Disclaimer: I don't own any of it.

A/N: Hi all. I wanted to clarify some issues relating to the timeline so that you don't all get confused. There have been a couple of comments regarding it. If you feel you have understood the story perfectly thus far, then feel free to disregard this note.

Chapters 1 through 6, the first discrete chunk of the story took place from mid-July to early August.

Chapters 7 through 15 went from mid-July to March in roughly chronological order, though often times switching POVs as I went along. Regardless, there were large gaps in time between chapters.

For the following, we're going to jump back to early August to pick up where we left off at the end of chapter 6. The next several chapters will bring you up to speed on what's been happening with Harry over the same period as chapters 7 through 15. Again, there may be some POV switching, and there may be jumps in time, but everything should be again, in roughly chronological order.

Hope that helps.

Chapter Sixteen

Harry in Wonderland

Harry peeled himself off the forest floor, peering about in the forest gloom for signs of danger. His wand was in his hand, a curse was on his lips, his stance a predatory one. Where the hell am I? he thought, his eyes keening the environment for some kind of familiar element. Unfortunately, there seemed to be nothing.

Out of nowhere, Harry felt a large body of limbs come crashing down on top of him. If he weren't slated to be murdered by the Dark Lord personally, if it hadn't all been foretold by a person who could only be described as a crackpot in a chance encounter of fate, then the combined weight of Tom, Minnie and Kittie flattening him to the ground probably would have killed him. However, at the present it only served to break both his legs.

"Arrgghh!" Harry shrieked, wailing and floundering incoherently from underneath his would-be travelling companions. "Ger off!" he managed, thrusting all three of them to one side as they themselves attempted futilely to right themselves. All except Minnie, who seemed to have whacked her head on Harry's shoulder and was out cold.

"Oof!" Kittie managed, landing on her butt in a patch of cold mud. Tom, as usual, seemed the least fazed, having used whatever inner grace God had bequeathed upon him to retain his ever-present composure. Immediately, he extended a hand to Kittie to help her up, which she took gladly, immediately letting herself be folded in his arms to absorb his warmth, to enjoy the feeling of protection that his encircling arms gave her.

Harry, meanwhile, moaned pitifully on the ground, the adrenalin from the perceived assault receding, leaving him acutely aware of his grievous injuries.

"Oh, Harry!" Kittie exclaimed, finally realizing that Harry was not in the best of shape. "Oh my God! You're - your legs!"

"Mmm," Harry managed to say, all the while on the cusp of swooning.

"That really doesn't look very good," Kittie said dubiously. "Marv, what do we do?"

Marv knelt down and examined Harry's form more thoroughly, poking and prodding as though he were a veterinarian and Harry were a street dog on death row. "Harry?" he asked in a measured tone.

Harry did not respond.

Marv gave Harry a gentle push, and, when Harry did not seem to respond to this, simply pushed harder, all the while speaking to him in staccato bursts. "Come on Harry. You need to stay with us. You're going into shock. Listen, Harry, come on." Marv motioned for Kittie to come closer and said to her. "Start talking to him. We need to keep him awake or else he may slip away from us."

Whether it was Kittie's faith in Marv or her own nervousness, she complied without question, immediately talking to Harry about various things, ranging from describing the trees to how bad he looked.

"You're going to have to tell him something that energizes him," Marv said, still focused on wiping blood away from his legs and gently resetting the bone and pressing down on any spots where blood was pouring out. Truth be told, Marv had next to no clue what he was doing, and all his knowledge on the subject of modern medicine came from NBC Primetime. He only hoped that Harry's considerable magical core would guide him through most of the work. It had been one of the first things that Tom had studied after expanding his repertoire of dark arts spells. He had wanted to know exactly how muggles differed from wizards, and he had not been disappointed, when he found out that magical persons lived much longer and had high resistances to physical damage and virulent pathogens; not to mention swift and sometimes miraculous recoveries. That That knowledge had led Tom to one of his more salient transformations.

