author's note: Well, okay. This one was a bit more like canon than I'd previously expected, but then, there's a lot of stuff that was in canon that isn't in this. Like, Harry and Thor destroyed the locket in the last book. And Harry and Ginny are already an item. But, Slughorn is still here, and Harry still sees the memories offscreen, and...yeah.

Those are mostly not the focus of this, like, at all, though.

There is also a chapter that might possibly have a scene that counts as RPF, so I've truncated that, given a safer summary, and put the whole chapter on The Archive.

This book is not as long as you might be expecting.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Three: Welcome to Wonderland

The summer preceding the beginning of Harry's sixth year of Hogwarts promised to be much better than the last. For one thing, Sirius dropped by often to visit with him, and to thank him, now that he understood just what Harry had done. And then, there were the stranger changes. For one, the fact that, despite Moody's overt threats to the Dursleys well-being (the rest of the Order assigned to protect still cared enough about their reputations to be subtle, although Tonks still glared), Uncle Vernon just gave a grunt, and made only an aborted attempt to bluster his way through the encounter.

Stranger still were Dudley and Aunt Petunia's reactions to seeing him again. Dudley approached with head bowed, and stuck out a hand to shake. "Look, Harry, I'm sorry about last year," he said, and, when Harry raised a sceptical eyebrow, he flushed redder than one of Mother's roses, and said, "I know, I know! I said that before—but those monsters, they make you think bad. They make it so you can't think, I mean. I really thought it was you, until I kept reliving that night, for the next few weeks."

Had Harry "forgot" to mention chocolate as a natural remedy for the effects of the dementors? Oops.

"I told Mum and Dad that you were the one who saved me. After you left. I don't think Dad really believes, but Mum—"

"Come along, Harry. There's something up in the attic I think that you should see," said Aunt Petunia, with a forced smile.

Right. Strange. And, since when did they have an attic?

Aunt Petunia still gave him chores, but she also led him up into the musty old attic, and pulled out a photo album, an actual, muggle photo album, full of stationary pictures of two little girls, one blonde, one red-headed.

One of the pictures was a very formal family portrait, with the man and woman who must be Harry's grandparents, each resting a hand on a different daughter's shoulder. Aunt Petunia's hair was done up in ringlets. She looked ridiculous. Lily's was styled back, falling in waves to either side of her face. His Mum in the pictures was only about eight years old. She had no idea who she was, what she was, what life had in store for her. A rare glimpse at the truly human Lily Evans.

Some of the pictures were of the family visiting the zoo, or the park, or the fair. Sometimes, not-yet-Professor Snape lurked, hidden, in the background. Sometimes, there was even a woman with a similar face, weary-looking, with deep bags under her eyes, who must be Snape's mother. A strange feeling crept over Harry, looking at these photos.

Aunt Petunia offered him the photo album to keep. "You can leave it in your room while you're at—at your school. I won't let Vernon throw it away."

Harry felt as if he'd entered some alternate universe, and kept waiting for the Dursleys to announce that it was some sort of cruel trick. But, it wasn't. And, he should know better than anyone, had it been a prank. (Although, the Dursleys didn't approve of humour, which rendered it unlikely, regardless. Not that a sudden lack of overt disapproval of him seemed any more plausible.)

Dudley wanted to know everything about Hogwarts. When Sirius returned, he became skittish and hid in his room, but he wanted to know even about the dementors. Or, perhaps, especially about the dementors.

"They made me relive all the times when I done bad," he said. "I heard the screams and tears of the people I'd hurt, and everything I thought I knew about myself was torn away. I guess if you don't have any personal bad memories for them to bring up, they have to do something else."

"Maybe they shoved off my memories of what you did onto you," Harry suggested.

He was not properly attending. Why couldn't life go back to making sense? A seeker of redemption should never be stingy in offering it to others. He was almost obligated to accept Dudley's apology and explanation. He kept a close eye on the Dursleys, on the chance that they were under the Imperius, or something. It seemed incredible that they'd suddenly grow hearts, like the Grinch.

Or he thought that that was how the story went.

He was more unnerved and out of his element than he'd ever felt at the Dursleys' before—sure, he had chores, but Uncle Vernon just grunted at him to do his best job, and not to stay out in the heat too long. Didn't want people suspecting that the Dursleys might be mistreating him.

Why care now, when it had never mattered to them, before?

They didn't even mind if he did the paperwork for his courses downstairs, within their eyeshot. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia avoided him, and Dudley asked questions. Harry almost missed the old way of life here.

On the second week, during Sirius's second visit, Harry reminded him, with false calm belying the utter perplexity and wrongfootedness pervading his current circumstances, that he had promised Harry that he could go to St. Mungo's. After the hospital had closed.

"And it will probably take more than a couple of visits," Harry said. "I don't want to space these things too far apart."

