:::
The first thing Harry thought when he woke up, was that he was in some kind of national park.
Because the trees were huge. They went up and up and up, almost a hundred metres tall, and Harry, who was only used to apartment buildings and skyscrapers that tall, was slightly impressed.
The atmosphere felt that way as well. There were birds flying overhead, and a thriving ecosystem, and no matter where Harry looked, he couldn't see the usual signs of human habitation – signs, rubbish on the ground, bits of plastic – not even signs.
And for a tree to get that big, they'd probably have to be protected by the government or something, otherwise a company would have harvested all this wood and sold it.
So – national park.
So – he needed to try and find a park ranger, who could then helpfully point out where he was, and from then, he could make calculations for a portkey, or apparate back to London without the fear of splinching from accidentally trying to apparate intercontinentally.
But right now, he was sitting on a rock in that forest, and marvelling at the size of the trees surrounding him.
"Tempus," he said.
12.36pm.
The numbers appeared in the sky, and then faded.
It was odd that 'tempus' didn't tell him today's date, because that charm normally gave that too, but Harry wasn't too concerned. He only wanted to know roughly how long it had been since breakfast.
Long enough to get lunch.
Harry carried his broom around with him everywhere, shrunken in a compartment in his belt, so he looked around for any sign of muggle activity in the area: muggles, muggle cameras, that sort of thing. Finding nothing, he pulled it out, unshrunk it, and then put on his invisibility cloak.
He made sure it covered him and the broom before he took off.
:::
Inventory:
Auror badge.
Dragonhide armour vest, fingerless gloves and boots. Otherwise, just the standard wizarding cloak and normal clothes.
A belt. It had multiple compartments with Undetectable Extension charms, and this was where he kept all his items. A wallet with his ID and muggle money. The galleons, sickles and knuts he kept in a moleskin pouch. Water bottle. Broom, shrunk and stored. A first aid kit for wizards with various potions, also shrunk and stored. The foe-glass and sneakoscope. The Invisibility Cloak. A shock baton, an eversharp steel knife in a sheath and handcuffs hung on the outside, for easy reach.
A wrist holster for his wand. An ankle holster inside his left boot for the Elder Wand, in case he needed extra firepower or backup – if he had to lose a wand first, he would rather lose the wand of Holly than the wand of Elder.
The Resurrection Stone, on a ring on his right hand.
:::
Harry was hovering above the canopy of the trees.
No lookouts. No roads. Not even power station lines.
Where the fuck was he?
The good news was that the forest had an end. He couldn't see any highways from here – the black asphalt concrete roads he would've seen in an instant – but maybe there were walking trails somewhere.
He took a moment to scan the forest again just to check. In the meantime, he took his water bottle out, took a sip. It was nearly empty, so Harry used Aguamenti to draw water from the air and refill the bottle.
Then he flew even higher.
To understand how high he flew: the trees were about the height of some of the Quidditch stadiums he had flown in, from pitch to roof. Harry went about triple that height – upwards.
Villages off in the far distance. Lakes and rivers. Evidence of farmland.
Still no sign of any skyscrapers or cities.
Harry was flying at the height of some of the tallest buildings in the UK now, and he was hesitant to go any higher. He spun around in a circle, and noted that he could see a vague image of what looked like two long walls off in the horizon – one wall on the horizon in front of him, and one wall on the horizon behind him.
The horizon was a long way off though, especially considering how high up he was, so Harry thought that he would investigate that later.
He was trying to think of country-side areas with villages and walls, trying to place where he was, when he noticed that one of the landmarks that he was looking at – moving.
That couldn't have been right.
As he looked closer, he saw that what he thought was a landmark – or an odd-looking rock, or statues that looked like humans – weren't actually statues.
What were they?
:::
They couldn't be human beings.
At his height, humans should've been nothing more than little ants – specks of black in his vision, but these things were visible, and they seemed to come in a variety of heights.
There was a group of them near his forest of trees, so Harry was going to take a closer look at them.
It only took a couple of minutes to fly to the edge of the woods, and Harry slowed down as he came closer.
It took him another minute to process what he was seeing.
Giants!
A family of giants even! Walking around, and maybe looking for food!
See, giants were just like werewolves, and centaurs and mermaids. They got a bit of a bad rap, because wizarding society didn't accept anything that was different.
However, Hagrid's brother Grawp was a full-blooded giant, and he had been fairly gentle and kind, even if he couldn't pronounce long words. Hagrid and the headmaster of Beauxbatons were both half-giants, and they were also, good people.
