by M.E. (Magnificent Entity)
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his world both belong to J.K. Rowling, several publishing companies (Bloomsbury Books, Raincoast Books, Scholastic Books), and Warner Brothers, Inc., and as I'm not a part of any of them I therefore own none of it. I'm making absolutely no money off of this, please don't sue. Ahem, however I do own the librarian and her friend.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU, spoilers for SS/PS through OtoP
Summary: Something is wrong. It seems that the only person who remembers the existence of Harry Potter is Harry himself...
Notes: Right. The plot of this story is loosely based on a dream that I had... I think it might have been some sort of demented hybrid made from about four or five different Harry Potter fanfics that I've read, so if any of this seems familiar to you, that's probably why.
/.../ denotes thoughts
Chapter 1: Disappears From View
What can you do
When it is clear to you
That your dreams will not come true
Where can you go
When everything you think you know
Disappears from view
– "Adjust Your Dreams," Christine Lavin
Even though they had all seen it coming for three years, in the end it still caught them by surprise. Voldemort and his Death Eaters attacked Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry three weeks before the end of the school year. It soon became apparent that his plays for power over the years following his return to the living world three years before were mere skirmishes, all of them leading up to this one, final battle.
Harry struggled to his knees, wand clutched in hand, and glanced around himself, taking in his surroundings. He thought that he might be on what had once been the Quidditch pitch, though he wasn't sure anymore – the ground was torn up, and it was hard to see through the heavy rain. Before him, someone stood tall and erect, facing the opposite direction. In the fading light of day, it was hard to see who it was.
The figure turned towards him slowly. His breath caught in his throat as he realized the identity of the other person. The person who had haunted his nightmares since the end of his fourth year at Hogwarts. Voldemort.
Grasping his wand, Harry jerked his left hand upwards, pointing it straight at the pale white face before him. His green eyes didn't seem quite human any more behind the glass of his spectacles, and there was a spark of insanity in them as he quietly spoke the words of the spell.
There was a flash of sickly green light, and then Harry was falling forward onto the muddy ground, exhausted. As his head hit the ground, he smiled softly. It was over, it was finally over. Then his eyes fluttered shut and all he knew was blackness.
Someone was rapping on the door. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, Harry fumbled about for his glasses. Finally finding them, he carefully put them on, then made an unsuccessful attempt to climb out of bed. Unsuccessful because he instead ended up hitting his head on the ceiling, and falling back into bed. He blinked in surprise, and for the first time he noticed where he was. The cupboard under the stairs at number four, Pivet Drive.
"Get up, you lazy boy! Up! Now!" the piercing voice of his Aunt Petunia demanded from the other side of the door.
"I– yes, Aunt Petunia, just let me get dressed," Harry replied automatically, cautiously swinging his feet over the edge of the bed. He rubbed his head, and tried to figure out what was going on. /Let's see,/ he thought to himself, /last thing I remember, I was on the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts, and I'd just.../ He sat up straight, nearly banging his head a second time, /I'd just killed Voldemort./ But that couldn't be right. If he'd been at Hogwarts, then he should be waking up in the hospital wing, not in his old cupboard. And that was another thing – what was he doing in the cupboard? Why wasn't he in his bedroom upstairs?
The rapping on the door again. "Boy, what's taking you so long? Get. UP!" Harry blinked, then started searching around for some clothes, and pulling them on. As he dressed, he decided that he must have made it to the hospital wing at some point, since his right arm was working fine, and he distinctly remembered having broken it during the battle. Dressed, he glanced around a second time, this time looking for wand. He couldn't find it. /That's strange.../
Shrugging, Harry opened up the door, and stepped out of the cupboard. He was surprised to see all three Dursleys standing right outside of the door. As soon as he was standing up, his uncle shoved a suitcase at him. "Right then, Harry. It's your eighteenth birthday and you are no longer my responsibility. Now get out," he gestured enthusiastically to the front door.
Harry looked down at the suitcase, then around the hall. His birthday? Since when was it his birthday? And then there was the matter of his missing wand... "Excuse me, Uncle Vernon, but is my wand in there? I couldn't seem to find it in the cupboard," his eyes skimmed the room, "and I don't see my Hogwarts trunk either."
Laughter from Dudley was the only response that Harry got , other than the stunned looks on the faces of his aunt and uncle. "Did you hear that, Mum?" asked Dudley, still laughing. "Harry thinks he has a wand. Hey, Harry, is your wand a magic wand? Can you do spells and things with it?" he sneered.
