Mini Me, Part 2
Credit to: the Harry Potter Definition fanfiction series by OliverSnape for the age-appropriate thoughts and emotions influencing a de-aged person
Warning for: metamorphic-induced de-aging
Chapter notes: Last chapter of the de-aging, for now. And, should I say, Teal’c doesn’t really know how to talk to a child….
Norwegian Pinewood, 4th November 2003
“Where are we going?”
“You said that you wished to ‘go camping’.”
“Are you going to keep carrying me?”
“If you wish it.”
“Aren’t I heavy?”
“No, you are not. And I am accustomed to carrying heavy things and people.”
“Really? What things and people?”
“Weapons and my fellow Jaffa when they were injured, mostly.”
“Are you a soldier?”
“Indeed, I am.”
I hang onto my angel’s shoulders for a while in silence, looking round with wide eyes at all the pine trees, shrubberies and rocks that litter our path.
“It looks like I came here, before,” I confess at last, timidly, ready to be called a freak.
But the man nods, instead, and says, “You are not always this small. You invited me for a walk here, yesterday.” Laughter sparkles in his eyes, then, but it’s not a mean one. “You found the journey hard. You were quite winded when we came upon a pool of clean water.”
I grin. “You going to bring me there?”
He nods again. “Or farther up,” he offers.
I nod enthusiastically, then squirm for a higher perch.
My angel doesn’t scold me for that! He changes the positions of his arms, instead, and let me ride almost on his shoulder.
Unbelievable. Even Aunt Petunia scolded Dudley when he squirmed too much in her arms, when we’re small!
Then I remember…. “You aren’t going to tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, are you?”
He shakes his head. “You heard me instruct your servant, did you not, Harry? The only people who will be informed of where we are are your friends and servants, and you never told me that ‘Aunt Petunia’ and ‘Uncle Vernon’ are among them.”
I grin happily, remembering the kind green being who suddenly appeared in the man’s room and called me “Master Harry,” who gave me tasty meal and comfy clothes, who agreed to tell “the other masters and mistresses” only when we’re long gone, who gave the man a pack full of camping things, who helped the man go out of the house through the window.
I’m having an adventure in a pine forest, like Dudley never did! He’ll be so jealous! I just hope I won’t get in too much trouble, if I tell him….
I coo excitedly when we arrive at the place where we camped before. “Fish!” And there are lots of them, swimming in the rocky pool of clear water with more water falling in large trickles from more rocks, like a natural showerhead!
“Do you wish to eat some fish soup?” my angel offers. “We ate it yesterday, from the fish that I caught here. You provided the fire and the water for cooking, as well as a few more ingredients and some hot chocolate.”
I shake my head regretfully. “Still full,” I admit. “Can we come back here soon and eat?”
He nods. “Do you wish to stay here then return to the house, stay here then continue farther, or directly leave for a higher spot?”
“Can we stay here for a while and take a look after we’re back from somewhere higher?” I venture out timidly. Having good choices that come true is still quite new to me; and not being scolded or beaten for it, even more.
His quick nod makes me beam at him. Him just as quickly continuing walking up the path, with equally no hesitation or reluctance, makes me want to do something nice for him.
Well, Aunt Petunia likes it very much when Dudley hugs her, although he does it so that she gives him more sweets or pocket money. So maybe my angel will like it too, if I hug him?
Only one way to find out….
With a deep breath, I carefully, carefully, carefully squirm lower and lean bonelessly against him and put my arms round his neck and nestle my face into the crook of the said neck, then release the breath in a whoosh.
My! It feels so nice!
It feels even nicer when he shifts his arms again and cuddles me close.
I feel so small, but so… safe. Much more than when I’m in my cupboard but not locked in and know that Uncle Vernon can’t get to me because he’s too big for the cupboard.
I want to cry, but I don’t know why. I certainly don’t feel sad. I feel so happy, in fact.
“Thank you,” I whisper to him, because I don’t know what to do with myself, otherwise, but Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon always tell me that “ungrateful freaks” like I am must be always thankful. My voice sounds wet and wobbly, but I don’t care.
His voice is equally strange, anyway, when he replies, “You are quite welcome, Harry.” Maybe it’s the fault of the big gulp he’s just taken?
It’s nice to be thanked, in any case, and I’m determined to keep his you-are-welcome in mind, forever and ever.
