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Chapter One
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The Awful Tea Party Part I
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It was a good life, the one that I had. Not a particularly interesting one, mind you, but still good. Okay, it was boring as hell if I'm honest, but it was mine. And my life stopped being mine the instant that Harry Potter pulled me into his world.
The worst part of it, the one that really pisses me off, is that I hadn't asked for it. During no part of my last day in a normal universe did I bemoan my fate, curse my ordinariness, or look to the sky hoping that someone, anyone, would take me away on an improbable adventure. Those kinds of things didn't happen in the real world, so I'd long stopped wishing for them. That's what growing up is. And sure, that's lousy, but it's life. You work with what you have. What I had was an affordable studio apartment; Fyodor, a boyfriend who was sweet and steady; and a mind-numbing career as a market research analyst who sidelined as a cover-story inventor for a married boss who everyone knew was slipping it to the HR lady during lunchtime.
Not extraordinary. Not special. Not magical. But all of that was real and it was good.
And then I stepped into a supply closet to get some toner because no one else could figure out how to refill the communal printer despite the instructions being taped to the side two years ago by someone who was tired of staining her fingers black, and found myself in a dim, candlelit room filled with stale air and the thick scent of blood. Sitting cross-legged on the stone floor was a thin young man with black hair. He was holding a yellow-paged tome so large that it seemed to take all his effort to keep it upright. And I knew him. From the eyeglasses to the lightning-shaped scar on his head, I knew him. You'd know him too, provided you're a fan of popular fantasy novels. This was a face that I had seen while reading book after book in one particular series, a face that had been locked in my mind, a face that was like that of a familiar friend.
The one thing out of place was the Slytherin crest on his school robes. Why was he wearing robes like that when he looked only a few years younger than me? He was well past Hogwarts age.
Oh, and that body in the center of the salt circle was unexpected too. It might have frightened me more if I hadn't sat on the grimy floor rocking myself, convinced that I finally had some kind of boredom-induced break with reality. Twenty-six was too young for such shit.
The man watched me sob and beg for someone to take me to a hospital. He really was a man. Twenty or twenty-one, maybe. Hard to tell through the blur of tears. A kid of his age shouldn't have looked so ... detached. God, it was bad enough that I'd had a breakdown, but had it really needed to involve the Harry Potter series? A non-canon version of it at that? And why Slytherin Harry, of all the cliches? Couldn't it have been, I don't know, Hufflepuff Harry? A Hufflepuff wouldn't have made what looked like a summoning circle and engage in probable human sacrifice. Or maybe he would have. You never knew with the nice ones. Fuck, my imagination really had got away with me. Mom was right. Shouldn't have had my nose in books all the time. Look where it had got me. I strangled down a panicked laugh. The sound squeaked through my teeth anyway.
His gaze shifted to snare mine. It was cold and sharp, yet curious. That curiosity seemed worse than the detachment, as if he'd found an interesting Flobberworm that he wanted to dissect. No one should wear an expression like that. It was too empty. "What's so funny?" he said in a soft voice devoid of emotion.
"Everything," I said. That sounded whiny. Tearful. Christ, this really was a breakdown. Karen from HR was going to waddle over to see why I hadn't come back with the toner and find me blubbering. Maybe she already had. Maybe the ambulance was on its way and the EMTs were readying the sedatives. So I might as well explain myself while I could. This figment of my imagination wouldn't last much longer, so there was no harm in furthering the conversation. Modern medicine could do a lot for sick people. "I have gone insane," I explained, "and I am talking to someone who isn't real."
He stretched out his long legs on the blanket beneath him. Tendons in one of them popped, as if it'd been kept crossed for too long. He shifted the heavy book in his hands. Read. Turned a page. Turned another. Frowned. Traced a scarred finger down the thick paper. What the hell had happened to his hands to scar them like that? "Are you a Squib?" A pause. "No, Americans call them Defects, don't they?"
"What?" Right, this was a themed breakdown, wasn't it? Squibs. I knew what those were. "No, I'm not anything like that."
Pleasure flashed across his face, startling compared to its former blankness. He quickly schooled his features. "Excellent." He flipped another page. "How closely are you related to the Evanses? You must be a cousin. A second or third one, perhaps ..."
"I'm not related to any Evanses."
Now annoyance flashed on his face. It stuck there. "Then what are you? A Muggle-born? No, wrong term — Were you born of Blights?"
"I'm a Henry. Violet Henry."
"With no relation to anyone named Evans? I find that difficult to believe after the little ritual that I've done."
My gaze drifted to the body not half a foot in front of me. "What have you done?"
"Summoned a witch or wizard of my blood to me." He saw where I was looking. His resulting smile was thin and nasty. He set aside the book. "Don't look so upset. The man had been a Muggle. A perverted one at that. Wanted to buy 'my time' for a hundred pounds. When I had refused to give it, he tried to take it, so I cut his short instead ... along with another small thing of his." My gaze darted away from the bloody spot on the body's trousers. Potter's smile popped up again, thinner and nastier. "If he hadn't been rough with me, I would've just been on my merry way and he would've been alive."
