Hedwig’s Misadventures

There has been a disturbance in his swamp.

—

They come to surrounded by darkness, only a light fog giving color to their black surroundings.

“Of course this happened on a Monday.”

Sirius grumbles, him having landed back first on what seems to be a bone. “I know right… Oh God.”

Sirius looks at Hedwig. He makes a disgusted noise and whips out his wand.

“What the fuck… What the fuck?!”

Sirius is now truly losing it. Therapy be damned. What the fuck.

“Hedwig, where’d you go?”

“Hedwig!” Sirius backs away from her and lights up his wand, illuminating them and their surroundings.

Hedwig stares blankly at him.

He stares blankly at her.

Hedwig looks down.

It seems that even in the underworld, Hedwig is some fucked up hybrid.

“…Hedwig?”

She has her human body back, but it’s all fucked up and way too tall. She’s barefoot and naked, feathers shrouding her entire body outwards with a foot long radius, her form barely able to be made out.

Why are her pinky toes so fucking long? Are they going to extend more every time she tells a lie or something?

She couldn’t even be a pretty hybrid, she looks like an acid trip.

Upon awakening, his first thought was to insult her? How rude.

“Am I not pretty enough for your tastes, Sirius? Do I not strike your fancy?”

Sweat trickles down the side of his face.

“You’re so…”

He gulps, adam apple bobbing with stress, his face slowly turning red as his hand gets too wet to hold his wand.

He bursts out laughing.

“You’re so bloody hideous!”

His wand falls out of his hand, rolling away with the light. He has to crouch down, laughing so hard that his legs can’t hold him up. Gasping noises escape him. Sirius falls to the ground, body twitching like he just got tasered.

“You can’t possibly expect me to be polite here…?”

She stands there deadpan. Even with her face hidden, he can still feel her soulless eyes boring into him.

“And why are you human shaped anyway? What is happening? Am I secretly still locked in the basement being spoonfed chicken noodle soup? Is this just a hallucination?”

While Sirius continues to lose himself, she takes a minute to look at her surroundings. She’s gotten herself in some wacky scenarios but this one has to top the cake.

Small bloody makeshift rabbits with abs feed on what looks to be poisonous leaves off to their left. They begin to whisper in a some foreign demon language that bunnies, even fucked, probably shouldn’t be able to produce.

…Lovely.

“Hey toes-“

“I swear to god Sirius I will rip your jugular out with my teeth.”

“…I still don’t understand why you have a human form…”

Her reincarnation was a secret she was going to take to the grave with her. Does this count?

Sirius looks at her and she remembers that he is already mentally unstable and learning this will only cause more problems.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay…”

They stare at each other, both having no fucking clue what’s happening.

“So… the veil, huh.”

Hedwig clicks her tongue. A chicken noise escapes. “Yeah…”

Sirius looks like he’s five seconds away from having another massive breakdown session. She hopes this one won’t be worse than the goat episodes.

“Are we… dead?”

Hedwig looks back down at herself, moving the feathers away from her face so she can see.

“I’m going to be so pissed if I died like this.”

She struggles to walk forward, tripping over her own obnoxiously long toes and being unused to a human form, however messed up it may be.

Sirius is holding his lips together so tightly that he looks like an old lady having a rough bathroom session. Or, maybe Snape is a better comparison.

“What do we even do?”

Neither of them know because… what does one do when accidentally falling into a world ending portal?

“Maybe… maybe there’s a way out? Or other people? Or-“

“-Or maybe a delicious home cooked meal.”

Sirius blinks at her.

“You and Harry really don’t think anything through except for food, don’t yall?”

She stared at him. He stared back.

“Did you just… yall me?”

He tries to explain himself. “It’s apart of my therapy. She said I should- You know what, it doesn’t even matter! We’re stuck who knows where doing who knows what with no foreseeable way out!”

Hedwig and Sirius stand there in depressing silence for a short minute before they realize that the bunnies with abs seem to be chanting something at them, potentially about to sacrifice them for a ritual.

“I think we should-“

“-Yeah.”

Hurrying away, they stumble around for a little while, unknowingly going the complete wrong direction.

“Is that a tree?”

“…That’s a really sad excuse of a tree.”

Just then, the tree grows larger and develops more branches. It clearly intends to fight them.

They end up wasting a couple of minutes battling a demonic tree in the potential underworld.

A figure appears in the background, just present enough to catch their attention.

“Hedwig! A human shape!” He points at the humanoid figure.

Before Hedwig can get a word in, Sirius’s dog instincts take over and he goes off chasing the potential demon.

“Sirius, you dunce. I can’t run like this!”

