Harry became vaguely aware that Sirius was kneeling over him, feeling his pulse at his wrist.
He opened his eyes just as Sirius glanced over to Dumbledore on the other side of the room. Instinctively, Harry looked toward the old man as well, just in time to catch Dumbledore waving his wand in the direction of himself and his godfather. At first Harry thought Sirius had vanished, but then he heard a low voice saying, "I'm here. Harry, can you hear me? I'm still here."
"I'm awake," said Harry hoarsely. He struggled to stand up by himself.
It seemed as though he, too, was invisible, or nearly so. Now he could just make out Sirius' outline wavering against the wall. Sirius took his hand and pulled Harry up to stand with him. Harry knew he was gripping Sirius' hand too tightly, but Sirius was holding his just as tightly, and his other hand was clasping Harry's shoulder to keep him upright.
"Harry, are you okay?" said Sirius in his ear, his voice slightly shaky.
"I'm fine," whispered Harry. "I'm all right. Really." He pulled the sleeve of his jumper over his hand, which was cold.
"Don't worry," Sirius told him. "We made a plan in case this happened."
"I'm not worried," said Harry, looking over to the place across the room where Dumbledore was kneeling. He could feel Sirius standing half-behind him, his burnt smell still there.
"Harry, can you hear me?" said Dumbledore softly, over the figure lying amid the shards.
"Du--I mean, Professor Dumbledore?" said the other Harry, sitting up. He was wearing different clothes than Harry--not the dragon jumper, but the Muggle clothes Harry wore at the Dursleys'. Harry thought his voice sounded different, although people were always surprised at the sounds of their own voices, weren't they?
"Hello, Harry," said Dumbledore gently.
"Wha--?" said the other Harry, adjusting his glasses. "I was just in the park in Little Whinging--where is this place? Did something happen?"
"I should say it did," said Dumbledore, helping the other Harry to his feet. "Are you cut anywhere?"
"No, I don't think so," said the other Harry, brushing the shards of mirror off his jeans. The remains of the mirror lay in two halves on the floorboards nearby.
"Then I suggest we go into the kitchen, where I shall explain the situation to the best of my ability," said Dumbledore. "And perhaps we can get some tea." The other Harry followed him out of the room.
"Do you want to go with him?" asked Harry, stepping away from Sirius as they both became visible again.
"Later, perhaps," said Sirius. "He'll want to talk to Dumbledore first."
Harry could hear his own voice faintly from the kitchen, interspersed with Dumbledore'--made more surreal by the state of the room, shards and halves of mirror still splayed out all over the boards.
"What's Dumbledore telling the other me?" Harry asked.
"He's you, but when he got his old memories back he lost the ones of this summer," Sirius answered.
Harry nodded. "That's good," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "So it'll be as though everything's back to normal."
"Right," said Sirius gently.
"Dumbledore said it would be best," added Lupin.
"I know," said Harry.
"Harry, I know you wanted it to work," said Lupin. "I'm sorry it didn't."
Harry just shook his head. He didn't feel able to talk.
"It's all right," said Sirius again, gripping his shoulder.
"I know, really," said Harry at last. "Go and see the other me, okay? I know he'll want to see you." They hesitated. "Really," insisted Harry. "Go on. I'm just going up to my room."
Lupin studied Harry, then, apparently deeming Harry suitable to be left alone, sighed in acquiescence.
"I'll come up and see you later," said Sirius firmly, and then he followed Lupin out of the room.
Climbing up the stairs now to his room, Harry remembered the first time he'd done the same thing--on the night he'd arrived here at Grimmauld Place. He'd been wondering then whether Sirius himself might be a wizard.
He certainly wouldn't've expected things to turn out like this then, he thought wryly, looking at the worn and ancient bannister, where hands must have touched--hundreds, thousands of times, probably. In the history of the house, his time here had been so small.
His room was vaguely warm, with a mist of dust in the afternoon sun. He sat down on the bed.
On Halloween, when he'd just been a baby, Voldemort had walked into his house and diverted the course of his future, transformed every facet of his life in one moment. Then, just this summer, Voldemort, or one of his followers, had done that again: in one moment, managed to affect everything he'd do and feel from then on. And now, today, a few moments ago--there were still a few gritty specks of mirror stuck on his palms--his life had been changed a third time.
It felt strange, like finding you'd suddenly grown and all your clothes didn't fit (which had happened to him before). Your old jeans were too short. Your shoes were too small. The world had shifted.
And it couldn't be taken back to the way it had been.
But, all the same, he didn't regret it, because this time it had been his decision. And if there was now a Harry Potter who could walk through Hogwarts as everyone expected him to be, and show the Wizarding World a way to stand against evil, and remember his spells and his past, and defeat Voldemort, and be friends with Ron and Hermione and Ginny in the meantime, then it was worth it.
He'd had to do it, and he didn't regret it.
Just for a little while, this fantasy had touched him, and now it was gone he was almost more surprised it had ever been there at all than that it had left.
