Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. Harry's Muggle friends belong to me (they probably aren't going to make any more appearances, though they may be mentioned). I'm making absolutely no money off of this, so please don't sue me.
Warnings: AU, spoilers for SS/PS through OtoP, mentions of OOC Malfoy.
/.../ denotes thoughts
Chapter 10: Have To Go
Suddenly I knew that you'd have to go
My world was not yours, your eyes told me so
Yet it was there I felt the crossroads of time
And I wondered why.
– "The Old Ways," Loreena McKennitt
He moved to turn over in his sleep, only to have his arm yanked back. Prying an eye open, Harry squinted at the bright light of the room, and tried to take in his surroundings. Everything was blurry, and for a moment he was afraid that could no longer see. Then he realized that he wasn't wearing his glasses, and he started to push himself into a sitting position so that he could find them. Only his arms felt terribly weak, not even strong enough push his body up more than an inch above the bed, before he collapsed back onto it.
Turning his head, he saw through the fuzziness that the thing that had originally yanked his arm back was a long IV tube, running from his arm up to a bottle suspended on a pole next to the bed. Looking out farther, he observed the flowery curtains that surrounded the bed. Taking all of this in, Harry thought for a moment that he must be in the hospital wing at Hogwarts. But no, he decided, that couldn't be right – he had seen the pattern of flowers on the curtains at Hogwarts only a month before, and these curtains bore entirely different flowers.
The wrist of the arm without the IV had what looked like a hospital band around it, and when Harry turned his head to the side away from the pole, he saw a ream of parchment hanging in front of the wall, a quill suspended in front of it, jotting down constant notes which Harry supposed must be his vital signs.
On a small table next to his bed were several vases of flowers, as well as a few cards. Harry stared at them, and wondered how he had been injured in the battle, for surely that was what had happened, as the last thing he remembered was putting the sword from the Sorting Hat through Voldemort's chest. There was also a vague memory of an eerie song, though Harry was not sure if he had truly heard it.
An almost bark-like shout, followed by loud giggling sounded from the rest of the room which was hidden from view by the curtain. There was a shushing sound, and then the quick pace of someone walking across the tiled floor. Harry watched as the curtain was pulled to the side, and a motherly witch wearing a green robe walked through, holding another bottle of IV fluids in her hand. She seemed to ignore Harry completely, focusing instead on changing taking down the empty IV bottle. Harry immediately jumped on her as someone who might be able to answer all the questions bouncing around inside his head.
"Excuse me," he asked politely, somewhat shocked by the harsh, disused sound his voice made. "Can you tell me where I am exactly?"
The witch started forward, her head swinging about to stare at him with wide eyes. She let out a startled squeak, dropped the empty bottle on the floor with a crash, and ran through the curtains, yelling for someone to come help her.
Harry was confused. He could not understand why the witch – who he now assumed had been a Healer –Êhad run away from him like that. As near as he could figure, she had not expected to find him awake, which was strange. She had pushed away curtains around his bed in her effort to run away, and so Harry left the mystery of the startled Healer for later as he took in what was beyond the curtains.
There where several other beds in the room, several of them occupied. Taking this in, Harry was surprised to find that he recognized some of the occupants of the other beds, though he could not remember when he might have possibly been in the room before.
It was not long before the Healer that had run away earlier returned, trotting to keep up with an older, drawn wizard in equally green robes. The older Healer was talking to the younger Healer, obviously annoyed at having been called. "Really, Miriam, I hardly think that after two years a patient would just go and–" The wizard broke off as he saw Harry. Harry felt the intense urge to wave to the Healer, but quickly quelled it, unsure as to whether either of his arms was up to the duty. "Oh, my," said the older wizard, obviously in shock.
"Good morning," Harry croaked, "could you please tell me where I am?"
"I told you he was awake," Miriam said, somewhat petulantly.
"I... Good morning, Mr. Potter. You are in the Janis Thickey ward at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. I am Healer Bloom, this is my associate, Healer Strout," the older Healer said with a stiff and formal voice, apparently he had adapted to the new situation, and was no longer in shock.
/That's why this looks familiar,/ Harry thought. /It's that long-term ward that we ended up in at St. Mungo's at Christmas in fifth year.../ Which brought up a very good question, Harry decided. "Why I am in a ward for long-term patients?" he asked, a bit worried.
"You've been in a coma," Miriam – Healer Strout – said brightly. "For over two years. It's very exciting that you're awake again." She smiled brightly, and Harry recalled that she was the same witch that had been in the ward when he was last there.
Bloom glared at his associate, then spoke Harry, "You were apparently injured in the Battle for Hogwarts. You were found lying on the ground afterwards, unconscious, and eventually you were brought here," he explained.