So the sight of this many full-blooded giants in a group, in their natural habitat, running around free – that sight was awe-inspiring. Wonderful even.
Harry would have to tell Hermione the next time he saw her.
He noticed that some of the giants he saw were smaller than Grawp. The majority of them were bigger. Like Grawp, they were naked – unlike Grawp, they didn't seem to have anything between their legs, which made Harry wonder how these Giants would have children.
It was odd, but some of their limbs and heads and torsos were grossly disproportionate to each other. Some of them were missing skin in places, but they didn't bleed.
Harry had only thought to get close enough to measure how tall they were – at sitting height on his broomstick, he was about a metre tall, and so he could work out that some of the smaller ones were roughly three metres.
He flew within an arm's length of the largest giant.
The giant's head swivelled around. Faster than Harry was expecting, the giant threw his hand through the air, as though he was trying to grab something.
That was close! The giant's hand missed his broom by only a few feet!
:::
It was impossible for the giant to have seen him, since Harry was wearing his Invisibility Cloak.
However, there were creatures that hunted using a sense of smell, or echolocation. His Cloak didn't protect him from those senses, and clearly, this giant had noticed that there was something amiss, and decided to try and find out what it was.
Harry flew out of range and thought for a minute.
Giants were classified as magical creatures. Since they seemed to be roaming freely around the countryside, Harry thought that he could safely assume that there were no muggles around.
If there were no muggles around, Harry could take his Cloak off without worrying about being hit with a fine for breaching the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy.
What a relief.
Besides, it was rude to have a conversation where the other person was invisible.
The instant Harry took his cloak off, all the giants stopped whatever they were doing, and started paying attention to him. The shorter – younger? – ones actually ran off to the area right under Harry with big, happy smiles on their faces. They started climbing over each other, trying to grab him.
Harry sighed.
It was part of being the Boy-Who-Lived. People were always trying to grab him, get a high-five, touch his clothes, touch his face, and they fought over each other to do it.
He shrugged it off and turned to the largest giant.
"Sorry, I was invisible earlier," Harry said to the giant. "You can't be too careful with letting muggles see you flying on a broomstick. You know how it is."
The giant only looked at him with a big, wide smile.
"Anyway, my name's Harry. I'm a bit lost. Don't suppose you can tell me where I am?"
Harry put his palm out and moved into hand-shaking distance. Actually shaking the giant's hand would have been impossible, but it was the gesture that counted, wasn't it?
As quick as a fox, the giant reached up and tried to swat Harry out of the air. If it weren't for Harry's Quidditch reflexes and his very fast broom, Harry might've gone flying off.
Harry frowned. That was rude.
Maybe these giants only spoke Giant? Grawp had been able to speak English at the end, but he had been taught.
Harry tried miming what he wanted next. He moved his finger in a horizontal surface, and then put both palms out to either side. 'Where?'
He only got guttural cries in response.
It was then that Harry noticed one of the smaller giants – one of the children, maybe – began to gasp as though she was choking on something.
He looked to the leader, seeing if he would do something to help her, but the leader was focusing steadily on him.
Finally, she made a horrible noise and hacked something out.
"Are you okay?" Harry asked, flying over. If the kids started vomiting, they might need help.
She also swatted at him. Harry was beginning to lose his patience – these giants didn't seem to understand him, and they also didn't seem interested in helping him either – when he noticed what exactly, the child had vomited out.
It was a crystal. It was a large, beautiful crystal.
And inside the crystal, were bits of broken body parts.
Human body parts.
What. The fuck.
:::
With a cry, Harry rapidly flew back out of reaching range. The giants ran after him, jumping into the air to try and reach him, and this time, he knew much, much better.
It was one thing to be a giant. There was nothing wrong with being a giant.
It was another thing to be a giant and EATING HUMANS.
That was the thing that the Department of Magical Creatures got called in for. They had executioners, who 'put down' dangerous creatures like Acromantulas and Werewolves. Harry was fully against this, firstly, because sapient beings who could think for themselves should never be called creatures, and secondly, because they didn't deserve to be put down like a dog.
Anything that ATE HUMANS though – no, Harry was fine with those beings being put down.
Fuck.
Still. Giants, as a species, were sentient beings. Everyone who was sentient should get a fair trial.
If he considered giants as sentient beings, then this was auror business. They were criminals, and they needed to be captured so that they couldn't hurt other people. He would have to open up an investigation, get in translators that spoke Giant, and see what on Merlin's good Earth was happening.
