NOTE: If you're wondering why I'm posting this and not an update of one of the several unfinished stories I've got going, please look at my updated author profile. Also, sorry.

I hope I managed to make things mysterious enough.

Disclaimer: I obviously own nothing.

~O~O~

Harry Potter tossed and turned in half-sleep. Try as he might, he couldn't seem to get comfortable for some reason. His bedclothes felt itchy and confining and his head was aching. He tried to think of what he might have done the night before to cause this restlessness, but his brain wasn't working properly yet. For all he knew, he was still dreaming.

'Up! Get up! Now!' cried a shrill voice, accompanied by a loud rapping. Harry jerked awake; he knew that voice.

'Ouch!' he bellowed as he sat up quickly. His already aching head had crashed into the low sloping ceiling above his small bed in the cupboard under the stairs. Already his Aunt Petunia was rapping on the door again.

'Up!' she shouted once more, and next second he could hear her retreating footsteps.

Harry rubbed his pounding head, trying to wrap his mind around what was going on. He was most certainly in the cupboard under the stairs at Number 4, Privet Drive, and that was most certainly his Aunt Petunia yelling at him to get up. What he was having trouble understanding was the why, seeing as he'd seen neither this cupboard nor his aunt in close to five years.

Thinking he must still be dreaming, Harry absentmindedly swung his feet over the side of his small bed only to discover they barely reached the floor. He was shocked for a moment, until he realized that the last time he'd been in this cupboard was before he was even eleven years old, so it would make sense that any dreams taking place there would give him the body he remembered having at the time.

Wondering what bizarre things he was going to see in the rest of the dream, Harry stood and opened the door, stepping out into the house proper.

If he'd been expecting something strange or spectacular, he was sorely disappointed. The house at Privet Drive looked almost exactly as he remembered it. It was so perfect, in fact, that he began to wonder if he wasn't dreaming at all, but perhaps reliving a memory of some kind. He knew he wasn't in a Pensieve – he'd be standing invisible beside his younger self if that were the case – but there were surely other ways to relive memories. Had he been hit with a curse or a jinx of some kind? He gripped his still-pounding head and strained to remember. He hadn't made any progress when Aunt Petunia reappeared seconds later.

'It's about time,' she snapped. 'Get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday.'

So that's when he was. Judging by his own height, it was either Dudley's tenth or eleventh birthday. He hoped it wasn't one of the years Aunt Marge had come to visit. Feeling it was best to just go along with things until he had a better idea what was going on, he followed Aunt Petunia wordlessly into the kitchen.

'Comb your hair!' barked Uncle Vernon the moment Harry entered the kitchen. Harry smiled and almost laughed; he'd forgotten how much his uncle – who looked younger than Harry could remember seeing him in a long time – had always hated his hair.

Harry was quite good at making breakfast. Quite apart from his years of forced practice with the Dursleys, he often used the task as a way to wake himself up and focus his thoughts in the morning – something he'd never managed to explain to his house elf's satisfaction. Kreacher did not like being robbed of any opportunity to take care of him.

He used that time now to take stock of his situation. He was certain now that he was not dreaming, for he'd never had a dream this lucid before. Indeed, he'd never once had a dream where he'd been entirely aware he was dreaming, and even in the few times when he'd been partially aware, he'd always been able to alter things to his liking.

No, he was almost certainly in a memory – his own memory, at that. How or why this was, he had yet to determine. It might have been a curse, but what purpose could such a curse serve? Had someone hoped to trap in him a traumatic memory to incapacitate him and gotten the timing off? Or had he come into contact with some type of cursed object and been trapped? That idea was most unsettling, as it meant he might have disappeared without anyone even knowing about it.

The other possibility that crossed his mind was that he had entered the memory voluntarily for some reason, but then once he arrived he'd forgotten why he was there. He knew of several potions and spells that could cause such an effect. If this were the case, he and whoever he'd been working with would have established a trigger of some kind to jog his memory.

Of course this was all conjecture, and the real answer might be something he hadn't thought of yet. He decided he'd best be on the lookout though, for either a trigger or whatever he'd come in here for. After all, if he'd done this to himself, there had to be something specific he needed to recall, though why he could not simply have used a Pensieve was beyond him at the moment.

He'd begun frying eggs by the time his cousin appeared. Harry nearly choked with laughter at the sight of him; having been so long accustomed to the burly boxing coach version of Dudley, he'd entirely forgotten just how porky the younger version used to be.