Petunia Dursley ignored her son's taunts, and instead looked at her nephew in horror, "Good gracious, Vernon. It seems the boy's gone and lost his wits."
"Well, it was only a matter of time," Uncle Vernon said gruffly, "good thing we're getting rid of him today."
And then, before Harry could protest or ask any more questions, he was shoved along down the hall, and out the door, which slammed shut behind him. Harry stood on the porch of the Dursley residence, one hand on his hip, the other holding the suitcase that had been thrust at him. "Well, this is just bloody great," he grumbled to himself. Stupid Dursleys wouldn't even let him get his Hogwarts stuff, they were so eager for him to leave. "Wonder why I'm here anyway. I should be at Hogwarts, and there should be almost two months until my eighteenth birthday."
But if the Dursleys wanted him out, he wasn't going to argue. He was tired of them anyway, tired of having to always put up with them and do exactly what they wanted. /I don't need them anymore,/ Harry reminded himself, /I've got friends now. And Ron and Hermione are almost as close as siblings, so I've got other family too./ Maybe he could send an owl to Ron and –
Owl. Wait a minute... /Where's Hedwig? Is she still in her cage in the bedroom...?/ Setting the suitcase down on the porch, Harry circled around to the side of the house, hopped the gate, and then climbed up the arbor on the side of the house to the second story. Seeing that the window was open, Harry called out quietly to his owl, "Hedwig, it's okay, I'm going to get you out of there." He came up even with the window and pushed it up and open a bit more, sticking his head in. He looked around inside, maybe he could get his trunk and stuff while he was at it as well...
No cage, no owl, no trunk. Nothing of his. In fact, it looked just like it had seven years ago, when it was still Dudley's second bedroom. "Whoa," Harry said to himself, "freaky. It's almost like the last seven years never happened." Shaking his head, he climbed part way down the arbor, then jumped free, managing to land on his feet when he hit the ground, though he did make a bit of a racket.
"Petunia, what was that? Was it the neighbor's cat again?" Harry heard his uncle ask from the kitchen. Cursing silently, Harry climbed back over the gate and went back to the porch, where he'd left the suitcase. Picking it up, he walked over to the curb of Pivet Drive and sat down, trying to understand what was going on, and placing the rather beat up suitcase on his lap.
Thumbing the latches, he popped it open. Inside he found some old clothes of Dudley's, and and a five pound note. Well, at least it didn't look like the Dursleys wanted him to starve to death... at least not right away. Five pounds wasn't going to go very far for food, and since something told him that this time the Dursleys weren't joking about throwing him out, he also didn't have any place to spend the night. Closing the case, the latches clicked back into place, and Harry stood up, holding the suitcase in one hand, and started down the street. He needed to find a telephone.
Harry eventually found himself at the local public library. There, he pushed open the door, and looked around inside. He had seen the building before when he'd gone shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley before he had gone to Hogwarts, but he had never gone inside. Aunt Petunia hadn't believed that he would be able to behave himself on his own and she herself never went to the library, so the building had always been off limits for Harry. Taking pleasure in his new-found freedom, Harry had decided that it was time for a visit. And, anyway, there might be a telephone inside.
Stepping inside, he noticed that it wasn't that different from the library at Hogwarts. Granted, it seemed to be a bit bigger, and it had far fewer books with cloth or leather bindings, but other than that it seemed very familiar, right down to the elderly woman with a pinched mouth who was glaring at him from behind the desk in the middle of the large room. Trying to reassure himself that the librarian was not going to take away house points if he so much as looked at her wrong, Harry steeled himself and walked up to the circulation desk.
Placing his hands on the counter nervously, Harry opened his mouth and was about to speak, when another woman behind the desk came over and started talking to the librarian in a hushed voice. The first librarian nodded, than went off to help a girl who couldn't find what she was looking for. The second librarian, a young woman with black hair, smiled at him. "How can I help you, sir?"
"Um, I was wondering, if it's not any trouble – might I use your telephone? I've found myself in a bit of a fix, and I need to call my friend..." He'd decided while walking that Hermione would be his best bet. The young witch had given him her phone number at the end of fifth year, and he ended up using it so much when he had a chance to that he had eventually memorized her number.
The young woman smiled at him and nodded, lifting a phone up onto the counter from a shelf behind it. Harry lifted the receiver to his ear, then dialed Hermione's number. A masculine voice answered the phone, and Harry immediately adopted the polite voice he used whenever he talked to his friends' parents. "Hi, Mr. Granger. May I speak to Hermione please? This is Harry, from school."
