Harry Potter and the Clockwork Wren

by melanie.deeee

Kidnapped from Hogwarts and forced to enroll at a rival school, Harry Potter finds himself in an unfamiliar and disorienting situation, with few allies and little hope of escape. Will he be able to navigate the labyrinthine halls of Madam Simulacrium's Arcane Academy? Who is to say...?

1. Chapter 1

Harry Potter is dead. At least, that's what the people who kidnapped him want us to believe. In reality, as he was walking across the Hogwarts grounds one misty morning, angsting over his best friend's younger sister, someone gagged his mouth and tied him up with magic rope and threw him in the back of a van. The situation wasn't even as kinky as you might expect. "Where are we going?" Harry shouted at his captors in a muffled voice, which in reality sounded more like "Ffffff ff fffffnfffff ff." "We're going to Madam Simulacrium's Arcane Academy," one of the kidnappers explained from the driver's seat. And then they drove off, leaving Hogwarts behind in a shroud of mist.

Harry must have fallen asleep somewhere on the way, although he could not remember falling asleep, for they arrived much sooner than he had anticipated. Daylight streamed in as the trunk swung open, and two masked kidnappers grabbed Harry by the lapel. He tried his best to resist, tried his hardest to break free of the magic rope, but to no success. The tallest kidnapper (there must have been several, though Harry's estimation of their number changed every time he cared to think about it) slung him over his shoulder, and Harry saw that he was in a lightly-wooded area, and in the distance he could see the outline of an imposing stone wall: Harry presumed it must be Madam Simulacrium's Arcane Academy. But they didn't head toward the wall: there was a small shack nearby, at the heart of the woods. Harry flailed around pathetically, made muffled screams, but the kidnapper didn't even react. It was if Harry were a sack of grain, for all the fight he had in him. The kidnapper, flanked by several fellows, opened the door of the shack, dropping Harry to the ground, a decaying floorboard, eaten through by termites. At the centre of the shack's main room was a chute, wide enough for one person. Harry shook his head ferociously: he was about to be late for his first class of the day, back at Hogwarts, he was growing hysterical. But with a firmness, his kidnappers all grabbed a limb and rushed toward the chute, throwing him in, and Harry slid down and down, still tied up with magic rope, careening toward an unfathomable darkness.