Harry blinked, then asked hopefully, "Oh. Um, I don't suppose I could leave now that I'm awake?"
"Eventually, you should be able to go home. However, after not being used for two years, your muscles have atrophied and you will have to go through physical therapy before you will be able to use most of your limbs to any great extent."
"Um, okay. Are my glasses anywhere around here? The blurriness is starting to give me an headache," Harry said. He was glad to have a reason for why his arms seemed so weak, though he did not know if he liked the sound of having to go through physical therapy.
Reaching into a drawer that was part of the bedside table, Bloom extracted a glasses case, which he handed to Strout, and a large manila folder. Strout opened the case, took out Harry's glasses, and perched them on Harry's nose with a beaming smile. Bloom flipped the folder open, and ran his finger down a sheet of paper inside, then glanced up at Harry. "If you'll excuse me, I'll see about contacting your family and letting them know that you have awakened."
Before Harry could protest, Bloom was out the door, and Strout had moved on to another patient, though she kept glancing back at him and smiling. Closing his eyes, Harry felt a headache coming on that nothing to do with his not wearing his glasses earlier. The Dursleys were the last people that Harry wanted to see right now, but apparently he didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. He was almost starting to wish that he hadn't woken up from his coma or whatever it had been.
The next day, Harry was moved out of the Janis Thickey ward and into a different ward for people recovering from spell damage. There was a grimy window next to his bed through which the sun shone, weakly illuminating the room. In addition to him, there were three other people in the room, a small boy in the bed next to him was staring at his newly regrown feet with wonder, poking the soft, new flesh with his fingers and laughing. Across the room from Harry was an old man who had a bare line shaved all around his head. The man was holding what looked like the remains of a bowler hat, and glaring at them. Next to the man was a girl, no older than fifteen, who scowled as she pulled feathers out of her hair.
Propped up in the bed, Harry couldn't help but wish for a book to read. He watched as the old man set the remains of the hat aside, and picked up a copy of the Daily Prophet and began to read that. The girl had finished extracting feathers from her hair, and was now pulling them out of her eyebrows, grumbling to herself all the while.
Bored, Harry sighed. He considered calling for a Healer and asking for another glass of juice, but discarded the thought almost immediately. Though he was no longer receiving all of his nutrients intravenously, it was embarrassing to have the Healer hold the the glass for him while he drank the juice through a straw. Having nothing else to do, he was about to settle down for a nap when the door to the ward opened.
Harry perked up as he watched Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and Neville enter the room. They spotted him and rushed over. Hermione hugged him enthusiastically, "We were so happy when we heard. You were asleep for so long, we almost thought you would never wake up!"
He grinned, and tried to lift his arms to return the embrace, only to have them fall uselessly back to the bed. "I'm guessing that, since you're all here, we won the battle then," he said hopefully. He hadn't asked the Healers about this yet, mostly because he was almost afraid to hear the answer.
Ron nodded his head happily, "We couldn't have done it without you though, Harry." Then he took up Harry's limp hand and shook it enthusiastically. Neville mirrored Ron's actions, and Harry sat back to bask in the happy glow that seemed to radiate from his friends. But something bothered him. Something about this scene just seemed wrong, though he couldn't think of what was out of place.
Then it hit him. Other than Ron and Hermione, he didn't know any of the rest of this group in this world. And it bothered him that neither Remus nor Sirius were there. Biting his lip, he asked about them. Ginny and Ron gave him strange looks, and Hermione sighed and patted his arm.
"Oh. Er... The Healers didn't say anything about your having amnesia, Harry," she said with concern.
"Amnesia? Wait, did something happen to them?" Harry asked, upset. Both men had been fine when Harry had them the morning before the battle, just the other day... No, that had happened over two years ago, not two days ago.
"Well, Lupin and my parents had work and couldn't come," Ron began, but Hermione interrupted him before he could say any more.
"Harry, Sirius died four years ago! You know that! How could you possibly forget?" She had a distressed look on her face, and her mouth was a thin line.
"Four years ago... but..." And then something occurred to Harry. He blinked slowly, and fixed his eyes on Hermione. "Say, what year is it?"
Ginny snorted, "Two years after the final battle, of course, 2000."
"But– but it was 2000 last time I was awake! The Healers said that two years had passed, so it should be 2002! The only way it could possibly still be 2000 would be if... I... came back," he said it slowly, wonder thick in his voice. Harry had never considered the chance that he might eventually return to his own world, had never even considered what his body there was doing in his absence. Now that he thought about, it made sense that a body lacking a soul would seem to be in coma-like state. "Oh, wow, this is so cool."
Ginny bounced onto Harry's bed and gave him a strange look. "What do you mean you 'came back'? You didn't go anywhere! You've lying in the long-term ward for the past two years – we visited you every Christmas."