The dead guy had been a pervert? If this hallucination was anything like the countless Slytherin Harrys in countless fan fictions, then it'd be hard to trust anything he was saying. Those types were always unrepentant liars. Then again, he was a product of my broken brain. He couldn't hurt me. I was fine. I was safe. I was real. He wasn't. The power was with me, not him. I uncurled from the floor. Sat up. Brushed loose hair behind my ears. "Where I come from," I said, "there are no witches or wizards."
He grabbed his wand from where it had been sitting beside him. Rolled it idly in a hand. "Forgive me if I don't believe you."
"It's true."
"You know what a Squib is."
I sighed. Hallucinations shouldn't argue. "Because it's in a book," I said. "A series of books. You're just a character in them — one who's Gryffindor, by the way, not Slytherin."
His amusement dissolved into distaste. There was anger too in his thinning mouth and his narrowing eyes. He said, "It seems that we'll have to discover the truth the hard way," and pointed his wand at my face. "Legilimens."
What followed was a pain that I couldn't have anticipated. It wasn't physical. But it hurt in ways that I had never been hurt before. Ways that would still hurt hours later. They'd hurt for the rest of my life. It's hard to tell you what that was like. Maybe you know. But I hope that you don't. I hope that the world has changed for those reading this chronicle. Let's pretend that it has changed, that you don't know the touch of an Unforgivable. So how can I let you know what it's like to have Potter in your mind?
Oh, wait. I think have the right comparison. Have you ever had a diary? A journal? Something that you kept from all the world and filled with your observations, your dreams, your secrets?
Did anyone ever read that diary?
It's awful, that kind of violation, isn't it? Someone else knowing your deepest and most private thoughts. Doesn't matter how irrelevant they are. You wrote them down and locked them away for a reason. The reason could be as simple as those thoughts just being yours. No one has the right to go through them. They shouldn't want to have that right. Everyone deserves privacy and trust.
Legilimency gives you neither. That spell is an intruding hand that cuts the lock on the diary of your mind, slices out the pages, and reshuffles them in its ceaseless, restless hunt for whatever secrets it wishes to find. Occlumency is the only thing that can slap that hand aside.
But I didn't have Occlumency then.
There had been no such thing as magic in my world. You can't defend against a weapon that doesn't exist. I sat helpless as he tore through my entire life. And I mean helpless. Active Legilimency, I would later learn, was a different beast from passive Legilimency. The second one happens when a practitioner of the art silently uses his skill to skim surface thoughts from the eyes of other people. It's not particularly strong, so an Occlumens of passable skill can deflect such intrusions without any real effort. Active Legilimency doesn't skim, it invades. You feel it slithering into your thoughts, rifling, exploring, tainting. It stirs up memories like ghosts, resuscitating their accompanying emotions. It suspends its victim between past and present, paralyzing them with the weight of remembering.
No Legilimens, no matter his skill, can pick one memory at a time, can be careful, can find exactly what he wants on the first try. And sometimes, like Potter, they just want to crack open your skull and see the insides.
Here was the disappointment when my family forgot to call on my birthday two months ago. There, connected to it by a skein of anger was a memory of my mother texting to say that it's your sister's birthday two weeks from now, don't forget! Here was me on a three-nights-in-a-row crying jag when I thought that Fyodor was cheating on me, and God, I'm so lonely, why hasn't he come over in three weeks? He can't be that busy. Is there someone else? Oh, that's stupid, he's too nice to cheat. Just imagining things, like always ... Here was last Christmas. No, the Christmas before. No, no, no, the Christmas when I was five and Grandma got me that book. Books. Always liked books. Books like the one he'd come from. Here was another book from another time and another and another, so many titles passing by until there was one called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Another memory, of a later edition with the original title floated in the back of my mind like a phantom, then dissipated. The memories of my first reading of that first book cascaded through me. Then the second book. The third. The fourth.
The fourth. We lingered together on the fourth. Alastor Moody's face, craggy and ugly, filled my head. Then another man's face, one that was slender and freckled and hollow-cheeked. Barty Crouch Jr. The faces that I had imagined them having. But the face that was lingered on the longest was always that of Harry Potter. Harry in the Order of the Phoenix, Harry in the Half-Blood Prince, Harry in Deathly Hallows. I saw him again and again and again until the haze of memory retreated and we were left staring at each other.
He had gone bloodless. His wand arm trembled. He finally human. What had turned him so inhuman in the first place? No. Nothing had turned him into anything. He was not real. This was a hallucination. A psychotic break. Shit, that isn't a comfort. Maybe it'd be better if this was real. At least then I wouldn't be crazy.
He licked at the sweat gathered on his upper lip. "I am not a character in a book," he said, lowering his wand, "but you are mad."
"Yeah, I'd have to be to think you're real," I said.
"No." He ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. "That's not what had turned you mad."
"What did then?"
"You can't have forgotten that, no matter how mental you are."
"Forgotten what, exactly?"
Disgust laced his disappointment. He took off his eyeglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a moment, he dropped his hand and slipped his glasses into a pocket of his robes. He stood with the muscular fluidity of an uncoiling snake. "I have work to do."
My hallucination-induced host was no stranger to corpse cleanup. He didn't flinch when he levitated the body out of the circle. He took it through the long, low room and out a door that opened with his approach. He paused on the threshold, the body hovering ahead of him. Without turning around, he said, "Don't kill yourself during my absence or else I'll have to murder another Muggle. You wouldn't want that on your conscience would you?"
