Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any characters.
Harry was dragged out of his memories by Dudley snapping his fingers in front of Harry's face.
"Hey, Harry. Wake up, we're at the school."
Harry shook himself, "Oh, sorry Dudley. I lost myself in thought for a moment."
Dudley chuckled, "Were you think about that girl again? You really should ask her out. You are the star of the soccer team."
Harry had brief flashes of – wait – LAVENDER BROWN? What was she doing here? It couldn't be possible. And yet it was. He had memories of her giving him little love notes and of himself flirting with her. That really shocked Harry. He was about as adept at flirting with girls as Hermione was at catching a snitch!
"You mean Brown?" Harry asked casually, not really sure if he wanted it to be her or not.
"Ya, that girl," Dudley said as he grabbed his bag and got out of the car. "You better ask her fast if you want a piece. We graduate soon and she's not the sort you want to be involved with after school is over."
"No, no she's not." Harry said with a shudder as he remembered Ron's relationship with her. Wondering what Lavender Brown was doing at Stonewall, Harry grabbed his bag and followed Dudley into the school.
His new memories told him what to expect, but he still couldn't believe it. As he walked down the halls everyone smiled and waved and called "Hey there, Harry!" and "What's up, Harry?" and "Good Game last night, Harry!"
He had never been so well-known in the muggle world before.
Harry spent the day being worshipped – which greatly disturbed him – while trying to avoid Lavender Brown. Harry could just tell that if he did a single thing to encourage her he would be sucked into a relationship like Ron had been. He really didn't want that for several reasons – the most important being that he still loved Ginny, wherever she was in this mixed up reality.
During lunch Harry escaped into a bathroom and tried apparating to the Burrow.
Nothing happened.
He got dragged off to soccer practice after school. Somehow he knew how to play and he did it rather well. This was, as long as he didn't think about it too much. It was when he tried to think that problems occurred.
So he just let his instincts run wild as he considered what was going on. Whatever it was, he knew the best thing to do would be to not draw attention to himself in any unusual ways.
He could hear Hermione telling him to wait and watch, and use his luck to work his way through. An opportunity would present itself and everything would make sense in the end, it always did.
That evening Harry at dinner with the Dursleys, did homework, and watched the news. It was the weirdest evening at the Dursleys in his life, just like breakfast had been.
The days and weeks slowly passed. Harry kept avoiding Lavender, especially when he realized she was just like the Dursleys – no memory of his old memories.
Eventually school ended, Harry and Dudley graduated. It took some digging through his new memories, but eventually Harry learned that he had been accepted at Cambridge. None of the memories made much sense to him; he had no clue how he had done that.
It was also a bit of a shock to him when he discovered that his parents had left him large trust fund to be used for his education.
A few weeks into the summer Harry excused himself for the day and caught the train into London for the day.
He was excited and hopeful. Maybe something had happened to the people, but the wizarding world still had to be there. He'd find The Leaky Cauldron and go through it to Diagon Alley. There had to someone or something there to help him set things right. There had to be.
Wandering around he eventually found the street The Leaky Cauldron was supposed to be on. He walked past the spot it should've been in ten, twenty, fifty times.
But it wasn't there, no matter how hard he looked.
Harry then took the underground up to King's Cross Station. Immediately he went to the area between Platform 9 and Platform 10. Instead of the familiar brick barriers there were spindly metal barriers.
Hopeful, Harry leaned against one of them, nothing happened. Harry couldn't stay much longer, a guard started giving him funny looks.
Beginning to fell desperate, Harry tried one last thing.
He went to 12 Grimmauld Place.
It wasn't there.
As the train took him back to Little Whinging, Harry began to doubt his old memories.
Maybe, just maybe, what had really happened was that he had a dream so realistic, that when he woke he thought it was real. A dream so real that it had affected his brain and pushed out his real memories that only touching an object so real and dear to him – the necklace – had brought his real self back.
Deciding that was the truth, Harry closed his eyes and relaxed while the train rolled steadily down the track. He had merely had an amazing dream about wizards, brooms, and magic. Nothing more.
Harry went off to Cambridge in the fall and had the time of his life. He slowly put the dream behind him as he accepted being a semi-famous soccer player. He had plenty of friends and he usually switched out his girl friend every three to nine months. Before he knew it his schools were completely over and he was signing on with England National Soccer Team.
Life was wonderful for Harry and yet the dream nagged at the back of his mind, especially when he was on the verge of falling asleep. That was all it was though, just a dream.
Albeit, an odd one, but still, just a dream.
He did question the fact that it was a dream when he saw a red-headed reporter at one game that reminded him a lot of Ginny, the girlfriend in his dream. But he never learned the reporter's name or saw her again, so he chocked it up to his imagination.
The years turned and Harry grew in popularity. Fans loved the thin scar on his forehead, they claimed it made him special. They loved the story of how he got it even more. Harry wasn't sure how they learned, but he was willing to bet that it had been Dudley. Even though the two of them were friends they couldn't stop from annoying each other.
It was on a cold, snowy morning a few days before Christmas that Harry was riding the train from London down to Little Whinging to go visit spend the holidays with Dudley, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon.
He'd already finished the book he had been reading, so bored, he picked up one of those silly free papers handed out every day in London.
Harry opened it to a random page and immediately felt his body lose all of it's warmth.
There, in the photo for an article on some medical breakthrough was Severus Snape. Harry would never be able to forget his face, dream or not. The article couldn't be right though, Snape was dead! Harry had seen it himself. Wait, no he hadn't, that had been in those old memories, the ones put there by the dream. Right?
Freaking out, Harry hurriedly flipped to another page. There was an article there on a brother and sister that had been apprehended for torture and murder. Their last name was Carrow.
How had he known those names and faces all those years ago if he hadn't seen them in the paper until today?
Which memories were real?
Harry thought it was the non-wizard ones.
But now he didn't know.
Had he gone insane?
Is that why he was seeing people from a dream in newspaper articles?
Or was the dream the reality?
Had Voldemort killed him and this was his heaven?
If he was dead, had he seen Lavender, Snape, and the Carrows because they were also dead?
Did that mean the Dursleys hadn't survived going into hiding? Were they also dead?
Wait, had that reporter really been Ginny? Was she dead? Had Harry failed to protect her?
He remembered going into the Room of Requirement and making Ginny leave. Had that gotten her killed?
Why did the dream feel more real than the train he was sitting on?
For almost seven years now he had believed that the wizarding world was a dream. Had he been wrong? Had he been deluding himself?
As the snow fell softly around the moving train, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived or the famous soccer star, put his head in his arms and tried to erase himself.
Author's Note: So, Harry's spent seven years trying to believe that the wizarding world was a dream, until confronted with new evidence. Anyone have any ideas on what's happening and how he got there? Mwhahaha, I don't think anyone can guess! :) hehe
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