"Dammit, Harry. What the hell is wrong with you?" Kittie reprimanded, taking on the role of bad cop. "You've got a bloody war to wage. Come on, soldier, get up. What the hell good are you like this to anybody, your family, your friends, all the people out there counting on you to stop Voldemort. What the hell would Sirius say? Hmm? Come on, Harry, I know you can do it, you're strong. Stronger than anyone I've ever known. You've got a resolve like steel, and there's no way a little thing like this is going to slow you down. My God, man, get with it."

Despite their feeble efforts, Harry remained on the blink of collapse. Strangely enough, in his semi-conscious state, he was surprised that it didn't hurt as much as he expected it to. He was aware that his legs had been broken, mostly by the audible crack as he fell to the floor at an odd angle. He had even felt his own blood pouring out of his leg, and remembered on a muggle television show that there was a major artery somewhere on the legs, making him idly wonder if one of them had been punctured. His slick hands certainly felt well coated, abnormally so. Funny, he thought, staring up at the dark canopy of foliage, the sun barely visible, showing up only in the occasional beam of light. It was hypnotic somehow, watching the beams shine down from different spots as the sun slowly trekked across what Harry imagined was a clear blue sky. Maybe I've walked into heaven, he thought. Just then, squinting and looking up, he saw a peculiar shape descending down upon them. It looked like a giant, multi-pronged claw, its hand all black and matted, its prongs tittering in anticipation. It's death, he decided. Death has come for me. It's time to finally find out whether I'm going to heaven or hell, or possibly being reincarnated as a flobberworm.

When the reaper finally came, he saw that it did not in fact go for himself, but it instead went for Kittie, who began screaming, her eyes widening in terror, her head suddenly unable to move as her body was half lifted into the air. That's odd, Harry thought, looking at it. The hand of the reaper looks a lot like... Aragog? Marv seemed to have gotten a wooden stick and was trying to prod the black thing into releasing Kittie, who continued to wail and plea, though Harry couldn't quite make out the sounds, since they all seemed to come from across a distance, as though they had to shout over the din of a raging river. Clearly, Marv was losing his battle with the creature, and Kittie seemed to be looking less and less alive as each minute ticked by. Harry couldn't help but notice that yet another creature was approaching from the side, and it looked to be heading toward Marv. He knew from past experience that he should be feeling a wave of panic, that adrenalin should start pumping, that his magical senses should be queued, that he should be alert and diving into battle, as long as he had strength to draw breath. However, that flight or fight response did not seem to be being engaged. Marv had to abandon Kittie as he futilely defended himself from the second attack, his eyes flicking to his beloved every chance he got, Kittie seeming not to have much fight left in her, though to her credit, she did manage to scream quite a bit.

Somehow, Harry knew that what he was seeing was wrong. In fact, it was rather irritating. Wasn't he the one that God was supposed to be killing? Why were they going after the bloody sidekicks? Harry dragged himself to a sitting position, aware that the pain was slowly returning as he fought to get a grip on consciousness, and not caring in the least. Those are my friends, aren't they? he wondered. What the fuck am I doing lying around like a cripple watching them getting eaten by acromantulas? Harry patted himself down and, upon feeling the familiar stick of wood, extracted it and pointed it at the eight legged abomination that now had Marv pinned, its pincers clicking furiously as it savoured its victory. Harry smiled a cold, ruthless smile as he too savoured his moment to destroy the creature. You're so going down, buster, he thought. In a soft voice that belied the deadliness of his intention, Harry issued one word, "Reducto." A clear, focused beam of light erupted from his wand and pegged the creature clean in the abdomen, blowing it apart from the centre outwards, causing blood and guts to spray across the trees and leaves on the far side of the clearing and causing its many legs to fly apart and fragilely spear the surrounding dirt and vegetation like lone, furry black arrows.

Not hesitating in the least, Harry pointed his wand toward the tree line, made a quick, unconscious calculation regarding the trajectory of his spell and then said, "Diffindo." An arc of light again shot out of his wand and struck the silk thread that was wound around Kittie's midsection, causing her to fall momentarily, before she became suspended with a simple levitation charm. Harry guided her down and then cast yet another reductor curse at the acromantula, except this time it missed, the spider having retreated beneath the first layer of branches. That was probably not a good thing, he mused. Critter's gonna go for reinforcements, most likely.

