As clothes flew left and right, Basil could feel the urgency of the situation simmering under his skin. He’d read about encounters like this before where a human lived so long in the form of their transfiguration that turning back was like being dunked into a pool of ice water. Everything hurt, hypersensitive and unprepared as the feral mind was. Madness sometimes overtook those who had adjusted to hardly having conscious thought and sometimes even death befell the worst cases. This would not be one of those. Basil was determined to prevent as much. He held firm as the red-headed man (bloody why was it always a red-head?! Did he have a sign on his back or something?) spotted him. Recognition seemed to flicker across that squirrel-y face in slow motion. Basil clocked the moment Cecil seemed to zero-in on him, but it was too little too late to do much about it.
They collided with a thud that then knocked the both of them to the ground. Basil saw stars behind his eyeballs but his arms came to wrap securely around the half-naked man out of instinct. He didn’t want Cecil to get away; he needed help, and by George that was exactly what Basil was going to give him! “Big buggar aren’t you,” the brunette heard himself grunt.
(In retrospect, it was a rather tactless comment, but Basil too was still trying to wrap his head around how the very hedgehog that he’d carted around and fed so many evenings could possibly have been a real person right under his very nose. Again, damnit!)
Around them the crowd was still gathering, whispers and comments floating in one ear and out the other. Basil shoved himself up and rolled the other off himself just enough to reach for his wand. Without warning he conjured up a blanket and quickly tried to toss it over the man. “Here,” he said gently. “Take this and we can get you out of here.” Yes! A ticket to freedom. For both of them.
Aubrey Davis et. al <3