Sirius gritted his teeth, but somehow again refrained from asking what Harry was attempting. He seemed to realise that Harry needed to escape from the Dursleys. Their odd behaviour was highly suspect, and Sirius resolved to keep a closer eye on them. If that also meant that he'd visit more often, well, Moody and the Order could hardly fault him. Harry smiled at this.

Stephen had yet to reappear, as if knowing that Harry was bound to ask him questions about his newfound ability to turn invisible. He'd made himself scarce in the week between the Invasion of the Ministry (as Harry understood that the papers were calling it) and the end of school, and Harry's exile to the Dursleys.

And, Stephen'd told them very little—only that future-Harry had enchanted it using an artefact he didn't have access to, yet. Part of the most recent ideas for tests were to see whether the object continued to exist in the future, as events unfolded differently.

Thus far, it did. Harry's suspicion was that it would continue to exist, now that it had been brought back, and orphaned from its proper time. This answer irked Stephen, who thought that it should cause a temporal paradox if the item was never invented or created, yet continued to exist. Harry exacerbated this by reminding him that he, Harry, was a source of localised chaos, as Sirius put things, and therefore, the normal rules didn't apply. That was when Stephen had vanished, either returning to the future, or turning invisible. Hermione had sulked for a week, claiming that Harry's overzealous nature had driven him off. This was Hermione at her most irrational and hypocritical. Harry knew better than to argue, by now.

Harry took some time to appreciate Sirius's continued presence, even if he could only visit every so often, needing to sustain the wards and protective charms around Grimmauld Place, particularly the Fidelius.

But, he brought Harry to St. Mungo's for the first session, on the night of the Twenty-Fifth. They were not supposed to be there. St. Mungo's was closed.

Harry was not about to let that stop him. Nor would he be deterred by the barriers and antiquated protective wards (wizards didn't often use wards anymore; they'd fallen out of favour with ritualised magic in the eighteenth century, according to Ron). He drew the Sword of Gryffindor, and cut a hole in them, with great caution, taking care not to let the rip reach either edge of the enclosure provided by the wards—it would almost certainly destabilise them, if it didn't straight-out destroy them. He wanted a hole he could pass through, not to put an end to the defences of a safe-house. If he cut a hole in the barrier, it would recover on its own, given time.

He stepped through, and then had to try to make his way through darkened corridors, in pitch blackness, by memory more than anything else, remembering as he did the unreliability of the signs in this place.

He called up one of his old white lights, anyway, to help him find his way. He embedded an unlocking spell into it (this was why it was useful to know how to pick locks), and sent it gently over to any locked door through which he needed to pass. Sometimes, he questioned the wisdom of leaving Sirius to guard the entrance. On the second visit, he coerced Ron into joining him, to keep watch.

But, the first visit, he was on his own. He still found his way to the fifth story, to the Dai Lewellyn ward, and paused, listening carefully, before opening the door.

All was quiet, and still, and he rather thought that everyone was asleep. As they should be.

He was careful to be as quiet as possible as he made his way to the beds in the back of the room, in the section for the patients who had been harmed so grievously, and had stayed here so long, that the hospital no longer had even a glimmer of hope of restoring them. He held up that ghost light before the motionless forms of Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Sentimentality and haste had no place in his current plans. He studied them, where they lay, asleep and unaware of the world (unaware of the world even awake), unaware of their visitors. He'd been studying the twine that was the Cruciatus Curse. Or, well, it wasn't twine. It was made of something tougher, and less flammable. It seemed to conduct electricity. Maybe it was metallic?

It laid down a sort of heaviness in layers, as if building upon itself. The more often you were subjected to the curse, the more layers would accrue. Harry had collected something like twenty layers, himself, which doesn't sound very much, but they were thick as planks of wood. Even with his mental self's added height, he'd had to work around them, find a passage through them, or a way around them. He'd realised that they were building a maze.

That just meant that he had some idea of what he was getting into. But, he knew that there were five factors in determining how bad the effects of the Cruciatus were: the power and hatred of the caster (which simplified down to the power behind the spell), his skill and magical ability (which amount to intensity), number of iterations (how often the spell had been cast on the individual), duration (how long each session had lasted), and recovery time.

As the first four factors increased, a greater recovery time was needed to minimise damage. Overexposure indicated an excess of the first four factors, with a dearth of the last. It seemed to result in a nervous breakdown, as the mind was forced backwards by all those layers. Possibly trapped within a maze which might or might not be of the mind's own making. Theoretically, however, there was also always a "self" to be trapped within the mind. If you could get them out….

Perhaps, it was expecting too much, for there to be some sort of external indicators as to which of the two were worse affected. Haste was not a good thing, but it had its uses. Harry was the sort who overplanned.