She spends her time playing catch up, trying not to stub her obnoxiously large toes on any of their suspicious surroundings.

“I’m not carrying you!”

Just when she finally catches up to him, neck to neck, they lose trail by falling into an unknown liquid pit.

Why is it always a pit?

Sirius easily paddles out while Hedwig looks like a drowned bigbird fighting for her life. She attempts to gurgle out “help” but it comes out like “hrgh.”

“Hedwig… ugh.”

Sirius had to help her out. She doesn’t take kindly to his slow behavior, immediately biting him once they’re back on solid land.

“Why?!”

“I have teeth now!”

They wrestle onto the ground, still covered in a foreign substance.

The human figure in the background stands there blankly.

“I’m going to feed you nothing but worms if we get back!”

“As if I’d let you!”

The human figure sighs a very drained sigh. They throw a huge rock at the two to catch their attention, hopefully angering them enough into confrontation.

Bouncing off someone’s head, it’s a success.

The simpleminded fools chase after the human figure.

…For only a short amount of time. They end up going off course again.

This time, small, too-skinny sized creatures with bulging out white eyes catch their attention.

“It kinda looks like Dobby.”

“Look Hedwig, you’re right at home!”

She elbows his ribs with her new pointy elbow, him immediately going down for the count gasping for air.

“Hhheeeeeh”

“You’ll be fine.”

Everyone watches. Why do they stare them then like they’re the weird ones here?

The figure tries a new tactic, in a hurry for some reason. Food on a plate attached to a rope.

This would have been a foolproof plan for morons… if the two were anything but overpowered morons.

Sirius and Hedwig, clearly hungry, charge the figure like two feral animals, hair and feathers raised with the speed and popping veins of Saitama.

They gulp it down so quickly that the figure itself has to intervene to stop them from eating the plate.

Hedwig almost takes off the figures hand.

“It’s a man hand!” Sirius points out in the manner of a kindergartener.

For good measure, Hedwig does manage to bite the man’s hand. “Yep, that’s a man hand.”

“Why?!” The man in disguise is so utterly baffled by this behavior, face darting between them with pure incredulity. He cradles his now bleeding hand to his chest.

They stare at the man like he’s the deranged one. Forgive him, he had hopes for the Black family’s sanity. He was clearly mistaken.

It’s like there’s nothing at all whatsoever behind their eyes, heads full of helium.

Maybe he should take another route…?

He puts on a little show with his hands. “You come here. You leave here.”

They stare at him some more.

A green glowing bug flies by their faces very slowly. They get distracted, attention no longer on the man.

Hedwig wants to eat it.

The figure sucks up his embarrassment and puts two fingers behind his head, making a a small honking sound. It worked, he has regained their attention.

He makes his voice a little higher pitched, like he’s talking to two small slow toddlers.

“We’re going, adventuring! Time to, leave!” He moves his hand in a up and down motion like a jumping rabbit leaving, other hand still being used as ears.

They continue to stare.

“Please just follow me, I need to get you guys out of here.” He could not have sounded more pitiful.

Sirius guffaws and slaps his knee like an old grandpa. “Well, why didn’t you just say so!”

Hedwig nods along.

“Just like that, you’re trusting me?” The figure is clearly concerned for their mental states. Just what had happened to them?

All in all, it works out for the best. Sirius and Hedwig follow this mysterious figure for a couple of hours through the suspicious liquid-slopped place. Multiple times does the man have to regain their attention and stop them from attacking the creatures of this land because they look at them “funny.”

A naked mole rat-looking creature appears in front of them.

“Sirius, it’s like that one foreskin looking elf at Hogwarts!”

Sirius takes a closer look. “Oh wow, it does look like him! Also kind of looks like Dobby when we caught him wearing that speedo once.”

They both shiver, eyes blanking out again.

Perhaps that’s what the issue is? Maybe these two are just so traumatized that they shut down upon impact.

“It’s a good thing Kreacher and Dobby overthrew the government during the house elf revolution. Poor Harry though, being named national animal.”

“The what… Who…?”

Sirius laughs like this is everyday news. And Hedwig.. certainly makes a noise. “Don’t worry about it stranger.”

Hedwig is too busy gnawing on a stick she found. She hopes she can keep these teeth.

“What… okay…”

The figure watches as Hedwig and Sirius see another makeshift rabbit and take off after it.

He realizes that this may take awhile.

—

Two days later, they stand in front of the portal so similar in appearance to that of the veil.

The mysterious figure cannot wait to rid of them.

They stare at the portal, unsure if it will take them home, murder them, or send them to some other mysterious dimension.

