Numbing, swirling white mist was filling his brain and the cold burrowed itself into his bones. What was he doing? Why was he flying? How did he get there? His skull felt as if it were being split in two. A rapid succession of images and voices and screams on a continuous loop through his head until he felt the stomach dropping feeling of falling.

Falling through the icy mist.

A shrill voice was laughing.

The woman was screaming.

A boy looking up at him from the ground with blank eyes.

Fire and marble raining down all around him and the splitting pain on his forehead before everything went dark and Harry knew no more.

Consciousness came to him slowly. He felt as if he were crawling through sludge, weighed down and heavy as he tried to remember where he was.

He could feel the rough sheets under him. His clothes heavy with water and clinging to every inch of his skin. His limbs heavy as lead, unable to be lifted or moved even an inch while he lay there, still, save for the rise and fall of his chest.

What happened?

Smoke and fire. Blood on his hands, on his face and in his mouth. Blood all around him. He was drowning in it. Drowning.

"Lucky the ground was so soft."

Harry twitched. Who was that? He clawed through his memories, trying to grasp at any sliver of clue to who was standing that close to him.

"I thought he was dead for sure."

Harry exhaled a sharp breath. A flash of green light, the splitting pain of impact and white, numbing emptiness. Dead…no not dead. Alive. His heart was pounding in his chest, chest rising and falling as he breathed in the muggy air around him. He pinched his eyes shut harder, brows furrowed deeply as he tried to move his arms again. He couldn't make sense of what was being said, he couldn't make sense of anything at all except for the fact that every inch of him was in pain.

"That was the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life."

The scariest thing…scariest thing…hooded black figures…cold…screaming…

Harry's eyes snapped open.

He was lying in the hospital wing and there, standing around his bed was his old Gryfindor Quidditch team, splattered with mud from head to foot and standing with them were his two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

His heart had leaped into his throat and for a moment he saw them with ashen faces and dead eyes.

"Harry!" he flinched sharply at the sound of Fred's voice. He looked extremely white beneath the mud caked to his face and a sudden swell of emotion felt impossible to contain when he remembered his limp body lying on the marble stone of Hogwarts. "How're you feeling?"

"What happened?" his voice was thick with emotion, but it sounded so young. Just barely broken in and he was so startled that he almost forgot that he was looking at a crowd of people who were meant to be dead.

"You fell off," said Fred. "Must've been – what – fifty feet?"

"We thought you died," said Alicia, and she was shaking. Shaking so hard that Harry knew that it couldn't have just been because of the cold. There were drops of rain still clinging to her face, running over skin as dark as black pearls and reminding him of tears.

What was happening?

How were they here?

Harry raised a hand weakly and pressed his fingers into his forehead, fingertips digging into the lightning bolt scar like he might be able to pry it off with his fingernails.

What kind of trick was this?

Suddenly the pain and the feelings of grief were overwhelmed by the sudden shock of anger that grew from somewhere within his chest. It spread through him like wildfire. He laughed, and it sounded off – sharp and shrill.

"This isn't real." He said between the huffed sounds of desperate hysteria.

"Harry?" Hermione made a small squeaking sound and he looked at her. Olive skin and big uncontrollable waves of mousey brown hair that only seemed to have grown in volume since she had been caught in the rain.

There was a terrible, drawn out scream that made the blood run ice cold in his veins, a desperation that thrummed through him with a sudden fight and he felt as if he were drowning in it. Helpless and hysterical with the feeling of stone against his knuckles.

"Harry?" Hermione's voice reached him through the black feelings spiralling all around him and he swallowed a thick lump that had formed in his throat.

The rain.

Had it been raining?

No. No they had been in Malfoy Manor and there hadn't been any rain except – they were all drenched in it. Soaked right through to the bone, surely the rain had come from somewhere.

"But the match," Harry asked, his mouth somehow catching up with what had happened before his brain. How could he have forgotten the Quidditch match? He had never been to the Malfoy Manor. He had been flying, the game between Gryfindor and Hufflepuff. "What happened? Are we doing a replay?"

No one said anything. The silence was tense as everyone shifted on their feet, weight moved from one foot to the other as they looked at each other as if asking with their eyes who was going to answer him, and Harry found himself experiencing a peculiar sense of déjà vu.

"Diggory got the Snitch." Harry said. The truth of it sinking into his stomach like a stone. Harry sat upright, and his head swam – dizzying and disorientating.

