It Never Happened

it never happened

There was a blinding green flash and Harry's shaking hand fell to his side, limp, his wand trembling violently before it clattered onto the floor. He could hear voices. Faint, distant voices. They were speaking familiar sounds in familiar tones. They sounded worried, but he couldn't understand them.

The green light was still there, fading, a little star in the infinite blackness around him.

It looked familiar, too, somehow.

As if he had seen it in a dream long ago...

*

Harry Potter woke up with a start to the voice of his mother after a long, disturbing dream. He closed his eyes, sitting up in bed, trying to remember the details. There had been someone ... someone he hated. Many people he hated, all crowding around him in a dark room.

In desperation, Harry got up. Trying to remember it would be like trying to remember every dream he had had for the past seven years. He had been sent to a plethora of psychiatrists to examine him, his sleep patterns, his R.E.M., to see if there was a possible explanation for these dreams which had started so abruptly on his eleventh birthday.

No one could give him and his family an answer.

They were just as confused by it as he was.

Finally admitting defeat, Harry had done his best to try to ignore the dreams. The strangest thing about them, though, was that they seemed to succeed each other, one chapter in a story following the last. And they had been so vivid when he had had them. Whole characters created out of his subconscious. More specifically, Harry could remember someone named Ron. There had been a Ron and he was always with Harry. Red hair, very tall. He was the most distinct memory. There had been a girl in almost every dream, as well. A very long name, Hermione. And a castle...

And magic...

There had been magic.

Ever since Harry had been a very little boy living with his aunt and uncle in Surrey, he had always hoped that there was possibly another world out there, one filled to the brim with magic. But when he had turned eleven, he had been sent to an orphanage and then his new family had adopted him.

They seemed scared at first. Scared of Harry.

But the years passed and he had won their confidence. Harry didn't know why they had chosen him if they really were as scared as they had seemed, but he had never asked them.

Abandoning all reminiscence, Harry pushed his glasses onto his nose and went down the stairs, following the smell of waffles wafting from the kitchen.

*

Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall walked away from the Muggle home in which they had just deposited Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. It was unsettlingly similar to the circumstances seventeen years ago. Harry had just defeated Voldemort, as he had seventeen years ago, he had just been dropped off in some Muggle home, as he had been seventeen years ago, but this time, his memory was gone. To him, the past seven years of his life were folded into a dream and arranged behind a series of lies he naively believed. True, he resisted to most mind-altering spells, but Dumbledore was finally able to do it.

"Is it possible he will ever remember, Albus?"

"There's always a chance, Minerva. Always a chance."

The two professors walked down the Muggle road. Had anyone kept watching, they would have seen the silver man disappear, and a stiff tabby cat replace the spectacled woman.

*

Ron Weasley blew gently on the wet ink carefully penned on the parchment. He read and reread his letter to his old best friend, knowing that Harry would never get a chance to read it. He was a Muggle, now. A legend in the wizarding world, his, Ron's world. But in his own mind, Harry was just a Muggle, and this time, there would be no Hagrid to rescue him, no Hogwarts Express to take him away to a magical place where his life would change forever.

Harry Potter's life was finished changing.

Ron folded the parchment and carefully slipped it into an envelope. He sealed it haphazardly with some red wax and placed the Gryffindor weight he had gotten for graduation into it, sealing the letter that would never be read with a finality none could ignore.

In that envelope which Ron slid under his mattress was a recollection of the adventures Harry and Ron had shared. Memories, nothing particular. That one time they got locked in the girl's bathroom for an hour and were forty-five minutes late to transfigurations, for example. And a picture Ron had taken of the two of them after a spectacular Quidditch victory against Slytherin in sixth year.

Nothing special.

"When it's time," said Ron quietly to himself. "I'll let him remember me."