Still basically running on autopilot – which he supposed made sense if he was reliving a memory – Harry carried the breakfast plates over to the kitchen table, where Dudley was counting his birthday presents.

'Thirty-six,' he said, looking up at his parents. 'That's two less than last year.' Harry watched as Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon maneuvered to avoid a tantrum by promising to buy him more presents later in the day. He vaguely recalled witnessing this exchange before, but this time he inwardly marveled at the horrible parenting being displayed. Growing up, he'd always been focused on his aunt and uncle's mistreatment of him (for understandable reasons), and it had never really struck him just how bad they were at raising their own child as well. He'd always known Dudley was spoiled, of course, but seeing this display from an adult perspective was truly appalling.

The phone rang, and Aunt Petunia answered it while Dudley unwrapped a racing bike, a cine-camera, a remote-control aeroplane, sixteen computer games and a video recorder. She came back looking upset, and as Dudley opened another gift – a gold watch ('Seriously?' thought Harry) – she explained that Mrs Figg had broken her leg and 'can't take him.' Harry knew she was talking about him, of course.

Something about the conversation jogged his memory, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He remembered being left with Mrs Figg several times as a child, and only later learning that she was a squib. Could something to do with her be what he was supposed to be remembering?

The Dursleys discussed what to do with him, acting as though he wasn't even there. As he wasn't really concerned with what they were saying so he may as well have not been there, this did not bother him. After a short time, Dudley began blubbering (falsely, Harry could tell), and wailing, 'I … don't … want … him … t-t-to … come!"

Come where, Harry didn't know, because he hadn't been paying attention and he didn't even remember what year this was. Something told him he should know, though, so he returned his focus to what the Dursleys were saying.

At that moment, however, the doorbell rang and Aunt Petunia ran off to answer it, returning moments later with a scrawny, rat-faced boy and his mother. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once. Harry only had to think for a second to remember this boy was Piers Polkiss, Dudley's best friend throughout most of his youth. Harry had less than fond memories of Piers, but was almost certain the boy had nothing to do with why he was here.

Half an hour later, they were in Uncle Vernon's car headed for the zoo, and Harry at last realized with a twisted feeling in his gut just what day this was. It was Dudley's eleventh birthday, the day he had first spoken to a snake, and the day he had performed his most memorable bit of accidental magic before learning the truth about his heritage.

He didn't remember much about the day other than the incident with the snake, but nothing really stood out at him as significant as they drove to the zoo and toured the different animal exhibits. In fact, save for buying him a lemon ice lolly and later letting him finish a knickerbocker glory Dudley had deemed too small, the Dursleys were behaving exactly as he would have expected them to act.

By the time they got to the reptile house after lunch, Harry was beginning to wonder again just what exactly was going on. Aside from the incident that was about to occur, absolutely nothing about this day had stood out to him as unusual in any way. Had the snake said something to him that he needed to remember? That would at least explain why he was reliving the memory instead of merely witnessing it; Harry could no longer speak Parseltongue, so watching a memory of himself talking to a snake would have just looked like a lot of hissing. Had whoever sent him here hoped that by experiencing the memory over again he would experience the translated snake language as well? It made as much sense as anything else he'd come up with so far.

Harry watched as Dudley made his father rap on the glass of the snake's enclosure to entice it to move, then grow bored when nothing happened and move on.

'This must be it,' he thought, walking over to look at the snake himself. It lay there basking lazily. The only problem was that Harry couldn't remember what he had done to get it speaking in the first place, and the memory didn't seem to be playing itself out automatically as one might expect it to. Harry stared at the snake, trying to think of what he was supposed to do or say, when suddenly it opened its eyes and slowly raised its head to look at him. Had it sensed that he was a Parselmouth? That seemed the only explanation for its behavior, looking back on it. Waiting for it to say something, Harry stood there staring back at it, when it did something that sparked another long-lost memory. It winked.

Momentarily taken aback, Harry was at a loss for what to do, and so merely winked back. The snake then made a gesture that made Harry think it would have been rolling its eyes were it capable.

He should be saying something to it, Harry thought. He knew there had been more to it than this. But what was he supposed to say? He looked around, and glanced at the sign indicating that it was a Brazilian boa constrictor bred in captivity.

'Er,' he stammered, feeling rather silly. He hadn't spoken to a snake in a long time and wasn't sure how exactly to go about it, even though he was fairly certain he could, and was indeed supposed to. What did one say to a snake in a zoo?

