I'm Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

Well, I guess that's incorrect now. Because I guess I never really lived.

I'm fictional.

Made-up. Non-existing. Fake.

Draco Malfoy, who still diligently remains my relentless tormentor since childhood, sneers in triumph and throws the book at my feet.

He broke my nose once. That's the kind of kid we're dealing with here. Well, the word "kid" isn't so accurate.

He's freaking seventeen.

The tome slams into my feet hard, but I resist the urge to wince. Malfoy grins coldly.

"How does it feel, Potter? To know that you're a puppet, a sham? Nothing but a mere figment of imagination?" He advances closer until he's almost stepping on my toes and leans into my face. His eyes glint maliciously, and his mouth just starts to curve unpleasantly upward again when I open my mouth.

"Huh. I didn't know our relationship was that close, Malfoy. I thought our faces would never find occasion to be this close together, but I suppose I'm wrong. Would you like some tongue with your kiss?"

He reels backward so quickly that he almost falls over, and I use this as proof to calm my pounding heart. I just said that. I thought the words, and then I spoke them of my own free will.

I'm not fictional.

I can't be.

Malfoy's lying. He's just trying to get a reaction out of me, the stupid little git. And I, idiot that I am, actually believed him for just a few seconds.

Not anymore.

Malfoy brushes back his white-blond hair fiercely with one hand and snaps, "I wouldn't be so funny if I were you, Potter. If I were you, I'd be thinking over every wonderful thing I have ever accomplished and realizing the fact that I. Didn't. Do. Any. Of. It. At. All." He enunciates each word perfectly, saying them in little staccato bursts.

Shaking my head, I turn around and start walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. "I'm done, Malfoy."

His voice rises, but I neither stop walking nor turn around. "You think I'm lying, do you, Potter?" He stays where he's standing, but a slide followed by a nearby thud tells me that he's just kicked the book down the hall after me. "You think I made up some wild story, paid a printer to make that book, and planted it somewhere so you could find it?" His voice climbs almost to a shriek as I distance myself even further from him. "You think I have time for such childish ruses?"

"I didn't even know that word was in your vocabulary, Malfoy," I call over my shoulder. "Where'd you learn it?"

Suddenly, Malfoy shouts out a single word, and as it registers in my brain I abruptly drop to the ground, narrowly missing a spell shot at where my head had been.

A few moments later, Malfoy has caught up behind me, and his cold voice throws the words down as I roll over to look up at him. "You are fictional, Potter. I'm fictional. Everyone in this stupid goddamn world is made-up. Do you get it, or would you like me to repeat it more slowly?"

Still lying on the ground, I plunge my hand into my robes and grasp my wand, just in case I need to defend myself. The action turns out to be unnecessary as Malfoy suddenly cocks his head, listening. A moment later, he stows the wand he has been pointing at me back into his robes and begins to leave me, heading the opposite direction down the hallway.

He abruptly stops a few steps later. "What does it matter what I even do anymore?" he mutters without turning around. He pauses. "I'm not even real."

I tense again, expecting Malfoy to whip around and cast the killing curse at my forehead or break my nose for the second time, but then he picks up his feet again and disappears down the hall.

Sighing, I peel myself off the ground and brush the dirt off my robes. Turning around again I almost continue my previous path down the hallway, but then I hesitate, and two seconds later I'm bending down to pick up the book that Malfoy had thrown at me a few minutes earlier.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Having found it a few days earlier, I've flipped through the entire thing, and it's an entirely-accurate-to-the-detail account of my first year at Hogwarts, including every single thought and emotion that I ever had along the way.

By J.K. Rowling.

Turning it over, I read the back summary again, trying to unearth any telltale clues. I live in a wizarding world, for God's sake. Anything is possible. Maybe some witch or wizard out there has a spell or a magical object that lets them look into people's minds, and after discovering a way to look into mine, they decided to write a biography of the famous Harry Potter.

I almost convince myself that it is indeed just a harmless biography when my eyes snag on a particular sentence, and my heart jolts.

"Rowling uses classic narrative devices with flair and originality and delivers a complex and demanding plot in the form of a hugely entertaining thriller. She is a first-rate writer for children."

And just a line under that: "A richly textured first novel given lift-off by an inventive wit."

"Narrative devices"?

"Hugely entertaining thriller"?

"Plot"?

..."Novel"?

My life has been invented, planned out, and written down? I'm just a character in a book?

I'm...fake?

God. I shake my head in disgust at myself. I'm seventeen. Not only that, I'm Harry freaking Potter. I've fought dragons, faced Voldemort numerous times, battled dark wizards by the dozens, and yet I was still susceptible to the simple lies of a bully. Malfoy was the one who had this planned out. He created some stupid book with fake information so he could scare me and laugh about it later.

In fact, the way I found this book was pretty dodgy in the first place. Just casually slipped into my book bag. One minute it wasn't there, and the next minute it was.

Malfoy. Such an idiot. Even after the second war against Voldemort, even after the Battle of Hogwarts, even after we've all witnessed death and sacrifice and torture, my childhood bully still invests his time in silly little psychological pranks as this.

Idiot.