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

Chapter Fourteen

"Right," he said, "rubbing his head. "Right, okay yeah I get all that, but what does it have to do with my parents being alive?" She held her finger up.

"Well, scientists and maybe philosophers too I guess have been speculating for the past couple of hundred years about the fourth and fifth dimensions. From what I can gather, the fourth dimension is sort of like quantum physics, where two things are in the same place at once. And the fifth, the fifth is supposedly a displacement of spacetime."

"I thought we ruled out time travel?" Harry asked, becoming increasingly confused, but Hermione waved her hands to stop him.

"No, no - not time, spacetime. It can be time travel, but it's also space that exists at the same time but we can't see it." She saw Harry raise his eyebrows, so she sat up eagerly to explain further. "So, in these TV shows, they use this theory when a character somehow finds a way to move between one reality to another - an it's an alternate reality, a parallel universe. So for them, the world has changed, because one event happened differently, and the people they know, their lives happened differently. And sometimes the character meets them self - then there's two of them, but sometimes the character's mind or soul or whatever pushes their doppelganger out of their own body, so there's just one of them, nobody knows the difference apart from that person.

"Okay, okay," she said, shoving her hair from her face. "With this fifth dimension, someone's developed this theory - like the TV shows, that there are parallel worlds existing side by side. Trillions upon trillions of them. For every possible decision ever made, for every 'yes' and 'no' there is a world created where every outcome happened. So if you found a - a doorway, a link of some sort, in theory you could jump between them."

She was flushed and out of breath. Harry felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. "So..." he said slowly. "Last night...I travelled to a parallel universe?"

Hermione took a deep breath, her eyes wide as they flicked over his face. "Yes. I think so." She bunched her fists. "If magic can make you travel in time, why couldn't it make you travel in space as well?"

He couldn't focus his eyes, all the blood was draining from his head and a wave of nausea swept through his body. He rolled over and seized the bedpost in order to stop him falling completely off the bed.

His home was untouchable. No matter how far he walked, flew, drove, he could never reach it. He was breathing too fast, no oxygen was reaching his lungs, and Hermione scrambled across the mattress as he felt his arms giving way. She grabbed his shoulders, her body pressing on his. He could feel her, she was real, warm and breathing. "Harry, are you alright?"

He let her pull him back into the centre of the bed, and he gasped in a lungful of air to steady himself. The room was still spinning though, and he clutched onto Hermione's arms, her school jumper rough in his hands. "I'm so lost," he breathed, his eyes finding hers. He took hold of handfuls of duvet, squeezing them. "Where am I?" he asked desperately. "Where's my home?"

"Harry," she said, her tone frightened but commanding. "Harry if I'm right, your home is right where you left it! We just have to find a way to get you through that doorway again, reverse the dimensional leap."

He blinked and took a genuine breath of air, feeling heady as the oxygen found its way to into the depths of his lungs. "Really?" he said, shakily.

She smoothed his hair from his face, a very natural movement that she jerked away from embarrassed halfway through. Harry experience a flare of hatred for a world that had hurt his best friend so badly. "Um," she said, recovering herself. "Yes, I think so. We'll need to work out the exact circumstances that led up to your passing out and shifting universe, but I bet we can."

Harry covered his eyes; he could feel himself shaking as he tried to hold onto the facts. He had travelled into a world that existed alongside his own, taken another Harry's body from him, and along the way someone, somewhere had made a decision that meant Voldemort had not attacked his home, had not killed his parents and Sirius had not been framed. Where Voldemort was still at large, terrorising the wizarding world. Killing Ron and the Weasleys and Neville Longbottom amongst how many others, he had no idea. He had arrived at this place by travelling through a doorway, and if he could just find it again then maybe, just maybe he could get himself home.

And yet that also meant...That meant it was real. They were really his parents, he'd really just met his little sister. It wasn't a trick. He felt a lump thicken in his throat.

"I know I have no right to ask," he said, lowering his hands from his face. "I don't know you and I've just turned your life upside down. But, will you help me...please?"

Hermione looked at him, eyes widening and jaw dropping. "Harry," she cried, grasping his hands, her earlier embarrassment at touching him forgotten. "You have every right to ask me!" She seemed to glow as she smiled at him, shaking her head. "Damn right you've turned my life upside down. I'm a witch! I'm not some awful freak of nature, there are others like me and I'm going to find them and get myself a wand and learn magic even if I have to teach myself! The least I can do is help you get home."

Harry didn't trust himself to speak, he just pulled her into a bear hug, burying his face in her mane of hair. "Thank you," he whispered.

They lingered like that until the lump disappeared from Harry's throat. They pulled apart and he laughed in relief. "When I arrived, I was trying to test whether or not you were really Hermione, my Hermione I mean and not someone disguised as her, see if I could trust you."

She shifted on the bed. "Did I pass?" she asked quietly.

He was the one to take her hands this time. "With flying colours."

She beamed at him. "So what do we do now?"

"I was hoping you'd know," he admitted. "I guess we could go back to my house, look over my kitchen where I appeared. My parents have a ridiculous amount of books I noticed earlier, it's like they've got their own library. There might be something documented there."

Harry was quite impressed at this plan, it seemed promising and had all the right components to it that a plan should. A journey. Research. He thought Hermione would have been impressed too, but a look of mild panic swept across her face. "Oh, I don't think I can go to your house," she stammered.

"Oh," replied Harry. "Why not?"

"It's late," she explained. "I don't know you - well I mean my parents don't know that I know you. They won't let me." She folded her hands in her lap.

"Well couldn't you say you were going to the library, or a friend's house or something?" She wouldn't look up at him.

"I don't have any friends," she said quietly. "I don't go out. Ever."

Pity welled up in Harry as he looked at his best friend, but it was soon replaced with a surge of determination. "Well that's the old Hermione," he told her cheerfully, tapping her on the knee so she would look at him. She did. "Hermione the Witch already has a best friend, and he's inviting her to his house. And" he added after a beat. "He'll help her fib to her parents about going to the library if necessary." He winked at her and her tension eased into a giggle.

"Okay then," she nodded. "Lead the way."