake, but it can be a dragon for the sake of the Harry Potter Universe. Anyway, I never really came up with a name for Harry's hometown (at least I don't think I did). Any suggestions?