Harry's mouth quirked in a grin, and he said, chuckling, "It's a long story. You might want to see about conjuring some chairs." With that, he told them about what he had been doing for the past two years while his body was lying comatose in a bed.
"Malfoy did all that stuff?" Ron asked, his eyes wide.
"I know it sounds really far fetched, but that's what everyone said," Harry said, wishing he was strong enough to rub his temples. Another headache was on the verge of developing. It was the third time that Ron had asked the question, and it was starting to get on Harry's nerves. However, Harry decided, it could be a lot worse. At least Ron believed most of what he had said, as did Ginny.
Hermione, on the other hand, was skeptical. "I'm sorry, but it sounds like a rather elaborate dream to me, Harry. I've never heard of someone having their soul knocked into another dimension just because they used the killing curse."
Suddenly, Neville looked up. He had been quiet throughout Harry's entire telling of his tale, unlike the others, who had constantly interrupted Harry in order to argue about about something or another he had said. "And how many people," he asked quietly, "end up in comas just because they used the killing curse? Besides, I've read that you can't learn anything new in real dreams, and Harry says that he read a whole bunch of books in this other world he'd never heard of before."
Hermione opened and closed her mouth a few times, staring at Neville. She had clearly not expected such an astute observation from him, and was stumped to come up with a reply. Ginny glanced upwards and smiled encouragingly at Neville. "So really," she said, "all we have to do to test Harry's story is ask him about the books that he read."
"And see if the Muggles he mentioned are real," Ron added, warming up to what Neville and Ginny were saying. Hermione scowled for a moment, then laughed and broke into a grin.
"I can't just stay upset about all of you shooting down my arguments. I'm too happy that Harry's awake again!"
Ginny laughed as well, and then glanced at her wristwatch. She turned back to Harry, a sad look on her face, "Oh, we should get going. We promised we'd visit Neville's parents too while we were here. And Ron and Neville and I need to get back to work..."
Harry nodded in understanding. His friends had all moved on with their lives while he was stuck in another world – or in bed, depending on how you looked at it. He turned to Hermione, curious. "Don't you have work too, Hermione?"
"No, I'm in uni. I hope you're happy," she added with a grin, "I skipped my morning class to be here." Harry stared at her in shock, unable to believe that Hermione had cut school just to come see him. /Well, I guess I haven't been awake and talking for two years, so it's kind of understandable, but still.../ Seeing the look on his face, Hermione made a face and stuck at her tongue before laughing, and leaving with the rest of the group. Watching them leave, Harry lifted his hand slightly, attempting a wave goodbye. Harry felt a lot better than he had earlier in the day. He was back home, where he belonged.
Across the room from him, the girl was using a pair of tweezers to pull feathers out from between her toes.
Two weeks after his friends' first visit, Harry was reading a book that Hermione had brought him. Though he had never been one to read for pleasure before, his time in the other world had left its mark on him, and continued to crave books. As he turned the page, he stole a glance at about the room. The little boy's bed was empty, both he and the old wizard had gone home a few days after Harry had been moved to this ward from the Janis Thickey ward. The wizard's bed was not empty, however, it was now occupied by a woman who sported a pair of green cat ears and was busy reading a magazine. Across from the empty bed, the girl was busy trying to pluck out her newest growth of feathers.
Harry had his entire attention focused on the book in front of him when the ward door opened, and so he didn't even notice the visitor until the man was standing right next to his bed and cleared his throat. Dropping the book, Harry looked up with amazement at the man. "You! I'm surprised you even came."
Pulling up a chair to sit down in, Draco Malfoy raised an elegant eyebrow at Harry. "What, haven't Weasley and Granger filled you in on what has been happening while you've been playing sleeping beauty?" he sneered, though it seemed to Harry that it was not particularly malicious.
Clutching at the bedding, Harry glared. "If I remember correctly, you said that you didn't want to have anything to do with us anymore. Last time I checked, it was not considered normal to turn your back on the people you've made friends with at the slightest chance of hardship," he said stonily. This was exactly what Harry had spent the last two years trying to avoid thinking about. Though they had not been friends for long – since the middle of sixth year, really – it had hurt a lot when Malfoy had walked up to them in seventh year and said that he couldn't believe that all three of them –ÊHarry, Ron, and Hermione – had been so silly to think that he was actually their friend.
"Well, I couldn't very well say something else and survive sleeping in Slytherin at night, could I?" Malfoy asked, the barest hint of a chuckle underneath his cultured voice. "Weasley and his sister told me about your wonderful adventure in a world where I'm some sort of pansy."
