Chapter 17: Dreams of home
The afternoon had gone by quietly.
While they built elaborate Lego constructions, Sam told Harry all about his school, about last year's teacher who had a scary beard but was actually very nice, about his friends, their latest disagreements, the class's pet hamster. He told Harry some more about what life was like at home when Violet was at school. How he sometimes got on really well with Anna, especially when they played Quidditch, the one thing he was better at than her despite their four-year difference. Some of it they'd spoken about in their dreams already, but it made so much more sense now that Harry had met Sam's siblings.
Several hours had gone by in this fashion, and before they knew it, they were being called to dinner. That was when James had pulled Harry aside and let him know that he could stay in the house – "for now", he had added without specifying when 'now' would be ending.
Harry had simply nodded. If he were perfectly honest, he didn't think there was any point in planning beyond 'now'.
Then, eventually, as it did in those days of summer, night had slowly fallen. The house had grown quiet as Sam, then Anna had been put to bed. Violet had disappeared to her bedroom shortly after dinner and not reappeared since.
After the day he'd had, Harry was exhausted. Yet as he lay between cool sheets in the guest room at the top of the Potters' house, sleep eluded him. The old cottage was creaking around him and the pyjamas he had been given – James's – were slightly too big for him, bunching up uncomfortably around his legs as he wriggled around trying to find a position that would allow him to sleep.
Harry punched his pillow into a more comfortable shape. He knew James had put a spell on his door to stop him from wandering around the house – and though that wasn't what was stopping him from sleeping, the feeling of being locked up in his room, his movements monitored, brought back unpleasant echoes of his life at the Dursleys.
Forcing away those thoughts, he instead ran the events of the day through his mind. All things considered, it had been a weird one – and that was saying something coming from him.
But then, how many people could claim they'd ever spent an afternoon building Lego constructions with their little brother from another world while their not-dead parents spoke in hushed tones in the next room?
But of all the bizarre things that had happened that day, the one that Harry couldn't seem to get out of his mind was Violet's face – how pale she'd suddenly turned, how drawn, when he'd mentioned Tom Riddle... He thought back to Lily's words about Violet being too young to understand the implications of it all. Back when the Chamber had been opened in his world, he'd also been too young to fully grasp what had happened to Ginny. And in the years that followed, there had simply been too much going on. He'd had to keep moving forward, always forward, locking the events from his past into a tiny corner of his mind. They'd never spoken about it, he and Ginny – not when they'd been little, nor when they'd been older, not even after he'd been possessed by Voldemort himself during the Ministry battle – but now, he wondered what she would have to say about the events of her first year, what she would say to Violet…
Harry shook his head, suddenly uncomfortable with where his mind was leading him. So instead, he thought about Sam's world.
Why? Why had the diary suddenly reappeared this year? Had Malfoy, presuming he'd been the diary's keeper here as well, simply meant to target the Potters and Violet had paid the price, being the couple's first child to attend Hogwarts? Or were there wider forces at work?
Similarly, Bellatrix's escape from Azkaban – why now, today of all days? Why just when Harry had landed in Sam's world? Was he doomed to be the Boy Who Lived in every single universe he set foot in? He simply refused to believe that. In his own world, it had been the stray bit of Voldemort's soul that he'd carried around with him unknowingly that had made him the key to defeat the Dark Lord. He didn't have any such power here. The only thing he carried with him here was knowledge… The Horcruxes… As long as they had remained the same in this world, he knew all about them. Where to find them. How to destroy them.
But the question then became this: should he tell them? He couldn't think of a good enough reason not to, except… Except – and he'd dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came to him because who was he to prolong a dangerous status quo simply for his own benefit? – that while he kept that knowledge to himself, maybe, just maybe, he could justify staying in this world, with this family that could have been his had things been different, just a little bit longer…
Harry did not want to go to sleep. Part of him expected to wake up in his bed in Grimmauld Place in the morning. That would be the logical thing to happen, right? If this was all a dream, wouldn't going to sleep make it stop?
Instead, he wondered…
He wondered what was currently happening in his world. Had anyone missed him yet?
He wondered if Hermione had managed to remove the spell on her parents, how well they had recovered, and whether they had forgiven her – he knew she'd been worried about that. He wondered whether she was currently on her way back to England, glowing with success. He certainly hoped so.
His eyelids grew heavier as he wondered how Ron was doing, looking after George. And Ginny – but he stopped that thought before it could get hold. Instead, he wondered about Teddy and Andromeda.
And as he wondered, he realised that it was the first day in weeks he'd spent awake, rather than weaving from dream to dream in his grey and lonely house.
Just before falling asleep, he wondered whether, now that he was in this new world, he might dream of home.