Until then…
"Petrificus Totalus!"
The young giant that he was aiming at didn't even try to sidestep the spell.
The other giants around her didn't seem to care that she was down either. They stepped over her body to try and reach Harry again, making those same guttural sounds.
Were they even sentient?
This was – every bad stereotype of a giant come true.
For good measure, Harry petrified the lot of them from a distance. Even if the other giants hadn't consumed human flesh, they were responsible for the wellbeing and actions of the younger giants in their group, and they had to be investigated as well.
Once he was sure that they were all solidly petrified, he used Stupefy to knock them all out. The Full-Body Bind could be lifted in time, but only Ennervate could wake someone from Stupefy.
Next, was Incarcerous to tie them up, just in case. Then a shrinking spell, so that they could be captured and tucked into his belt.
Handcuffs wouldn't work on giants, afterall.
He went off to the nearest village. Hopefully once he found out where he was, he could give the country's Ministry of Magic a floo call, and hand in the giants for processing.
:::
The first village was empty. The buildings were run down, and worse of all, a large majority of them had suspicious blood splatters all over the woodwork. Broken bones littered the area – a ribcage here, a foot there.
It was obvious that no one had lived in it for a while.
Harry took a deep breath and flew on.
The second village was also empty. So was the third. And the fourth.
Harry remembered the body parts in the crystal that had been vomited up, and began to have some very dark thoughts.
Was this what feral, uncultured giants did?
There had been humans living here at one point, so this area couldn't have started off as giant territory. It belonged to humans. And then somehow, now there were giants everywhere, and no signs of any living humans in any village.
Had they been invaded by the giants?
Harry didn't know. He didn't have the answer to these questions.
What he did know, was that it would get dark soon, and he was currently in the middle of Giant territory, and these giants ate humans.
He needed to bunk up somewhere for the night. And he would need time to make it safe.
:::
There was a forest nearby. Harry flew deep into the forest – hopefully all the trees and branches the giant had to pass would slow down the giants a little – and he found one of the tallest trees near the centre to make his Homebase.
This sort of work needed the Elder wand.
Diffindo, to cut down the trees near his Homebase. He wanted a small clearing around his chosen tree, so that he could see 360 degrees in all directions around it.
Diffindo again, to cut the wood into regular, rectangular planks. The Elder Wand read intention, which was good, because Harry didn't have a ruler, and he didn't know any spells that would've allowed him to cut things regularly otherwise.
Feather-Light spells, and then Wingardium Leviosa to lift all the planks.
His chosen tree split into two strong sturdy branches near the top, and this was where he built the base for his treehouse. First, two planks to connect the branches together. Then a grid of planks above those planks, attached to each other with permanent sticking charms.
From that point on, it was easier.
He laid planks horizontally on the base, and this became the floor. Next were the support beams for the walls and roof. He laid the planks vertically, and these became walls.
Now he had basically, a wooden box with a lid.
Once he stuck all the planks together, he cut windows into his treehouse with Diffindo. One for each wall.
Next was the roof.
A few beams across the top, and then more planks above that, so that it formed an upside down V. Harry had to do a bit more cutting so that everything fit in its proper place, but at the end of it, he had a perfect treehouse, built with no rulers, no gaps, and seemingly without nails or rivets or any kind.
The whole process had taken him two hours.
The beauty of permanent sticking charms was that they didn't fade. A wizard needed 'finite incantum' to stop them from sticking, but until then, it was stronger than any kind of industrial strength super glue, all while being completely invisible.
Harry took a moment to admire his hard work, and then he got down to the nitty-gritty bit of it.
Reinforcing charms on the branches supporting his treehouse – right now, it weighed about as much as a couple of feathers, but once Harry was standing in it, he didn't want it to break. Protection against fire, runes carved along the base of the treehouse. Water and insect-repelling spells on the roof and empty windows.
Most importantly, muggle-repelling charms along the clearing, so that in the very off chance that someone was wandering lost in the woods, they wouldn't see his treehouse.
He looked at the shrunken and petrified giants in his belt. What he really wanted was giant-repelling spells. The villages that he had seen…
Giants were magical creatures. Someone had let the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy lapse, and let these giants loose on what had obviously been muggle villages.
As an auror, it was his job to protect the innocent. It was his duty especially, to protect muggles who didn't know any better, from being attacked by creatures from his world.
He would work towards that end.
:::
A/N: I've been watching this show. It's awesome.