'Do you ever get bored in there?' he tried lamely. That sounded like something he might've said at eleven. The snake nodded vigorously. 'Any idea what you'd do if you got out?' he asked. The snake almost looked like it was going to answer him, but they were interrupted by an excited yell from behind them.

'DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!'

Piers was gaping openmouthed at the snake, his eyes wide with excitement. Dudley came waddling over quickly. 'Out of the way, you,' he said, taking a swing at Harry. Harry's reflexes were so honed from years of training and experience that he dodged out of the way easily, but Dudley didn't seem to notice. He was now pressing his nose up to the glass of the snake's enclosure.

'Any second now,' Harry thought to himself. He knew the glass was about to vanish and the snake would escape. Perhaps it would say something to him then that he was supposed to hear. He paid extra close attention so he wouldn't miss anything.

But nothing happened. The snake looked blankly at Dudley for a moment, then turned to Harry, who was sure it would have shrugged it if could, then lay back down and closed its eyes once again. Dudley was now laying into Piers for having him on, and Harry was left blinking in confusion at the dozing reptile behind a completely solid pane of glass.

What had happened? Harry busied himself with this thought for the remainder of the afternoon, to the point where his relatives likely thought him a bit touched in the head, because he certainly wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to anything that was going on around him.

The glass was supposed to disappear; the snake was supposed to escape. Not remembering little details was one thing, but that was a fairly major event in Harry's life. Why had it not happened the way it was supposed to?

He was supposed to have been punished, too. He remembered that. The accident with the vanishing glass had landed him in his cupboard for weeks, but the Dursleys were going about their business, treating him no worse than they would on any other day. When they got home after dropping Piers off, Harry again began to worry he'd somehow been trapped in some kind of curse. But if he was reliving his memories, why weren't they happening how he remembered them? Perhaps someone had altered his memories in some way? At first he thought accomplishing such a thing would be incredibly difficult, even for someone as talented as Hermione; then he remembered that she had accomplished such a thing, essentially rewriting her parents' entire identity. If he was experiencing some sort of memory-related curse, it couldn't possibly be more complex than that, could it?

Without thinking, he'd gone upstairs to what would eventually become his room, but at this point was still Dudley's second bedroom. He shifted course for the bathroom instead, where he splashed some water on his face, though it did nothing to subdue the dull throb that had been his constant companion all day. Then a horrible thought struck him – the worst yet, in fact. Maybe he wasn't dreaming or remembering at all. Maybe the rest of it – Hogwarts, magic, his friends – was the dream. Maybe he had imagined it all and then woke up back in the real world and none of it had ever happened.

A feeling like an icy claw gripping his heart made Harry stumble and he quickly closed the bathroom door and locked it before anyone could walk in on him and ask him about it. Could it really be? Had he dreamed it all? Tears leaked from his eyes. Ginny, he thought agonizingly. He was supposed to be engaged. He was supposed to be marrying the love of his life. Did she exist only in his head? And Ron, and Hermione, and everyone he knew? Were they imaginary? Some bizarre, elaborate delusion?

No, that couldn't be right, he thought, shaking his head and trying to pull himself together. There was no way he could have dreamed thirteen whole years of his life in such detail in a single night. There had to be some other kind of explanation. He just had to figure out what it was. Though at the moment, he couldn't help but feel that if someone had cursed him in an attempt to induce trauma, they'd done a pretty good job of it after all.

Aunt Petunia was yelling at him to come downstairs. Taking several deep breaths to compose himself, Harry reasoned that the best thing he could do for the time being was to play along. Until he knew exactly what he was dealing with, it would likely be best to avoid causing too much of a fuss. Calling to his aunt that he would be right down, he took a quick look in the mirror. A child with sellotaped glasses looked back at him.

'Okay, Harry,' he said to his reflection. 'You can handle this. You've been in worse fixes before. Just keep a cool head.' He steeled himself and headed back down the stairs. His last thought before Aunt Petunia started in on him to help with dinner was that if he was trapped somewhere, there would certainly be no shortage of people on the other side trying to get him out.

Weeks went by with no indication how or why he was suddenly reliving his life in the 1990s. Several new theories had occurred to him, including that he'd actually gone back in time, but none of them seemed any likelier than the last. 'And if it were time travel,' he reminded himself one morning at breakfast while Aunt Petunia busied herself with a pot full of something that smelled as though it had gone bad weeks ago, 'I wouldn't be in my same body from before.'

