Chapter 2
His whole body hurt, something wasn’t quite right. He took as deep a breath as he dared with the pain, he could smell grass and dirt.
He could hear birds chirping around him, and leaves rustling in the wind. Taking stock of his body he knew he was laying on his stomach, with his arms down his sides and his head turned to the right.
He could feel a lot of injuries, a lot of cuts and bruises, some lacerations along his left side and back, some of his ribs were probably broken and his right ankle hurt a lot too.
He wasn’t sure what had happened, his memory was fuzzy. As he laid and took in the sounds and smells of his surroundings, he started to remember.
He had gotten hit, had his friends saved him? But then why was he laying outside, wouldn’t they have brought him inside to recover?
And there were no voices nearby, something was very wrong. The pain in his body felt worse than he remembered, but maybe he just wasn’t feeling it before because of adrenaline.
He fluttered his eyes open, it was difficult, his eyelids were so heavy. The first thing he noticed when he got his eyes open was the green grass he was laying on.
Next he noticed the trees, he was in a forest, this wasn’t where he got hit and it wasn’t the Forbidden Forest either. He didn’t know where he was or how had he gotten here.
Deciding that he couldn’t just lay there, he slowly moved his arms under him and pushed himself up. It took a while, but eventually he was standing up, slouching a bit with the pain but standing nonetheless.
Looking around nothing seemed familiar to him, although it seemed like the trees were thinning out to his left.
He decided to go towards where the trees were thinning, without trees he would be able to see further ahead, and hopefully be better prepared incase he encountered an enemy.
Moving was slow going, and he had decided that his ankle probably wasn’t broken, since he could still put a little bit of weight on it, but it might still be fractured so he was careful with it, more jumping than walking to keep as little weight on the ankle as possible.
As he was moving through the trees he had noticed another wrongness about his situation. His limbs were moving all wrong, it almost felt like his whole body had shrunk.
He ignored the weirdness for the moment, focusing on getting a better idea of where he was. Eventually making it to the edge of the forest he realized quickly that he was no where near Hogwarts.
The open grassland before him was unlike anything he had seen, the occasional rocky outcroppings solidifying in his mind that he was most likely not even in the right country anymore.
Spotting a river in the distance he pushed his body to continue moving, he remembered having heard somewhere that civilizations often settled along rivers, maybe Hermione had been the one to mention it to him. He knew that he would struggle to get by on his own with his injuries so finding people was quite important for his continued survival, and maybe they could get him in contact with someone back home too.
He was so exhausted he could barely move by the time he made it to the rivers edge, and the sun was starting to set as well. He could feel that some of his wounds where probably getting infected so he knew washing in the river would be a good idea, and luckily for him it seemed like the current wasn’t very strong in this area.
He all but crawled into the water, staying right on the edge just in case the current was deceptive further towards the middle of the river. As quickly and thorough as he could he washed his wounds, and also his clothes considering he didn’t take them off before entering the water.
With the last waning bits of his strength he dragged himself out of the water and sat down at the bank. He knew that being out in the open next to a river during the night was probably a bad idea, after all he had no way of knowing what kinds of creatures lived around here, but with how exhausted he was he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it to a safe place before it got too dark to see anything.
He decided the safest option in these circumstances was to stay at the river during the night and then reevaluate his options in the morning.
As he moved about to find a more comfy spot to sleep his gaze fell on the surface of the river, the surface was calm enough that he could see his reflection.
He must have been too preoccupied earlier to notice but now he could see his face. His face was all wrong. He looked like he was about 5 or 6 years old and his hair was really long.
As he leaned closer to the water he noticed another thing, his ears looked weird they looked kinda pointy.
Moving back away from the water he moves his hands up to his ears, he couldn’t believe this did he get turned into some kind of creature? Maybe some kind of Veela or House elf hybrid?
He could feel himself starting to freak out so he forcefully took a deep breath and laid down, deciding it would be best to wait until the morning to explore and worry about the changes to his body.
As he laid under the darkening sky he couldn’t help but wish in his head that this was just some weird dream and that everything would be back to normal when he woke up.
Although he knew deep down that there was no way this was a dream, it felt too real.
A/N: Okay so I was playing around with AI art a bit and, I managed to get it to generate pretty much exactly how I imagine him looking, except for the ears it had a lot of trouble understanding the ears bit, but yeah I'm just gonna put that in here and you can use it as a reference if you want, or imagine your own appearance, up to you of course.