"Just a minute, son." There was a short period of silence from the other end of the phone, then a familiar voice came out of the receiver.
"Hello? This is Hermione."
Harry sighed in relief, then started talking quickly. "All right, so I woke up this morning at the Dursleys', and I have no idea what's going on. The Dursleys were acting really weird, and they kicked me out, and I can't find any of my Hogwarts stuff. Do you think I could stay at your place tonight?"
A heavy pause, then, "Who did you say you were again?"
Pulling the receiver away from his ear for a moment, Harry gave it a strange look, then shrugged and put it back to his ear, "Ha ha, very funny, Hermione. It's me, Harry Potter – you know, your best friend? The Boy Who Lived? Etcetera?"
"I'm sorry," Hermione said in a cold voice, "but I don't think this is a very funny joke. I think I would remember if one of my best friends was called Harry Potter – I don't even know any Harrys. If you're going to try to kid around with me, you might at least try to do a better job of it." There was a click as she hung up, but Harry continued to hold the receiver to his ear for a few moments more, listening to the dial tone, stunned.
"Are you all done with the phone?" came a quiet voice, breaking Harry out of his daze.
Placing the receiver back in its cradle, Harry slowly shook his head at the librarian. He looked up at her, his eyes wide with surprise, and said, "Yes. It seems that I've somehow stumbled into the world's greatest joke."
"I'm sorry, I seem to have missed the punch line," the librarian replied, her brown eyes dancing with humor behind the lenses of her glasses. "Anyway, you seem to be upset about something, so why don't you tell me about it?"
"Well, if you're not busy..." Harry said.
"Please, it's a weekday in the middle of summer. No one's going to come in needing help any time soon, and the returned books have already been shelved for the day," the librarian waved her hand and rolled her eyes. Harry grinned at her.
"Well, to make a long story short, it seems to be my eighteenth birthday, and my legal guardians kicked me out this morning. I just called one of my friends from school – I figured I might be able to spend the night at her house – and she got all upset and pretended that she'd never heard of me before. So I've got no place to stay, my friend is playing a cruel joke on me when I need her the most, and on top of all that I seem to be missing most of my personal possessions," explained Harry, sighing and putting his forehead down on the cool counter in front of him.
"Wait. What do you mean it seems to be your eighteenth birthday?" asked the librarian. "Don't you know when your own birthday is?"
"Well see, the thing is is that last thing I remember I was off at boarding school and my birthday wasn't for about two months, so–"
He was cut off by the librarian, who, despite lacking a pinched face, was managing a pretty good glare. "When is your birthday? The date, please."
"Um. July thirty-first. I was born in 1980, but–"
"And July thirty-first is, conveniently enough, today. And since the year is 1998, it would seem that you are indeed eighteen years old. Maybe you just have some sort of short term amnesia." She shrugged. "Now, since it seems that your friend is playing a trick on you, couldn't you just show up on her doorstep? Or maybe try calling one of your other friends?"
Harry shifted back and forth on his feet, then looked over to the side. "Well, I don't know Hermione's address, and Ron doesn't have a phone. I mean, I guess I could look always Hermione up in a phone book, but she's being mean so..."
"What about this Ron guy? Couldn't you look up his address? That is, if you think he wouldn't mind you showing up on his doorstep," the librarian added thoughtfully.
"Well... Ron wouldn't mind me showing up, but I think his address is unlisted." Indeed, Harry had no idea where either Hermione or Ron lived. He'd never been to Hermione's home before, and though he had been to the Burrow, he had no idea where it was actually located. /If only I had my wand,/ thought Harry, /then I could stick it out and catch the Knight Bus./
"Sounds to me like you're in a predicament. Hm," she tapped her chin with her finger, thinking. "I think I know someone who could give you a place to stay for the night, but you'd have to be willing to help out at her store for the day."
Harry looked at the librarian suspiciously, "Why are you helping me?"
"Because you're cute and you look like you're a nice young man. Of course, for all I know, you could be a incurably criminal boy," she grinned and gave him a wink, "but I really doubt it. And my friend needs someone to help her with her used book store today – she's having her yearly big sale, and she really can't manage the entire thing all by herself."
"So I just have to help her out with her book sale, and she'll probably let me stay the night?" he asked.
"Yes, that's it. Look, I'll write you a note for you to give her and tell you where the store is. Whether you choose to take up my suggestion is entirely up to you; however if you decide to take it, you had better hurry, since you should be there for the as much of the day as possible, and the store opened an hour ago." She nodded to the clock, which read half past ten.