He recalled this with a frown, recalled that Sirius was on the lookout for him at the entrance, waiting. Perhaps, they could get away with inexplicably deciding to break into a hospital. Harry wasn't going to risk it. He turned to Alice Longbottom, thinking of Mother. Who needed Fathers, anyway?

He'd have to wake her up to even try this—Professor Snape had said something about eye contact being a facilitator for legilimency. Well, actually he'd said something to the effect of: "Someone with your skill should make sure to maintain eye contact with his target. Eyes are the window to the soul, and located near the brain, providing easier access to the mind. Perhaps someday, you'll have the competence not to need it." With a sneer that suggested that he very much doubted it. Well, he could only expect so much from the man.

"Silencio," he said, first. He silenced Frank, too, for good measure, and then reached out to gently shake Alice's shoulder. Her eyes shot open, impossibly wide, and flailing as she lashed out at everything about her. She didn't have her wand, of course, which might be just as well. Who knew what sort of magic she might still be able to accomplish, despite her estrangement from the material world?

"It's alright," Harry said, trying to be soothing. This was not his forte. It was not something he was even passably decent with. But, he'd caught her attention. She turned to look at him with blue-grey eyes wide and wild as a frenzied horse. He could deal with those, he thought.

"Hsst! Shh!" he said. "You're alright. I'm not going to hurt you." That was a better tack to take. While she was still looking in his direction—before she could turn from him, he cried, "legilimens!"

He'd waited to reach whatever tortuous, torturous reality Alice was trapped in before using the Star Preserver Spell—who knew but that it would remain trapped around his physical body if he did otherwise.

It was not worth the risk. He fully intended to not have to fight anyone, or use magic for any other reason, here at St. Mungo's.

Also, he was still underage. The Ministry was giving him a lot of slack in light of the events of last year, but they could tighten the reins. He knew that. Best not to give them what they would misconstrue as "cause". He'd realised that if his intentions could be misconstrued to his detriment, they would be.

He knew that he was in trouble when he stepped forwards onto a path in a forest composed of mushrooms. Which might mean that it didn't qualify as a forest, but who cared about trivial semantics?

Also, the sky was pink. He didn't know what to make of that.

"Is this a reference to Alice in Wonderland?" he asked no one. He had never read the book, but from what he'd heard, this was the sort of nonsense it brimmed over with. He kicked at the white "trunk" of the nearest mushroom, and tried to find any sort of path. There was none, of course.

Where were all the planks and boards of his own experience? Was this the sort of thing that happened only with overexposure? Or was he wrong to extrapolate from only his own experience?

The ground beneath his feet was sand. Somehow, that made sense. It was probably quicksand, too, at least in places. Traps. What had he gotten himself in for?

"You are a problem. Symptoms of a greater problem. You should be lush grass, or pine needles, or spores, or something, given the apparent climate of this place," he said to the ground, realising that he'd have to try and fix the world if he ever wanted to find Alice Longbottom.

There was a barren wasteland combined with mushrooms, renowned for growing only in dark, moist places. And, the sky was pink.

He understood the metaphor of the ground beneath his feet, at least. There had to be some way to redistribute the water, or make the ground remember that it had once been fertile. But, he didn't know what it was.

With a sigh, he pushed forwards through the mushroom forest, full of 'shrooms of different heights and ages. Further on, he encountered a waterfall, in which water sprung up from a taller mushroom and ran down in a series of cascades down several 'shrooms into a patch of grass. This patch was several feet across.

Harry had an idea, and despaired. It was a shame that rainmaking was not elemental magic, but instead weather magic. It was not something that he could do.

"Why could I not have been a rain god?" he asked. "Thor would have an easier time of this."

He kicked the trunk of the mushroom nearest him, and said, "servo stellas!" And then, after a pause. "Aguamenti!"

And, he created a continuous path of instantaneous green from the end of the waterfalls, watching as the mushrooms faded away round it, backing up until he reached his starting point. He only knew that he'd come to the edge of her mind by the fact that a solid wall seemed to be behind him, even if it were invisible.

Then, in a moment of inspiration, he pointed to the sky. "Aguamenti!" he cried. And, in the almost counterintuitive manner of dreams, turquoise clouds rolled into the sky. It started to rain.

He returned the next night, expecting the same place he'd left. But, of course, it wasn't. He appeared neck-deep in water, and glared around at the lake around him. Of course, this would happen. Were there still mushrooms down there? he wondered. Somewhere, far below?

Then, he scowled, remembering the Second Task of the Triwizard Tournament, and then what Luna and he had discussed concerning the nature of the Tasks.

"Serves me right," he said, as he realised another problem. "I'm a 'source of localised chaos', trying to make order of chaos. What else did I expect?"

He tilted back his head to stare at the uniform grey of the sky, and then down at the grass below his feet. Grass? He wondered what the logic of this dreamscape was. Just last night, he'd spent hours wandering amongst giant mushrooms, and at first there'd just been that patch of grass. Now, there was grass and water, but no mushrooms. Were mushrooms important?