He left and the door locked itself in a turn of great, clanking tumblers. I got up. Not in a panic. There was nothing I could do about all this, so I might as well explore until the psychiatrists and their drugs got hold of me. The lines of the summoning circle didn't keep me from crossing them. Once beyond the wavering light of the candles that were positioned around that circle, the rest of the room was easier to see. It looked like a basement. What else could it be without windows, really?
Against a shorter wall opposite the door and behind the circle was what looked like a potions crafting station. On the long wall to its right was a door that proved locked, though by leaning up I could see through the window placed high at the top half. There were shelves inside the room, many of them, all lined with jars, boxes, and phials of what looked like potions ingredients. Interesting, but not extraordinary. Further along that same wall and to my right, were bookshelves. Lots of them. Few books, though. Some were in English, others Latin. In the corner nearest the big metal door that Potter had gone through — it was difficult to think of him as plain old Harry, bastard that he was — was a small, square area cordoned off with battered, wooden screens. A peek behind them revealed a neat bed, a trunk, and a small table with a few books on it. He seemed to be living here, wherever "here" was. The other long wall had two doors, the first of which led to a bathroom with a separate water closet and the second of which was a large storeroom filled with odds and ends. More than a peek in the storeroom seemed like prying, but the bathroom was useful, so in I went.
"Don't you just look horrid!" said a scolding voice.
I jumped.
The source of the voice was a mirror hanging over the sink — although I suppose that'd properly be called a basin if this dream-hallucination-whatever was set in Britain. My reflection wasn't lying; I did look awful. Sweaty, pale, drawn. My bangs were plastered to my forehead with sweat. The rest of my hair wasn't much better. I fixed the tangles as best I could with my fingers since there wasn't a brush or comb lying around. Not that I would've used them. Using other people's brushes was weird. My face was an easier fix. Just a little cold water from the tap, a pat of a towel hanging from a hook next to the sink, and my skin felt fresher. The clothes were a different matter. Landing and then lying on the floor had dirtied them. Ugh, the skirt was a hopeless case. So grimy. These were my best work clothes too. Would it have killed him to clean the floors around here?
The great tumblers turned again, so I rushed out of the bathroom.
Potter returned to the room, the door closing behind him. He had come alone. His school robes were absent, however, leaving him wearing trousers, a blazer, and one of those cardigan vests over his shirt and tie. A school uniform, this one also with a Slytherin crest. The ensemble was vaguely Tom Riddle-ish. In fact, he looked something like the Riddle I had imagined reading about, but that resemblance between them was canon and not my tendency for bullshit symbolism controlling this situation. The question was if the resemblance ran to personality and not just looks. Well, it must have, considering the dead body. Maybe the real question was to ask how deep the resemblance was. The only way to find the answer would be by testing the boundaries of this hallucination.
"What did you do with the dead guy?" I said.
He strode past me, taking his wand from an inside pocket of his blazer. How had that fit in there? Stupid question. Magic, obviously. "Do you really want to know or are you just politely inquiring after my hobbies?" he said.
"Both, I guess."
Potter waved his wand and the salt circle disappeared. Maybe he'd Vanished it. Neat trick. Maybe he could be convinced to get the grime off my poor, innocent clothes. "The less you know about it, the better." He sent the candles flying into metal sconces set at intervals on the stone walls. "Suffice it to say that it has been adequately disposed of." He turned to face me. "Do you feel sorry for the man?"
"It's hard to feel too sorry for a construct of my subconscious."
That answer wiped away his neutral expression, replacing it with something dark. "Stop talking like that."
"Why? Does the truth hurt?"
Some emotion flickered in his eyes and was gone too fast for me to catch it. "It's not the truth," he said, "and if you keep spouting it, someone other than me might someday overhear it, and you'll end up in hospital where you won't be of use to me."
"What use could you have for me?"
"You're to be my guardian."
It was likely a bad idea to say no to him — he had just got rid of a body — but I was still stupid enough to say the first thing that came to mind. "You're a little old for that, aren't you?"
His lips pressed together. "It's a pity about your madness, but I suppose that I can work around that."
"God, that sounds so Slytherin ... This is really AU."
Now his lips disappeared. With what seemed like a titanic effort, he finally said, "What does that mean?"
"It means that some explanation would be nice, like telling me why you need a guardian at your age."
He said, "Yes, I suppose that some explanation shall be necessary."
Potter Conjured a table and a set of chairs. He then brought a full tea service out of seemingly thin air, much in the way that meals were served by house-elves. Maybe it was some variety of Summoning Charm. There were little cakes on a three-tiered tray and everything. Fancy. Not that I'd say so — it'd make me sound like a tourist visiting a London tearoom. Incidentally, that was probably where he had got it from. It was hard to imagine that he was the sort of guy who kept an extravagant tea setup lying around for potential guests. Potter jabbed his wand at me a few times, using two spells that cleaned me up and tidied my hair, and a harmless flash of foggy white light that didn't seem to do much of anything at all.