Harry took a moment to survey his surroundings. He even strained his neck to check to see if there were any hostiles behind him. Thankfully, the spiders seemed to be travelling in pairs. Marv, who was now sporting a decided limp, had gone to Kittie and was checking her over, his fingers gently brushing the hair back from his eyes, the sound of his voice soft and delicate and coming out in caressing, loving tones. Kittie, for her part, seemed to be untouched. Unlike Marv and Harry, who had both been bloodied, Kittie seemed to be relatively intact. Only her apparent disorientation indicated that she had been near death.

"She's been poisoned," Marv said, coming to examine Harry. It looks like the acromantula injected venom right into her spinal column, and its slowly causing paralysis."

"Mmm, that's not a good thing," Harry said, flopping back down into a prone position. Harry chose to stare up at the floral ceiling, his mind blanking out on any good plan of action. He supposed he was tired. The day had been a long one, and it just didn't seem to be ceasing. Between the torture, the multiple revelations with Marv and then dealing with that ground beef monstrosity, Harry was coming to the end of his rope. Now this, stupid, stupid acromantula crap. He inwardly groaned. And it was seriously not over anytime soon. "We've only about five minutes before they return, I reckon," he said finally. "We'd better get a move on." Harry dragged himself back up to a sitting position, seeing Marv's nod of assent as he continued to minister over Kittie's twitching form. Harry aimed his wand at Kittie and said, "Mobilicorpus." Kittie promptly rose into the air and hovered there comfortably, as though she were resting on a bed. Marv nodded and came over to Harry, asking, "Can you do that to multiple people?"

Harry nodded, adding Minnie to the list of floating bodies. "I could, but I can't do it to myself. It's highly unstable."

Right, right," Marv said, sighing and running his fingers through his black hair. "I knew that."

"As loathed as I am to suggest it," Harry said, "you're just going to have to carry me."

Marv seemed to consider the proposition, glancing from Kittie to Harry and then off into the distance, his mind turning over any alternatives. Finally, he said, "I just wish there were a faster way. We don't even know what direction to travel."

"I would have been able to apparate," Harry said, "but I'm not sure if I can do it like this. Besides, I wouldn't know where I'm going. It's only now starting to dawn on me that I'm not exactly in Kansas anymore." Harry let out a bark of laughter, which echoed unnaturally in the otherwise silent forest. "Here I thought I was going to find my way home." He shook his head ruefully. "Come on. We don't have much time."

With that, Harry levitated Minnie as well, and the intrepid young adults made their way westward toward what they hoped was the beginnings of civilization.

It turned out that they were not in the Forbidden Forest as Harry had initially suspected. Not that it was a surprise they weren't, since they had started out in England, and it was unlikely that they would have been spatially displaced as far as Scotland. Marv had pointed out that temporal displacements tended to cause shifts in straight lines and that long distance displacements would have put people deep into the bedrock, as the planet was spherical in shape. Marv had also gone on to explain that, apparently, though Harry couldn't quite believe it, despite having vague memories from elementary school on the subject, that the planet was actually in motion, at a speed of twenty-seven kilometres per second, not to mention the fact that it was rotating. Marv had gone on to explain something about magical theory, and its relationship to gravitational forces, or, more specifically, the fabric of space-time, which was intricately connected to magic in ways that scholars could only speculate. Harry had tried to follow the monologue turned lecture, but was having a great deal of difficulty, though Marv was proving to be an excellent instructor, once he gained a better sense of Harry's level of knowledge. Harry supposed he wouldn't have started paying mind to Marv's info-dumping, if it were not for the fact that he was being carried like a star-crossed lover in Marv's arms. Marv had taught Harry an obscure anti-pain charm, which Harry began doling out liberally, though with the admonition that, unlike healing spells and potions, it did not cure the pain but simply made the sufferer oblivious to it. That had instigated yet another lecture on the importance of pain as an indicator of dangerous activity.

