Chapter 2:
The Strangest Dream
Harry was in the midst of a dream most strange.
It was still unpleasant, just like all his dreams, but at least this one was interesting. His surroundings were wretched and reeked of death and burning rubber, but his company was something to look at.
A younger Hermione with platinum blonde - though still bushy - hair lead a Buddhist monk at wand-point. He noted a significant amount of makeup on her too, which was very unlike his friend, but then again his friend would never have bleached her hair either so he didn't question his overly imaginative subconscious on this idiosyncrasy.
The only other person he recognized was Dudley, who had really taken to Aunt Petunia's diet. And apparently died his hair black. Honestly, he looked great, not that he would ever tell his pink-cheeked cousin as much. The rifle was a frightening addition. He remembered Vernon owning a pistol for the shooting range and a shotgun for home defense, but what Dudley carried looked significantly more suited to a war zone.
His other companions were rather cool. A redheaded girl with a litany of deep scars on her face and arms that looked to be from third degree burns and fencing accidents, yet who was still rather pretty. There was also a burly brunette who looked like he could handle a Quidditch goal post. The last one looked a bit like that Greengrass girl, the older one, but with wider shoulders, narrower hips and who may or may not have been a boy.
"Norberta, Cedric. Get him up. I'll robe him." The possibly sex-swapped Daphne ordered.
The red-haired crash-test dummy and prospective Keeper picked him up by his elbows. It was as they did so that he realized he was completely starkers. The blonde girly-boy waved his wand and remedied that, conjuring a dark robe around Harry's frame. It fit as snuggly as a full-body turtleneck sweater.
"Thank you." Harry managed to slur to the effeminate boy.
He nodded to Harry.
"Don't mention it. But we don't have time for pleasantries, introductions or explanations." He said.
"Yeah, let's go!" Bossed Hermione.
Norberta and Cedric practically dragged him along the igneous floor towards what he hoped was an exit. The holes in the ground to either side of them were not pleasant to look into and he very much wanted to get out of this place.
He managed to find his feet as the door came into view but still needed to be propped up by the pair that had pulled him out of that odd metal box, which he just now registered they had sunken into one of those the pits - or perhaps back into one? It was when they reached a thin metal door that Harry tried to make sense of things.
"What spell are you using on the bald gentleman there, Hermione?" He asked the small girl, sidestepping her makeover and plastic surgery binge.
His companions glanced at each other in confusion before they seemed to agree that the youngest member should answer.
"The imperius curse." She answered.
"That's what it looked like." Harry said with a nod. "And um, another question, why is the eleven year-old using the imperius curse on an old man?"
"Well we all tried casting it but hers was the only one to stick." The bulky boy, Cedric, said from his side.
"Ah." Harry conceded. "That makes sense."
It did not make sense. But he chalked up their complete disregard for committing one of the most atrocious felonies possible to the general weirdness of dreams.
"And I'm twelve, thank you very much!"
It wasn't until the adrenaline and muscle soreness from running up several flights of stairs sunk in that he had the first inclination that he might not be hallucinating all of this. It was as the familiar taste of blood in his lungs from exertion that he shed the last ebbs of dreariness and learned to walk on his own two feet again.
"We're still not running up against much resistance." The blonde girl who looked like Hermione said.
"Smack her!" Norberta ordered.
The in-shape Dudley complied, rapping her hard on the back of the head for jinxing their luck. Harry was already starting to like these guys, who he supposed were rescuing him and probably deserved to be liked regardless.
"Is your dad bringing the Diricrawler around for evac?" The skinny blonde boy asked Dudley.
His cousin glanced to their Cedric who pushed a button on his over-sized watch. The action elicited a light show from the device. He saw what looked like a three-dimensional topographical map depicting a mountain range with a large red and gold dot at the center. Moving fast towards the Gryffindor dot was an even larger blue and bronze one.
Harry was loving the Hogwarts color scheme.
"That's an affirmative." Cedric confirmed. "ETA, two minutes."
They went back to sprinting up flights of stairs, occasionally stopping for Dudley to peer behind doors or down pitch-black hallways with the scope of his rifle. The group worked as a well-oiled machine, even with the two dead weights they were dragging along or pushing ahead at wand-point.
At long last they reached a straighter staircase, as opposed to the slightly spiraling ones they'd been climbing for what felt like hours. Harry could outright taste the fresh air wafting in through the crack of light from the open doorway at the top. They hurried past two - hopefully unconscious - guards who wore armor similar in design to the box he'd been pulled out of and burst through the gaping archway to the wide open world.
