Harry Potter Vs Common Sense
Harry looked up from where he sat on the playpark's swings.
A huge flaming... something burned its way through the sky, coming down in the nearby woods with a thunderous crash.
It wasn't an airplane. It wasn't... well, anything he recognized.
He knew he should just ignore it. He and Hermione had had long conversations about something called 'common sense'. He knew that this flaming aircraft had nothing to do with him. He knew that it would only be trouble.
But Hermione was right. He had a 'People Saving, Thing'. If he could help, he would. He had to.
He stood and began to run toward the crash site, but cautiously. Five years at Hogwarts had taught him that, at least. There was nothing wrong with caution, after all.
Not that it ever managed to keep him out of trouble.
Harry arrived at the crash site out of breath and was shocked by what he found. The no longer flying... thing was oddly bird-like in its shape. In the 'head' section contained the shattered remains of a pair of glass... portals where the
mechanical bird's eyes would be. Would the pilot be there? The area around the vehicle showed signs of having been burnt, but all of the fires had been extinguished... somehow. Strewn throughout the crash site was long lengths of some kind of cabling that was twitching in an odd rhythm.
Again, Harry overrode the screaming of his undeveloped common sense and approached the 'head' of the bird craft,
stepping over the lengths of cable as carefully as he could.
In the cockpit of the craft, he found the pilot. The man was horribly wounded, with so much blood everywhere Harry
found himself wondering just how the fellow was still alive when the man opened his one remaining eye and sighed.
"Thank god," the man wheezed, "you've come."
"I'm going to go find someone to call for an ambulance," Harry said, "try to hold on."
"No time," the stranger wheezed, groping at his chest. "I've got five minutes left at the most," a grim smile pulled at the stranger's lips. "Besides, I'm here for you, Harry."
"You know me?" Harry asked suddenly very aware that he really should have listened to that common sense thing.
"You are the next bearer of the Talisman," the stranger wheezed. "Each bearer knows of his replacement as soon as we take on the mantle, we just never know when we will need to be replaced. When our time comes, the next bearer will find us. You'll see."
"Look," Harry said in a near panic, "I've got a lot on my plate already. Surely there is someone better?"
The stranger extended his arm, in his hand was a large red glyph that looked something like a stylized letter F.
"Take it, Harry, it is your destiny."
Almost involuntarily, Harry accepted the glyph. As soon as it was fully in Harry's hand, the wounded man seemed to... shrink into himself.
"Thank you, Harry," he whispered.
Harry was too distracted by the way the red glyph was flowing up his arm and onto his chest, painlessly implanting itself over his heart. Then there was a rush of sensation, and a name came to his consciousness 'Wan Hui-fang'.
Wan Hui-fang would be the next bearer.
"What?" he gasped.
"You will need time to come into your new powers," the dying man whispered. "The defensive system will protect you. It depleted itself dealing with the fire from the crash, but the auto repair systems should have it back online soon."
Harry looked around in confusion looking for the 'defensive system' but only saw the cables from before, still twitching on the ground. Looking back to his predecessor, Harry found that in the time it took him to look around, the man had died.
Harry stumbled away from the wreck before sitting on a log and cradled his head on his hands. The glyph... No, Talisman, was still feeding him information.
Was this thing kidding? Harry concentrated on the information for a moment before shaking his head. He certainly wasn't calling himself that.
"Sumptin wrong, BF?"
Surprised by the unexpected voice, Harry fell backward off the log and struck his head on a tree root.
"You should be more careful, BF," the figure said, looking at him supportively, before turning its attention to the cable extending from its left shoulder joint and seemingly willed it to retract. This... thing appeared modeled to resemble a dog, but not very well.
Especially when the green cape and cowl the mechanical sort of dog wore was taken into account. Harry shuddered when he noticed the green shoes on each of the mechanical dog's feet.
"The Falcon Flight has finished its repairs," the Dog Mecha said as the last of the cables that had been strewn around the crash site retracted into its body, "and Old BF has been moved to storage until we get back to base so he can join the other BFs in the Hall of Honor."
The robot again returned his attention to Harry. "Don't worry BF, we'll have fun."
Harry blinked. The information download from the Talisman was finally complete. "Dog Wonder?" He asked, fearing the answer.
"That's me!" the mechanical mutt proclaimed before it wrapped Harry in a coil of cable extending from its back. "Let's go, BF, we need to be in Coolsville by midnight!" With that it started loping toward the now repaired aircraft, laughing insanely.
- Why yes, I did see the Scoob! trailer, why do you ask?
