Chapter Three
Hermione stared at her parents. "WHAT? Mum, if this is a joke, it's not funny. What do you mean, who's Harry? Oh, well, only my best friend, that's all." She almost stopped at that, confused by what she had just said.
What about Ron?
She brushed her confusion aside for the moment and continued. "Only the boy who lived. Only the person who Lord Voldemort's been trying to kill all these years. That's all! I've only mentioned him in practically every letter I've written!"
Her parents stared at her. "Honey," her mother began haltingly, "you must still be dreaming. You've never mentioned anything about a Harry-"
"Harry, mum, Harry Potter, the guy who has a scar shaped like a bolt of lightning on his forehead, the guy who Voldemort's been trying to get rid of all this time, the little star of the Griffindor Quidditch Team, the only person ever to survive the Avada Kadavra curse, the youngest seeker in 100 years, the boy who stopped Voldemort getting the philosopher's stone, the one who closed the chamber of secrets, the person who won the triwizard tournament, the person in the prophecy that everyone was so hot after last year! I've told you about him dozens of times!"
Her parents looked back and forth, clearly worried.
Suddenly, downstairs, there was a sharp crack. Hermione sighed and jumped up, racing down the stairs, leaving her parents staring at one another.
"What do you suppose is wrong?"
"I don't know. At least Professor Dumbledore is coming, maybe he can explain. If it's a spell, at least…. But…."
Mr. Granger finished his wife's sentence. "But, if it's a spell, then who is targeting Hermione, and why?"
No explanation that they could think of set their troubled minds to rest.
Down the stairs, the object of their concern was rushing from room to room when the doorbell rang.
Hermione ran to the door and yanked it open, like the lid on a Jack-in-the-Box. There, just outside, stood an old man with a long white beard and hair of equal length. His blue eyes, normally so merry, were grave as they surveyed her.
"Hermione, I believe you said you needed me."
"Oh Professor Dumbledore, I'm so glad you're here! Somethings gone wrong with Harry, he made a mistake. I don't know how, but I dreamed it and he made some awful mistake, and I can't feel him now! I have been able to all summer long so far, I don't really know why, but now he's gone! And then when I tried to tell my parents, they said that they hadn't ever heard of a Harry Potter, but I've told them about him so many times!" She could feel the tears that she had forced back welling up again as she wrung her hands. "Oh Professor, you need to come and see my parents and we all need to figure out what happened. I'm scared!"
The headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry moved slightly, putting his hand on the young girl's shoulder. "Hermione, if I am to have the pleasure of understanding you, you will need to speak a little bit slower. Take a deep breath and say what you needed me for again, and this time take your time."
"That's what I'm trying to say, we don't have any time!"
"Time will not be wasted in translating your story for me. I won't be able to help until I know what is going on." The man was calm, but then of course he was calm, he was always calm.
Always.
Normally Hermione appreciated this, but now she just wanted to scream at him, "Don't you have any idea what is going on? THIS INVOLVES HARRY POTTER!"
"Take a deep breath and begin at the beginning, please."
The witch did as he suggested and began to gulp air in an attempt to calm herself. Vaguely she registered her parents coming down the stairs and sitting down on together on the faded, striped couch behind her.
"A deep breath, Hermione. I didn't say to hyperventilate. Remember, Madame Pomfrey isn't here to help if you faint and I am not nearly so skilled at healing as she."
The girl complied with his wishes and took one last breath, holding it for a second before beginning to speak.
"I know that normally this would sound crazy, but Harry did have that true dream last year, and so I thought….
"Oh Professor Dumbledore, Harry's made a mistake, I don't know how but somehow he isn't here anymore, he's somewhere else. I know because I dreamed it. I'm not sure what I dreamed, but it's some part of the place he was sent and it was dark and it was cold and… there was green fire all around me.
"And more then that, I've been able to feel him all summer. I can't really explain how but somehow I know where he is and how he feels. It's strange, and I would've thought that I was just imagining things but he had sent Hedwig to me a few times with letters saying what he had been doing, and he was always doing what I felt he was! I'm not going crazy, he really did write me.
"And now, it's like there's this huge empty space that used to be filled with my knowledge of him and I don't know what's causing it, but we have to fix it!"
Albus frowned slightly. "First of all, we need to get on the same page. Who is Harry?"
Hermione stared for a few seconds, and then slowly sank to the floor, holding her head as she began to cry.
"No one remembers, no one remembers but me, it's like he doesn't exist anymore, it's like he never did," she said sobbed quietly. "I know something's wrong, but no one else even knows that Harry exists… It's like I've gone crazy…."
Slowly the headmaster lowered himself to the level of his student. Placing one spindly hand beneath her chin, he tipped it up, forcing their eyes to meet. "My dear, I am not saying that your story is not true and I am not saying that there is no Harry. What I am saying is that I do not remember ever knowing any such person. However, I will be the last to claim perfection. Hermione, you are quite possibly the cleverest witch in the school at the time and are most certainly not crazy.
"That leaves us with three options, that you imagined Harry, that a spell was cast to make you look crazy for saying things about a Harry Potter, or that a spell was cast and for some reason only you can remember that he ever existed.
"This last one is not entirely outside the realm of possibility, and the first might also be true, depending on what you remember, but I think the second is just not practical. Unless you have more enemies then I am aware of, there is no one who would be motivated to cast such a spell.
"So, we have eliminated two of the possibilities. Let us now endeavor to root out a third.
"Tell me. Who is Harry Potter? What did he do? How did you meet him?"
So Hermione told him.
She told him of their meeting on the Hogwarts Express and how Neville had lost Trevor and of Scabbers biting Goyle's finger.