The sight that greeted them took Harry's breath away.
Rolling hills stretched on to the end of the earth, coating in lush, green grass and pimpled with small rocky outcroppings separated by the occasional flat plains. He looked to the horizon where the ocean of green mixed with the ocean of blue above and, for just a moment, felt like he might float away into the abyss like his poor, poor aunt Marge.
This wasn't Scotland. Somehow he knew that, despite the similarities, this was some different land entirely. His first guess was American midwest, or maybe New Zealand? Either way it was heavenly and he wished he could spend the rest of his life there in solitude and peace.
Probably no chance of that.
"Thirty seconds." Cedric said from behind him.
Harry turned to look at him and noticed the single monolithic standing-stone in place of the archway they'd just exited. He already knew that trick from platform 9 and 3/4 though, and so he turned his sights to where his rescuers stared.
Something was definitely moving towards them. It was big. It was grey. It was damned ugly.
For a moment he wondered if Mr Weasley had enchanted a dumpster truck to fly and attached short stubby wings to the sides. For another moment he thought it might be one of those big ugly military helicopters with a snow plow latched onto the front. Whatever it was, it certainly looked like a dodo bird, which he still couldn't bring himself to call by their wizarding name. The name "Diricrawler" suited it nicely.
The porthole-studded dumpster truck landed mere feet away from them without kicking up a single blade of grass or errant speck of dust. It clearly didn't propel itself the same way as a helicopter, but what those blue, light-emitting spheres on the wings were, eluded Harry.
The butt of the Diricrawler, which now faced them, folded open like the plank of a space-ship, creating a nice platform for them to climb.
All Harry could think at the sight of the man at the mouth of the ship was that Uncle Vernon must have hit the steroids. And hit them hard. The Dursley patriarch's skin absolutely rippled with muscles, and though he couldn't see his chest behind the tactical - and likely bulletproof - vest he supposed that it and the rest of his body matched his arms and shoulders.
Harry didn't like the distinctly purple hue to his face at the moment.
He opened his mouth to scream at Dudley of all people but froze when his eyes landed on Harry, who knew what to expect when his uncle was in such a state. Instead of the normal outrage, however, the once-obese man did his trademarked fish impression, which would be amusing in any other situation.
He kept glancing, dumbstruck, between Harry and the other youth before seeming to come to a conclusion.
"Okay, you're all still grounded as all hell." He told them. "But good job."
It was upon hearing his voice that something finally clicked, and Harry understood. Crazy as it was, he understood.
"Dudley?" Harry all but whispered.
"Yeah?" The buff man and rifle-laden boy answered as one.
Harry glanced between Dudley and his, he gagged to think if the word, son in a good imitation of Dudley Senior's earlier fish impression.
"You've been asleep for a long time, Cousin." Dudley Senior said in what might have been a sad voice. "Everything will be explained soon enough. For now I'm going to have to ask all of you to GET YOUR ARSES INTO DODGE!"
Ah. That was more like it.
The other five minors jumped at the sudden outburst and filed in as quickly as their legs could carry them, which was much faster than Harry's aching knees could keep up with. Dudley Senior snatched the rifle out of Junior's hands and knocked the monk unconscious with the butt.
Harry found a seat between Cedric and Norberta and fumbled with the buckles as his cousin closed the hatch.
"We are clear for takeoff!" The imposing man yelled into a speaker on the wall.
The vessel lurched and did exactly that. Harry was impressed to see that the elder Dudley didn't so much as stumble as he walked to a work-bench in the corner. Harry took in the interior of the Diricrawler and aside from clearly being magically expanded it was indistinguishable from what an army dropship's interior should look like.
He watched in silence as his cousin took apart the assault rifle with practiced ease, reducing it to a pile of small parts in mere seconds. He grumbled to himself about burnt-out runes and magic residue as he tossed aside what looked like smoking granite lipstick tubes.
The entire scene was too bizarre for words.
Staring through the nearest porthole Harry watched the landscapes fly past them. The sight helped calm him down, so he did that for a few minutes. He was thankful that the other children, whose identities he was already making educated guesses at, remained silent throughout the trip. It was the kind of silence he knew well from guilty detentions with McGonagall.
"How long have I been asleep?" Harry eventually asked.
Dudley Senior sighed.
"I'm not sure if I'm the best person to be explaining everything to you, Harry." He confessed. "And I'm proof-positive that this isn't the right place for it. I promise you, we're going to the right place now and the right people are there waiting for us."
