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

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Slowly, reality came back to Harry. As consciousness crept through the darkness, he started reaching out with his senses. His body was telling him he was lying down, somewhere soft, like a bed. But something in his memory told him that wasn't right, that he expected to be in pain, to be cold and alone. 

But he could hear the murmuring of a voice, a man; the words were unintelligible, and the speaker unknown, but Harry could tell he wasn't by himself.  

His mouth tasted stale and his head was pounding like a herd of Quintapeds were trampling through it. The voice was still muttering, and Harry wanted to open his eyes, but they felt like they were glued shut. He began fidgeting, kicking at the bed sheet he could definitely feel on top of him now, and rubbed at his face with his hands. 

"Oh Harry," said the man as he managed to peel his eyelids open a little. "How in the many worlds did this happen?" 

Harry blinked. His glasses had been removed, so his vision was blurry anyway without the aid of the confusion. But there, crisp as fresh ink, was the man, the one that had been talking. He was quite tall, blond, and flipping through pages in beige coloured files. Harry could tell he was in a darkened room, a bedroom in a house he guessed, but he couldn't see any detail apart from the man. 

"Jia is going to have my job for this," he said ruefully. 

Harry tried to talk, but his throat refused to make any sound, and his eyes were so heavy he could barely keep them open any more than a second, blinking slowly as he tried to get a grip on his surroundings. 

The man looked up and smiled at Harry as he stirred. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm sure you'll get home in no time." He checked over some of his notes as Harry screwed up his face. "There might be a spell or something...I don't know, you chaps seem to have a spell for everything." He was extremely well spoken, but his clothes were somewhat miss-matched and his jeans were even ripped. The image jarred with the sound a little.  

"Where am I?" Harry croaked.  

The man looked back up in surprise, eyed Harry suspiciously, then looked over his shoulder. There was no other movement in the room, from what Harry could tell between blinks, suggesting they were alone, and the man apparently came to the same conclusion as he shrugged and carried on writing in his file with a blue ball point pen. 

Who was he? Harry was still struggling trying to remember what had happened, where he'd been, how he got in the bed? A spark of anger flared in him, but he didn't know why, and he was succumbing to sleep again, drifting back into the darkness. 

Was he dreaming?

***

He woke again, still bleary, but this time his limbs responded when he tried to move them, and his eyes blinked against sunlight. He grunted and flailed. 

"Harry?" said a female voice. Where was he, had he been here before? He was lying in a bed, but without his glasses he couldn't tell. His head was aching and his mouth was dry. Had he been talking to someone? Had there been a window, did it break? 

"Harry?" said the voice again. Whoever she was, she was concerned, and Harry felt her take his hand. 

"Hermione?" he mumbled, scrunching his eyes and trying to get rid of the sticky feeling on his lashes. 

"Harry are you okay, can you hear me?" He didn't know the voice, but now her hands were taking his pulse, touching his forehead. Maybe she was a nurse? 

He remembered defending himself, had he been attacked? Why was there a lingering sense of anger gnawing at his stomach? 

Finally, Harry was able to force his eyes to stay open. He could tell from the blurred shapes that the woman or girl was sat on the bed beside him, and as she leaned over as swathe of red hair swung over her shoulder. 

"Ginny?" Harry tried again. Why did her voice sound different? 

"Who?" 

As disorientated as he was, Harry was starting to get the feeling something was very wrong, and fear was seeping into his gut. This didn't look like Hogwarts, or Privet Drive; where was he? 

"Glasses?" he managed to utter. 

"Oh, of course," said the woman, and reached over to a bedside table to his left, and placed a pair of glasses into his hands. They didn't feel familiar, but Harry slipped them on anyway. 

What he saw as his vision came swimming back into view made his heart still. He had good reason to believe in the afterlife, being surrounded by hundred-year-old ghosts everyday at school, but she didn't look like a ghost, she was solid, she was real. 

He stared, and the woman looked concerned. "Harry, are you alright?" she said. 

He struggled to find any words, his whole body had seized up in shock. But after a few moments had passed he was able to swallow, able to think. 

And so he said the first and only word that came into his head. 

"Mum?"