Then, as he sat staring at all the stuff in his room, a realization hit him.
Two trunks now sat, next to one another, in Harry's room: the older one with R.A.B. on the side, in which Lupin had put all of Harry's Muggle things from the Dursleys', and the newer one, with Harry's magical things.
He would have to separate his possessions.
Methodically, he moved the two trunks side by side and scanned the room for things he'd want to keep. The Firebolt--that would have to go to the other Harry. A heap of Weasley jumpers. Harry looked down at the dragon jumper he was wearing, and then decided--to hell with it, he was going to keep it. The other Harry probably wouldn't notice one jumper was missing.
His wand, in his pocket. Well, that was his. It might not even work as well for the other Harry, and in any case he was keeping it. The Invisibility Cloak, the new trainers, and any number of other magical things he'd gotten out of the new trunk--they all went back in. He'd have to get used to wearing a few big old Dudley castoffs again.
The textbooks he'd been using to brush up on magic. The other Harry wasn't likely to miss those, was he? They'd been buried in old salamander eyes at the bottom of the new trunk, and they looked as though they hadn't been touched for years. They went in the old trunk.
Brushing his hands together, Harry stood up. That was about it. He shut the lid on the old trunk and dragged it out of the room. There was the room Sirius said Ron had been staying in, down the hall. That would do. Pushing his fringe off his forehead, he began to drag the trunk, then realized what he was doing and levitated the trunk down the corridor and into Ron's old room, by now a little dusty.
He couldn't hear voices any more. The other him must have Flooed to the Burrow, as he'd promised Ron and Hermione.
The encyclopedia. Harry wanted that. He'd still been looking at it, when he had headaches and couldn't sleep, or just before bed. He went out to get it, and ran into Sirius into the corridor.
"There you are!" said Lupin, looking relieved. "I thought you said you were in your room."
"I moved all my stuff to that one," explained Harry. "I mean, just the stuff he wouldn't miss."
"Oh," said Lupin. "I didn't think of that, Harry. Good thinking."
Harry led them to the room he'd put his trunk in, and sat down on the bed, the dust in the air catching in his throat. "I can still stay here, right?" he asked tentatively.
"Of course!" said Sirius fiercely. He sat down next to Harry.
"Well, until the term starts," amended Lupin. "Dumbledore wants you to go to Hogwarts, too."
"What? How?" said Harry, baffled. People would hardly not notice if a new boy showed up who looked exactly like Harry Potter.
With a slight skeptical lift of his eyebrow at the idea, Sirius said, "He wants to you to go in disguise, under a fake name. Say you've been too sick for school up until now."
The same story they'd used for Sirius, Harry thought. "Why?" he asked at last. From a logical point of view, surely disguising him and trying to keep his real identity secret was more trouble than it was worth.
"Dumbledore says we can use as many voices on our side at Hogwarts as we can get," said Lupin. "Apparently, the Ministry's sending some awful woman to stop you all from saying Voldemort's back." Harry could almost have laughed at seeing Lupin drop his teacher persona for a moment, if the man didn't look so weary and worn. "Anyway, you've got to get your education, too."
Lupin might have gone to say something else, but Harry barely heard him. "Wait," Harry said, his hands appearing again from the ends of his jumper sleeves, where they had been clenching the knitted wrists into tight balls. "You mean, I'm really going to Hogwarts?"
"Yes," said Lupin, confused.
Sirius had talked about the practical jokes he and Lupin and Harry's father had played at Hogwarts; Lupin had talked about the lessons there, whole classrooms full of children turning desks into pigs or making potions to turns frogs into newts; and even on that day when he'd first met her, Ginny had talked about a magical castle by a lake with dungeons and towers. And even then it had sounded so wonderful.
He hadn't even really thought of himself going there for a long time--but now, when he did, he felt a thrill of excitement ringing through him. He was going to Hogwarts. He was going to Hogwarts.
Suddenly, hundreds of different questions jostling for place in his mouth. "Then--will I get Sorted?" he asked at last. "Or will I be in Gryffindor?" But before Sirius or Lupin could answer, Harry went on. "Do you think I can take the OWL classes--oh--I'll need to get books, and school robes, and a cauldron, and I wonder if I can get a second-hand broomstick?" He brushed his hair back from his forehead. "Sirius, you've got to come to Diagon Alley with me. They can disguise you, too, can't they?"
"I can probably persuade Dumbledore," said Sirius, breaking into a smile.
"When can we go?" said Harry breathlessly.
"Well," mused Lupin, "the other you is staying the night at the Burrow, but he'll be back tomorrow, so we reasoned you'd need to be disguised by then. I think the person is coming to do it tomorrow morning."
"So, after that," said Harry, trying to hide his excitement. Then he paused. "Who are we going to say I am?"
"I think we thought you'd be a Lupin," said Lupin, a little abashedly.
"The Black name is a little tarnished at the moment," added Sirius dryly.