He knew this firsthand, having actually traveled back in time once many years ago. He would never forget the surreal sensation of watching himself get beaten up by the Whomping Willow on the Hogwarts Grounds, mere hours after actually living the experience.

That was another thing: was time travel of several years even possible? He was far from an expert, but he'd been under the impression that time turners could take a person back a few hours at most.

The reason his mind kept unwillingly coming back to time travel, even though he was sure that wasn't right, was because with each passing day full of experiences that he was sure did not and could not have happened, he was more and more certain that he wasn't just reliving a memory. His best theory remained some kind of cursed object – perhaps similar in nature to the Mirror of Erised – that he had somehow become trapped within. The only problem with that was that he couldn't think where he would have encountered such an object. The last thing he remembered before waking up in the cupboard was falling asleep in his own bed in his own home with his fiancée curled up in his arms.

Every time he thought of Ginny his heart gave a great pang, as if it were simultaneously being stabbed and squeezed by something red hot. He forced himself not to think the same thing he thought every night in the dark as he lay in that dingy cupboard: that it had all been a dream, and he had no fiancée, no friends, no magic. The only thing he could tell himself to keep those thoughts at bay was that the snake at the zoo had understood him. He could speak to snakes, which meant magic was real and he wasn't crazy. But as each day passed with no change in his dreary life at Number Four, even that mantra was beginning to lose its power to buoy his spirits. After all, what if he'd imagined the snake, too?

Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen then, interrupting Harry's melancholy, followed by Dudley, who was once again banging that idiotic stick around everywhere he went. As they sat down, wrinkling their noses at whatever was in the pot on the stove, the clack of the letter box could be heard from the front of the hall, along with several letters flopping on the doormat.

'Get the post, Dudley,' said Uncle Vernon from behind his newspaper.

'Make Harry get it.'

'Get the post, Harry.'

Harry obeyed automatically, as had become his habit. He was mostly just going through the motions these days, unable to see what the point of anything was in this memory, or illusion, or mundane reality, or whatever it was. The ability to feel anything at all save bleak hopelessness seemed to be seeping out of him as time went on, prompting yet another theory: that he was imprisoned somewhere with dementors and was being driven into despair. The very idea terrified him, no matter how many times he forced himself to remember that dementors were incapable of inducing full-on hallucinations. As far as he knew.

When he bent over to pick up the letters, he froze. There, among a postcard and what looked like a bill, was an envelope of yellowed parchment, addressed in glittering green ink to

Mr. H. Potter

The Cupboard under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

A great swell of joy ballooned up in Harry's chest as he picked up the post, destroying the dementor theory on the spot. Here, in his hand, was proof that he was not crazy, that magic was real, and that somewhere out there Ginny was waiting for him, wondering where he was and if he was okay. Who knew how long he'd even been gone? Maybe what had felt like a month to him had only been a few hours to her and everyone else. Maybe no one had even realized he was missing yet. He couldn't concern himself with such problems at the moment, because it was all he could do just then to take in the relief and happiness he felt at this little rectangular affirmation that it was all real.

'Hurry up, boy!' shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen and bringing Harry back to the moment. 'What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?' He chuckled at his own joke.

Now Harry had to think fast. Did he let them see the letter and allow events to play out as they had before, or did he open it right now? His first instinct was to open it, but as soon as he thought it he realized there would be nothing really to gain. He already knew what it said, after all, and who knew what would happen if he altered such a major chain of events? Would his first meeting with Hagrid never happen? And how would he get to Diagon Alley to buy his wand? The Dursleys surely wouldn't take him.

He'd been mulling it over on his walk back to the kitchen and by the time he arrived had decided to let things happen more or less as he remembered them. And that meant not opening his Hogwarts letter.

'I've got a letter,' he said to his Aunt and Uncle, doing his best to sound as curious and amazed as he imagined his eleven year-old self had been.

'Who'd be writing to you?' Uncle Vernon sneered, snatching the letter away as Harry had known he would. He opened the envelope and shook out the letter. His face went from red to green to greyish white comically quickly.

'P-P-Petunia!' he gasped. Harry watched in amusement as his Aunt and Uncle panicked about the letter. It was a lot funnier now he wasn't desperate to read it himself. He made sure to protest when they took it away and destroyed it (not to would have been extremely suspicious, and even though Harry still didn't know exactly what was going on, he didn't want to get things so far off track he could no longer predict them).