Fortunately, Kittie seemed to have ended up pacified into a slumber that did not look lethal, though neither Harry nor Marv were prepared to start counting chickens. It was still not clear whether she would have full mobility, regardless of treatment. At the very least, they had to accept that, if there were long term effects from the exposure, then she would have to endure them, because magical help was not forthcoming. On the upshot, their spider problem did not manifest itself again.

Eventually, with the sun setting to the West, they managed to reach a roadway, Harry having been consistently using the Point Me Charm to maintain a straight line. Marv had also helped Harry to conjure some pumpkin juice and sandwiches, which they ate greedily, despite the waxy and sawdust aftertaste.

"Don't worry," Marv said. "You'll get better at it."

"Yes, yes, you keep saying that, all the while reminding me that I've got the magical skill of a twelve year old."

"Well, conjuring, at least, is supposed to be seventh year work," Marv said. "At least, the fancy stuff."

"And that's why I'm still struggling with plain bloody jam sandwiches."

"Oh, I'm sure to some peanut butter could be classified as fancy," Marv replied airily.

"God, I'm so incompetent," Harry lamented.

They came up to the roadway, and Marv relaxed and knelt down, setting Harry down on the edge of the grass so that he could rest. "Nonsense. Clearly you have a great deal of power. Your spellwork in the area of defense is a testament to it. I did stay long enough to see the spellfire you were discharging at that great beast that Tom loosed upon the bystanders in the Old Place. And I believe you mentioned a fully corporeal patronus at some point as well. One which repelled a hundred dementors. Again, impressive." Marv fell silent, staring across the road and into the forest, which started up again on the other side.

"What then," Harry asked resignedly. "Why am I so average everywhere else? You weren't average. You were brilliant at everything." Harry knew he was starting to sound whiny, but he didn't care. He was the magic one and yet he found he could do little to help them, short of conjuring food that would probably give them the runs.

"You lack certain keystones. Honestly, I'm amazed sometimes that Hogwarts is supposed to be the best school for magic in Britain, and a contender for the top spot in all of Europe." Marv shook his head, thinking about all the things he saw as flaws in the education system. "I have no doubt that if you pin down but a few concepts, the finesse that you currently lack in transfiguration and charms would come to you all too easily."

"You're just saying that," Harry said, now moping.

Marv just smiled a sad sort of smile. "Come on, why don't you see if you can summon the night bus, and then we can get out of here."

Harry did so, and they soon found themselves on their way to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical maladies. Harry wasn't surprised to see that Stan Shunpike was not on the bus, mostly because he now connected the once naive, acne-infested teen to Azkaban and all that was wrong with the Ministry of Magic. Even under Scrimgeour's rule, they weren't doing what they needed to do to stop Voldemort. Harry cleared his thoughts of the past and instead focused on the rolling countryside, watching as the hills and forests soon gave way to open plains and farmers fields, which in turn gave way to the crowded city of London, with its narrow cobblestone pathways, the bustle of compact cars and taxis and double-deckers, the rise of exhaust fogging up the otherwise clear evening air. Both Kittie and Minnie remained unconscious the entire time, which may or may not have been a bad thing, and Marv seemed content to just stare at her, clearly having sunk into his own memories. Whether they were good ones or bad ones, Harry knew not.

"Oy! St. Mungo's!" the driver called out, and Harry was amused to see that it was still Ernie. Well, it's good to know some things never change.

Harry's last thought apparently held for St. Mungo's as well, which, to him, looked exactly as he had remembered it. For a moment, as the quartet stood about in the waiting area, Harry could almost manage to convince himself that he really was in his own time and space; that the moving pictures of Gaelin and Hippocrates, who were prancing about like twelfth century homosexual swordsmen in the French court, in frilly white frocks no less, were really the paintings from his own time, that the bored looking guard and the receptionist who looked like a female version of Stan Shunpike, only with more acne, really went to Hogwarts under his Dumbledore. Alas, he couldn't fool himself. Strangely enough, he didn't even need Marv or Kittie or Minnie confirming it for him, nor did he need to see the headlines of the Daily Prophet, or read a history book or visit his old haunts. No, he didn't have to do any of that, because he knew, deep down that it was true; that whatever threshold he and his companions had crossed had cut him from the ties that held him to that other world. All at once, despite the aching in his legs, the cramps in his back from having been carried, he felt a sense of peace, as if the ever-looming fate pressed upon him were no longer there. Quite possibly, it wasn't, as the ordinary rules no longer applied. Not even prophecies can cross the bounds of reality he thought grimly as his senses acclimatized to the constant hubbub of activity, of sniffling patients and distraught mothers and fathers, of the antiseptic calm of the orderlies who pushed past the injured and traumatized as they continued en route to their next charge.