"How'd you know?" Fred asked.

"George just said."

"I didn't say anything." George corrected uncertainly.

Harry blinked several times until the team came back into focus. Each of them staring at him owlishly whilst Harry stared owlishly back. He could have sworn he heard George answer him. Remembered the hollow feeling in his stomach when he heard him, and Harry groaned as that familiar splitting pain settled across his skull.

"Harry are you alright?" Hermione again. And when he looked up Ron had edged a little bit closer too, hand pressed down against the mattress beside him as if he had moved to grab a hold of his shoulder but then thought better of it in Harry's current state. He couldn't see him clearly, like peering into an old photograph, nothing around him felt real.

"I don't know." Harry said finally and with a thick gulp.

"Alright everyone," Ron said abruptly, "gawking's over. Clear out, give him some room."

Harry found himself flooded with a sudden feeling of impossible gratitude and the same deep-rooted fondness he had once felt when Ron and his brothers had rescued him from the Dursley's his second year. Harry watched as Ron shouldered his way through the Quidditch team, both arms out and hands displayed as if ushering a rowdy crowd out of a closed establishment and he couldn't help but smile and snort.

The sound seemed enough incentive for the team because with a handful of short and fleeting glances as well as gently murmured goodbyes and get wells, the team slowly shuffled their way out of the Hospital Wing leaving him alone with his two best friends.

What was happening to him?

Why was he remembering things that had never happened?

"Harry?" Hermione had moved to one side of the bed, plopping herself down near his arm and Ron had made his way over to the other side. He couldn't explain the feelings writhing in his chest even if he had wanted to. He couldn't put into words the guilt he felt in the pit of his stomach or the sudden and overwhelming feelings of relief and love to see them both standing there with him and how thankful he was that they would do so for many more years to come. He couldn't explain the memories of years that he hadn't even experienced yet that had carved their way into his brain, nor could he understand how he knew that they were memories.

All he knew for certain was that he had never known anyone who meant more to him that Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

"Oi, mate?"

"Oh, Harry!"

Harry hadn't realized that he was crying until he felt his best friend's hands on his shoulders. Hermione wrapped her skinny arms around his neck and after a short beat, Ron followed suit, bending awkwardly over from where he stood so that he could do so without elbowing either Harry or Hermione in the face. Harry carefully curled his own arms around them and exhaled a deep and shuddering breath.

"Sorry. I don't know what happened." Harry said after a handful of short eternities. "One minute I was flying and then – and then there was just a woman screaming. It felt so real."

"It must've been the Dementors." Ron said.

Half a beat past before both Ron and Hermione pulled away, giving Harry a chance to compose himself as his cheeks burned with embarrassment. He pulled his glasses away to wipe his face, hiding the blossoming red as he done so.

"Dumbledore was really angry," Hermione said, her voice still not quite right and Harry thought he saw her wipe her own face before he returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose. "I've never seen him like that before. He ran onto the field as you fell, waved his wand, and you sort of slowed down before you hit the ground. Then he whirled his wand and the dementors. Shot silver stuff at them. They left the stadium right away…He was furious they'd come onto the grounds. We heard him – "

Harry listened to Ron recount how Dumbledore had brought him to the Hospital Wing and slowly but surely the splitting pain of his skull seemed to fade. He still felt terrible, but it wasn't that sinking devastation that had washed through him moments before.

"It's a shame about my Nimbus." Harry said with a heavy sigh.

"Your – "

"It hit the Whomping Willow."

Both Ron and Hermione looked at each other then, startled and pale under the mud on their faces and Harry blinked and swallowed again. Brows furrowed as he stared at them.

"Harry," Ron said, his voice suspiciously careful. "how did you know about your Nimbus?"

As if on cue, Hermione reached down for a bag at her feet, turned it upside down, and tipped a dozen bits of splintered wood and twig onto the bed, the only remains of Harry's faithful, finally beaten broomstick. Harry found himself staring at the shattered remnants of the broom but saw another. Sleek and black with a registration number in gold at its head and smooth, streamlined birch twigs that made up the tail.

"Hermione just told me." Harry said absently.

Hermione and Ron shared another look and Harry threw his hands up in exasperation.

"What now?" He asked impatiently.

"Harry," Hermione said hesitantly, "I didn't say anything about your broom."