章節 2: I swear I wasn’t playing with my stick

"Ughhh"

'That motherfucker, I told him to stop mixing stuff in my coffee. It was funny only the first time. GOD, I need new friends.' I thought as I held my head, that is feeling terribly heavy.

As I managed to open my eyes, I found myself staring at a very unfamiliar ceiling. It's wood. The last I saw something like this was when we went to our ancestral place to meet Grandma before she passed away, only this place looks even older.

"Where the hell am I?" I said as I looked around this damp attic that smelled like moss and rotten wood. There are tons of stuff just sprawled across the floor here.

'Did a storm hit this place or what?' I thought as I looked at the big hole in the thatched roof and the attic window that was barely holding onto the structure.

"Let's hope it isn't my doing," I said as I forced a chuckle.

"Ben, what the hell are you doing up there? Trying to blow the house up already?" said a woman from the room below. Her voice sounded so familiar, yet I was sure that I had never heard it before.

'I am not sure if I should say something. How does she even know my name?'

"Benedict! Are you alright? I am coming up. You better not be playing with your wand." She screamed as she climbed up the stairs hastily.

'Playing with my wand? Does she think I'm masturbating here? If only my wand could do this amount of damage.' I thought with a chuckle.

"Good lord, what in Merlin's name did you do?"

As soon as I looked at her wide-opened beautiful brown eyes that matched perfectly with her curly brown hair and shocked face, I knew who she was.

"Mum!"

'She's Dorothea Brown, my mother. And I am Benedict Brown. How could this be? But my memories are proof that this is real. If this is real, then what about my other life? Was that just a dream?'

"What happened to you? Why are you staring into oblivion, and what happened to your clothes?"

As her questions brought me back from my inner musings, I looked at my clothes, and they were in an even worse state than the room. I barely had a shirt on, and my trousers were missing a leg.

"I don't know. I blanked out, and this is how I woke up. I remember nothing that happened before."

'I do, but I can't tell you what happened.'

"Oh dear lord, let me take a look at you." She said as she pulled a wand out of her left sleeve and cast a diagnosis charm to look for any injuries on my body.

"Everything seems to be in order with you, but your clothes, on the other hand, are beyond saving."

She cast a Mending charm on my clothes but my pants are still missing a leg and my shirt, a sizeable chunk from the chest area.

"Blimey, these are beyond saving, but let me fix the roof before it collapses on us. Reparo."

And with a few circular motions of her wand, the collapsing mess of a room was back to being a relatively safe space.

"WOW."

"You are in big trouble, young man. What did we tell you? No wand-waving without supervision."

"But mom! I don't even have my wand with me. It is in my room."

'It's crazy how I know all this.'

"Oh, Merlin! You mean you did this without a wand?"

"I didn't do it. It was like this when I woke up, and now my head is hurting, so please let me rest before I pass out again."

'Oh heavens! Help me. I just wanna get this over with so that I can figure out what the hell is going on with me.'

"Alright, you go lie down for a bit in your room, but make sure you clean this after. This is still your mess."

"I will, I promise."

"We will talk about this once your father gets home."

"Ugh, alright."

I quickly made my way down the squeaking stairs from the attic towards my room through the dark hallway and washed up walls, and opened the door to my room that hardly had any paint left on it. The condition of this room wasn't much better either: chunks of wallpaper were missing from the walls, but surprisingly, whatever was left of the wallpaper was quite lavish. It had intricately designed trees, flowers and birds of gold in a brown background. The furniture in the room, although a bit battered, was clearly made by skilled hands. Lost in my thoughts, I quickly went in and sat on the edge of my bed, ignoring the squeaking sound it made and also everything else.

'There is no doubt about where I am.' I thought, looking at the wand that lay on top of my bedside table.

"This is obviously the world of…"

To be continued…

A/N: Ghahahahaha, unnecessary cliffhanger-san is here. Khekhekhekhe. I will leave you all to guess where our protagonist is. [Hint: He can shake his stick and make things happen with it here.]

I ended this chapter here because there was a lot of info dump after this, and I didn't want to divide it into two chapters. We will get to know a lot more about the Brown family tomorrow. See ya.