Harry listened only partly as Marv returned to the desk and asked again about the waiting time and the pressing need for medical attention in light of the toxic venom. "Please," he said, and Harry knew that Marv was jacking up the charm factor to its maximum. "My friend could die. We really just need a few moments of a doctor's time before-"

"I'm sorry," the receptionist said, donning her most sincere smile, which reminded Harry distinctly of Umbridge. Let's just hope she's a loser that goes nowhere in life, Harry thought, his gaze momentarily resting on Minnie's still form. She, at least, should have woken up, and he was starting to get nervous that she too was in a pretty bad condition. The receptionist was giving Marv what sounded like a programmed speech about policy or existing emergencies and so on and so forth, clearly enjoying the power she had to shut Marv-the-pretty-boy-who-got-everything-in-life up. Barring the vampires, Minnie was the first person he had spoken to in that strange fringe world, which he had started referring to as the Old Place. She had caught him so off guard in that alleyway, his mind having been bent on the single task of saving the blonde woman, completely unable to process her advances mentally, despite the clear reaction his body had given. He had felt pulled in two directions at once, and it had felt both excruciating and exquisite simultaneously. And then there had been Jack, who, in all likelihood, he had murdered partly out of self-defense and partly out of a battle-crazed thirst for revenge. Harry didn't really have regrets about Jack's fate; he was a brute who died by the code of the warrior. However, Harry still remembered the very real look of pain that graced Minnie's otherwise immaculate features. She was an airhead; Harry had no doubt about that, but she still had the power to feel, and jack was someone she clearly cared for. He was a good fuck, at any rate, if her rampant screaming had been any indication.

Harry remembered Kittie mentioning something about psychic pheromones, and that it added to her allure, and, more importantly, that he himself had command of such a thing. Marv came back utterly dejected, clearly having thought his own skills with the ladies was some sort of a trump card. Marv's failure made Harry feel better on some level; appealing to his baser masculine need for some ego-stroking. It wrangled a bit that Marv the Muggle knew more about magic than Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived.

"How long d'you suppose it'll be?" Harry asked.

Marv flopped down in the chair next to him. "Not a clue," he responded. "Not one bloody clue."

"If only we could have gotten them to Hogwarts," Harry said. "Madam Pomfrey would have fixed them right up."

"Any chance you know any healing spells?" Marv asked.

"I can fix broken noses. Does that help?"

"Bloody useless."

Harry bit down on a scathing remark. It would do no good to start fighting with Marv, especially when Harry knew that Marv cared a great deal for Kittie; perhaps he even loved her, in his own sort of way. After all, how could a thing which amounted to the bi-product of necromancy really understand love? It was supposed to be this incredible force that defied all study, and yet here they were, Marv clearly demonstrating a capacity for it, or something akin to it at least. Maybe it's like those androids in that novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Harry mused. Maybe they can only mimic human emotions. Maybe he's got some sort of programming in him that allows him to copy human behaviours, patterns, inflections in speech that emulate emotions. Harry decided that it would probably be best to ponder on it another day. He really didn't have the cognitive abilities to generate a decent thought on such an abstract subject anyway.

To both Harry's and Marv's dismay, the waiting area seemed to be getting busier as night fell on London, and, worse yet, the people streaming in were sporting severe wounds, including still pouring blood from large wounds in abdomens, legs, from missing fingers, or limbs or some were being levitated while unconscious, clearly both legs having been smashed.