He gestured for me to sit down, which I did. Might as well. A dream couldn't really hurt me, and other than that whole invading my mind thing he had been somewhat civilized. Well, not to the dead guy. But to me? Yeah. Plus the tiny cakes looked good. He served the tea, then floated the sugar and lemon slices my way. When we had finished fixing our drinks to our respective tastes, the hovering dishes and spoons settled onto the table. We drank a while before he said anything else. "You understand the generalities of the magical world, if not the specifics," he said. "I suppose that we have your addled mind to thank for that."
I reached for a mini-tart that might've been lemon. "Addled is a little harsh." Tasting the tart, I found that it was lemon. And delicious. "What don't I understand, then?"
Potter set his teacup to its saucer, then placed both on the table. "You're taking all this surprisingly well."
I shrugged. "As far as nightmares go, I've had worse ones."
He took a cake off the bottom tier, one that looked interesting. "Shall I frighten you, then?"
"No, I'm good." Besides, he'd already frightened me. I nodded at what he'd just taken. "What is that?"
"Seed cake."
"Any good?"
"It should be, considering the prices of the tearoom I had just pilfered it from." He levitated the plate my way, then tended to his cup again. "Please, help yourself."
I did, and then the plate settled back to the table. The seed cake was better than good. My imagination was working overtime on this hallucination. "So, that's your deal? Stealing things?"
He frowned over his delicate white teacup. "My 'deal?' "
"Your thing ... your ..." No, that was less helpful, not more. "It's part of your characterization, I guess I'd say."
His cup struck his saucer with a loud clink. "I am not a character." He was holding his cup so tightly that it looked as if it was close to being shattered. "You are not allowed to say that I am, or that anyone else you meet is one. In fact, you are not allowed to mention any of your delusions to anyone save me. Is that clear?"
It didn't matter if the lead character was Voldemort or Harry, I'd read plenty of Dark Arts fics to know where this was going. "Let me guess," I said, "if I go against your orders, you'll use the Cruciatus Curse as motivation? You do know that's the refuge of shitty fan fiction Dark Wizards, don't you?"
"No," he said, finally bringing up his cup. It was a long drink. "I've always found that particular curse a blunt tool compared to the delicate instrument that is the Imperius Curse. It's an insidious spell, one that you can't truly recognize when it's cast upon you. Of course, that changes when you've been commanded to do something that's against your nature to do." He set everything aside and picked up his napkin to blot his mouth. "Put your plate down, pick up your knife, and hold it three inches away from the center of your right eye — assuming that is your dominant eye. Is it?"
I did as he asked. He'd done it so politely that refusing him seemed silly. He wouldn't ask me to do anything to hurt myself. Even if he did, it didn't matter. This wasn't real. The knife didn't quiver in my hand. Oh, I was being rude. I hadn't answered him yet. "Yes," I said, "my right eye is my dominant one."
He selected a scone from the tower of food. Set it on his plate. "It would be a shame to lose that one, I should think."
I frowned. He wasn't asking anything of me. He should. "Do you want me to agree?"
"Your agreement doesn't matter," he said. He took up his knife and split open his scone. "What I want you to do is slowly move the knife towards the corner of your eye — the inner corner with the tear duct — until the tip of it rests against the flesh between that corner and your nose."
That wasn't very much to ask and it wasn't very much to do. We weren't friends, but he was Harry Potter. He wouldn't hurt anyone without good reason. That Muggle had died because he had got rough with Harry. Me, I was a different case. I was useful to him. Even if I wasn't, it didn't matter. This wasn't real.
He spread clotted cream on one half of his scone, jam on the other. The second looked like a streak of gore. "Now," he said, "I'm going to tell you how to gouge out your eye and you're going to live to regret it."
The request was awful enough to make my knife-hand waver. But it didn't matter. This wasn't real.
o
(Oh, but the pain was.)
o
An eternity later, he Vanished my blood off me, my clothes, and the otherwise pristine white tablecloth. "You should finish your tea," he said, leaving my side to return to his chair. "The leaves have a mild calming effect to them that unfolds over time, one that is aided by the caffeine." He set his wand next to his plate, within easy reach.
My hands stayed firmly on the table. I wasn't doing a thing that he told me, not now. "Fuck you."
He took a bite of his scone. Jam flecked his lips like blood; he licked it away. "Is that the first thing that you have to say after I so kindly released you from my curse?"
"Fuck you sideways."
Another bite. "You could at least thank me for putting your eye back in place. It was tricky work after you had sliced it into such uneven pieces." He traded his food for his cup. After drinking deeply of his tea, he said, "As I was saying, you shall not mention your delusions to anyone save me. And when you do mention them to me, you shall do so in a private setting where no one else, not even portraits, can hear of it." His tone was calm but his eyes were alive and deadly above his cup. "Have I made myself perfectly clear?"
Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him.
"Have I?" he said.
I jerked my head just enough for it to be taken as a nod. This was still a dream. Nothing would happen to me in the real world. But ... I'd never felt pain like that in a dream before, not even my worst nightmares. I didn't want to feel it again. Didn't want to feel the hot blood coursing down my face. Didn't want to watch myself set my severed eye on the table and chop it up like a tiny blob of gelatin. Didn't want to feel so helpless.
"Good," he said. Nodded at my cup. "Drink. It shall help." A smile touched his lips, one that held no friendliness. "Think of it as the chocolate after the Dementor."
