Disclaimer: I have a chemistry test to study for, an uncomfortable chair, and, when I open my wallet, a lonely dazed moth flies out, so… Yeah, I'm not JK Rowling and I still don't own Harry Potter.
CHAPTER ONE
MEMORIES AND SOUNDS
He remembered. For once he remembered something.
First came the sound: the clashing, the shouting, the cackling, the screeching, the panting, the mad deafening beating of his own hearth that seemed to be trying to jump out of its owner's ribcage, to tear through flesh and bone without mercy.
Then for a few torturous seconds everything stopped before returning. It was just his breathing and heartbeat this time, slower, somehow heavier, and pained.
Then came the images, blurry and distorted. And then… Then was the feeling.
Many others would have cried out. He didn't.
Blood, thick and dark, seemed to be everywhere. He was lying in blood. His blood. Others' blood. It was slowly dripping down the stone steps. The light sand in the base of the stairs was soaked in bright red; a sacrifice to the cruel god who has sent them all there to fight and die in a futile war.
He tried to move, causing strong sharp pain ran through his entire body.
Perhaps that was his end.
What came next was a loud crack, the faint sound of a wand quickly being drawn, and a few sure steps towards him. For a moment he thought he would have to fight even in his last minutes in this world, but the voice he heard was not one of an enemy.
"YOU! You immature, irresponsible, insufferable utter idiot! How DARE you put your life in danger!?"
The angry worried voice was unexpected. He started laughing, as loud and clear as he could, his broken ribs aching terribly, his breath coming out in short troubled pants. It didn't matter. Just then and there he could laugh himself to oblivion.
And so he laughed, multi-coloured spots appearing in his blurry vision. He felt to familiar hands grabbing onto his collar just before darkness claimed him and his defected consciousness slipped away from his weak grasp.
And the greasy darkness embraced him once more.
Awesome wasn't just cool, it was terror and it was wonder, it was the knees-buckling, chest-tightening, fearful encounters with the radically Other, with what was grand and crushing. And if he'd ever heard anything truly awesome, what followed was most definitely it.
It was an all-mighty and all-encompassing sound like someone had ripped through the very fabric of space and time and sawn the pieces back together in an unrecognisable form. It made him feel impossibly small, it made him feel watched, and controlled, and weak, like a pawn on a game board with trillions of figures, like a grain of dust inside a giant's eye.
Innumerable memories were crashing through, breaking through all of his mental defences with the sheer brute force of their numbers. One after the other, quicker and quicker, the million hours of a forgotten life flooded his mind. They were far more than even he could hope to untangle for now, but they were nevertheless there. Soon enough he would find his way through them.
He just needed a little time. And time he always had.
Just not quite right now.
Something tugged on Harry Potter and dragged him far, far away to another place and another time.
Profanities she would never admit to know swam around her head as her gaze settled on the form of her five-year-old nephew lying on the kitchen floor, a great bloody gash on the left temple of his head.
Petunia Dursley didn't want that. Whatever her feelings for her sister were, she did not wish to see Lily's son dead.
"Vernon!" the word, full with shock, escaped her mouth. She looked at her husband, who stood still just next to her, a bloodied frying pan in his hand, his lips slowly beginning to form a silent word.
She didn't wait for him to do or say something. Instead she ran for the phone, ignoring Dudley's current tantrum, thoughts madly racing in her head.
He hurt, that was for sure, but this wasn't anything new.
His thoughts were all sluggish, never quite formed. He didn't feel at home in his own mind and this was new.
He opened his eyes, reluctantly letting the ruckus, weird smells and bright images of the outside world penetrate his bubble of isolation.
A blond woman and a faceless man in a white called stared back at him, waiting for something to happen.
The man certainly had a face, there was no doubt about that. It was just that the white coat probably meant the stranger was a doctor and he had long ago stopped paying attention to their faces. Soldiers, civilians in war zones, physicians and their patients; he never allowed himself to truly see them, to remember their faces, it made it easier for swallow if – no, when – they died. Maybe this had saved him some suffering over the years.
It was a selfish act, but in the end he didn't feel sorry.
In the end he didn't feel anything.
He tried to focus on focus on the woman, but, he realised, his eyesight was rather lacking in quality. The gloved, smelling of disinfectant hand of the doctor reached out and put on his face a pair of bulky glasses. Vision finally cleared, he could make out the woman's worried expression.
He tried to dig through his memory only to find jumbled chaos. He could not navigate through it. Not yet.
"Do you remember anything? Do you remember- Do you know who you are?"
A name emerged on the surface of the roaring ocean that was his thoughts.
Harry James Potter.
But names didn't actually mean anything. He didn't know who he was, no matter what label, what fundamentally meaningless sequence of letters was assigned to him, so he gave them the truth.
"No."
The woman's next expression was weird, he could not read it. Or, perhaps, he had forgotten how to.
Everything about faces was weird: the way it ever so slightly reflected light"; the many lines, big and small; every curve… He hadn't seen an actual face for so long and something in it made him inexplicably happy.
He leapt from the hospital bed into the woman's arms. For all he cared, he could be hugging his greatest enemy. It didn't matter. She was close and she was a human; the first one he had seen in centuries.
Petunia Dursley stood there, frozen and confused, for a second and then pulled the boy in an embrace.
Log #01109001 – 00000000
Tick tock.
Here we go round the prickly pear at the dawn of a new ending.
Who am I?
What am I?
Are you even still listening?
No, you're not. I can understand.
Sometimes I'm not entirely sure whether even I am listening anymore.
But I know something and I think I might just be enough to keep me going…
I'm back.
Whoever I am, whatever I am, wherever I am, whenever I am, I'm back.
And I remember.
A/N: Again, constructive criticism really would be appreciated.
Also... Can we just pretend that the Dursleys (Petunia at least) aren't two-dimensional cartoonish villains?
Because, you know, most people aren't.