"There's a fight going on," Marv observed. "A lot of that is spell damage. Some of it dark. That one over there-" Marv pointed to a toddler with glazed eyes and drool sliding down his chin. "That one has taken the Cruciatus, I reckon."

"How do you know?" Harry asked, now fixing his gaze to the pale little blond boy. Hearing of the Cruciatus in connection to the child, Harry couldn't help but think of Neville.

"You get to know the signs." Marv did not seem inclined to elaborate, so Harry didn't push.

"Who would do that?" Harry ventured, having a feeling he knew exactly the kind of people who would do that.

Marv only looked at Harry with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, Do you really expect me to dignify that with a response?

No, Harry supposed he didn't. Bloody Death Eaters, he thought miserably. Not only do they have to terrorize my world, but this one as well. After considering it, he shrugged, deciding that it really wasn't his problem anyway. This world probably had its own saviour all decked out and ready to fight the good fight. Besides, it could have been a lot worse, once he started thinking about it. Harry wasn't gifted with a terribly active imagination, and whatever skills at creativity he might have possessed had been sorely stifled, starved and strangled to death amongst those dark days in his cupboard. In his private space, which was both Heaven and Hell. Still, even he could imagine them having landed in a world where everything could have been horribly wrong. Armageddon, nuclear wars, genocide of muggles or muggle-borns, to name a few. Hell, for all they knew, they could have ended up in a world where apes ran around with machine guns sipping on a fine Chianti one minute and beating down the enslaved humans the next. Anything was possible when you mixed magic and multiple dimensions; when you played God like Tom had.

"This is ridiculous," Marv said, slamming his fists down on his lap, mounting despair and frustration evident in his voice. "I swear to God, if Kittie dies because these clowns can't get their act together..." Marv left the threat hanging, clearly unable to articulate an adequate punishment to express his feelings, or, more aptly, Harry thought, because he wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway, being a muggle and all. Marv's momentary feeling of inadequacy didn't elate Harry the way he might have wanted it to, however. Instead, it made him feel that much more depressed, because it fell on him to protect them using magic, whether that meant fighting off the acromantulas, or coaxing the staff at St. Mungo's to get medical treatment. No doubt the perceived squib status of his three companions by the hospital staff was exacerbating their problem. With these thoughts, running through his head, Harry didn't realize that Marv was actually speaking to him, whispering in hushed tones and taking care to keep his words quiet.

"Huh?" Harry asked, swiveling his head to look directly at Marv.

"I said, use the Imperius," Marv whispered fiercely, his eyes alight with that alien red intelligence.

It took a moment for Harry to understand just what Marv was asking, and, when it finally registered, surprisingly enough, he didn't experience the knee-jerk feeling of horror that he once would have at the prospect of any light wizard using the curse. That's because you're not a light wizard, a voice inside him said silkily.

If I'm not light, though, Harry thought, does that mean I'm dark?

No, you're something else entirely.

Harry, resolved to employ the curse, simply turned to Marv and whispered back, "Show me how."

It took Harry a dozen tries to get the spell right, which, he supposed, wasn't a surprise, given that the Imperius Curse was rather unique in its effects. On his seventh attempt, he had managed to catch the mind of the victim, but he rejected it almost instantly, like a novice fisherman relinquishing control of a fishing rod when he gets his first real snag. It didn't help that he was trying to do it while looking at a stray piece of wall, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on the receptionist through the periphery of his vision. Got it, he thought satisfied, reigning in the feelings of dizziness and vertigo that were threatening to pitch him back out across that black space between his mind and her mind. Distantly, he could hear Marv urging Harry to give her instructions before people began noticing her blank look. Apparently, as Harry was discovering, the quality of the curse, its strength and the believability of the victim to act normal were both predicated on the skill and strength of the caster. After what seemed like an age, Harry managed to drive the flutter of foreign sensations down into one corner of his mind, which he marked off with a 'Do Not Disturb' sign, its only existence being a slight yet constant ethereal sort of itching feeling.

Harry issued mental instructions the way Marv was ordering him too, and, before they knew it, a doctor was approaching, a magic clipboard floating dutifully next to him.