With shaking hands, I picked up my tea. It tasted better than a knife to the eye had felt, even if I wasn't thirsty. Trying to ignore him watching me as I drank was the hard part. Eating anything was out of the question. My stomach was quivering worse than my fingers were. Both my hands and my stomach settled when I had reached the bottom of my cup. Potter made the teapot pour me a second one. It poured out steaming hot. This time, I added extra sugar. Calories didn't matter in a dream.
He leaned back, touching nothing else of his food or drink. "Let's continue our conversation," he said. "The one where I had been telling you how wrong you had been about the magical world."
"Details and generalities," I croaked. Somehow, despite the tea, my throat was still dry.
"Yes," he conceded with a nod. "Details and generalities." He waited for me to finish my tea before saying anything more. His hands, white and scarred, folded together, then drifted out of sight, presumably to rest against his lap. "British Wizards start their magical education at seventeen or eighteen, not eleven. After seven years of schooling, they have a year of apprenticeship. Upon the age of twenty-five, they are considered full-fledged wizards and are no longer bound by the rules of youth. You don't look older than me" — he examined my face so avidly that I turned my head away — "but you are. You must be, for I had specified as such in the spell that had brought you here. A witch or wizard of my blood, twenty-five or older, and suitable as my guardian." There was no hint of a smile on his face now. "The spell took a rather liberal interpretation of what 'suitable' meant, I'm afraid. You'd hardly be suitable enough to gain custody of a Kneazle, never mind a person."
Potter pursed his mouth, an oddly schoolmarmish expression. Maybe he'd picked it up from his Aunt Petunia, the cow. "There is more to it than that, but we shall save that for another time," he said. "First, I have to figure out what is wrong with you, and to do that, I'll have to be unkind again." He had his wand pointed at me before I could jump out of my chair. "Don't fret." He stood and the candles threw his shadow over me. "I won't let you remember this part if you don't want to do so. I'm not cruel."
o
When I woke, it was with him leaning over me and my teeth fuzzed over with what felt like several days' worth of gunk. My eyes squinted in the candlelight. My jaw popped when I spoke in a rusty voice. "What day is it?"
Always wanted to say that. Sounded so dramatic.
He straightened up, making a face. Was it my breath? Good. He deserved worse. "You don't know what day it was when you got here, so knowing which one it is now won't help you." He waved his wand at me several times, hitting me with half a dozen different kinds of light that must've been spells. There was the smell of flowers on my skin and the taste of mint on my teeth. No fuzz either. "I suppose that some politeness is in order, however. It's the twenty-six of July, two thousand and one. You've been here for three days, counting the one on which you had been summoned, and you've been a pain to clean after on every one of them."
Trying to sit up ended in failure. I rolled onto my side instead and propped myself onto an elbow. Progress. "If you keep prisoners, you have to maintain them."
He idly spun his wand around in one hand. It must've been a hard trick to pull off without his glasses. Maybe his eyesight wasn't that bad. Come to think of it, it hadn't been that bad in the books, had it? Everything was slightly blurry to him, but not hopelessly indistinguishable. Must've been nearsighted or something. God, I'd read that series way too much.
"So," I said. Yawned. "Did you have fun with my unconscious body?"
Anger darkened his face. "Don't be disgusting." He turned half away, folding his arms behind his back, his wand still in his left hand and still spinning. "I needed to see if you had been damaged by the spell that had brought you to me. What I had learned had been nothing more than the obvious conclusion, one that I had already come to."
The spell he had used, he meant. Nice way to deflect the blame, dude. "Three days seems excessive just to reach an obvious conclusion," I said.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He stopped spinning his wand and slipped it up a sleeve. "We are as closely matched as can be in blood." His face darkened. "Too closely matched, in fact. Not even a sister would be so close to me." He watched me from the corner of his eye. Only now, with his face in the light of the candle that was shining a short distance away from the bed, could I see the stubble on his cheeks, the shadows under his eyes. "Even a madwoman would have some break in her self-made memories, some foundation of reality. But you ... you are consistent in all of yours, even those that you don't like to remember. And the matter of our blood, the closeness of it, has proved that your consistency is not that of the irrevocably insane. So yes, the conclusion was obvious."
He twisted down towards me, lightning quick. His right arm was even quicker and the hand that held my chin was like a vise. He turned my face to the light. "My opposite," he said in a soft, wondering whisper. He ignored my hand batting at his. "It is fascinating how closely aligned we are, despite the differences ..." His gaze caught on my forehead, quickly dragged down to my eyes, and then flicked aside. Pulling away, he wiped his hand on his robes as if he had touched something slimy.
I wiped off my face in the same way. "I do not look like you."
"Mad you are, but blind you are not."
I blinked at him. "What, are you fucking Yoda or something?"
He blinked back. Then scowled. "Don't bring up that Muggle rubbish. I've heard enough about that to last a lifetime."
My gaze turned around the little space that was ostensibly his bedroom in this sunless prison. It wasn't a very long look. "There aren't many people talking about it here." His scowl deepened, but that wouldn't stop me. Why quit digging when I was already so close to reaching China? "Or do you mean the people at number four, Privet Drive talk too much about 'Muggle rubbish?' "
He didn't reach for his wand but he looked as if he wanted to. "Enough. You're awake and if you're awake, you're ready."
"For what?"
"To become my guardian."
