Seamus wakes up. His fingers tingle as if with too much magic, a sting which at first is slight but which becomes sharp and then lessens in waves. A creature stands over him, with gray skin and a lot of hair. It is short, but with abnormally long limbs, and a high forehead. Its eyes are enormous and round, almost baby-like, but unnervingly out of place in proportion with the rest of the face and body. Seamus shudders slightly and shuts his eyes. He doesn’t know how he got here. He remembers being in bed. Maybe he’s in a strange dream. Sometimes closing his eyes in a dream causes him to wake up. But nothing has changed.
The creature begins to speak, in an accent entirely unknown, nearly incomprehensible, and at a higher pitch than Seamus is used to hearing people speak, but nonetheless English. “We do not intend to harm you.”
At least, Seamus hopes that’s what it said, rather than wishful thinking changing his interpretation. He remembers playing games on summer vacations when he was young, where Dean would speak underwater, and Seamus would try to guess what he said, coming up with various nonsense until being told what it really was. And after being told he had heard perfectly clearly, his brain rearranging the sounds into coherent words despite them being anything but.
Seamus realizes that the creature stopped speaking. “You were not paying attention. It was written across your face.” Seamus tries to respond, but his throat is dry and he can’t seem to get anything out. “You will have to pay attention. Follow me.” The creature grabs Seamus’ upper arm, rather harshly, and lifts him up. The floor squishes as they walk.
The room they leave behind is plain, so plain Seamus had hardly registered it with the creature in front of him. The hallway, likewise, almost looks as if it could be in an unfurnished apartment building, off-white walls and nothing of note (except for the floor being of unknown material.) But the room Seamus and the creature enter once through it is anything but.
At first glance Seamus thinks he has somehow gone outside. But the sky lacks depth. Even the fake sky of the Hogwarts dining hall can be discerned if one knows just how to look, the subtle bits of unreality, but this is hardly even trying to appear to have more than a yard of space above the actual roof. There are grasses — although with a purple tint — and a bench — albeit with glowing cut-out triangular legs. “Seamus!” calls a voice. He follows the sound to the corner of the room and sees, crouched with an arm on the wall, someone he hasn’t seen for a very long time. “Fleur Delacour?”
Ron had once told Seamus that Fred, George, and Ginny had put red pepper powder in Fleur’s facial cream over the summer break. “I quite like her,” he had said. “Don’t know why they need to be so unkind.” That story had stuck with him for some reason. And her sister... she had, or has, Seamus hopes, a sister, who was trapped underwater at the Triwizard Tournament. He couldn't remember her name.
He bursts out laughing, unable to stop himself. He manages to get out between giggles, "Of all the scenarios in which I might see you — or anyone else from our school days — again, this really takes the cake.”
Her lips quirk into a smile. "Indeed.” She pauses. “Remind me how I know you again?"
"I was in Ron's dormitory."
"Ah yes, I think he has mentioned you a few times. And I must have seen you when I was at Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament.” She gets up and walks closer.
“The more pressing matter, of course, is figuring out how we got here and what is going on. I was brought to this room what feels like hours ago, although I wouldn't really know.”
“I think they did something to my hands. They ache, although the piercing moments seem to have subsided. It was like that when I woke up. It reminds me of the time I cast spells continuously for nearly a full day, trying to see if I could reach the limit.”
Fleur nods sympathetically. “Lets sit on the bench, shall we. It’s here after all. I simply got tired of it.”
Once they sit she says, “I too awoke with pain, behind my ears, mainly. I thought I had acquired a headache. But now I am inclined to think it is injury, done to me as was to you by the beings here.”
“Why would they take us? Did you have any warning?”
“No. I tried to ask, I have a sense of being observed, but I don't know how. I was home in bed before, so I thought it might all be a dream, but that can't be right. It's gone on too long... although sometimes they can be awfully long, something about this is altogether sour.
"They must be aliens. They certainly look like it. I tried to understand them, but without a wand there was little I could do. This room is strangely idyllic, isn't it. Except for the bugs. I was watching them, with nothing else to do. Did you know that someone went to the effort of adding fake bugs? I know they're fake, because they move as if possessed, and occasionally change size and then revert. "
"It's almost as if the.. aliens were trying to make us comfortable, to be welcoming."
"I don't know if I'd call insects the pinnacle of earthly comfort," says Fleur.
"Should we be freaking out? I feel like, logically, I should be going insane, and yet the direness of the situation has yet to truly reach my nervous system. I’m sure it'll hit me sometime soon. How about you?"
"I was afraid, at first. But being in here with nothing to do has transformed panic into boredom into almost resolve. You've caught me at a good moment, I must say."
"There's not much to do than sit and wait, is there. I can’t recall reading about this in any textbook. Just muggle science fiction novels.”
“True,” says Fleur. “Although some of the details were quite different.”
An alien creature enters the room. "Have you enjoyed your time?" it says in the strange high pitched tone, vowels moshing about as if in a snow globe.
“More than I would have imagined in such a situation,” says Seamus, with only a hint of sarcasm.”
"It is time we tell you more details about why you are here.” Seamus sits up. Fleur, on the other hand, appears to relax into her seat.
“We are what you call “muggles.” We have traveled back, very far back, in time to find you. Or rather, you have traveled forward. This is a temporary holding far above the earth, in between your time and ours. Our planet is your planet, but you would not recognize it. The magical population, of which we have discerned the two of you once belonged — sorry, belong, has traveled away, with capabilities far beyond our own. We have already collected samples, as best we could try, of your magical capacity. Never before has anyone tried to hold it outside of life, or to transfer it from one person to another, but we think it may, combined with our technology, provide a fighting chance against the diseases with which we are being ravished. Don’t worry, I saw that expression, we have all been quarantined and sanitized.”
“If you are muggles — humans — why do you sound like that?”
The creature — alien — person from the future smiled. “Like it, don’t you? I spent years studying, looking for texts that still existed from your time period. It’s technically the same language that mine evolved from!”