A/N: I honestly would have made this longer, an apology for re-writing four books meticulously in my head, but I couldn't write more without revealing a bit too much than I would like at the moment. Plus, it's past midnight, I've lost a lot of sleep, and I would like to go to bed.
However, before I go, I will direct you to my profile (which has a short, short explaination on why I took so long with everything) and say that soon, on Anne la Jordanie's account page, there will be a fic entitled A Midsummer's Nightmare, in which I will write yet another Harry Potter fic with my good friend. If you like Harry Potter, please check it out when it's up.
Final notes, if you're confused, please tell me. I don't want to confuse too much yet. Also, I need a year for these people. Any would help. I would also like to reiterate that I get some liberty when it comes to this AU fic. Harry has no excuse, but everyone else does. For the most part...a bit.
Alright, I'll shut up.
Harry numbly sat in his seat during lunch. He still couldn't believe he had been able to get through a potions class without getting hurt- mentally, emotionally or otherwise. Snape had completely ignored him, favoring his other favorite target (Neville hadn't changed, and neither had Snape's attitude towards the Gryffindor) over the boy-who-lived. Malfoy had told him what to do, watching his progress and correcting him where he was about to make mistakes. As he thought, he toyed with his food, a basic meal of ham and potatoes, while all around him his world continued to spin out surprises.
Like the fact that he not only sat next to his nemisis, but the fact that all of the other Slytherin students in his year were carrying on calm, relatively clean and peaceful conversations around him. He leaned his chin against his hand sighing softly. The day was already taking a toll on him, and he had a feeling fate wasn't done with him yet.
Someone kicked his shin. Harry yelped, glaring to his left at where Malfoy sat. "What was that for?" he asked.
Malfoy raised an immaculately groomed eyebrow. "Tired, Potter?"
Harry turned away furiously, much to the confusion of the rest of the house. If the two powers in Slytherin were fighting, that didn't bode well for anyone else. They quietly speculated on what could have caused the rift between the two most inseperable people since the infamous Sirius Black and James Potter, and wondered if history would soon repeat itself.
Meanwhile, Draco turned to whisper furiously at Harry. "Even if you can't remember much, can you at least pretend you're still Slytherin?" he demanded. When he was met with a flat stare, he stood, leaving behind his salad, and pulled the brunette with him. "I need to talk to you, Potter."
Harry reclaimed his arm from Malfoy, but did nothing to turn away and stop following him. He could hear the whispers following him, flushing with anger and frustration. He tailed the blonde boy until the doors to the Great Hall shut behind them. Then, Malfoy rounded on the unsuspecting teen. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he hissed.
"What's wrong with me?" Harry retorted. "What's wrong with everyone here!?" He screamed the last part, causing a paranoid Malfoy to slap his hand over his friend's mouth and pull him down towards the dungeons, Harry struggling the entire way.
Finally stopping, Draco rounded on the person whom he trusted most. "I reiterate- what's going on in your head?" He flicked Harry's forehead, a habit he had gotten when Harry had been an idiot one too many times. Harry backed up, rubbing his forehead, his glare affixed to a mask of anger.
"Everything is wrong here!" he screamed, fisting his hands at his side. "I'm friends with my enemy, enemies with my friend, in the wrong house, and to top it off..." Harry searched for something else to say as his mind tried to put words into a coherent sentence, "Snape was nice to me!"
Draco kept up a blank face for all of two seconds before he burst out laughing. He clutched his sides, leaning over, his face completely open for the first time that Harry had ever seen. It shocked the green-eyed youth into an open-mouthed stare, his anger momentarily forgotten.
Draco knew that Harry wouldn't like his laughing at him, so he tried to curb his amusement, straightening and apologizing. "Sorry, you just looked so...childish." He had a much more free look on his face now, a happy medium between a smirk and an outright grin. "I couldn't help myself."
Shaking off his surprise, his hands fisting once more. "I'm trying to be serious, and you're making fun of me." Harry pivoted on his foot, going who knew where (since he couldn't go to Gryffindor tower and wouldn't go to Sytherin) and not looking back.
Draco moved up beside him, grasping one of his shoulders. Harry tried, unsuccessfully, to shake him off. "Let go," he ordered.
Malfoy glanced at him from the corner of an eye. "No. We're skipping the rest of the day to go see Pomfrey, whether you like it or not." When Harry made a move to leave, the older student tightened his grip. "Don't make me hex you in order to do so. I know more curses than you ever will."
"Because you're a junior death eater," Harry growled under his breath. He thought he felt Draco misstep, but he was too full of his own fury to notice any change in the Slytherin's movements. He didn't realize that Draco had slipped on a very familiar, very fake mask of indifference as soon as the commen was out of his mouth.
It didn't take them long to reach the infirmary- Madam Pomfrey, ever present despite any hour, looked up from straightening a bed to see a poor sight. It had been a while since Harry and Draco had gotten into a fight (the last having been way back in first year), she had nearly forgotten that the two were human and, therefore, prone to disagreements. It had been ages since she had seen that hurt look hidden deep within Draco's eyes, or the absolute fury Harry possessed openly in his gaze, or the pure tension between the two friends.
It worried her immensly. The first words from the blonde didn't help, either.
"Potter's gone and lost his memory, somehow replacing them with a fantasy," he stated in what, to anyone else, was a conversational tone. Madam Pomfrey heard how flat and lifeless it was.