"All right, I'll do it," Harry finally agreed, and took the note from her once she'd finished writing it. After carefully listening to her directions, he thanked her for her help, then left the library, note in one hand, suitcase in the other.
Mrs. Whelton waved happily to the last customer of the day as she closed the door of the of her shop, locked it, and flipped the sign in the window over to "Closed". She then turned to Harry. "Well, dear, it seems that was the last one of them. Are you going to try calling your friend again, or will you be wanting to spend the night? You can always call her in the morning."
Harry smiled at the little old woman from where he stood by the counter. "I think I would like to stay the night, Mrs. Whelton, if that's okay with you." He had had a good time helping out in the store today. All the books stacked every which way reminded him of Flourish and Blotts on Diagon Alley. Mrs. Whelton herself, with her short, round complexion and her curly white hair flying all over the place, reminded him a bit of Professor Sprout.
She smiled at him and clapped her hands, "Oh good! That means I get to bake you a cake! Come on, into the back and up these stairs. I live on the second story you know – it's all fixed up as a flat. Really quite a nice little place."
Following her into the storeroom in the back and up the stairs that he found there, Harry looked at Mrs. Whelton a bit uneasily. "Cake? What do you mean?"
"Alice said in her note that it was your birthday. It would be dreadful for you to have a birthday without a cake, wouldn't it? And it will give me an excuse to bake one, so I won't take no for an answer!" She had arrived at the top of the stairs, where she stepped into a pleasant sitting room. "Right then, bathroom through that door, kitchen through that one, and straight down the hall and to the right for the room you'll be staying in. Just put your suitcase on the bed in there, and then you can wash up – you must be all dusty from getting books down off of the high shelves. I'll be cooking dinner and making the cake."
Harry followed her directions and went down the hall to the door she'd indicated to. Setting the suitcase on the bed, he opened it up and pulled out the jumpers, looking for one that was only mildly revolting. As he took them out, a paper caught on the underside of the bottom-most jumper came out too, and fluttered down to the floor. Leaning over, Harry picked up the paper, turning it over to see what it was.
He almost dropped it in surprise as he read the words on the opposite side. "Certificate of Graduation: Stonewall High" it said across the top in fancy script. However, Harry barely noticed this, his eyes were instead drawn to the name on the sheet: "Harold J. Evans". /Evans? Why would the Dursleys give me a senior school diploma for someone named "Evans"?/ The rest of the name was his own, though no one ever called him Harold, he did know that it was his proper name – well, at least the Dursleys had always said it was. And his middle name was James, after his father, so that was correct as well. But Evans? /Say, wasn't my mother's maiden name Evans? I guess it would have been Aunt Petunia's also. Maybe this is my grandfather's diploma...?/ But no, that couldn't be correct, the year on diploma was 1998.
And now that he thought about it, Stonewall High had been the senior school he was going to go to before his Hogwarts letter had arrived. Over all, it was a rather strange piece of paper. The implications of it alone were astounding – that his surname was Evans, not Potter, and he had attended Stonewall High after primary school instead of Hogwarts. /Crazy./
Putting the paper down on the night stand, Harry grabbed a orange and purple striped jumper, and went to wash up. He would worry about the diploma later, he decided as he walked down the hall. Turning into the sitting room, Harry heard quiet humming coming from the first door to his right, which he remembered Mrs. Whelton pointing to and calling the kitchen earlier. The door after that would be the bathroom.
Setting the sweater he was holding down on the rim of the bath, Harry closed the bathroom door softly and stripped off the jumper he had put on that morning. Turning to the sink, he removed his glasses, and began washing his face, grateful to be rid of the dust that seemed to be covering every inch of his skin. Dimly he wondered whether Hermione would pretend not to know him on the phone again tomorrow when he called her as he dried his face.
Replacing his glasses on his face, he glanced up and grinned at the mirror in front of him. He didn't look a year older, but then he never seemed to look older on his actual birthday. Glaring at his wild mop of hair, he made a half-hearted attempt at finger combing the parts that he could see. As he ran his fingers through his fringe, Harry frowned. Something didn't look right about his face. He couldn't exactly place his finger on it, but it felt like something was out of place. /Let's see... nothing looks wrong. Nary a spot, blemish, or any other sort of disfiguration or scar,/ he decided after a moment's study. He froze, then suddenly pushed back his fringe, staring at the mirror. /Good lord... Not even a scar./
Yay for used book stores! There's nothing quite as satisfying as spending your Saturday going booking : )
Next chapter: Harry figures out some of what's going on, gets a job, and generally lives through a rather dull year.