The week that followed was the most enjoyable since Harry had first woken up in the cupboard. Free from the worry that he had imagined his entire life, he was able to watch Uncle Vernon descend further and further into paranoid madness with a kind of vindictive glee. He went along as the family was boarded up in the house, dragged out with no warning on a road trip to a dingy hotel in Cokeworth, and then finally to a very familiar hut on a rock out at sea. Harry hadn't realized it at the time, but knowing what he now knew, he could see Uncle Vernon was clearly trying to make use of the old superstition that witches couldn't cross water. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing while pretending to demand his letters back for the hundredth time.

The hut was just as he remembered it. Probably because of what had happened here, he'd always had a very clear memory of it, despite never even staying for a full day. He laid himself down right where he had been before – as near as he could tell – and waited. Unlike most of what he'd (re-)experienced in the last month, he did not remember just bits and pieces. This had been one of the most pivotal nights of his entire life, and he could recollect every moment of it almost perfectly.

He remembered watching Dudley's watch count down to his birthday. He remembered hearing scraping noises outside (he was hearing them again; his heart beat faster). And most of all, he remembered Hagrid knocking loudly on the front door almost exactly at midnight.

BOOM.

And there he was. Just like before. Harry's heart swelled. For the first time since entering this nightmare or whatever it was, he was finally going to see a friendly face.

As Hagrid knocked again and Uncle Vernon came stumbling out of the other room brandishing his rifle, a mad thought entered Harry's mind unbidden. What if Hagrid was trapped the same as him? What if he'd been sent to rescue him, pull him out?

As soon as the thought entered his head he dismissed it. After all, he knew from experience how difficult it was to do things exactly as he had done them before, when he could even remember what he'd done before (which was almost never). What were the odds of Hagrid managing to turn up at exactly the same time and in exactly the same manner if he were having the same experience as Harry?

No, he decided, it was proof enough that the Hagrid who had just smashed down the door was as much a memory as everyone else by the sheer fact that he had behaved in the same way. The elation he'd felt upon seeing Hagrid again, buoyed by the anticipation and excitement that had been building up since the arrival of his first letter, seemed to drain away. A mad hope that had sprung out of nowhere and died just as quickly had managed to almost completely destroy his good mood.

It was just as well, he mused morosely, as Hagrid greeted him cheerfully. It would certainly look odd for him to greet a strange giant of a man he had supposedly never seen before as an old friend.

When Hagrid asked him if he knew about Hogwarts, he briefly considered saying that yes, he did, but ultimately decided he would prefer to watch his friend berate the Dursleys again. It was just as satisfying as it had been the first time, and Harry didn't have to fake his smile as a portion of his good mood returned. Dudley even got a pig's tail again.

In the morning, when he headed out with Hagrid, Harry grew concerned once more. Now that he was no longer merely hanging around the neighborhood of Privet Drive, there were hundreds of ways in which Harry could inadvertently alter the way things had happened before. He worried about this for many reasons: one, things would start to become more unpredictable, and he'd had a difficult enough time of it the first time through. Second, if he was supposed to be watching for something specific, it might not even happen if he altered the course of events too much. And third, sure as he was that it couldn't be the actual explanation, the idea of time travel refused to leave the back of Harry's mind, and if it was the case, he risked altering future events. Not that certain events couldn't use some altering, but then he circled back to that whole 'unpredictable' thing and his worrying would start all over again.

For the most part he felt like he was doing all right so far. Hagrid was mostly just making small talk as they made their way on the underground to the Leaky Cauldron. Harry made sure to ask his best estimation of appropriate questions. It wasn't actually difficult; he just had to pretend he knew absolutely nothing. In fact, he probably ended up asking Hagrid more questions than he had the first time.

When they reached the pub, everyone crowded around to see him. He received a shock upon meeting Professor Quirrell; he'd forgotten the man had been there that day. They shook hands without incident and Harry realized he must not have been possessed by Voldemort yet.

Much more socially assertive than he'd been when he was eleven, Harry was able to work his way to the back of the pub with Hagrid rather quickly. He could tell some of the patrons were a little disappointed, but he had more important things to worry about. For the first time since this all began, he'd have a wand, and would be able to do magic again.