Not this again. But what choice existed? This was not going away. This was not ending. This wasn't a nightmare. My stomach twisted at that, heavy with the weight of the truth. No, this wasn't a nightmare. Nightmares ended. And even if this ultimately turned out to be one of those instead of a stupendous break with reality, it might be best to start cooperating. Phantom pain still lingered in my eye no matter how many alleged days had passed since the gouging incident. Dream or not, that had felt horribly real. I nodded. "Okay," I said. "Let's get it over with."
His triumphant look lasted about three seconds before he folded it away. "Good choice."
"Did I ever really have one?"
He settled into a wooden chair not far from the edge of the bed. "What do you think?"
"That I have about as much choice in watching over you as your aunt did." The words were out before I could think to stop them. Potter didn't look angry. He had his smooth mask of vague politeness firmly in place. "So ..." I began. "How do we do this?"
Crossing his legs, he said, "You must accept me into your home."
It couldn't be that easy. My disbelief must've showed because he continued, "The protections require that I live with a person of my mother's blood, a person who has taken me into his or her care."
"I know that," I said. When he looked at me with his dagger-sharp curiosity, I added, "Dumbledore told Harry, um, I mean, you, tha —"
"If you're going to say that he explained the bond of my mother's blood to me in a series of fictional books, I would rather that you not say anything at all." Potter plucked irritably at a fold in his robes, then flattened it with the side of his hand. Plain black robes, not his school ones this time. And he had on Muggle clothes under them, not the uniform he'd worn before, but a dark suit with a waistcoat. God, he was mean and Slytherin and pretentious. This dream was one cliche after another. Maybe it was a message from my subconscious, something that would've given Jung the fits.
He said, "What I want to discuss is why you look so skeptical about something that you claim to have already known."
Tension uncoiled within me, though it didn't disappear. There was no telling what he might do to me, not after he had used the Imperius Curse. "Isn't there anything more to it?" I said. "It can't just take a few words. That's ..."
Ridiculous would've been the term for it. But could I really say that considering all the ridiculous things that had happened in the books? They'd been written with a humorous streak a mile wide, even if the overall tone of the series had darkened towards the end. Animals could be turned into teacups, jelly beans could taste like every single thing in existence, and there was a hex that made boogers turn into bats. Rowling's magic could best summed up as, "If you're looking for a rigorously defined rule system here, you're going to be disappointed, mate." So it made perfect sense — or, nonsense, as was really the case — for a few words to make me the guardian of Harry Potter.
He unfolded his legs, stretching them out. "You're not completely incorrect."
"Oh, thank you. How generous."
My scalding tone might as well have been silence for all it affected him. "After you make your claim as my guardian, Petunia Dursley shall have to transfer her 'care' of me to you," he said. "In that respect, it shall take more than just a few words — it shall take at least several dozen of them." He gave a flat smile.
Was that an attempt at a joke? No, I must've hallucinated that. He hadn't been hydrating me properly during my nap, that was all. This Potter wasn't Harry, with his sarcastic remarks and unflagging bravery and heart of gold.
"There's also the matter of you not precisely having a home in which to accept me."
"I'm not homeless," I said. "I have an apartment." Wait, what was I saying? This guy wasn't real and even if he was, he wasn't someone that I wanted living with me.
"You are, technically," he said, "because your flat exists in another world."
So that was the angle this dream was taking? That I'd come from a different universe or something? "Yeah, the real one," I said.
If that comment annoyed him, he didn't show it. "Even if it did exist, we couldn't live there." My skin crawled at the thought of sharing any living space with him for an extended amount of time. He must've seen that too because amusement lit his eyes. "Britain must be our place of residence until I've finished my education."
That he used we and our didn't bode well for me. He was already acting as if I had agreed to help him. Saying otherwise would be a bad idea — the power here sure as hell didn't rest with me, my dream or not. But I had to say something. Go down with a fight, or at least call him an asshole. Because that's what he was. A dangerous, devious, kidnapping asshole. And he needed me, so I was too valuable to kill no matter what I called him. Of course, that didn't rule out him punishing any insolence. Magic could repair a lot of damage with little effort. Like what had been done to my eye. A shiver ran through my whole body.
"You want to know why you should help me," he said.
I jolted. Heat bloomed in my face. Why was I jumping at anything that he said? This was a dream. It wasn't exactly shocking that my own brain could guess what I was thinking and twist it into one of his comments.
"Accepting me as your own isn't something that I can force you to do," he said, and I relaxed. "The transfer of blood protections shan't work if your answer is forced by magic or through coercion. It has to be willing."
Well, it seemed that I had some leverage. I took that as a sign to sit all the way up in the bed. Strength had been returning to me little by little, but every movement seemed to take a year. My spine popped in several places as I straightened my back. After taking a great, shuddering breath, I said, "What if I won't help? What if I refuse?"
"Then there isn't anything that I can do to make you say yes."
"Shouldn't you be saying you'll kill me right about now?" Really, he should be. Promises of death and pain are exactly what too many Slytherin Harrys make at times like this. Very little subtlety for a house that took pride in it.
