As always, please do let me know what you think and suggest fixes for any errors you will find. :)
Earth
"Easy, lad. Everything's alri'ght."
One of the muggles, a man with close-shaven, thinning hair and kind eyes, spoke. His voice was professionally soothing, the voice of a man used to coaxing unconscious people awake.
There was something vaguely familiar about him - an accent he couldn't quite place.
"My name's Bill. I'm a nurse at the Eastern Central hospital. How're you feelin'?"
"What's the date?" Harry replied instead. His body was slow with the lethargy that comes from being woken from a deep sleep, but his mind was as sharply awake as the day the Unspeakables had captured him.
To wake now, not to the face of a familiar wizard (or to any wizards, oh god, to muggles) but to strangers, meant that at least part of their plan had worked.
He had slept, and the world moved on without him.
The only question was; how far? What was left of the people he'd known, his chosen family?
Were any of them even alive? Had they told their children about him?
Would he have someone to go home to?
"It's January 5th, 2147." Another man butted in, moving forward and ignoring the nurse's disapproving glare. He wore something on his shoulders, almost like the rugby armour he'd seen Dudley strut about in once or twice. A bright light shone from his left shoulder and something round and dark - and mobile - whirred and clicked and shifted from his right.
"What's your name? When did you go to sleep?" He continued, leaning forward with the sort of hunger that Colin once had, though without even a fraction of the boy's innocence.
"None of your damn business." Harry said sharply, sitting up despite Bill's hand pushing gently on his shoulder. He looked around again. The room he was in was small, but expensive looking. The entire right wall was made of glass, through which he could see the tops of trees. Far beyond them, another building - or maybe more of this one - extended from one side to the other, a wall of glass walls, shimmering blue.
Around him was a collection of muggle equipment, through with rather less wires than expected. The wall behind him hummed softly with power and a glance over his shoulder found the bottom of a large.. well, television, he supposed. One of the fancy flat ones that Dudley had been demanding, right before...
Well. Before.
It was set into the wall and showing a lot of medical stuff the significance of which he could only guess at.
He looked back at the people in the room.
Aside from Bill the nurse and the pushy shoulder-guy, there were no less than five people in suits, a couple of people dressed nicely but less formally and behind them all lurked two young women wearing the same style of clothing as Bill. More nurses?
There was a chuckle from one of the suited women. "Looks like we won't be needing a translator, at least." She noted, smiling a little. One of the formally-dressed-but-not-suited people slumped a little.
The woman stepped forward.
"Good afternoon. My name is Gillian Maine. I'm the public liaison for the United States Government, which oversees the land where you were discovered. You were brought here just under a week ago. May I ask your name?"
Harry looked around again, tried to ignore the shoulder-guy's eager shuffling, and gave his first name only.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Harry." The woman replied smoothly. "Please allow me to introduce everyone else and then I will be happy to answer any questions you might have."
"To my right" She gestured towards a guy who stood slightly stooped like an old man, yet his face was smooth and unlined, his hair thick and dark. "Is Doctor Maudlin. He's the Chief of Medicine here and has been personally responsible for your care."
The doctor smiled stiffly, dark eyes openly scrutinising.
"To his right is David McGregor, a representative from the RDA. They've volunteered to cover your rehabilitation and reeducation costs."
Harry eyed the man, because that didn't sound foreboding at all. David McGregor just waved back at him with two fingers, quirking a quick smile with eye contact before turning back to a thin, transparent sheet of glass or plastic held in his other hand that flickered with light at every touch.
"To my left is Mary Schwartz, CEO of Pepsi-Cola."
…Sorry, what?
A woman with blonde hair and vaguely Asian features gave a tight-lipped smile, one long blue-green nail tapping restlessly against her thigh.
"And to her left is Michael. He will be your bodyguard until such time as he is no longer needed."
At this, Harry blinked.
Michael was a dark-skinned man who stood a head taller than every other person in the room. He nodded, once, when Harry met his eyes, but gave no other greeting - or expression. His suit, now that Harry was paying attention, didn't look quite as sleek as everyone else's and wasn't buttoned up in the front. Something about the lay of the material - and the fact that he was a muggle - made Harry wonder if he was packing a gun or two.
Unfortunately, Harry's experience with bodyguards came from the Order of the Phoenix. More prison guards than guardians. It was difficult to think of this well-muscled muggle as anything different.
"The man next to you is Marcus Hight," The government woman's tone turned sour. "He's with the GNN - the Global News Network."
That explained why the guy got on his nerves. A bloody reporter! Which meant the thing on his shoulder was most likely a camera of some sort and had been recording away all this time.
Bloody hell! He couldn't even have a second of privacy?
Either the liaison read his expression like a book, or she felt the same way.
"Don't worry. Although he is permitted to record freely, the content will be reviewed and edited before being released for public consumption."
She went on to introduce the last two non-suited people (nurses not ranking introductions, apparently) but Harry only vaguely caught that one was a linguist and the other a historian. His head was already swimming with too many names, too much information to process - and below it all, a constant thrum of 2147 2147 2147.
It had been 1997 when he'd been imprisoned.
He tuned out completely as he counted forward in his mind.
Plus 3 to 2000.
147 plus 3.
It had been one hundred and fifty years.
That was longer than Dumbledore had lived.
And yet.. in a way...
He looked around again.
It didn't feel like long enough. Not for something considered by the Unspeakables to be priceless beyond measure, and hidden as such, to be found by muggles.
What happened?