She bustled over to the duo, immediately checking Harry's vitals. He could scowl all he wanted to, even insist with as much ferver as he could possibly use, but she would never skip over the basics. Sometimes, rarely, entire lives were saved from going back to basics. It was a fact that wouldn't change any time soon.
"Mr. Potter, what is it you remember, exactly?" she inquired in a brisk manner. No matter what their problems with their friendship, even if it were between her two favorite patients (not to mention most frequent ones as well), she was only business when the time called for it. This time was no exception.
"First off, I'm in Grffyndor." The stern nurse held up a hand when Draco opened his mouth to speak, forestalling any input on his part. "Second, Malfoy hates me. Third, Ron is my best friend. Fourth, Snape despises me. And fifth, everything else," he held out his arms to either side to encompass the entire room in the spance of his arms, "is turned around. Nothing is as it should be." His hands fell to his side.
A bell rang dully, signifying the end to lunch and beginning of the next class period. Madam Pomfrey turned to Draco. "I do believe you have double defense right now, Mr. Malfoy." Her worry only increased when, instead of protesting about his best friend being left behind, Draco merely nodded and walked off without a word raised against her. But, once more, a patient was in front of her. She switched to her nurse-self, the one most students saw, and fixed Harry with a stare that bore through him.
"Alright, Mr. Potter. You hit your head harder than we thought, and either you managed to switch minds with an alternate reality version of yourself, or you forgot everything and switched all of reality onto its head. Either way, you're in a heap of trouble." She put her hands on her hips, wondering what he would say. He had never been predictable to begin with, and not knowing what kind of Harry she was dealing with didn't help.
Harry couldn't believe what he was hearing. Alternate realities? Hitting his head? He wondered where she got that sort of thought process. "All I know is what I remember. Nothing more."
Madam Pomfrey nodded, spotting a new student approaching the wing. "Well, you try to recall something, and when I get back, you tell me it exactly as you remember things." She pushed past him in a whirl of nursing skirts, the next patient taking the whole of her attention.
Harry watched her leave for a moment before he turned his mind to the problem at hand. closing his eyes after moving out of the way, Harry tried to recall his first meeting with Ron. It was something he would never forget.
He sat on the train, staring out the window. He was incredibly bored and just a bit intimidated from everything that was happening. He still hadn't quite grasped the fact that he was a wizard, but he was getting there. It was only a matter of time.
The door to the train compartment opened, and there was Ron. He was a lot younger than his present self, and for a moment, the two blended together. But then it was back to being regular old Ron, freckles and all, asking to take a seat across from his future best friend. He smiled, offering it warmly.
Ron sat across from him, staring at him while trying to be sneaky about it. He was such a transparent soul, something that was infuriating at times. He finally found the courage to ask about his scar ("Do you really have-?"). Just as he was about to lift his bangs to show him, though...
One minute, Ron was sitting across from him. The next, it was a certain blonde haired prat, and they were both laughing.
The memory went off from there, taking an unknowing spectator on the most confusing and frightening journey of his life. He tried to recall Ron from before, walking in on the compartment, but this time it was Draco.
The young Malfoy immediately recalled aloud having met him at Madam Malkin's, where they had apparently struck up a conversation. He exclaimed his own recollection of that day, adding a thank you for showing him around Diagon Alley. He then watched as his younger self offered the younger Malfoy a seat across from him.
The young heir never once asked to see his scar, nor tried to stare without staring, never even glanced up to see if the lightening bolt was right where rumor had it placed. He talked animatedly about the wizarding world, revealing things the starving child yearned to know about. He didn't once put him down, insult him without taking everything he dished out, or acting any other way than open and friendly.
It was a sober yet terrifying experience, watching him go through the motions he knew had never happened, but couldn't help but remember no matter how hard he tried against them. He watched as Pansy Parkinson, not Hermione, wandered into their compartment looking for Trevor (although she wanted to kill the thing, not help Neville find the missing toad), and as he and Draco crossed the lake with Crabbe and Goyle in tow, as he met Ron.
It hurt. Ron saw him with Draco, automatically assumed the worst, and as he ganged up with the other future Gryffindor's, he proceeded to give Harry the most painful tongue-lashing he had ever recieved. Draco stuck up for him, dealing out insults and remarks that pushed Ron's limits until McGonnagal organized them for the sorting.
He watched until finally, in the moment of truth, he heard the sorting hat in his past-self's mind.
Well, aren't you a confusing one, it said.
He wondered aloud about the hat's abilities to communicate telepathically.
Not quite, it responded, but close enough. But, what's this? You've a cunning mind, very close to a Ravenclaw trait, but not directed to furthering knowledge. Hm, and what's this? Ambition as well. My my, a Gryffindor trait as well as a Slytherin one. You also have a lot of bravery for one so driven to the Slytherin's traits.
Slytherin, his other self wondered. That was the house Draco was in. The house his friend was sorted to.
Slytherin, then? That house will make you a great wizard, the hat told him, just before calling out his new house.
Then he walked over and sat next to an enthusiastically clapping Draco, and he couldn't take any more.
There had been nothing warning him that it was Voldemort's house he was going to. Nothing about Hagrid, or Dumbledore, or Scabbers, Hermione, Neville, Ron...
Harry forced himself back to reality.
End Chapter
Any questions? Comments? Suggestions? Rantings on my lateness and shortness of the chapter?