Their first stop, of course, was Gringotts. Harry itched to visit his family vault, but then he wasn't supposed to know about that yet. Also, (he was likely imagining it), it almost seemed like he could feel the pull of the Horcrux locked away in the Lestrange vault. He wanted to just go down and get it and have everything over with, but couldn't think of a way to do it. Besides, he wasn't planning on staying here – wherever here was – long enough for that to matter anyway. Once he had a wand, he could resume looking for a way to break himself out of whatever curse – for he was now almost certain that's what it was – he'd gotten himself into.

Shopping with Hagrid wasn't as fun as it had been the first time. He mostly was impatient to get it over with so he could get his wand. He did, however, get to have a bit of fun when he met Malfoy in Madam Malkin's. He'd forgotten about that, too.

'Hullo,' said Malfoy from the stool next to him. Harry was momentarily taken aback; he'd never in his life heard Malfoy sound so polite and civil. Well, he supposed he must have, if this was a replay of what happened before, but he hadn't known Malfoy then and didn't remember it anyway. 'Hogwarts too?'

'Yes,' Harry answered politely.

'My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands,' said Malfoy. Harry privately wondered what good that would do, since Malfoy would need to be present for a wand to select him. 'Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first-years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow.'

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Same old Malfoy. 'Even if you did, they probably wouldn't let you ride it, would they?' he asked innocently.

'No, I suppose not,' Malfoy grumbled. 'Have you got your own broom?'

'Yes,' Harry lied. He'd have one soon enough.

'Play Quidditch at all?'

'Of course.' He suppressed a smirk. Oh, if Malfoy only knew…

'So do I. Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you'll be in yet?'

'Yes,' Harry thought proudly. Aloud he said, 'I've a fair idea.'

Malfoy nodded. 'Well true, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been – imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?'

'I can think of worse things,' Harry said. He'd almost said 'Better there than Slytherin,' but at the last second he'd decided this was more fun when Malfoy didn't realize he was being made fun of.

'I say, look at that man!' Malfoy exclaimed, nodding toward the front window. There was Hagrid, grinning at Harry and holding two large ice cream cones.

'Oh, that's Hagrid,' Harry said. 'Gamekeeper at Hogwarts.'

'Oh yes, I've heard of him. I heard he's sort of a savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed.'

'He's actually quite brilliant,' said Harry matter-of-factly, forcing down the surge of anger that had sprung up as he remembered all the times Malfoy had tried to get Hagrid sacked.

'Is he?' said Malfoy with a sneer, obviously not believing it. 'Why is he with you? Where are your parents?'

'They're dead, but thanks for bringing it up,' Harry said a little more coldly, having tired of this game.

'Sorry,' said Malfoy, clearly not sorry at all. 'But they were our kind, weren't they?'

'British?' Harry questioned, pretending not to understand the question. 'Yeah, but I don't see what difference that makes.'

'No, I meant were they magical?' Malfoy asked, annoyed.

'Oh, right, yeah,' said Harry. 'They were. Still don't see what difference it makes, though.'

'Oh, you're one of those people, are you?' Malfoy sneered. 'No proper wizarding pride, I see. Those people have never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of magic until they get their Hogwarts letter! I think they should keep it all in the old wizarding families.'

'You think that or your parents think that?' Harry asked. Malfoy puffed up in indignation, but was interrupted by Madam Malkin, who came over to tell Harry he was finished. Stepping down from the stool, he offered a cheery 'See you at Hogwarts!' to thoroughly irritated Malfoy and exited the shop.

They ate their ice cream outdoors, and Harry passed the time by asking Hagrid about random things he saw in the alley, since now he'd covered the basics, it turned out to be harder than he thought to think up questions about things he already knew all about.

Once they'd finished, they visited Flourish and Blotts. Harry was tempted to purchase some of the advanced books for later years, but Hagrid told him he wouldn't be able to manage spells of that level yet and he didn't argue. He reasoned there was always the school library, if it came to that. He smiled wistfully, imagining what Hermione would say if she knew what he'd just been thinking.

After books they visited the apothecary, and then Hagrid offered to buy Harry a birthday present. Harry nearly seized up. Of course Hagrid was about to buy him Hedwig; why hadn't he thought of this before now? He hadn't even seen her yet and the emotions welling up within him at the very thought of it were almost overwhelming. What was he going to do when he saw Fred? Or Dumbledore, or Cedric, or anyone else he'd seen die and spent years coming to terms with their loss?