"Ah, you are Marv Oloson?" the doctor asked, coming up to Marv, who nodded. "What seems to be the trouble here?"

Marv pointed to Kittie first, saying, "Acromantula poisoning. She was bitten in her lower back several hours ago." He then pointed to Harry and indicated the two broken legs, and finally, Minnie, who was simply unconscious, diagnosis unknown.

Before long, the four patients were ushered into separate chambers, two per chamber. Marv's superficial wounds were healed almost instantaneously, whereupon he promptly joined Kittie while she was placed in near isolation. Harry's legs were a bit more tricky to fix, as his own internal repair system was hard at work mending the bones as best they could. The healer had to break them before setting them and giving him a blood replenishing potion. Minnie was given a concoction of unknown type that seemed to perk her up rather readily. Colour returned to her cheeks, her state of unconsciousness transformed into one of restful slumber.

They were all given beds for overnight observation, and Marv was accommodated, because he was believed to be Kittie's next of kin. Everything seemed rather fine, all things considered. Harry awoke early the next morning, the sky still a dark blue from what he could tell through the window. Minnie was awake and sitting upright, staring at the far wall, but not really seeing it.

"Hey," he said, brushing the grogginess from his eyes and hoisting himself into a sitting position. At first, she didn't answer, and Harry wondered if maybe the concussion had done something to her brain.

"Hey," she replied.

Harry couldn't make out anything from her tone, though he supposed it had to be bad since she was normally so jovial. Harry tried again in the ensuing silence. "How are you doing?"

Again, she took a rather long time to respond, as if weighing the question or the words carefully, as though her life depended on it. "I'm okay, I think."

"Should I go try and find you a doctor?" Harry asked, wondering if perhaps she needed medical attention. Certainly her response time seemed to be down.

'No, no," she responded. "I'm fine like that, you know? It's just..." She trailed off, her eyes taking on that unfocused quality as though she were thinking really hard about something which, unbeknownst to her, what was an intractable problem. Before Harry could prompt her, she asked suddenly and with an unusual intensity that it made Harry want to flinch back. She turned to him and asked, "Where am I, Harry?"

It was a decidedly odd question. It was also in its oddity that it was so astounding. Asking such a question was like permitting yourself to stand upon the precipice of something great, like a faraway magical land, or before a cataclysm or incomprehensibly vast gorge. What kind of answer could Harry give her? What would make sense? What would help her ease into the fact that she had crossed some ludicrous boundary between realities? Harry himself hardly understood it, Marv little better. What was there to say, when the knowledge would sweep away all you thought about the world, all your beliefs, all the things that made you think you understood stuff, the reason you took comfort that the sun would rise the next day or that the ground beneath your feet was solid. It was like displacing the Earth from the center of the universe. It was like telling an eleven year old child that he was a wizard, that his parents were not drunks and vagabonds who died in a car crash. It was like finding out you were in a prophecy and that you were slated to take on a really big tough guy, and that you were at the center of the world, that the world, apparently, revolved around you instead of the other way around. Harry smiled all of a sudden, the full import of an earlier concept coming to fruition in his mind: the prophecy meant nothing here. He meant nothing; he was no chosen one, no saviour, no nothing. Just a loose piece of driftwood like the rest of the worthless rabble that ambled aimlessly through the streets of London, through Britain, France, Nepal, Indonesia, Canada, Australia, Papa New Guinea. Hell, the Arctic, even. He was, for the first time, just Harry. Fuck Yeah. And so, with those thoughts running through his still sleep-addled brain, the first light of dawn creeping in through the windows, the distant tinkle of magical wards going up and coming down, doctors and nurses on the graveyard shift calling it a night and going home, others taking their place, putting on newly pressed labrobes, casting anti-grogginess spells on each other, Harry couldn't help but let a goofy smile spread across his face as he responded to Minnie's formidable question, his most formidable response crystallizing into four words. "Minnie, you're in wonderland."

A/N: hi, it's me again. I just wanted to say thank you to those who reviewed last time (shivakashi and Smurf).