The weather gets colder the farther my angel carries me up the path, but I don’t mind it. He begins to tremble a little, though, so I ask if he has warm clothes for himself in the pack. “I’m not cold,” I insist when he rummages inside the thing and comes up with a few pieces of thick clothes on my size. “You are shaking. You need to wear thicker clothes.”
“Will you wear your thick clothes if I wear mine?” he… bargains? Whoa, this is new. It’s like Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon bargaining with Dudley in the rare times either of them really wants him to do something, usually to be nice to Aunt Marge and her dog.
“Can we spend tonight beside the pond with the shower-like water, if I wear thicker clothes and you wear yours?” I bargain back, tentatively, revelling in the newness of it but still pretty wary of everything blowing up on me.
He nods, so I – quite reluctantly – start to layer the thicker clothes over my original clothes, while watching him wear his own thicker layer. We stuff our feet into a second layer of socks, then, before relacing our boots.
“Would you like to walk or be carried again, Harry?” he asks when we’re ready.
“Will you carry me after we walk for some time?” I ask back. I’m being greedy, I know, but who knows when this good thing will end? I must take all that I can get before I wake up and find myself back with the Dursleys!
I beam up at him when he says yes.
He asks me about angels while we hike up the path. A little puffingly but quite eagerly, I tell him all about angels and heaven and paradise.
I ask him why he’s so strong, then, while hopping up from root to root. When he tells me that Jaffa men are strong because of their warrior training, I ask if I will be a Jaffa man someday.
“You will be a kind human,” he smiles in answer.
From my spot a few feet away from him and farther up, I smile back at him, sadly. “Nobody ever told me I’m kind,” I say. “Do you think I will be kind?”
“I know it,” he nods.
“Do you think I’m a freak?” I prod further.
He shakes his head.
“Whoo!” I murmur to myself, beam at him, turn round and continue my hops from root to root and from rock to rock. He says I’m kind and not a freak!
But then, I find a strange door-like spot in thin air between two old trees that my angel can’t see but can feel, and I wish to explore it, and he begs me to “change back” so seriously, and my excitement dims.
I remember him explaining to me, while we were eating in his bedroom, that I was a grown-up who wanted to try to be a child in a “safe environment.” I remember him promising that he wouldn’t ask me to be a grown-up again unless he’s to go home or there’s something bad about to happen to us.
“Is it bad?” I ask, motioning at the door-like spot between the trees, which I’m turning my back on. “It feels like something I should’ve known. It feels like… home.”
“It feels like a chaapa’ai to my senses,” he admits while crouching before me, with an eye fixed on the spot I’ve pointed out to him while the other is trained on me.
“Chappy?” I repeat, baffled.
“Cha-paaa-ee,” he spells out, then adds, “It is how the Goa’uld and Jaffa move from planet to planet, when we do not move by ship. The Chaapa’ai are highly visible, however, unlike this.”
He describes the Chaapa’ai, then, which is translated into “Stargates” in English. The details are interesting but a little puzzling… and I’m not aware that he’s moved me to the side, not until he puts an arm round my waist and holds me close to his side.
I huff.
“I do not advise us to go through this gate at present,” he tells me before I can muster some courage to complain. “I am weaponless; you, likewise; and it is not certain whether we will be able to return to this place once we are there, because of one reason or another. The cold might even kill us before any native species had a chance to see us.”
I huff again.
“How can we get weapons?” I ask hopefully. “Don’t you think these clothes are enough already for the cold? I feel so hot!”
He shakes his head. “My weapons were taken. As it is, I need to return to my people through another means. As for the cold, it has penetrated through all the layers that I’m wearing.”
“Oh.” I really, really, really don’t want to be reminded about him going away….
Well, but if he really must go away, soon at that, wouldn’t it better if I weren’t a grown-up, would it? He can’t carry me if I’m a grown-up; not comfily, at any rate, since I’m not “injured” in any way. And, by now, I can’t get enough of his hugs.
I really want to explore the door-like thing that feels like home, but my angel says it’s not certain, while his hugs are certain – he promised me so!
So, rather grudgingly, I squirm till I get to his front, then climb up to my usual spot hanging from his neck, instead of persisting to go through the door-like spot between the trees.
And just so, he rises up without a word, and treks back down the path.
Bye-bye, home-like something. I wish I could visit you.