Farther Than Wonderland
An Alice in WonderlandHarry Potter Crossover
Author's Note: Well, hello again! This is one of the weirdest ideas my twisted mind has ever come up with. I hope it works, because it should be pretty fun. Please read and review! (As for the style of writing I chose for this chapter, it's based on Lewis Carroll, but tweaked by me.)
Disclaimer: Alright. I'll fess up. I don't own Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter, but I do basically claim the idea to put 'em both together for a pleasant party mix of madness and magic.
Chapter One: Farther Than Wonderland
Alice sighed. She was bored out of her little rich-girl mind and quite tired of sitting on a chair in the drawing room. She surveyed the room with dismal review. The walls were starkly bisque-colored, the carpet brown and dull. The only picture hanging on the walls was a portrait of her grandfather, George M. Dumba— Dumble—Dumville... oh never mind. She'd forgotten. It was a funny name, but that was all Alice could recall about it. It didn't matter anyway. The portrait was just as depressingly boring as the rest of the room. And the rest of the world, for that matter.
A small, tubby cat crawled out from under an ugly grey sofa across the room. It yawned, stretched, and then began to make its way over to Alice in the most infuriatingly leisurely manner imaginable, as if it had decided on a whim to grace the blase child with its company.
"You're such a snob, Dinah," Alice accused half-heartedly. However, she stooped to pick the feline up into her arms anyway, scratching the furry chin fondly.
"It is so terribly boring around here, isn't it, Dinah? The same thing every day. Nothing ever changes." She began to stroke the cat absent-mindedly as she talked to herself. Dinah didn't listen; she was too busy purring and being comfortable to take any interest in what Alice had to say. Alice pointed this out with an exasperated sigh.
"You're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you, Dinah? Ah well. I'm quite used to being ignored by now. Nobody else cares about what I say or do. I mean, I understand that everyone is rather preoccupied lately, what with Mary Ann getting married and all, but honestly. You'd think people would at least remember me, but they don't seem to."
Alice's voice cracked as her throat constricted suddenly and tears sprang to her round blue eyes. "Oh come now," she scolded herself firmly, unsettled by her close encounter with crying. "Alice Pleasance Liddell, you are sixteen years old. You are far too old to cry. And besides," she added coldly (for she was an odd sort of girl who enjoyed telling herself off), "you ought to be happy for Mary Ann because she has found a splendid gentleman to wed. It is only to be expected that she will be the center of attention for a while, and it would be selfish to be bitter about it."
Alice then attempted to shake herself to restrain from crying any more, which resulted in an odd, jerky sort of movement that would have been very amusing to see if anyone had been in the room at the time. No one was, however, and so the only one to have noticed Alice's sudden, violent self-inflicted attack was Dinah, who leapt gracefully off the girl's lap and stalked off, her tail twitching in an annoyed fashion. Alice sighed after her and sank, very un-ladylike, into the chair.
"Oh, but I am so bored with everything. Whatever shall I do?" she wondered aloud. Her gaze shifted from the floor to the portrait of her grandfather quite subconsciously in that following moment and she at once sat up and gasped loudly.
"I do believe that picture just winked at me! How funny! But it couldn't have. Oh but it did look ever so like it!" she breathed, standing up and crossing the room. She stood before the great portrait, her arms crossed in a contemplative manner. She raised one —admittedly shaking— hand to the portrait and touched the painted weathered cheek of her grandfather and felt a sudden rush.
"Goodness, me! What was that?" she asked aloud, talking to the air as she often did. It had felt like a summer's zephyr, fluttering through her limbs so that she swayed like a willow tree. She raised a curious eyebrow, gazing intently at the portrait as though trying to dissect it with her eyes.
After a long while, she reached out again and this time she felt the same rush before she even touched the surface of the painting. Her dark-blonde hair strayed wildly behind her as her hand neared its destination. Her heart beat very quickly and she could hear its allegro rhythm, pounding sharply in her ears. She gasped for breath and leaned forward into the wind that was seeming to issue from the huge portrait before her. Huge? Had it always been that big? Surely not! Why, it was getting bigger before her very eyes, bigger and bigger as her hand drew nearer and nearer. The pounding in her ears seemed to reach its height in volume and then— it stopped.
Her fingertips lightly tapped the surface of the painting; the eyes of her grandfather flew open and she could see for the first time that they were a piercing light blue; all sound ceased and all became wind and time.
Alice shut her eyes as an unsettling spinning sensation began to spread throughout her body. She had a feeling that she wasn't in the drawing room anymore, that she was now farther from home than ever before. Farther than Wonderland.
Time. It seemed to pulse all around her, like she was living in a clock tower. She felt like the vortex she had been sucked into was the very essence of time itself, and Alice was just another split second in the everlasting cycle of moments. She willed herself to keep her eyes shut and keep breathing, but in this place there seemed to be nothing to see and no need to breathe. No atmosphere, no landscape, no nothing. Alice trembled as she spun.
For hours this seemed to go on, or sometimes she thought it might be hours. Other times it felt like she had only been in the frightening place for a few seconds. But, she decided mentally, in the corner of her mind not totally shrouded by fear, whatever this place was, it certainly had an unusual definition of time. Or, rather, she corrected herself thoughtfully, the lack of definition of time.
Suddenly, she realized that she could breathe again. Atmosphere was existent again, and never before had she been so happy to welcome such a common thing as air. Perhaps, she thought, if there is air, then there is also something to see when I open my eyes.
So she opened her eyes. And immediately Alice's feet were in contact with solid ground, and an intriguingly rich landscape greeted her eyes. She looked around her. Mountains, and a misty forest. She shivered. Rather cold, this is, she thought. Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned to look behind her. A gasp of awe escaped her trembling lips as she surveyed what lay before her. An enormous, sprawling castle. It was magnificent. Alice could scarcely believe it to be real, especially after her unpleasant visit to the Realm of Time, as she began to call it in her mind. Perhaps it wasn't real! The thought occurred to her and she was suddenly very afraid that it was only a vision or a dream.
So Alice walked briskly towards the castle, to make sure it was real.