Harry was not having the greatest day so far to be honest. Not only had he burnt his toast this morning, which had led to a rushed breakfast before work, Anderson had also called in late, and, to top it all off, he had been sent to this shoddy location where he had to sit in a tree and wait for anything to happen.
Spoiler alert. Nothing happened.
Well, scratch that, something did happen; it was just not what he had been sent there for.
He had been sitting on his, now numb, ass for the past seven hours without anything happening. The tree branch he was sitting on was too branchy for his tastes and not even the cushioning charm he had placed on it had helped. He was sick of watching this small clearing that was supposedly a rendezvous point for a vampire and a werewolf who were planning to blow up the ministry. Just how they were planning to do it was a mystery, which was why he was now sitting in this tree. Except it wasn't even supposed to be him sitting there, it was meant to be Anderson's job but of course, when he called in, it meant Harry had to do it.
So fast forward, the day was entirely wasted staring down at the small clearing whilst the birds stared judgmentally at him from the opposite branch. Nothing had happened all day and the sun was now disappearing behind the treeline.
He had jumped down, dusted himself off and took a step forward.
Only to then be struck from behind by a spell. What the spell was, he could not tell you. What he could say was that the effects of the spell seemed to be an excruciating pain radiating outwards from his chest.
Harry groaned and cursed as he huffed from where he now lay face-down amongst the dirt and leaves on the floor. He managed to roll himself over and push himself up just slightly so he could properly take stock of himself.
"Well. Shit."
As he stared down at his chest, he saw quite a big, gaping hole where there should definitely not be a hole.
This was not an ideal situation to be in if he was being quite honest with himself.
He sighed—as much as he could with his lungs sticking together and his insides currently falling out.
Harry paused for a moment to think his options through:
He could try and heal it, but his healing abilities were limited and he was more likely to make another gaping hole rather than heal this one.
He could try and apparate back to the office, but that option ran the risk of him splinching himself and he didn't really fancy losing any more body parts in this current state.
Alternatively, he could try and send a patronus, but if he lost consciousness, then Prongs may well disappear before getting help.
Or… there was always the back-up plan.
He stared up at the darkening sky, the trees surrounding him appearing as if they were looming up and arching around him, hiding him from any other horrors that could await him.
If he lay here and awaited help, then he may well bleed out long before the alarm was raised—he had no other options; he had to do it.
Harry wiggled his neck, he could hear the familiar sound of it crack and creak as the bones within it broke and splintered. Then another little wiggle with his magic focused around his neck. Snap, crackle and pop, and it was done.
He blinked, rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out.
Nothing different—it seemed like it had got off without a hitch.
Now he just had to wait for the cavalry to arrive.
It turned out that lying very still was exceptionally dull. Nothing to do, nothing to really see now that the sun was all but gone. Then his brain decided to grace him with one small spark of knowledge that he was, in fact, a wizard and could actually summon a bit of light.
Only downside was that he would need to use his wand and his hand to do so, which he didn't have right at this moment.
Oh, well, there was no time like the present to practice wandless magic while waiting for help to arrive.
It took him a good half an hour, but finally a light had been summoned and he didn't bother to muffle his laugh at the sight he was met with.
His headless body was wandering around and was currently trying to walk through a tree. Safe to say the tree was not budging and all his previous body was left doing was just repeatedly running into it.
"Hey!" he shouted, before realising that no, headless bodies do not have ears and so could not hear him. Then he tried to facepalm before again realising that, no, decapitated heads do not have hands.
He remained in his spot, defeated, silently watching his headless body and trying to wiggle his own, headless neck from where he could feel his spine growing back in and was in the weird ticklish phase.
Quite frankly, being just a head wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. You couldn't move by yourself until a bit more of your spine had grown back in to nudge you about. You couldn't really do many spells unless proficient at wandless magic, and there was always this odd sensation of not being able to inhale quite properly due to the lack of lungs.
But, on the plus side, it was a pretty nifty trick to save yourself when your body was gonna crash and burn.
The funny thing was he hadn't even meant to do it the first time. He had been in yet another set of woods on a stakeout except, that time, the people had arrived, and they had arrived with plenty of backup to take out the lone spy watching them from perched in a tree.
So there he had been, lying on a different set of crisp autumn leaves and dirt, bleeding out from a well-aimed bombarda, and he'd felt like he needed to just shake everything off.
He did, and he had had quite the panic when he realised he had shaken everything off a bit too well and his head was at the other side of the clearing than his body.
There had been a lot of screaming that day.
He remembered the ensuing panic from Hermione who happened to be the lucky individual to find him at the time. She had not been impressed and they'd had a very serious talk about why it had been a completely moronic decision to shake his head off without any communication to anyone beforehand and that if he did so again, he would be in for yet another very serious talk.
He wasn't looking forward to that. He could already hear the screeching now.
"Harry James Potter! I have already told you once before about this!"
"I specifically said that if you did this, we would be having serious talks!"
"Why did you not send for help before you did this? Then we could have come and found you instead of traipsing around these bloody woods searching for a lone head."
Harry blinked. It was almost as if he could hear her voice now. So realistic.
"I know you can hear me, Harry! Don't you dare ignore me!"
So realistic.
Harry wiggled the bottom of his spine which was now luckily just long enough to launch him along—from a series of previous trial and error of techniques, he had found that pushing down with his spine into the ground and launching his head forwards like a javelin was far superior to the wiggle-and-roll approach.
He made a good headway towards where he had heard her voice coming from. Then, lo and behold, there she was, glaring down at him with a frown on her face that she had perfected over the years of disappointment she had faced with them.
"Hi, 'Mione. How are you? You made any headway into the case?"
The replying glare told him that she hadn't appreciated his joke. Then again, it was a bit old hat.
"Harry, we have been looking for you for the past five hours. You couldn't have sent just one message?"
Harry blinked. He hadn't realised it had been that long. Then again, he hadn't been expecting anyone to search for him until tomorrow morning. "Why are you even searching for me? I thought that it would be here until at least tomorrow morning," he paused, thinking briefly. "Or is it this morning?"
The glare did not leave her face. "I know you."
He spluttered, "What's that supposed to mean? 'I know you.' Is that supposed to be some backhanded compliment because it certainly doesn't sound like one."
Harry huffed indignantly, pushing himself around by his spine so he wouldn't have to see her face.
It had been a long day, okay? He just wanted to go home and grow a new body in the comfort of his own home.
"Harry," she said and sighed. "I'm sorry, that came out wrong. What it meant was, I know you. You didn't turn up for our weekly game night and I knew that something was wrong immediately, you've never missed it especially since—"
He knew what she was going to say, but neither of them wanted to bring it up at this moment.
The silence remained between them, it felt like the woods were pressing in, knowing the depth of the moment.
"Anyway. I knew you wouldn't miss it so I raised the alarm and found you. End of story. Now, I'm going to pick you up, flambé your headless body before it can run off into the woods, and we're going back to game night."
Harry grinned. "Fine, but I get to claim the good chair and you can't play charades as I don't have a body yet to play with."
He shuffled around again and waited for Hermione to pick him up. His lone head grinning up at her from the leafy floor.
Games night awaited.
THC/The Houses Competition.
Round 2 - Drabble
House - Ravenclaw
Class - Potions
Prompt(s) chosen -
[Dialogue] "I know you."
[Location] Woods (Small forest)
1704 words (wordcounter .net)
Inspired by Sea Slugs - Elysia marginata