Disclaimer: I don't own either Harry Potter or Supernatural. All right go to their respective owners.

ONE

Bump In the Night

Harry couldn't remember anything.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. If he searched his mind hard enough, he could almost pinpoint the last memory he had before waking up. But it was fleeting and formless, shadowed in the back of his consciousness.

He knew enough about his life and himself that he was sure it was weird for him to have woken up on the side of a dusty road, barren landscape stretching as far as the eye could see. Okay, so maybe that was unusual for any sane person, but Harry felt, within that cloudy portion of his brain, that this was even more out of the ordinary for him.

Being Harry Potter, he decided not to let a bad situation get the best of him. Having laid in the dirt for god knows how long trying to clear the raging storm of confusion inside his head, he wriggled his toes and fingers experimentally, deducing that nothing had been injured. Heaving himself to his feet, Harry brushed as much dirt off of his clothes as he could. In his frenzied almost-groping, he realised with a stab of panic that his wand is nowhere to be found in the folds of his trousers and sweater.

Breathing deeply through his nose, Harry tried to calm himself down by noting that any threat coming in his direction could easily be pinpointed somewhere on the horizon all around him and he would be well prepared. It was an small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

With slight trepidation, he looked in either direction down the seemingly endless road and saw no discernible signage pointing towards civilisation. Shrugging his shoulders and realising he couldn't possibly make his increasingly dire situation even worse, he took a chances and turned to his right, beginning his journey along the side of the highway.

After a good half an hour of walking, Harry decided with some difficulty not to take it as a bad sign that not a single car had passed by him. Or that the level of the horizon in front of him hadn't changed a single bit. Or that he was pretty sure he hadn't had any food or water for quite some time.

Another half an hour and Harry began to panic in earnest. He usually felt that he was a fairly positive person. Sure, many of his life experiences shouldn't have led himself to that conclusion. But after all that, he thought that he'd developed a sort of immunity to the things that life threw at him. Though he wasn't always entirely prepared for them, he longer imagined each setback as the thing that would end his life. Again, the reason for this newfound serenity (if it could be called that) seemed to be in the cloud of lost memories.

His current panic, though, seemed to be as endless as the asphalt laid out ahead of him. The certain combination of circumstances that he found himself in felt bigger than anything else he'd dealt with up to this point though he was unsure about why that was exactly. Perhaps the complete and utter lack of options at his disposal, his dishevelled state or the uncertainty of his mental state.

This anxiety continued to pervade him for some time as he continued down his path, and he officially gave up trying to track the passage of minutes or hours. All he knew was that his thirst, consternation and the blank stretch of earth under his feet continued even as the sun began to set.

His gait slowed considerably as the last remnants of light left the sky and he was certain now from the rough dryness in his mouth that he hadn't even seen a drop of water in days. Something niggled at the back of his mind. He should have really found his parched state more confusing than it was but the part of his brain that held the answer to the question of why he was in the middle of nowhere seemed to buckle under the weight of his survival instincts.

Something in the distance halted him in his tracks and he stared blankly, unsure of himself. His thoughts must have distracted him from his progress because the thing that stuck out of the ground was only about a hundred feet away from him. He moved again with a renewed vigour and a small sigh of confused relief escaped him as Harry recognised the small cylinder.

For just a moment (at least, he'd only admit to it being just a moment), Harry was entirely unfazed by the sight of the cool metal water fountain buried directly in the middle of the road. He reached out a slightly trembling hand before pulling it back suddenly, letting the logic of the environment catch up with him.

Though it took him an embarrassingly long amount of time, Harry finally realised that whatever was in front of him must not be real. Mirage, his mind helpfully supplied the word. And though he's sure it's a hallucination, Harry still stared longingly at the thing.

In fact, so transfixed he was by the sight of the fake fountain, he maintained that what happened next was entirely not his fault. In fact, he was sure that the complete void of anything all around him really have should rendered him invulnerable to attack by wayward drivers, but the thing came out of nowhere and hit him nonetheless.

The blaring horn pulled him from his staring match with the faux water fountain first, and he was too utterly dumbstruck to move his body an inch. Blinding headlights flooded his vision and he couldn't tell if the sound was coming from five feet or fifty feet away. Apparently the offending car was closer than he thought, as the metal hood connected with his body with a sickening crunch seconds later, despite the screeching brakes signalling the driver's efforts to slow down.

Air escaped his lungs in a painful huff as his body rolled heavily over the body of the car. Pain roared without warning from several points of impact. His limbs flailed comically around him as he was suspended in mid air for an impossibly long time before landing with a thud and final pulse of pain that seemed to vibrate his bones, a cloud of dust suffocating him.

The vehicle finally skidded to a stop ten feet away from where he laid pitifully in the dirt. He didn't dare move a muscle, for fear of irreparably damaging his long-suffering body. He vaguely heard the thud of car doors opening and closing and shifted his eyes as much as he could in the direction of his assailants. The now grumbling black muscle car sat bodily between two shrouded figures and Harry noted with some annoyance that neither one made any movement to help him.

Sensing that they were either in shock or plotting how to dispose of his body as he was rapidly fading into unconsciousness, Harry decided to spur them into action by croaking weakly in the strongest plea for help that his battered lungs could handle.

Both figures broke out of their reverie and rushed immediately to his side. Through the blurriness of his concussed state, Harry could just barely make out two young men, one blond and the other brunette. A handsome face set with hazel green eyes swam into his vision and the last thing Harry saw before blacking out was the set of lips in front of him framing the exact words in Harry's brain:

"Oh, shit."