AN-A new story! Some of the lines from chapter one were taken directly from Deathly Hallows and are the property of J.K. Rowling. I claim no ownership over these or any characters or themes. Thanks for reading!

"Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"


The white light faded and burned black. There were galaxies behind his eyes, deep pools of swirling light dusted with stars. He was weightless on his way down, so when Harry Potter hit the forest floor and woke up, he felt as if he was hit with a shattering electric charge.

He opened his eyes and saw a tilted view. Where am I? He attempted to place a date, a time, any fragment of memory to where he was and why. In his desperate search, he failed to place his own name. His mind was a black hole. All he could find was one shard of light surrounded by warmth and accompanied with the sound of a deep, comforting voice of someone he thought he should know but could not place a face.

What is happening to me? Who am I?

The ground was cold and smelt of decay mixed with fresh growing things, a contradiction he failed to connect. There was pain everywhere from his burning forehead to the odd lump underneath him sticking with something long, narrow, and solid, like a stick. It was dark and difficult to see, and he was not alone.

There were voices nearby but none spoke to him. They did not seem to notice he was there. There was concern for another on the ground, a pale figure in a black robe getting to his feet. When he looked at him, his forehead pumped with a fresh surge of pain. He closed his eyes with blood pulsing in his temples like drumbeats.

"The boy…is he dead?"

The boy? Him, he was the boy, and they were coming closer. One was touching him, a woman with cold, probing fingers and flowing hair. He almost didn't dare breathe. How did he get there? Who were these people and what did they want? Would they kill him if he ran? Could he even move? His body felt like a dead weight on the ground. The pain was so strong he was sure it would kill him before anyone else. He wished it would. Maybe he would wake up from whatever obscure dream he had landed in and remember who he was.

"Is Draco alive? Is he in the castle?" The woman asked him in a barely audible desperate whisper.

What was she talking about? Castle? What was this? Wake up, wake up!

His eyes opened a fraction and met the anxiousness glinting in hers. Somehow she found her answer in his frightened gaze because she moved away quickly and left him lying limply.

"He is dead," she told the others for reasons he could not imagine.

There had to be a way out, he thought through the shouts and yells of triumph. There was flashes of alarming light mixed with the chilling sound of laughter from the man in the black robes. He was like walking death. Unbearable to look at.

"Harry Potter is dead by my hand, and no man alive can threaten me now!"

Harry Potter. That was a name he thought he recognized. There was familiarity to it which gave him a surge of relief. He knew his name. He had nothing else, but he knew his name. Now, he had to think. He had to get out of there and find out more.

The rippled of laughter from the lurking crowd of unseen faces interrupted Harry's thoughts. There was more movement nearby as the ground shook slightly. Something with very heavy footsteps was advancing to where he lay.

"You carry him," the face of death commanded. "He will be nice and visible in your arms, will he not? Pick up your little friend, Hagrid. And the glasses— put on the glasses— he must be recognizable—"

Harry's glasses were shoved back on his face as enormous hands lifted him off the ground. Through his half-closed eyelids he saw what carried him. Something most assuredly from a nightmare. A giant, a hairy beast of the forest.

Overcome by his fear, Harry fell into deep unconsciousness.


This time, when he awoke, there was no celestial lights to greet him. He was not falling, he was flying. Strangely, the sensation gave him comfort. Harry hoped he was nearing the end of the dream. Or perhaps he had arrived at a new state of being where he would float for eternity. It did not matter that he could not recall anything as long as he could remain where he was in naive bliss.

Too good to be true, he plunged into icy reality and returned from his deep sleep to find himself still in the arms of the giant. A gentle giant, he quickly realized, who was less frightening in the shift of light. Hagrid had moved him at the bidding of the fiends who surrounded them. Harry could make out the edge of a line of trees and bright stars overhead which were like seeing an odd side-by-side photograph of his unconscious view and the backdrop to his nightmare. Was he in the stars or on the ground? Was he flying or being carried?

"Are yeh happy Harry Potter's— d-dead…?" The giant sobbed with such howling force that Harry nearly scrambled from his arms. The desire to run was strong, but he dared not move or give away his advantage. They would not kill someone they already thought was dead. He willed himself to remain limp.

"Stop," the black robed leader commanded. Footsteps ceased and the giant abruptly stood still.

The air was frigid. Harry could feel it in his lungs like despair. He wished he was dead as he fought to maintain control on his senses and not blackout again. Why couldn't he remember anything? There had to be something. He could not have simply started to exist the moment he lay in the forest. He dug deep in the recesses of his mind and came up with nothing but a snapshot of fleeting shadows and darkness followed by warm, soothing white light and that calming voice without a face.

"Harry Potter is dead!" The booming, magnified voice of evil rent the air and yanked Harry from his fleeting memory. His head throbbed as he caught the words "war" "castle" and "new world" through the ringing in his ears. Harry opened his eyes just enough to see the Lord of Darkness walk by with a great, slithering serpent slung over his shoulders.