He managed to hold himself together in the Owl Emporium. He had no trouble whatsoever picking out his faithful owl from among the dozens of birds on display. Even if she hadn't been one of only three snowy owls in the place, he'd have known her anywhere.

Doing his best not to get choked up in front of Hagrid, which would surely lead to awkward questions he still wasn't sure how he should answer, Harry followed the half-giant to Ollivander's wand shop.

This, too, was much as he remembered it. Hagrid held Hedwig's cage while the enchanted tape measure inspected every part of Harry's body and Mr Ollivander prattled on about wands. Harry paid a little more attention this time in case there was any useful wandlore worth remembering, but he didn't learn much except the make of his parents' wands, which he was sure Ollivander had told him before but he did not recall.

He was sorely tempted to just tell Mr Ollivander the wand he wanted so as to speed things along, but that would have led to those awkward questions again. Finally, Mr Ollivander placed the holly and phoenix feather wand in his hand and for the first time in over a month Harry felt whole again. He hadn't even realized how naked and vulnerable he'd felt until that moment. He grinned widely and Mr Ollivander was satisfied, and once again related to him the story of his wand's shared core with Tom Riddle's. This was all old news to Harry of course, so it didn't unnerve him nearly as much as it had the first time, and he left the wand shop in much higher spirits than he'd entered it. He had his wand, he had Hedwig, and maybe now he could actually do something about his situation.

Almost immediately Harry spotted the flaw in his plan. While he doubted he'd get in trouble for underage magic at this point since he'd never officially been warned in the first place, it was more the issue of explaining how he'd managed to do any at all. An eleven year-old who'd just received his first wand and hadn't even been to school was not the sort one usually expected to perform complex enchantment assessment charms.

Thus, growling in frustration, Harry resigned himself to waiting an additional month before taking any definite action. He did, however, begin to map out the various enchantments he thought he'd check for, which ones he already knew how to deal with and which ones would require a stay in the library. His first instinct was to ask Hermione to help him, but of course even if she were more than just a construct of whatever he was trapped in, she didn't know him yet and he wouldn't be able to explain his problem to her even once she did.

The month of August seemed to absolutely crawl by. Harry had nothing to do and the Dursleys were completely ignoring his existence, which made him feel very lonely indeed. Not that their company would have been much better, but he was starved for any type of human interaction at this point. He missed his friends, his colleagues, and most of all he missed Ginny. He hadn't slept alone in over a year before this ordeal began and he still felt her absence at night, yearning for her touch, her smell, the sound of her voice, everything. It was a longing so powerful and unlike anything he'd ever experienced before that at times he feared it might overtake him and drive him mad. He couldn't afford that – not if he ever wanted to see her again. To get back to her once and for all.

Some nights he would just sit awake on his bed in a kind of meditation, trying to force himself awake, or out of an enchantment, or something. He was hindered primarily by the fact that he still didn't know what he was trying to force himself out of. Other times he almost felt like giving up, and just living this new life better than he had his first one. He could get close to Ginny sooner, he could save Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Fred, Cedric, everyone. But what good would that do? If this was an illusory world, saving people in it wouldn't do them any good in the real world, and being with all his dead loved ones would make it all the harder for him to leave when the time came.

Again the possibility crossed his mind that he was actually reliving the past, and again he forcefully dismissed it. Even if it were possible – which, he reminded himself again, it wasn't – there wasn't much he could do about it if that were truly the case. He knew he'd been acting largely as if time travel was the answer, because try as he might, he couldn't stop himself from considering it. Every time he pushed those thoughts down, they'd somehow wriggle back up to the surface again.

On the last day of August, Harry went to Uncle Vernon to ask for a ride to Kings Cross. He could make do without, but he felt he'd rather avoid the Knight Bus if possible. Uncle Vernon mocked the idea of Platform Nine and Three Quarters, but agreed to take him. So it was that the next day, Harry found himself preparing for his first day of Hogwarts. Again.

They arrived at the station with a half hour to spare. Uncle Vernon took Harry's things inside for him, and then pointed out the lack of his platform. As the Dursleys drove away laughing, Harry just shook his head in disbelief that anyone could be so unpleasant. It had been so long since he'd lived with them that apparently he'd forgotten just how awful they really were.