“We had a hell of a ride, didn’t we?”

He smiled at her as though is wrong in the world.

“We did.”

Sirius can’t move his legs. “I’m not ready to die yet, Hedwig.”

She grabs his hand, her feathers tickling him. Since they came through touching, they better leave in contact as well. She looks at him earnestly through her hairy and feathery face.

“Shut the fuck up, Sirius.”

She still doesn’t have tear ducts, but that’s probably a good thing.

“Wherever we end up, it’s together… hopefully.”

“That’s incredibly unconvincing from a female Voldemort.”

“Okay, I’m trying to be the big person here-“

“You are-“

She aims her fist at his nose, immediately cracking it.

Another tussle begins.

The male figure sighs a very tearful sigh from behind them, sending some type of zapping at them.

Sirius turns around ready to argue with the loud-mouth, only to finally see the figure unveiled. He’s smiling, but also has a bone-weary, ready to drop tiredness consuming him.

“Reggie?”

“Good riddance, Sirius.”

With Hedwig’s elbow in Sirius’s mouth and the electrical current of a telephone wire, they tumble through the portal.

—

Hedwig and Sirius slam open Dumbledore’s office door, still covered in that gross liquid substance.

The room is… a mess. That’s putting it kindly.

Books are thrown everywhere, messy handwriting on stray, ripped out pages. Each kid has eye bags under their eyes, but no one quite as bad as Harry.

“I swear on my fathers grave, if you have those shoddy damn pants on again-“

Harry looked up, taking a double look. A dirty napkin is stuck to his hair.

“I think I’m hallucinating.”

This grabs everyone else’s attention.

“They’re alive!” Hermione is the first one of them to close their gaping mouths, running up to the duo and squeezing them into a big, uncomfortable hug.

“I knew it! Thank goodness! But why are you two wet?”

“Uh-“

“How in Merlin’s name?”

Sirius stomach grumbles. “Uh, can I?-“

“-Explanations can wait!”

He can’t even finish his sentence before he is mother-henned, pulled into the mix with snacks being shoved down his throat from worried children and two house elves.

“Someone find something gory for Hedwig!”

“Kreacher is only here because he was hoping the Black heir would be gone for good!” Hedwig can see the tears in the house elf’s eye. Just one, for some odd reason.

She looks up from her position on the floor. Harry’s right there, just staring at her like he can’t believe it.

“You’re home.”

She tells him not to be so stupid. Of course she’s home.

“I- I waited for awhile, but you never came back. But, I knew you couldn’t have…”

Hedwig looks at the massive stack of research behind him. He notices.

“You would do the same for me.”

He looks so tired and worn, clearly needing a new pair of glasses again.

“It was a lot of reading, but at least I had a clear summer-“

What?

Months?! Months passed here?! She can’t even fathom how many meals she’s missed. That’s so unfortunate.

“Hedwig, I…”

How does Harry even begin to explain his relief at her being back? Can he tell her that every day she was gone, he relived their first meeting over and over again? Or how he even threatened Nicholas Flamel himself for information?

He couldn’t imagine how his life would have turned out without her.

Hedwig saved Harry.

How could he possibly explain how much she means-

-Hedwig is plucked from the ground and thrown onto a plate with a raw turkey. Very raw…

Dobby is being quite eccentric. “We must celebrate!”

Dumbledore crashed through the door, eyes zeroing in on the two. “They are alive!”

Glad to see the vote of confidence he had in her and Sirius.

The house elves of Hogwarts have been summoned for food. The whole gang is here. Ron throws his arms over Hermione and Draco’s shoulders, height outranking them both.

“Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you!”

“Wrong song, elves!”

No one here can sing in tune. Her ears ache already.

Laughing, they all join in singing Happy Birthday to Sirius and Hedwig.

They can’t even celebrate right, lord.

Hedwig looks at Harry in exasperation. Once she sees that he isn’t going to help her, she explodes the cake.

“Seriously Hedwig?”

“Dobby was promised cake!” Dobby will not take no cake for an answer. He whips out a knife. “Dobby will have cake!”

A light reflects off the window.

“Oh no! Someone tell Hagrid that he can’t bring that big dragon here! Someone!”

As chaos yet again ensues, Hedwig safely sneaks away from her own caused destruction to land on Harry’s shoulder, covered in raw turkey and cake icing.

She shakes like a dog, getting it all over him. His watery eyes go unnoticed amidst the mayhem.

“Ugh, Hedwig.”

Of course he doesn’t need to tell her, she already knows.

But that doesn’t stop him from holding her later that night as he sleeps, crying into her feathers.