Parallel Dreams
Chapter One- Through the Window
The war was over.
Celebrations raced through the streets, wizards and muggles alike throwing anything they could into the air and yelling like children, embracing strangers like family, reminiscing about old friends and giving away trades that they had.
Harry Potter watched them celebrate from a small, dingy muggle hotel room seven stories above the streets below. Ron and Hermione had asked to go down to the streets to enjoy the night three hours ago, and he'd watched their reception from the scratched window. The world seemed to collapse on them as though they were Gods in their own right; as though they were kings of something so much greater than the battle that morning.
He heard Ginny stir from the single bed behind him and turned with a half smile. She'd saved his life in that last battle by coming out of the shadows and defying Harry's earlier orders to remain at Grimmauld Place. He would never be able to thank her enough.
She opened her eyes slightly and smiled a bit at him. "You've got to be tired."
Harry walked over and sat on the corner of the bed, still staring at her. "A bit. I slept a bit this morning after we got here, remember?"
"Yes. But that wasn't exactly a feel-good sleep, now, was it?"
They both looked down a bit, memories flooding back. The room fell silent other than the sounds of Ginny's soft breathing for a matter of minutes.
"Are you going to go out there tonight?"
He shook his head, still looking down. "I think I'm just going to sleep a bit. I'm not ready to go out there... I saw how Hermione and Ron were received, and honestly, I don't want that. I just want everything to be quiet for a while."
As soon as he finished the door flung open and two figures spilled onto the floor, completely drunk and laughing. Ron stood up first, a firewhiskey in one hand and Hermione's hand in his other. "You two need to go down there! There's food and drinks and people and everything else you can imagine! Come on, let's go!"
He took a step back towards the door but ended up falling over into the wall. Ginny bit her lip to keep from laughing while Hermione, looking only a bit tipsy, cast a sobering spell on him. Ron didn't look thrilled.
"Come on, guys. We've been living in abandoned houses for a year and a half now, fighting this shit for longer. All of us deserve this. We can sleep later, do whatever later, but there will only be one night to celebrate like this."
Ginny looked at Harry hopefully. He shook his head a bit. "You go, Gin. All three of you. Have fun. I need to sleep a bit, I'm exhausted. Come up and get me when you're ready to go back." he paused. The others all looked at one another uneasily. "Well, we'll figure it out eventually. Have fun out there."
"You sure?" Ginny asked gently, taking his arm. "I can wait here with you if you want." She didn't sound at all enthusiastic at the proposal. Harry shook his head.
"Go, Gin. You three will have a great time. Enjoy it. Take lots of pictures or something. I'm just tired, that's all."
They stood, leaving Harry behind on the bed. "Goodnight, then." Hermione muttered, turning and grabbing Ron's arm and pulling him out of the room.
"Night," Ginny whispered, leaning in and kissing him gently on his cheek. "Please have good dreams."
"I will." Harry promised, falling almost immediately into a half-awake state.
I must be a lot more tired then I thought...
"Night, Gin."
He thought he heard her say something else, but he was fading too fast to make it out perfectly.
She said it again, a bit louder—he could make it out this time.
"I love you."
Immediately, energy filled him and Harry opened his eyes slightly. He stared at her back as she walked out the door, only her red hair visible through the fog of sleep that had come over him.
"What did you say?" Harry tried to say. His face felt groggy and the words were lost. He shook his head slowly and tried again. "What did you say?"
The red hair stopped suddenly and turned slowly to him. He couldn't make her out completely, so he blinked a number of times.
Very softly, as though she had seen something impossible, she whispered, "Harry?"
The voice wasn't Ginny's, Harry realized suddenly.
He threw his eyes open, and suddenly the surroundings became clear. He wasn't in the room he'd been in two minutes ago; this room was perfectly white. The woman who'd been walking out wasn't Ginny; she was much older, with reddish-gray hair and a more slender build.
"Where am I?" Harry asked, feeling immediately drained after speaking. "Who are you?"
The woman didn't move. She stood there, frozen; her eyes full of terror and her body shaking.
Harry moved to get off the bed but as he did a number of needles clattered to the floor. He stared at them in shock. "What are you doing to me?"