One of the most difficult things about going back more than half his whole life was just how much Harry did not remember. He reckoned it was not unusual for day-to-day trivialities to fade away over time, but it would be nice to stop being constantly surprised by things followed by an immediate sense of déjà vu. Some things, however, such as his first meeting with Hagrid, were etched permanently onto his mind. His first time on Platform Nine and Three Quarters was another one of those things. He had almost made straight for the hidden entrance and gone right onto the train when he remembered he hadn't been able to figure out how to find it that first time. Not that he was concerned with keeping up appearances, but it was Mrs Weasley whom he had asked for help, which meant she'd be along any moment – and she'd be bringing his best friend and the love of his life with her.

Harry knew he couldn't say anything to Ginny. He couldn't act like he knew any of the Weasleys, and he knew he'd be meeting Ron on the train shortly anyway. He just wanted to see her. She wouldn't be the girl he had come to know and love, but she'd still be Ginny and that was as close as he was going to get for at least a while.

He dawdled, pretending to be lost, when he heard a voice. The first (friendly) familiar voice he'd heard since Hagrid's, and it lifted his spirits immensely.

'– packed with Muggles, of course –'

Harry turned his head in the direction of Mrs Weasley's voice and saw them: Percy up front with his chest and prefect badge thrust out, followed by (his heart hitched) Fred and George, identical as ever, and a very young and gangly Ron. And of course Ginny. She was peering around as though looking for something and the second he caught sight of her Harry couldn't tear his eyes away. Even as a young girl, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. His breath caught and his eyes started to water, and he hastily turned away when he saw her head begin to swivel in his direction.

'Now, what's the platform number?' asked Mrs Weasley. There was a slight pause, followed by a ponderous sigh from Ron.

'Nine and Three Quarters,' he said, as if this were not the first or even the tenth time she had asked this question. Harry grinned; knowing Mrs Weasley, it probably wasn't.

He turned his trolley and prepared to follow them through the barrier at a slight distance. When he did, he thought he caught Ginny rapidly looking away from him, but it was probably just his imagination on overdrive – wishful thinking.

When he did walk through, the Weasleys were already a good distance ahead of them and Mrs Weasley was busy trying to wipe something off Ron's nose. He did not imagine it this time; only a few seconds after he passed through the barrier, Ginny looked back over at him and her eyes shot wide open in shock. Harry was puzzled. What was that about? She shouldn't have realized who he was yet.

She continued to watch him as he approached the train. Soon he was close enough to overhear Mrs Weasley say, 'Ginny, say goodbye to your brothers.' At this Ginny gave a slight jump and turned around to hug each of her brothers in turn and smile and wave them off as they got on the train.

Something wasn't right. Harry remembered this day very clearly, and Ginny had most definitely been in tears and begging her mother to be allowed to go to Hogwarts with her brothers. Moreover, she had not paid much notice to him until after Fred and George had revealed who he was. She was the first person he had yet encountered who was not acting the way he remembered.

His next thought struck him like a lightning bolt; hadn't he considered this possibility before, right before meeting Hagrid? He'd long since written it off as impossible, but now here the evidence was staring him in the face – literally, for his feet had begun carrying him toward Ginny as if she were a lodestone. They had not taken their eyes off each other and an expression of bliss and rapture was gradually overtaking her face. Mrs Weasley, busy telling off Fred and George, was paying them no attention.

'Gin?' he mouthed, using the shortened form of her name he only used when they were together, when his mouth had better things to do than pronounce two full syllables. She nodded rapidly, her radiant smile growing all the bigger as she opened her mouth to take deep gasping breaths. Harry caught himself doing the same.

The train's whistle blew, jerking him back to the moment. He quickly gestured to Hedwig and then pointed to Ginny. She nodded vigorously again. Then just before he turned to climb onto the train, and just before her mother turned back to her, the most wonderful thing to happen to Harry since waking up as a ten year-old happened: she very clearly mouthed the words, 'I love you.'

~O~O~

~O~O~

Don't ask me why I wrote this. This type of story can be found everywhere, and it's not like I don't have plenty of other things I should be working on. This is what my brain wanted to write though, so this is what you get. I have a whole big thing planned for this – and while I can't honestly say how long that will take, I can assure you that I know exactly where I'm going with this from beginning to end, so I won't have to make it up as I go.

This type of story has been done before, of course, but as far as I know, not this particular take on it. I wanted to include a sense of the unknown - an enigma. What exactly is happening and why it is happening is something that - for the moment, anyway - remains unknown to Harry (and the reader). This, I hope, will provide a sense of urgency that usually isn't there with this kind of setting.