Chapter 7

Harry Potter awoke in a pit that reeked of hot sauce. He could feel viscous fluid under his fingernails, burning the tender skin. Everywhere were white bags bulging with foul product. They were diapers stuffed with chicken bones and hot sauce, their foul odor blossoming in the muffled dark. Harry's nostrils begged his brain for mercy. He flew upwards, away from the saucy mysteries below. The smell grew faint, calling him to return. Harry ignored their lies, flying beyond the lips of his prison. He was in a laboratory, with machines that had no purpose beyond blinking lights and soft hums.

"Hello, my boy son! You make a father so good!"

Harry had flown out of the nose of an old man. This man wore a white coat, yet was drawn by the hand of an idiot. His voice came not from his mouth, but from elsewhere, a sad attempt at humanity.

"I know you'll do so well! Now you choose!

The man reached into his coat and laid out three diapers, each brimming with the spicy bones of the nose prison. He removed his head and stuck it on a spike on the counter, to keep it from rolling away. The diapers began to stir as creatures clawed out of bony wombs. Arrayed before Harry was a turtle, the reptilian body so frail that it seemed an afterthought to the shell, a bald weasel with toothpicks for legs, and a wrinkled thumb in a glass of water. The old man's head called out from the spike.

"Everyone has one! Make your best friends for life!"

Harry drank the glass of thumb water and spat the thumb at the old man's head.