He remained slumped in his chair like a lazy lord. "As I had said, I can't coerce you into it, not with spells, or fists, or threats." He shot forward with startling speed, leaning towards the bed. "But I can give you dire warnings about the interest that others shall have in you, a young and not unattractive woman who, by all appearances, is related to Harry Potter, a wizard who has had Voldemort himself as an enemy." The light of a candle caught on his face, sticking pinpricks of orange-red on his irises. "There wouldn't be anything that I could do if they caught you, either. And they would catch you. The Ministry of Magic keeps a close eye on any 'lunatics' who rave about magic just in case they might be wizards breaking certain important statutes ... and no matter how mental you are, you know that the Ministry is filled to the brim with Death Eaters." He kept staring at me with those green-red eyes, staring until I looked away. It was like looking at a forest fire. "You would be alone and entirely vulnerable to whoever might come your way, and I doubt that those who do shan't be offering tea and a free flat."
Potter was good. Very good. The skin had rose along my arms during that spiel of his, and that was with me knowing that this whole thing wasn't real. He was a frightening figment, one of the better ones that I'd ever had. And since I was, in reality, going to be put in the care of doctors soon, there would be no harm in going along for the ride. I'd be free of this whole awful thing and he'd meld back into the shadows of my brain.
"A free flat, you say?" I said, and watched the corners of his mouth creep upward.
Not very long afterward, we took a Portkey to some park in London, then hurried elsewhere without a second spared for me to wonder over the miracles of magic.
o
The neighborhood was clean, fashionable, and full of Muggles who looked as if they spent more on their shoes than I could make in a year. That was as much as I could gather about the place while Potter paid the cabbie. None of the residents looked at us twice as we went up the stairs to the building — before we left the basement, Potter had got rid of his robes and Transfigured my clothing into an expensive-looking outfit. As he dug jingling keys out of his trouser pockets, I said, "I'm no expert on the London real estate market, but this area looks ..."
"Posh?" he said. "It should, considering what I had paid for the block of flats."
My eyes widened. "You bought the whole block? An entire block of buildings?"
He nodded towards the place in front of us. "No, just this one block of flats. What you would call" — a brief pause — "an apartment building. Two of the flats have been let. The third shall be ours."
There was that word again. Ours. But could I really blame him for the presumption? I was here with him, wasn't I? "What did you pay for it?" I said. The price he rattled off made my eyes water. "That's — Jesus, how can you afford that? I mean, I know you're decently well-off, but you're not that well off."
"My parents gave me enough for a comfortable start." He found the right key, stuck it in the lock, and twisted. "Or they would have done had I not made my own fortune before ever hearing the word 'Gringotts.' " He opened the door and stepped inside, leaving me to scramble after him.
Which I did. After shutting the door. And locking it. "You can't just leave it at that," I said. "What fortune?"
"I can leave it at that." He was also leaving behind the small entryway for a staircase that led past the ground story apartment — should probably start calling those "flats" out loud just to spare any confusion with the natives. Urgh, what am I saying? Everyone I can see in this world is just a part of my imagination. They'll be fine if I use American English ... unless, like me, they enjoy accuracy in their fiction. Okay, I should probably stick with calling pants "trousers" and bangs "fringe" just so I don't embarrass myself but what the hell am I thinking? This wasn't the time for vocabulary issues to interrupt the narrative.
"No." I went up the stairs so fast that I almost knocked into his back. "No, you can't just leave it at that, not when you've dropped that kind of backstory on me."
His step hitched the slightest bit, but made it to the next riser just fine. "Remember what I had told you about mentioning your peculiar way of looking at the world?" he said in a too casual tone as he came to a stop on the second story landing. No, that was called the first story landing in Britain. First stories were above the ground story. "The middle of the staircase isn't the place for such a conversation."
The question had been rhetorical and the followup comment unnecessary. I remembered his warning perfectly, just as I remembered the knife that he had made me slip into my eye socket. He had left those memories intact. My hand trembled up to that eye, pressing at the ghostly pain throbbing there. Potter hadn't moved above me. Maybe he was waiting for an answer. "Okay," I said.
He moved on, which allowed me to do the same. The third story apartment — or second story flat, if you wanted to be all British about it — was the last stop. Our stop. He unlocked the door and let me go in first. Must've been a trick. I shuffled inside with painful slowness, narrowing my eyes at the dark, trying to discern any dangers. There was a faint sigh behind me and then Potter swept past me. Warm light flooded the room as he tore the curtains open, illuminating exactly what I hadn't expected: a good-sized sitting room empty of everything except a lumpy grey sofa and a sorry-looking side table. Well, the bare light bulb in the ceiling socket probably counted as decoration in a room like this. There was bedding bunched up on one side of the sofa, along with a pillow. Did he sleep here?
Following my gaze, he said, "I haven't had much reason to come here often. The place we had been in before is part of a magical residence, one where I can cast spells without worrying about the Trace, so it has been of more value to me." That made sense. Getting busted for underage magic wouldn't have been a good idea, especially when he was going around killing Muggles in his spare time. Potter motioned off to his right. "The kitchen is there." Now a motion to his left. "The bedrooms are over there, across from the bathroom and the toilet. Have the larger room if you wish to do; it doesn't matter where I sleep."
Images of the bed in the basement and a dingy old mattress in a cupboard flashed through my head. Yeah, it obviously didn't matter where he slept. Crappy accommodations didn't seem to bother him. Kind of weird, come to think of it. You would think that someone with his apparent fondness for fine clothes would want to sleep on something better than a glorified futon. "Are you sure?" I said.