Harry turned to look at the man as he spoke but could only nod at the non-answer.
"What's up with the monk?" He broached, glancing to the unconscious figure on the floor.
"We have to wipe his memory and get him home." Hermione, scratch that, Hermione's DAUGHTER told him.
"Yeah." The other girl, obviously a Weasley, added. "Can't have Moldywart knowing we've rescued you."
That at least got a chuckle out of him. It was childish and silly, but he liked his enemies' new nickname.
A moment later a woman's voice rang over the speakers.
"We are out of detection range." The voice said.
Dudley Senior hit a button on the wall and leaned into one of the speakers.
"All right. Prepare for Portkey launch." He said.
He stood up and motioned for Harry to follow. It took him a few tries to unbuckle himself and get up from his seat, but he was soon following the man past a pair of shower stalls, bathrooms and sleeping quarters, each marked for the respective sex they were built for. There was also an impressively large mess hall and entertainment center filled with books and electronics along the way, making this ship by far the most impressive example of expansion magic Harry had ever seen.
Soon enough they reached the cockpit and Dudley motioned him inside where Harry met the pilot, likely the woman who called over the speaker.
She looked between Harry and Dudley, who shook his head and instructed her to take them home.
A series of complicated switches and knobs later and what looked like a ball of blue plasma shot out from some part of the ship. The ball exploded into a large disk of the same color and consistency directly ahead of them.
They did not slow down as they approached the disk, and Harry braced himself against a safety handle on the wall as they slammed into it.
The familiar sensation of traveling by Portkey enveloped him, but for once it was only a mild sensation. This was much more bearable. When they exited the tunnel through space they found themselves flying over a vast expanse of skyscrapers and industrial monoliths.
Each of the glistening towers boasted a checkerboard of televised billboards and holograms, made all the more difficult to read by the swarm of other flying vehicles in the air. Harry tried to spot one uglier than the Diricrawler but such a thing must not exist.
"Welcome, Harry. To Hong Kong" Dudley said in a manner way to similar to Hagrid's introduction of Diagon Alley years earlier.
The Diricrawler set down in one of the mountains overlooking the great Chinese city almost a half-hour later.
Their vessel lurched as it sank into a square, concrete landing. It was surrounded on all sides by foliage like that of a rainforest. Harry would never have known Hong Kong was so tropical. Or humid.
Just past a concrete path leading from a metal gate was a Victorian house, looking more suited to the Mexican desert than a modern cityscape. It was rather nice though, maybe twice as big as the Burrow. Blocking the path were six none-too-happy parents.
Harry had zero difficulty assigning each pair to the other teens, and figured the two blondes must be siblings based on the lack of a fourth couple to match them too. He wondered where or who Dudley's mother could be.
Dudley Sr motioned for Harry to wait inside as he death-marched the others down the ramp. Harry couldn't make out the words of the tongue lashing they received, but he caught the sentiment. Cedric, Norberta, Junior and the other two remained perfectly silent as they were told their punishment and Harry had to admit, they were made of tougher stuff than most to keep their composure through all of that.
At long last, Dudley Senior motioned for Harry to come down. He felt like a surprise birthday cake being wheeled out for display. The reaction his appearance got was to be expected.
He took their slack-jawed shock as an opportunity to look them over and he recognized four of them instantly.
Norberta's father was a much older Charlie Weasley, which he'd already guessed because "duh". His wife was a kindly looking woman with ear length brown hair and pearl earrings. He had never met her before.
Cedric's parents were none other than his old Quidditch captain and who stood next to the former Hufflepuff chaser, Heidi. Or was it Tamsin? He never could tell them apart.
Finally, his eyes landed on Hermione, and his heart went out to her as the waterworks started. He'd only had occasion to meet her parents in Diagon Alley once, and yet she looked exactly like her mother. It was frightening.
But who the hell was the man standing beside her?
He vaguely resembled Fleur's father. He had high cheek-bones, barely more than skin and bones with sunken cheeks like Sirius, but maybe a bit more healthy and lean. He dressed well and extravagantly in fine silk robes, but so did his wife.
"Who..." Harry wondered aloud and got his answer when the man smirked.
Harry knew that smirk.
"Rise and shine, Potter." Said Draco Malfoy.
That was a bit too much for him. Flying ships, time displacement and a bladerunner Hong Kong he could deal with, but the revelation of Hermione marrying Draco BLOODY Malfoy was pushing it too far.
He fainted.