"Also, if you pretend to be my relative," Lupin went on, "some people might suspect that you could be a werewolf. We'll play into that, using it as a red herring to distract them from the real secret."
Harry blinked. "Are you a werewolf?" he said, lost.
Lupin looked taken aback. "You didn't tell him?" he said to Sirius.
"I left it up to you, of course," said Sirius. "Didn't you tell him?"
"No, I didn't," said Lupin, avoiding Sirius' glance.
"You're going to have to tell me these things if I'm going to pretend to be related to you, you know," said Harry with an exaggerated sigh. He wanted Lupin to know that his being a werewolf didn't matter to him. "Were all the Lupins in Gryffindor? I hope I am."
Lupin laughed. "They were, actually."
"You will be, too," said Sirius dismissively. "More importantly, our favourite Lupin here had a great history of innovative hell-raising at Hogwarts, which we expect you to live up to."
"Not too much, though," amended Lupin. "Best not to draw attention to yourself."
Sirius rolled his eyes, and the rest of the evening was spent making plans for Harry's entrance into Hogwarts. It was agreed that Harry would Floo to Grimmauld Place during the full moon (which sounded great to Harry) and that Harry would unarguably need a broomstick of his own (although Harry and Sirius could not agree on who would pay for it).
"Professor Snape, the Potions teacher, will probably dislike you," warned Lupin. "But don't forget: he is a member of the Order."
"And then there's Peeves the Poltergeist," said Sirius. "Don't trust anything he says, watch your head and your pockets while you're around him, and if you're doing breaking the rules and he sees you--well, run."
Harry nodded. "What's the difference between a poltergeist and a normal ghost?" he asked.
"Good question," said Lupin in a very teacher-like way. "Peeves isn't actually a ghost at all. You see, in order to be truly sentient--thinking and reasoning--something's got to have a soul, or at least be the imprint of a soul, as ghosts are. Peeves is more like a force of nature. The castle's been used as a school for thousands of years, you know, and all that magic use has effects on its surroundings." Lupin sighed. "It's rather difficult to explain. Magic isn't always completely logical. But Peeves is sort of . . . natural magical chaos, reacting against all the ordered magic performed within Hogwarts."
"Wow," said Harry, wide-eyed.
"He's not that bad, though," Lupin assured him. "You just have to make it so annoying or difficult to cross you that he moves on to easier targets."
"And I thought my old school was bad when Dudley put my head down the toilet."
"What's worse, when you're new, is the stairs that move," said Sirius. "When I was a first-year, I once got so lost I had to get a portrait of Boudicca to walk with me the whole way back. I never found that wing again, either."
"He's not joking," said Lupin. "I was there."
That night, Harry had trouble trying to clear his mind before bed as part of his Occlumency practice. It might have been easier if he'd known whether he wanted to bury his face in his pillow and shout with disappointment or elation. As it was, he felt on edge, and ended up quite tangled in the sheets with turning over before he finally fell asleep.
Author's notes:
1. Uhm . . . so, here's Mr. Twist. It's intended to tie in with the larger themes of the story, so . . . hope the change in direction doesn't throw you off. If you don't like it, naturally I respect your opinion. But I do reassure you that this story does have an end. It's not just going to waffle on forever with wacky antics and so on.
2. Remember, Harry, Sirius and Lupin (and Dumbledore) have been aware of this possible bad result from the spell since Dumbledore first told Harry about it. So, like the clever people they are, they've thought about what they'll do if it goes wrong. But, like Harry, they didn't really think it would go wrong.
3. I'm aware that the actual nature of the two Harrys (both a Horcrux? etc.) isn't clear, and I'm sorry to people who were unhappy about that, but . . . it's kind of supposed to be that way. It's a tantalizing mystery, you know? (Well, ahem, perhaps not.) Anyway, this is not to say that Dumbledore isn't aware of the question at least, if not of the answer just yet, and you will definitely find out eventually what exactly happened to produce two Harrys. I didn't just say, "Oh, let's have two Harrys, how jolly" and not think about the mechanics or implications : )
4. Reviews are nice to hear! Thanks to Fibinaci for the thoughtful review. I agree with so much of what you say! Canon Harry's intellectual laziness does drive me mad. But I'm going to try to resist the temptation to turn this Harry into someone who suddenly gets up at 4 a.m. to learn kung fu and the Animagus transformation and so on, either. I'm glad you said "curious and eager to learn magic," because that's what I was going for : ) Apart from being just a bit more contemplative and responsible after (as far as he remembers) being sort of a loner and having to do things for himself, I think our Harry is a bit more like Philosopher's Stone Harry, who was curious and also had a snappy wit later Harrys sort of lost (remember how little Harry told Dudley the toilet might be sick since it had never had anything as horrible as his head down it? I miss that). And as for Luna's "awkward truths": yeah, I purposefully tried to put one of those in, since they're so Luna! And I was also interested in Ginny's perspective on the CoS incident, since it was pretty much her entire first year. Wow.