She told him of the sorting and of how relieved Harry had seemed when the hat put him in Griffindor. She told him of that first flying lesson, when she had been afraid and Harry hadn't and of Malfoy throwing the Remeberall and Harry diving.
"He was so fast," she said, "I could barely watch!"
She told him of how that stunt had landed him a position on the Griffindor Quiddich team. "He was the youngest player in 100 years, the seeker, you know, but Professor McGonagoll said that he was just too good for the team to wait even a year for-that none of the people who had auditioned for the newly vacated seeker position were any good and how she just wouldn't be able to stand it if Slytherin won the Cup again."
She told him about the midnight duel and the trapdoor. She told him of the broomstick and Ron saying she was impossible Halloween and her running to the girl's toilet to cry and missing the feast and the announcement that the troll was loose and Harry and Ron saving her by bravery and sheer, dumb luck and how she had taken the fall and how after that they had been friends.
She told him of the search for Nicholas Flammel and Norby and the race for the Philosopher's Stone and Quirrel.
She told him of how the chamber had been opened the next year and the voices Harry was hearing and how they had discovered he was a parselmouth at the dueling club.
In short, she told him everything, everything that she could remember, every detail that could make the tale seem more real, even to her. For no one else remembering had begun to make her even doubt herself, and she told the story she found herself nodding at certain parts and laughing at others and nearly crying at others.
She told him of Sirius's escape on Buckbeak and everyone's part in that and of Harry's Paronus and her own (it's a silver otter, he taught me how) and the DA and anything else she could remember.
The telling took hours, but she felt relieved when she was done.
There was a strange sense of comradeship with the old man sitting in front of her, in her father's favorite recliner chair, when she was done. At least now one other person knew everything.
After she had finally finished, he just leaned back and thought.
"This is an interesting history you tell me, and I'm sorry to say that I remember very little of it.
"It makes sense though, and there are obviously too many clear details of everything from emotions to the tone of his voice, for you to have made it up. Too many for someone casting a spell, even, for no one would think of putting all of these details into your memories. I don't think that they would even be able to come up with all of them.
"This only leaves the option that for some odd reason, everyone else has forgotten him. Now, the only question is why…. Let me think…..
"Tell me about your dream again."
Hermione hesitated, and then began. "It started off as a normal dream. I was home, in a giant orange jellybean with glass walls and floors, when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it but there was no one there when I finally arrived."
She paused.
"It's strange, really, but now that I think of it, on the way back the doorknobs had changed.
"When I went down to the front door, they had been glass, just like everything else, but when I was going back to my room, they were silver…. It's probably nothing, but it stands out in my mind, now that I think of it….
"I was feeling angry, after I answered the door and headed back, angry like I've hardly ever been before, the anger that makes you want to hurt, makes you want to make other people suffer.
"Another strange thing is there was a rat running down the hall. He was silver, but he looked nasty.
"The doorbell rang again then, and I went back down to answer it, feeling confused now, and still slightly angry, and undecided. It was the feeling you get when you're not sure what's right anymore.
"I put my hand on the knob, and suddenly I knew that something was very, very wrong with Harry.
"He was about to make a mistake, I don't know what, and I tried to stop him, but I couldn't reach him.
"I didn't want to open the door then, but it was somehow forced open and outside there was this terrible darkness.
"It was… oh, you can't imagine. I hadn't known that anything that dark could actually exist. It wasn't just the presence of dark; it was the absence of light.
"It pulled me too, it pulled me from my jellybean home out into it and as soon as it touched me I knew I was lost and that Harry had made that mistake, a mistake that could literally change everything that I knew.
"I said it was dark… how do I explain… somehow there was also fire. The flames were green and even though they didn't shed any light I could see them. They were surrounding me, licking at my hair and face and hands. It was strange though, it was like, instead of heat, they shed cold, bitter cold like the depth of winter.
"Anywhere I looked I could see nothing but the blackness and the towering sheets of green flame and the white that was my breath.
"It was freezing, I couldn't feel my fingers or my toes and my mind had started to slow down when I saw something.
"My mother was in front of me.
"I cried, and could practically feel the tears freeze on my cheeks as I saw her, because not only was she in this horrible place, she was pearly-white and see-through, like the ghosts. And then I saw my father too, he appeared next to her.
"I think I screamed then, and all of my will just went out of me. I collaped, I would never be able to get away from this place that I was beginning to think more and more was death and my mother and father were here, and they were dead, even if I wasn't.
"Some time later, I don't know if it was seconds or days, something else happened. I saw a spark, a shivering little wavery silver spark, that seemed to dance in front of me.
"It was the only light that I had seen, and you would think that it should've blinded me after so much time, but it didn't. It seemed warmer then everything else too, and so when it seemed to say, follow me, I let it guide me.
"I'm not sure how long I walked, but things seemed to get warmer as I went along, and then there was a bright light in front of me and I ran for it and then… it was odd, as it wasn't really waking up, I felt like I had already been awake, but I arrived here, in my bed, with my mum and dad holding my hands.
"That's when I sent you that owl, Professor."
Albus Dumbledore steepled his fingers and leaned back slightly with a sigh.
"I'm afraid to confess that I am not sure what your dream means, though we might be able to divine an answer-after all, if this is what I think it is, then theoretically, we have all the time in the world."
Hermione looked curiously at him.
"What do you mean?"
"If this dream is indeed a result of the spell I am thinking of, a spell I have only heard of, and a bond between you and young Mr. Potter.
"It would certainly explain the circumstances."
Hermione didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
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Whoa, long chapter. This single chapter is almost as long as all three of the previous chapters and the prelude combined.
Anyway, not the best place to end, but whatever. I hope you like it.
Review please!
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