The Dream Trilogy Book One: To Dwell On Dreams (A Harry Potter FanFiction)

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Everything was different since he had woken up, everything, even his skin. And yet Sarah was pulling him out of his bedroom, telling him his faithful friend, his owl Hedwig was somewhere waiting for him. 

No, he thought logically. That could just be a coincidence. He'd got the name out of a book after all, it didn't mean it was the same owl.  

Harry stepped out into a corridor, Sarah still dragging him by his hand. There were a couple of doors leading to other rooms, and staircases at either end. The one on the right led up, but the one up ahead was the one they started walking down. The wall on his left was absolutely covered in framed, animated photographs, but Harry barely got a chance to look at them, such was Sarah's pace. 

"Look," she rasped. "They've got the Healer coming now, so if you're faking, or you're some sort of spy or something, now would be the time to snap out of it." 

"Hey," said Harry, snatching his hand out of hers as they reached the landing that lead to what looked like the front door. "I'm not faking anything." 

Sarah looked him up and down. "Fine," she said, and lifted a Nimbus 2000 from where it had been discarded by the umbrella stand. "Good, good." She grabbed a cloak that looked to be about her size from a rack by a mirror next to the door, and flung it over her shoulders, then took hold of a slightly larger one. "It's cold out there," she said, chucking it at Harry.  

Harry didn't protest, and slung it over his own back. His own Hedwig or not, the implication was that this was his owl Sarah was talking about. Why would she have flown to Ireland? he thought as they went under an arch to their right, through a living room and into a good sized kitchen.  

Confidently, Sarah skirted round the large wooden dining table to the back door, pushing it open and walking into the crisp November air. Harry followed, taking in every detail he could about this house that supposedly belonged to the Potter family.  

The place was a bit unkempt, piles of mail and cook books littering the kitchen surfaces, and washing up waiting to be done in the sink. But Harry liked the authenticity of it; his Aunt Petunia's obsession with having a spotless house had always made it feel even less like home to him, like it was a picture from a magazine rather than somewhere to actually live. 

Welly boots were piled up by the back door as he passed through, but Sarah just stayed in her slippers so he did the same. The garden was nicely kept with colourful flowers spilling out all over the place despite the wintery weather. Neater than the Weasleys, but a mess compared to Aunt Petunia's - which really wasn't a hard thing to accomplish when you considered that Aunt Petunia tended to measure the grass with a ruler.  

Poking their heads out of the various forms of plant life were all sorts of little stone ornaments; mischievous gnomes with big hats, gargoyles, toads and griffins. Angels adorned the water feature to Harry's left, and they winked and waved as he and Sarah walked past.  

Harry stopped and turned round to take a good look at the house. It was even bigger than he'd initially thought, and appeared to be in the middle of nowhere - or at least well back from any town. He could see the Quidditch trophies by his own window shinning in the weak sunshine. Other windowsills contained the backs of photo frames, ornate crockery and fat teddy bears. Through one of the pairs of curtains on the ground floor he could see a gleaming black grand piano, something Harry had never seen in real life.  

This house - was this the house his parents had lived in when he was a baby? Was this the one Voldemort had destroyed? The one Hagrid had plucked him from as a baby, crying and bleeding? Absently, he reached up and rubbed his scarless forehead again. Was he in Godric's Hollow? 

"You alright?" said Sarah worried. "You're not going to faint again are you? Should I get mum?" With some effort Harry pulled himself away from that train of thought. He had to deal with the here and now, no dwell on the past. He had to treat what his eyes were seeing as the truth to a certain extent, and just roll with it.  

"Yeah, I'm fine," he assured her. Her eyes remained wide. "Honestly," he added. "I might freeze to death but I'm not going to faint." 

"You really scared us," she told them as they made their way along the frosty garden path, icy wet blades of grass tickling at Harry's bare feet encased in the slippers. 

"Um, sorry," he said. He meant it; he was pretty scared himself. 

Swaying up ahead in the autumn breeze were several gnarly trees. They were covered in various paper creations, lanterns and glittery pictures of fairies, that were spinning cheerfully in the wind. Harry shoved his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown and watched his breath curl from his mouth like cauldron smoke. 

Sarah put her broom in a shed nestled into some evergreen trees; there were a couple of rusty bikes in there as well as the usual gardening tools and a growling old fridge-freezer, presumably generated by magic, not electricity. Sarah then led Harry to a little owlery some way further down the garden path.  

"She's a bit tired," Sarah informed Harry. "She only just got back from Galway, but she'll be well pleased to see you I bet." She walked under the covered archway where five or six owls of varying sizes and colours were sleeping. Harry wondered again why his owl would have flown to Ireland, but then a familiar hoot reached his ears and the snowy white bird swooped gracefully down onto his shoulder.  

He couldn't believe it. "It's good to see you here," said Harry softly, scratching Hedwig's head. It was her, the same bird he'd picked out himself in Diagon Alley all those years ago. She nipped his ear affectionately.  

Whatever was going on, here was some small bit of proof that his real life was still present. With all this craziness he was faced with, it would be easy to lose his reality, so he was very glad indeed to have his old friend hop onto his other shoulder and hoot.  

"No message," said Sarah with a shrug as she filled up the water bowl, crunchy with ice. But Harry didn't care where she'd been. He was just concerned about where she could go, and what other old friends she could find. 

"Hey girl," he said, a thought forming in his mind. "I think I've got a job for you."