He looked at me as if I were crazy. To be fair, there was an increasingly large possibility that I was.
I said, "If you're rich, you're probably used to better things."
His expression flattened. "Don't make assumptions of me," he said, and turned towards the windows to stare onto the street.
God, I'd been saddled with a genuine drama queen. Soon, he'd be dragging out the tale of his dark and tortured past that would make me forgive his bitchy brooding. Of all the Slytherin Harrys to end up in my hallucinations, I had to get the mysterious and mopey Byronic version. Whatever. His problems were not mine to fix. He could afford a therapist. I left him to stew and checked out the bedrooms. They were both completely empty, with little difference between them other than size. Fuck him, the bigger one was mine. When I came back out, he was waiting with two thick-looking paper folders.
He thrust them in my direction, along with a ballpoint pen. "The first are documents for your new identity. The second is the agreement that shall give you the flat, for the exorbitant rent of one pound per month until I turn twenty-five."
"That's four years."
"It will be four years and four days," he said, "until I am of age in the magical world. That amount of time is unfortunately necessary."
I flipped through the first file, which proved to contain my California driver's license, a passport, social security card, my birth certificate, and other important things. "Where did you get these?" I said. "Did you go to my apartment and rob my stuff?" I paused as I found something that I didn't recognize. "I've never had a UK residence card." Nor did I ever have the other IDs and documents behind it. I stared at him over the top of the folder. "Where did you get these?"
He made a rough noise that might've been a suppressed laugh. "Muggle identification isn't exactly difficult to acquire."
Okay. Nothing to worry about. This wasn't real, so I didn't have to fear forged documents made in my name. This particular card looked passable enough, even if I'd never seen a similar one in my life before. "Well," I said, "at least you took nice pictures of me." Wait a second. My eyes narrowed as I looked from one photo to another. "How did you take these? I've been asleep. And what are those clothes? Did you change me?"
"I had Transfigured your clothing," he said, "nothing more. And you hadn't been asleep for these past three days. Just for part of this one." Before a protest was halfway out of my mouth, he said, "If you'd like to relive too many hours of signing paperwork and answering my questions on your life, I can return your memories to you at once." He said that like he was committing some great act of charity.
"Why did you take them at all?"
"Because you had asked me to do exactly that."
"I don't believe you."
But that was a lie, wasn't it? There were parts of me that wanted to believe him, that did believe him. Maybe they were the parts that still remembered canon Harry or maybe they were bits of memory that hadn't been entirely ripped away, wisps of three days staining the rest of my mind. With things like the Imperius Curse and Veritaserum, there probably wasn't a thing about me that he didn't know by now. A cold shiver snaked up my spine.
Stop being stupid. There is nothing to be afraid of. Controlling minds and bodies, truth serums, Dark Arts, none of that is truly possible outside dreams. He can't do a thing to me, not the me that matters anyway. Not the real one.
"Fine," I said. "Give me my memories."
He reached into his blazer, took something from an inner pocket. It was a small phial filled with restless liquid of a color that was like mercury mixed with mist. It was attached to a silver chain. He threw it to me.
The folders fell from my hands, scattering documents and IDs to the floor. I clapped the phial between my palms. Barely. "What's wrong with you?" I said. "What if it had fallen?"
Sounding very tired, he said, "The Unbreakable Charm on it would've lived up to its name." He nodded at my hands. "Go on then, see what you're missing," he said. "You told me that you would likely demand them, so it would be best for me to keep them close." His eyes were the only part of him that turned lively, burning with fevered curiosity. Those eyes made me shudder and look away. "I wonder if you'll be just as right about whether or not you would actually put them back."
I took the phial up with my fingers. The memories swirled lazily against the glass. They looked harmless. Beautiful even. But why had I wanted them out in the first place? There had to be some reason for it. Something that would've left me better off without them. Had he done something to me? Something that was too terrible to remember? No, why would he have kept my memories intact instead of just erasing them? And if they were that terrible and he didn't want to erase them, he would've just let them stay in my head, same as he had done with the memories of me gouging out my eye. The reason must have really been mine. Which left me with one question: What could I have wanted out of my head so badly without wanting to destroy it?
The memories struck the glass like waves battering a seaside cliff. My shaking arm drifted down to my side. Some questions didn't need answers.
Potter didn't look surprised. He took the phial from me. I was numb and still as he put the chain around my neck. "They're yours," he said, not looking at me. "Keep them with you." He then busied himself by gathering the folders and their contents from the floor, taking far longer to collect them than seemed needed.
o
o
o
[There is a purpose here, I swear it.]
[This fic was inspired by a prompt from the HPfanfiction subreddit, one that was kindly thought up by redditor Avaday_Daydream. I won't detail the exact prompt here because it might spoil a few things. If you do find it yourself, though, be warned: that idea quickly spiraled out of control (as if you couldn't have guessed that already). What would've made for a fun crackfic took a direction that surprised the hell out of me, and is probably making anyone reading this wonder what the description has to do with the actual story. Don't worry, the summary isn't a lie — this is just the setup phase. At least I didn't end with a cheap cliffhanger or anything, amirite?]