"You– he– wasn't a 'pansy' – and, you know, she might take some offense to be thought of as a something nasty," Harry shot back sarcastically.
The sadness in Malfoy's eyes belied the nastiness in his voice. "I don't think that Pansy is any position to take offense, considering she's six feet under," he bit back.
Well. What did you say to something like that? "I'm sorry," Harry said quietly, "I know you two were friends."
Malfoy let loose a loud bark of laughter, and the girl across the room glanced up at them, before returning to her feather-pulling. "I'm sorry too, I didn't want to kill her. But, seeing as she didn't really give me much of a choice in the end..." He shrugged, and his long bangs fell forward, hiding his face in shadow for a momen. Had Harry not known the other wizard as well as he did, he would have thought that Malfoy was crying. After a moment, Malfoy reached up and tucked his hair back behind his ears, "Enough about that, though. Tell me about this angel-me."
"He wasn't an angel," Harry said, "he was a bit of a jerk. He couldn't cook, couldn't fly, and kept on asking annoying questions when I didn't feel like talking." Harry glanced at Malfoy, then released the big guns, "And he took Muggle Studies."
"What?! The outrage– that's soiling the family name," Malfoy grumbled, though it seemed to Harry that his grey eyes twinkled ever so slightly.
"And being friends with a Muggleborn and a Weasley don't 'soil the family name'? And that's not even mentioning that you were friends with Harry Potter," Harry teased, settling back into the friendly bickering that had plagued his conversations with Malfoy since the middle of their sixth year.
"That's different, I was corrupting you people. And I'm actually related to Weasley on my mother's side, so that's not as bad as it may seem at first. At least he's a pureblood, which is more than I can say about you, Potter," said Malfoy with an air of superiority.
"My, I'm so glad to see that your manners have improved over the past two years," Harry mock growled, laying on the sarcasm as thick as he possibly could. Then a thought occurred to him, and he asked in a much softer voice, "Why didn't you come with Ron and the rest two weeks ago, then, if you're ready to make amends?"
Malfoy sighed, and dropped his gaze to his lap, mumbling something.
"What was that? I didn't hear it."
"I said I was ashamed to come. I was a jerk back in seventh year when I said that to the three of you. I was afraid of what my father might do, what He Who Must Not Be Named might do. Everyone expected me to be a Death Eater – I didn't want to know what would happen to me if I refused..."
Remembering the Malfoy in the other world, Harry reached out and rested a feeble arm on his friend's arm. "You would have probably been disowned," he said quietly. "And Lucius might have tried to kill you. You– the Malfoy in the other world, I don't know what happened to him when he didn't go over to Voldemort, but he was living in Remus' house in the middle of nowhere. I think he was hiding out. Don't worry about it, you're not the only person to ever run away from his problems."
Malfoy leaned forward on Harry's bed, his head resting between his crossed arms. "I'm not brave like you and Weasley and Granger. I do the things I do because that's the way I am."
"I know," Harry said. "And I'm not unbearably tolerant. I get frustrated and angry with the way you act sometimes, because that's the way I am."
"You are an idiot, Potter," Malfoy said, raising his head and laughing.
"So are you, sometimes."
"I know."
They smiled at each other, and sat there in silence for a while. For the first time in two and a half years, the little voice in Harry's head was quiet.
A month after his twentieth birthday, Harry Potter left St. Mungo's in a wheelchair, pushed along by Ron. The Dursleys, though notified of their nephew's recovery, had never bothered to come see him since he had awoken. Of course, murmured some of the hospital staff, they had never bothered to visit him when he was in a coma. As it was, Harry was released into the charge of Mr. Weasley and his wife, who were more than willing to have him in their home until he was fit to live on his own. "It's so empty dear," Mrs. Weasley had explained when Harry had protested to this arrangement. "Everyone's off on their own now except for Ginny. We won't hear of you going anywhere else."
As Ron pushed him down the street, joking about letting go of the handles at the top of a high hill, Harry looked at the world around him, and smiled. It did not look that different from Evans' dimension, but it felt immensely different to Harry. He would always miss Sirius and feel guilty about Cedric, yes, but somehow having them alive did not make up for losing all of his friends, all of the people he cared about.
Yes, it had been an interesting adventure, but now Harry was ready for a different kind of adventure.
And thus endeth the fic (yay! I'm done!). Would anyone be interested in either a prequel or a sequel taking place in the alternate world? Because Alternate Malfoy has been bugging me about it nearly the entire time I've been writing this thing...
I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed this fanfic :) I know I didn't thank you personally in each chapter, but I'm really not the kind of person to do that type of thing. Your reviews did make a difference, however – I always try to write more/better when I know for sure that someone will actually read what I've written. So, anyway, thanks for suffering with me through my first fic of the fandom! :)