They began to move again, out of the trees into the open air. In the distance Harry saw a towering building made of stone with many turrets and windows. When they drew near, the Dark Lord commanded them to stop once again. Debris lay like a war zone dotted with the pale faces of battle-scarred men, women, and children.

"No!" Someone screamed at the sight of him lying in Hargid's arms. Despair was echoed in the yard before mingled with threats and curses from a growing crowd around the open castle door.

"Silence!" There was a bang and a flash of bright light. "It is over! Set him down, Hagrid, at my feet, where he belongs."

Harry did not want to be set down. He wanted to cling to the warmth of the great man's thick coat and use it as a shield against the cold, hard wrath of the thing which hovered like a skeletal grim reaper. He forced himself to lie motionless on the broken slate courtyard as the Lord taunted the spectators and goaded them into shouting their passionate contradictions to his lies.

Wake up, wake up, wake up! It could not be real, this place, these happenings. Whoever Harry Potter was, Harry wished he wasn't him.

A flash of light darted across the courtyard from the direction of the crowd. "Dumbledore's Army!" someone yelled.

Harry's heart hammered. He could not explain the sudden excitement in his chest. He did not recognize the voice or the phrase it so bravely shouted, but something in the tone gave him hope built on the cheers from the masses.

"Very well," the Dark Lord sneered. His voice also caught Harry's attention and caused him to peer through his lashes with his breath held in anxious anticipation. The leader of the black army raised a thin stick and pointed. Somewhere glass shattered and drew the attention of the crowd to the windows of the castle.

The stick… Harry made a connection and made an imperceptible move with his hand to touch the place under his clothes where he had felt the odd shape of a something underneath. This thing the Lord held was a weapon, and Harry had one two.

In the confusion of the Dark Lord's attack on the one who yelled "Dumbledore's Army!" and the sudden increase of noise from newcomers arriving on the scene, Harry was able to extract the stick from its hiding place along with a shimmering piece of cloth which padded it. He did not know what to think of the cloth, but used it to shield his face from the chaos going on around him. Raising the stick, he looked at it closer.

Wand, he thought without effort. The word came from nowhere but made perfect sense. In all of the bewilderment and panic, this was one thing that felt the most certain. But, what to do with it?

The Dark Lord's screams rent the air. Harry looked up and found the cloth was sheer and see-through. He instantly saw the snake lying on blood-splattered stone, dead. Its master was furious as he raised his wand at the sword wielding perpetrator of the serpent's beheading.

Without thinking, Harry mimicked the defensive gesture and cast light from that strange and powerful stick. His fingers tingled and felt alive. Protego… His mind formed words without his help. An out-of-body phenomenon which caused him to break into a sweat. What was he doing?

What did it matter? He wanted to do it again.

Over and over as he moved through the chaos with the shimmering fabric shield pulled over his face and his wand disrupting any move the Dark Army tried to take. He followed the fighting inside with an unexplained pull to be where the action was and witness the end of the Great Evil with his own eyes.

Why not? It was his dream. Why not see the finale?

The fighting grew so intense that Harry found himself watching more than participating. People were dying. These fireworks of brilliant shades of light were lethal and the thought almost made him run for cover.

The Dark Lord was losing and the knowledge of this made him angry. He moved to end the life a woman who valiantly took out one of his own.

Harry interceded with the one spell at his disposal and cast a shield to protect her.

In his surprise, the Dark Lord searched for the source of the interference.

Harry stepped back and dropped the shimmering cloak. The surrounding army of duelers gasp in shock and surprise.

"Harry!"

"He's alive!"

The exclamations were stifled as Evil faced Harry straight on. Rooted to the spot, Harry clutched the wand in his hand hardly daring to breath. His mind raced through shadows and constellations for an answer that made sense. A word, a memory, anything that would realign this madness with sense. This cloaked corpse with leering fangs was poised to strike and kill him for good. The only thing that came to mind for Harry's defense was one word. As the Dark Lord called his death knell curse with weapon raised, the boy's instincts drove him to use his wand and shout, "Expelliarmus!"

What had he done? How had he done it?

Harry could only stand in shock as the room erupted in cheers. He was sickened by the sight which had played out before his eyes. The Evil was gone, the Dark Lord's wand was in Harry's hand. He did not recall catching it, but there it was. People were jostling him and hugging him from all sides, and all he could do was stand there amazed.

Faces filled with joy swam before his vision. They shouted his praises while he swayed on his feet.

"Harry!" A young woman shouted in his ear as she swallowed him in an erratic embrace and engulfed him with a bushy halo of hair with tears on her cheeks. "You're alive!"

"You did it, mate!" A grinning ginger slapped him on the arm.

His female likeness appeared and smiled at Harry with a look of amazement and awe in her sparkling brown eyes. "Harry," she pulled him in with her arms around his neck before kissing him warmly on the mouth.

Harry moved away, stared with uneasiness at the mass of strange faces, and made his escape from the castle.