He asked exactly that, not even realising he was interrupting the liaison. At her hesitation, he clarified.
"Where did you find me? How?"
There was a slight pause, then the woman gestured the historian forward.
The man brightened, edging around so that the reporter's shoulder camera could get a good look at him.
"After the terrorist attacks in Wiltshire, England, about three years ago, an archaeological dig found the remains of Stonehenge." The bony man babbled, more to the camera than to Harry. "It was very shocking, of course, as it had simply disappeared some time in 2050. England, which was then an independent nation, was consumed with problems caused by the climate change of the time. Radical weather shifts, climate refugees, flood migrations - the usual. By the time they could spare anyone to investigate it, all that was left were deep indents filled with chalk. It sparked quite a lot of debate amongst-"
The liaison cleared her throat.
"Oh, right, yes." The man coughed and wiped his palms on his jacket. "Well, anyway, once Weyerhaeuser inc set up their global HQ there, they became a target for eco-terrorists upset about deforestation. In 2141, they successfully detonated a bomb that not only devastated the building but tore up quite a lot of the land surrounding it. During the recovery efforts, fragments of bluestone were found - something not natural to the area and which sparked a revival of Stonehenge interest. Soon enough, an RDA-funded dig discovered the remains of Stonehenge eighty meters below ground. In its entirety!"
The historian was clearly, genuinely, passionate about this. He'd even stopped paying attention to the reporter, staring wide-eyed at Harry instead.
"It was as though the stones had simply sunk beneath the earth!" He cried, hands fluttering. "The mechanics involved, well... some people thought it was an engineering student's prank, or a different sort of terrorism - denying the country the artifact, or perhaps some sort of defacement or vandalism. But, in the light of your discovery-"
The liaison cleared her throat again, a little more sharply.
"Right, yes, right. Sorry." The man licked his lips and turned away a little, hunching.
"Anyway, the stones were removed to be displayed in greater security - and where they couldn't be so easily damaged as they had been before. The dig was abandoned and only school trips or die-hard amateur archaeologists visited it since."
The historian looked him straight in the eye, like a man beholding unspeakable treasure.
"And a couple of weeks ago, one amateur team found an entrance. Into an underground cave, below where Stonehenge had sunk, where you yourself lay sleeping."
He stopped then, expectantly, awaiting a response.
A response Harry couldn't give him.
Stonehenge had.. sunk? It had to have been magically done, obviously, but why? And all that stuff about climate change, spoken of like world war two - an unpleasant but well-known incident referred to flippantly by anyone not actually involved.
And...
"England... 'used to be' an independent nation?" He said hoarsely.
"Yes, yes." The historian brushed it aside impatiently. "After its GDP crashed, an arrangement was made with the United States - in 2073, I believe - whereby 'The United Kingdom' and all nations within became protectorates of the United States of America."
He seemed to be waiting for something more, probably an explanation, but as far as Harry was concerned, he could wait forever.
Something had happened to the world - something that affected everybody, not just muggles. Climate affected even wizards, surely. An influx of people, terrorists, changing locations... and wizards had sunk Stonehenge for some reason, but why? It was important to them, he knew that much. His history of magic books, which covered more than just goblin rebellions, had mentioned how it was a protected area in the treaty with the muggle prime minister, which was why the muggles had laws about leaving it there.
Had the English government fallen? Had the wizards taken matters into their own hands and hidden themselves and their 'territories' even further?
What had happened? He wanted to ask again, but of course, none of these muggles could have the answers. They probably thought he did.
He needed a witch or wizard. Any. At this point, he'd even take a bastard like Snape over this horrible, nauseating not knowing.
He swallowed.
"I'm tired." He said distantly, voice still strained and hoarse like he'd been shouting.
The historian frowned and so did the liaison - the reporter looked almost angry - but it was enough for Bill the nurse to take command. With polite but unflinching authority - his accent thickening slightly, just enough that he almost sounded like Professor McGonagall - he herded everyone out, including his own boss. Only him and the bodyguard remained, although he gave the bodyguard a warning glare.
The man - the solider - just stood out of the way against the wall, keeping the entrance, Harry, the nurse and the large window within his sights.
"No worries, Harry." The nurse assured him, reaching out to help him lie back down. Harry let him, his senses floating loose and free. The nurse darted a quick look up at the telly and drew a small clear half-bulb from somewhere. It looked like a breathing mask, but smaller and without any tubing.
"Just relax and take some deep breaths for me." Bill said automatically, fiddling with the battery-like pack on the mask until it started to hiss. "I've just got some oxygen here to help you out, but if you feel tired mate, you just go on and have a nap."
He rested the mask over Harry's mouth and nose and it was only due to the fact that he didn't try to hold it there or tie it on, that Harry allowed it to remain.
It actually seemed to wake him up a little, enough that he turned on his side and raised a hand to keep it in place.
Bill placed a warm hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently.
"It'll all be alright, Harry." The nurse promised quietly. "I know yer probably scared, but everything will be okay. Yer a bit famous and that's why there's such a fuss, but the RDA has volunteered to take care of you so even when the fuss dies down, you'll still be well off."
He moved away then, and Harry's gaze fell naturally to the man leaning against the wall before him.
His bodyguard, Michael.
The man's dark eyes were watchful, but not of Harry himself.
It was strangely reassuring.
"Just sleep, lad." Bill encouraged, now standing at the edge of his bed and doing something with something else that beeped. "It'll all be better in the morning."
With little else to do except freak out, Harry closed his eyes, and slept.
Earth