Harry was so tired. Voldemort had taken so much energy out of the Boy-Who-Lived, and Harry was ready to lie down and rest. Of course, he couldn't, at least not yet. The castle needed to be repaired, the injured cured, the dead buried. It wasn't until 9:00 AM that Harry Potter had a moment to himself. He grieved. Oh, how he grieved. Tonks, Remus, Fred. His parents. Dumbledore. Colin. All dead.
If only, he sighed as he slowly drifted off. If only.
If only.
If only what?
Why was his bed so warm?
And what was that delicious smell?
Harry slowly opened one eye, and gazed cautiously around the room. If running from Voldemort, a corrupt Ministry, and countless enemies had taught Harry anything, it was to be wary. And he was very wary of the unfamiliar room he had just woken up in…
His last memory was of laying to rest in the Gryffindor Boy's Dorm after the battle.
After that, well, Harry was lost…
The posters moved on the crimson and gold wall of his room, and for some reason, a snowy white owl softly breathed under its wing in the corner. And it looked remarkably like Hedwig.
"Hedwig?" Harry breathed, as if hardly daring to believe his eyes. The owl cooed softly, its hazel eyes blinking sleepily in the morning sunlight.
"Hedwig! It is you!" Harry tried to stand up, and found that his feet suddenly very closer to the floor than he remembered. He stumbled, and caught himself on the edge of a bedside table. He saw his glasses, and quickly put them on, not bothering to notice how small they were. Or how small he was.
Harry went over to the polished bronze of Hedwig's cage, opening and, and smiled at the sight of his owl stretching her wings and soaring in a small circle before landing on his shoulder to nuzzle him softly. Harry grinned madly, stroking the feathers of his familiar companion.
Suddenly, the door to the room opened, and a woman came in. Her red hair tumbled down her back in loose waves, resting against the robes she wore. Her eyes stared into Harry's brightly, as if Harry was her favorite person in the world. Harry looked cautiously at the woman, not believing his eyes. At the touch of his owl, his supposedly dead owl, Harry suddenly understood what was going on.
"Mum?"
"Harry."
"What year is it?"
"1991! You know that!"
Harry moaned, and sat down on the floor, much to Hedwig's discomfort. The woman – his mother – his dead mother, crouched down across from Harry and laid a hand against his forehead as if checking for a fever. Harry shied away, and the woman frowned.
"Harry, it's me. Are you okay dear?" Lily Potter asked.
Harry flinched. "You're not real. This is a dream. This is a dream, and I want to wake up." He pinched himself, as if that would pull him out of this 'dream'.
Lily, or the woman who looked like Mrs. Potter, except much less dead, frowned concernedly. "Harry, what's going on. I'm very real, and this is not a dream."
Harry blinked. He slowly looked around his room, gazing at everything. The posters he had previously noticed flashed innocently, pictures of Puddlemere United Quidditch players flying around on brooms. A desk in the corner held parchment and an assortment of colorful quills, which looked as if they had been used recently. A trunk lay open near his closet, empty, though the closet was filled with clothes and trainers. A window was open on the wall across from the closet; the crimson drapes fluttering in the breeze.
While Harry sat on the floor, drinking in the sights around him, Lily stood and turned, shutting the window, ignoring Harry's odd behavior. She guessed it was just a dream, and Harry was confused about reality and his dream. "I never did like these drapes." She said, trying to return to normalcy. "Your father picked them out when you were little while I was out with Alice and he won't return them."
"Dad?" Harry croaked, all thoughts of the room vanishing. His father, dead for 16 years, had picked out drapes for him?
"Yes, Dad." Lily said. "The man who is reading the newspaper downstairs?"
Harry started, surprised that his father was apparently downstairs instead of buried in Godric's Hollow like normal. Though nothing about this morning had been normal so far. Harry stood up unsteadily, and reached out towards his mother, poking her gently in the arm, as if afraid she would vanish. She remained in front of him.
Suddenly Harry threw himself into his mother's arms, tears streaming down his face. Lily patted his back uncertainly. He did not usually do this when she woke him up. "What's wrong dear? Nervous about your first day at Hogwarts tomorrow?"
"Hogwarts?" Harry said thickly. He was too concerned about trying to understand why his mother and supposedly his father were undead. It was only after his mother said Hogwarts that Harry pulled back and looked in a mirror he saw on his wall.
He was scrawny, dressed in a white shirt and pajama bottoms, his glasses on crookedly from rushing his mother. "You have bed head." The mirror said politely, and Harry reached up, running his hair through his hair. He stared into the mirror, and took in his appearance. No more did Harry look like he had spent a year on the run. In fact, he looked eleven again. Harry laughed in spite of himself. The possibility that he was eleven with his parents alive was absurd.
Lily reached over and tousled his hair. "You ready to go to Diagon Alley today? I told your father not to wait, but he was on a mission with the MLE until today."
"Mum?"
"Harry."
"Are you real?
"I thought we went over this, Harry." Lily sighed. "I'm very much real. You were dreaming."
"No. I wasn't. Where I'm from, you are dead."
"What do you mean where you're from? You are from here, Harry."
"No mum. I'm not from 'here'. I fell asleep and woke up here. At least, I think I did."
"Harry? What do you mean?"
Harry sat down on the bed, and Lily sat next to him. "Listen, I'm not from this time. Or dimension. Whatever. Where I'm from, Voldemort murdered you and Dad on Halloween when I was one and lost his powers trying to kill me…"
Harry continued telling his story, watching his mother's face growing surprised and scared, and concerned all in one go.
Lily frowned. "You're really not from here? You grew up without us?"
Harry nodded, his throat tight from the strain of holding his emotions in. "I was seventeen yesterday, and now I'm eleven. I don't know what's going on."
Lily looked at nothing, her mind awhirl with the new information her son had told her.
"Harry, that's not how it happened…here… When Halloween came around that night and Peter betrayed us, Voldemort didn't kill us, but put me and your father in a coma for a month. You lived with Sirius until we woke up, but Voldemort was still destroyed."
"I though you died to save me. It was that which triggered the magic that destroyed Riddle."
"Who said anything about dying? I just had to sacrifice myself. Voldemort could've Transfigured me into a turtle, but as long as I sacrificed myself for you, he couldn't touch you. I looked into it afterwards." Lily said, after noticing Harry's confused look on how she knew so much.
"Oh." Harry replied, trying to process the fact that he had an entire new life with his parents.