The door opened again, and this time, a man in a white coat walked in with his face buried in charts. "All of his stats are normal, nothing different. We're going to run the typical monthly tests out of precaution and from there..."
"You don't notice anything different, Doctor?" The woman whispered, not taking her eyes off of him. "Like the fact that he's awake?"
The man stopped talking and lowered his charts. He stared at Harry, completely wide-eyed.
"Oh," he muttered, turning slowly and yelling for a nurse outside the door. He then turned back to stare at Harry. "Remember, he will still have the mind of a one-year-old child; he won't be able to react, or talk, or..."
"Or ask you what the fuck I'm doing here?" Harry said suddenly, moving to the edge of the bed and standing up.
Or at least trying to.
His legs buckled out from underneath him as though they were nothing more than spaghetti. The doctor ran over and moved him back onto the bed, completely aghast.
"Where the hell am I?" Harry yelled, feeling completely helpless. "What the hell is happening to me?"
He felt like he did after Dumbledore died, completely lost, like there was no one but him in the world. He couldn't deal with it. He wanted, needed, to escape. But even as he tried to move, his body seemed to reject him.
The woman hadn't moved; she still stood in the corner of the room, staring at him. The doctor cleared his throat.
"Your name is Harry."
"Harry James Potter. I know that. What I want to know is where I am and why I can't move." He paused, looking between the two people. He noticed a number of nurses in the door, staring in much in the same fashion as the doctor and the woman had. Harry raised his voice and glared at the door. "Look, I'm Harry Potter, I know that. I know what I've done. Now please leave me alone. I'll sign autographs or whatever later. You all should be out celebrating, so go enjoy yourselves."
No one moved; they all stared at him, though this time more with incredulity than shock.
"You're perhaps the cockiest patient we've ever had, Mr. Potter." The doctor said bluntly. Harry stared at him.
"I defeated Voldemort this morning. I think that I have every right to be a tiny bit confident in what's happened."
This time, a look of confusion ran over each of the faces.
"That's impossible," a nurse blurted. Harry felt anger boiling over.
"Why is it impossible, because he's been around for years and has taken out all those people?"
The doctor shook his head. "No, Harry... Voldemort is a corporation... it's a pharmaceutical company."
Harry felt himself freeze up. "Tom Riddle, then."
"Tom Riddle is the founder of the company," the doctor said slowly. "He's one of the richest men in the world right now... one of the most powerful..."
There was a silence that ran through the room.
"But he killed so many," Harry whispered. "He and his Death Eaters..."
A number of the nurses laughed. The doctor smiled. "I have no idea how you know all this, Harry. That's a term used to describe his inner circle of executives by jokers—the Lestranges, Lucius Malfoy, Augustus Rookwood..."
"They're all murderers!" Harry yelled suddenly, throwing his arms up. "How can you talk about those bastards without hatred?"
Once again, the room fell silent and stared at him.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the woman stepped forward.
"You fell into a coma when you were a year old," she said softly. "We were at home on Halloween night, the three of us... you were upstairs, and I'd put you to bed... you got out somehow, the cradle had broken... we heard you scream, but by the time we got to the stairs it was too late, you'd fallen down them and were unconscious at the bottom... I'm so sorry, Harry..."
The doctor moved to her side. "That's why we're so surprised you can talk and move... you should have the mind of a one-year-old child, and moreover, one with sufficient brain damage. But you're here, talking with us like a normal eighteen-year old adult. Some of your stories are a bit odd, but the people in them... they exist, and there's no way you could know all of them..."
"Unless this is a dream." Harry interrupted suddenly. "I went through hell this morning. I went through hell the last eighteen years. And now it's over... I'm going through post-traumatic stress. This is an illusion my mind has given me to escape reality. Sorry," he finished suddenly, staring at the woman. The light in the room suddenly caught her bright green eyes, filled with tears. "Sorry, mum, but you died seventeen years ago. Voldemort killed you. And this morning, I killed him. It's over now. Goodbye."
Harry leaned back on the bed and closed his eyes, opening them only when he heard the voices of his three friends bursting through the door and into the ransacked hotel room. He smiled at them as they threw down a number of bottles of alcohol and started singing a nonsense song.
End Part 1/20
Beta'd by Laura