What a question!

But, he had the feeling that this water might be the kind that wasn't really there. It didn't seem to be keeping him from walking. Perhaps, it was just like air. Only heavier.

Hmm.

"This is ridiculous," he declared, pointing at the sky. "Lumos!" And then, for good measure, "Incendio Maximus!"

Watch him return next time to a desert. Still, he didn't think there'd been a sun there even the first time.

"Horas ostende!" he told it, for good measure. It was the most counterintuitive thing he could think of saying, telling the sun to show the hours. It seemed to turn into a clock, then, but it was blazing bright, and difficult to read. At least it didn't have to be told to move.

"Noxne veniet?" he asked it, as if it would answer. As if the sun even knew whether or not night would come. Why was he taking to it in Latin, anyway?

He walked under and above the water as the land dipped and rose. He could breathe just fine. There was just a heavy sort of pressure everywhere. He had the sense, briefly, that the water here was not his aguamenti spell gone awry, but rather those planks of wood after which he'd been seeking. He couldn't know for sure, but he glared down at it, anyway, and thought why not?

"Incendio!" Setting fire to the water he was neck deep in was just about the most counterintuitive action he could think of to take. But, he doubted that it would hurt him. There was not enough of reality about this place for that. Sure enough, all it seemed to do was to scoop a hole out of the water in front of him. He sighed.

"Incendio Maximus!" he cried, pointing at the water before him. In the Waking World, he would have been boiled alive, doubtless.

Now, he began to notice the heat of the sun, that it was drying up the water in a far more natural way. Because he could not think of a way to both let it continue to dry up the lake, and stop it when it had revealed the ground beneath, he wandered through the lake area, as if it would mean that he'd still be there when the process finished.

He registered a complete lack of lifeforms. He was alone, here. At least, as the lake withdrew, trees sprang up in a proper forest. That was probably good. There were, however, houses being displaced by the forest. He looked inside some of them, but they were utterly empty. He had the sense that there was some house, in particular, that he needed to find.

There was a crib in one of the houses. He frowned, as if that would give him an answer as to what to do about it. He shrank it down and put it in his pocket. He had a feeling that it was connected to Neville, somehow. He shoved it into his resized jeans, and headed back out into the lake, as the water continued to recede. Thanks to the water pressure, and the sheer size of the lake, it took hours to explore the whole thing. He'd have to come back in a few days and see what further mess he'd created.

On the third night, he emerged into a world that was so blazingly bright that he had no idea what his surroundings were. The sun seemed to have come right down to the ground and stayed there.

It was scorching hot, but in a distant sort of way. Harry sighed, and remembered his cooling charms, and the cancellation charm for extinguishing lights.

"Be cool," he told it in Latin, instead. "Nox," he added, thinking of nighttime.

It was instantly night, and the sun had become the moon, the way such affairs will happen in dreams. He almost didn't notice.

He found himself in a greenhouse full of plants that he was sure that he should recognise. He wished that Neville were there, or even Hermione. He was wary of the plants, but couldn't quite remember why. There was something medicinal about them, wasn't there?

He reached up, and pulled one out by its roots, and it gave a horrible shriek—

And, he found himself back in the hospital room. He glared around the room, as if it were anyone's fault but his own that he hadn't recognised mandrake roots when he saw them. Ron wisely gave him his space.

He thought that it was probably better not to return that night. Not without a battle plan. But then, who knew how things would be the next time?

He returned the next week, right on schedule, to the exact same world as he'd left. The moon hung in the same place, touching the ground, looking a bit like a bowling ball, huge in the distance. He created a barrier around his ears—it was the best he could think of to do, stopping them up with a wall of solid ice. He pulled up a mandrake, in the automatic way common in dreams, and then realised that he had no idea what he was meant to do with it. He wandered out of the greenhouse, still holding it, and carried it into the cave directly before him.

Thankfully, the cave opened up almost immediately into a huge cavern full of statues.

He shuddered. No. Not statues. They were all identical, but he knew that they were people. Their eyes were wide with horror—or pain? Each on its knees, hands out as if in supplication.

The mandrake wriggled out of his hands, and ran around the chamber, whacking each of them in turn with its fronds, or hands, kicking that one, punching the next. It looked like a little person, dressed in dirt, which should not have looked half as much like cloth as it did. Harry was past evaluating the logic of this place. It seemed, understandably, to be the same sort used in dreams.

None of the statues responded at all to the mandrake's violence, of course. But, since they couldn't feel it, he found that he found some catharsis in watching the mandrake visit violence upon those poor lost souls. He'd just have to look up the antidote to petrifications.

He'd forgot, of course, that the method differed depending upon what had caused the petrifications—and the Cruciatus Curse would never be in there, regardless. That was not what the Cruciatus Curse did.