Harry Potter opened his eyes after eight long years to find that the lights above him were winking at him, in that friendly way he had grown familiar with over his multiple visits to Madam Pomfrey's hospital wing. Harry felt very hazy. This was not the first time that he had awoken in a hospital bed with no clue as to how he had arrived there, but surely - surely - he ought to remember something? He blinked wearily up at the lights like he might persuade them to stop their brilliant bursting each time that he blinked (someone had removed his glasses), then - out of sheer habit - reached over to his bedside table to see if he could find his glasses. His arms ached with the movement, a thousand times more heavy than he had thought it possible for them to be.

His glasses were there, folded carefully and perched on the edge of his bedside table, which was actually a little set of drawers. This was Harry's first clue that something was amiss, because as well as the rust that was beginning to gather in the hinges of his glasses and the dust that had settled, deep-set, into the frames, there was the sello-tape. When Harry had been young, his cousin Dudley and his friends used to chase him all around their primary school, as Harry was rather good at escaping (this had been, Harry had later discovered, due to his magical abilities), and he had generously allowed the overlarge boys the opportunity to exercise aerobically before getting stuck into their favourite form of exercise: punching him on the nose. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had purchased a roll of sello-tape which had become a staple optometrist's tool around the house until he had first travelled to Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he was 11 years old. Hogwarts' teachers - especially Professor McGonagall - had not, on the whole, stood for his limited sight, and had seen the glasses immediately repaired with a wordless wave of their wand. (Harry's own wand, he noticed only later, wasn't there at all; he couldn't find it).

To find the sello-tape there, at the bridge of his glasses (and at the arms), made Harry's heart do an odd sort of somersaulting flutter, and then it dropped into his stomach so solidly he could have sworn he felt it. Now that he was properly looking around, he was beginning to feel very concerned about things. He was in a Muggle hospital, for one thing - and usually, and Harry did not like to think it because it made him feel very big-headed, usually, when he found himself hospitalised, there was at least one get-well card. People being worried about him - wishing him well - had become the new norm, since he had very first stepped foot into the wizarding world; had nobody thought to send a card? Some sweets? Perhaps to come in, and keep him company? It wasn't like Harry didn't have anyone to miss him. Besides, what were the odds that he'd come into a hospital - even a Muggle one - and gone completely unnoticed?

Surely, there had been a mistake. There was no way that the Weasleys knew where he was and hadn't sent so much as a lime-green, well-intentioned jumper. Even Harry didn't know where he was. Now that he looked for it, he found the writing on the wall fairly easily:

ROYAL FREE

world class expertise - local care

Royal Free, Harry knew, was a low-cost hospital (as the name implied) located in London. Light was filtering in through the small window, through which Harry was sure he could see the entirety of Camden, if he tried hard enough. The light helped to illuminate the otherwise dim, but sterile, ward, which seemed to house his own and several other beds, though if anyone else was awake then they hadn't any visitors, either; it was silent. The curtains were drawn on either side of his bed.

"Hullo?" he tried, into the quiet, and was surprised by how hoarse his voice sounded. He had to try twice more to get the word out as anything more than a croaky whisper, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth was. When had that happened?

Nobody answered him, anyway.

Harry pressed the NURSE CALL button, once he finally decided that sitting there and wondering (with that same, unfounded knot of dread in his stomach) wasn't going to achieve much besides worrying him more. He was just beginning to wonder if he could telephone Hermione (who had, among his wizarding friends, a much better hold on telephones and their function than Harry had ever thought to appreciate) when a short, squat nurse came bustling in, looking more harried than even Harry was. He didn't seem to expect to find anyone in the room - he barely threw a glance into Harry's bed before attempting to exit again, and stopped dead in his tracks when he found Harry there.

Nurse Clougherty was a round-faced and pimply nursing student (Harry guessed, at least), with long dark hair he'd tied into an elegant, low ponytail so that it gathered at his waist. He wore a pale blue nursing uniform with the name of the hospital, and its reddish logo, stamped on its breast. On the sight of him, alone, Harry felt a sudden, inexplicable rush of recognition, a familiarity that he couldn't place - vaguely, he thought that he must have met this man before.

"You're awake," Nurse Clougherty told him, shock colouring his voice.

Harry felt his face heat up, though he could not pinpoint why this was such a surprising revelation. "Yeah," he said, a bit defensively.

Nurse Clougherty didn't seem to know what to say to that, immediately, so he became extremely interested in the clipboard at the end of Harry's bed for a moment. A patient file.

"Sorry," said Harry, after a couple of minutes of this, "Can you tell me where I am?"

Nurse Clougherty looked up. Harry saw a series of emotions wash over his face - first surprise (again, that Harry was still awake), then fear (uncertainty?), then the general professional calm which was trained into every member of staff in the medical field. "My name is Nurse Clougherty," Nurse Clougherty told him, gently. Harry sat up a little straighter in bed, feeling a bit annoyed by how gentle Clougherty was being (after all, he wasn't fragile). "I've been your nurse for a few years now. You're in the Royal -"

"A few years?" Harry blurted, although he hadn't meant to.

Clougherty paused for a moment to check that Harry was finished, then continued, "- the Royal Free Hospital, in London. Everything's alright, Harry. You're very safe - you're okay, medically. Now that you're awake we'll need to do a few last checks, but you're up and talking to me and that's more than anyone could really have hoped for. Raina!" he yelled this out, into the passage - "Call the Dursleys, will you? They're on file."

"I don't want anyone to call my family," Harry inserted, flatly. He and the Dursleys had never been on the best terms, and he did not want to explain to any of his friends why he had called for his aunt and uncle before his best friends, or girlfriend. Clougherty didn't seem to make any note of this, so Harry pressed: "Can you tell me what happened?"

The man's face reddened, perhaps as he realised that he'd neglected to mention anything about it, as of yet. "There was an accident," Clougherty said, "you - well, you were - when you were eleven ... nobody really knows what happened - you must have been running for some reason, maybe you were going to miss your train. All we know is, you ended up taking quite a knock to your head. The swelling was quite substantial - nobody was ever really sure ... it was your Aunt, that saved you, wasn't it? She refused to take you off life support for the first leg of it - so upset."

Harry was a bit skeptical. "My Aunt Petunia?"

"Petunia, yeah. That's it. She visits, sometimes. Once a year, in October - Halloween."

Halloween had been the night that Harry's parents - and Aunt Petunia's sister - had died at the hand of the greatest (and worst) Dark Wizard of his time, Lord Voldemort. Harry reached up a hand for the thin, lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, absently rubbing at it as he thought hard about everything he'd just learned.

"You were in a coma, Mr Dursley," Clougherty concluded.

"What?" Harry asked, entirely caught by surprise. "I'm Harry Potter."

Clougherty finally decided there was no point beating around the bush: "It's been eight years. The Dursleys thought it was best to, er - formalise the ... adoption process, just in case-"

"They're not like that." Harry felt the entirety of the world tilt away from him. The idea that the Dursleys had ever once thought to include him in their family was laughable - it was a wonder they hadn't just left him there to die on the street. Still, eight years... it came back into his head in an instant. At once, he was dizzy - he could feel his heart thumping a marathon in his throat as he asked, "What year is it?"

"I'm not sure I'm the best person-"

"I don't - I don't mind. Really. I just want to know. What year is it? Tell me."

"It's September of 1998, Mr Potter."

Harry surprised even himself when he choked back a sob.

A/N: More to be written soon, if there's interest. Thanks for reading, guys! Please remember to leave a review :)