Shifting Realities

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true;
I stand alone without beliefs,
The only truth I know is you.

- "Kathy's Song," Simon & Garfunkel

The bell above the door to the shop rang, indicating that someone had walked through the door. From where he sat behind the counter, Harry watched as a woman and her son wandered over to look at the young adult books.

When Harry had first taken Mrs. Whelton's offer to stay the night, he really had meant to only stay just that one night. However, when the next morning had come, he had found himself reluctant to try phoning Hermione a second time, remembering the diploma that had been in his suitcase. He recalled something Hermione had once said about a Muggle Chinese philosopher. The philosopher had had a dream in which he was a butterfly. Upon awakening, he was reported as having said something along the lines of "How do I know I am a man who dreamt I was a butterfly? It may be that I am actually a butterfly dreaming that I am a man."

In the morning, Harry felt like the philosopher to a certain extent. How could he be sure that he wasn't actually Harry Evans, and not Harry Potter? The Dursleys had obviously not known about him being a wizard, and he had awakened on his birthday in the cupboard under the stairs. The only reason he had ever been moved out of that cupboard was that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had been worried about what the wizards might do to them if they continued to mistreat Harry when it became obvious from the Hogwarts letters that the wizarding world had not forgotten him. What if those letters had never come? Harry would have never been moved into Dudley's second bedroom, instead remaining in the cupboard. And he would have attended Stonewall High.

How did he know that he hadn't dreamed all of it up? Witches, wizards, Hogwarts and all, even the scar on his forehead. When there was no way to prove that magic existed other than your own memories, it was very hard to believe in it. It was, however, quite easy to believe that he really was suffering from some sort of amnesia, as Alice the librarian had suggested. Maybe he'd had a traumatic experience at Stonewall, and he'd ended up blocking out all seven years of it, then replacing it with memories he'd manufactured for himself. Fantastical memories about magic and wizards, dark lords and scars shaped like lightening bolts. In fact, the only proof he had that any of those memories could possibly be real was the fact that when he'd called the phone number he knew to be Hermione's, he'd gotten her house.

But there were even ways to explain that away... Hermione could have actually been someone from his school - only it would have been Stonewall instead of Hogwarts. Harry had no idea of where she lived, there were hundreds of houses in the suburbs that included Pivet Drive, and Hermione could live in any one of them, and could have attended Stonewall as well. And she wouldn't have known who he was, because he'd said that his last name was Potter, not Evans.

So instead of calling Hermione on August first, Harry packed up his suitcase, allowed Mrs. Whelton to feed him breakfast, and then trundled off to the local court house in order to do some research. There Harry learned that Harold J. Evans was the only child of Lily Evans, who had been a single mother struggling with a career as a journalist when she'd been killed in an auto wreak. Her son was sent to live with his only remaining family, Vernon and Petunia Dursley.

There was no record of there ever having been a Harold J. Potter. Or even a simple Harry Potter.

And so, according to the records, Harry was just your normal, average teenage Muggle male. The only thing was Harry wasn't prepared to operate on his own in the Muggle world. He didn't know what they might teach in Muggle senior schools. He was guessing the same sort of things that he remembered from primary school - math, literature, English, history, maybe some science. He couldn't go to college, that was one thing he was sure about - for one thing, he didn't have any vault of gold left to him by his parents.

Parent. Lily Evans had been a single mother.

In the end, Harry had found himself coming back to Mrs. Whelton's book shop at the end of the day, and asking her whether he might be able to have a job there. She had smiled at him happily and said that of course he could, for she was rather fond of Harry - he reminded her of the children she'd never had - and she really did need a helper in the store. He'd been installed in the bedroom in which he had spent the night before, and soon she was teaching him how to run the cash register, among other skills that were required to run a used book store.

So here he was now, behind the counter and managing the till almost five months later. Part of his pay he never saw, since Mrs. Whelton took room and board out of it. That which he did see he used to buy new clothes, and the occasional fiction book. He had a library card, and he sometimes checked books out and visited with Alice. He had pretty much come to terms with the idea that he had created seven years of his life from scratch. If one of the customers in the shop were to ask him whether he believed magic was real, he would have shaken his head and calmly replied, "No". Even though he was not exactly happy, he was content, and that was enough for him at the moment.

Watching the woman and her son from the corner of his eye, Harry leaned back in his seat, reading the book in his lap. It claimed to be a history of werewolves, and was actually quite well written, but rarely agreed with what his make believe "memories" told him. He remembered asking Remus Lupin one time during his sixth year about the subject since they hadn't covered it in detail in third, and had gone away with an earful. The book itself was one that Mrs. Whelton had acquired from an estate sale only a few weeks before, and she counted it among her very rare books. Because of this, it was kept on display below the glass countertop, and was very handy when Harry wanted something to read.

The woman was coming towards the counter with a books in hand, her son, somewhere between ten and twelve, following behind her. Harry set the werewolf book back on its stand beneath the counter, and smiled at her. She set down a copy of 'The Last Unicorn' as well as one of 'The Hobbit', and looked at Harry nervously, "You don't think that these will be too advanced for him, do you?" she nodded to her son, who was rolling his eyes at her. "I remember reading and loving them when I was a girl, but I can't remember how old I was at the time."

"Oh, I think he should do fine. You might want to reread them yourself while you're at it, I'm told that a lot of the concepts become clearer when you read them as an adult."

She nodded, then set down another book, this one a copy of 'The Mists of Avalon'. He raised an eyebrow at that, and was about to say something when she held up her hands, smiling, "I know! Don't worry, it's for me, not for him. I have a friend who's reading it, and I'm tired of reading over her shoulder. I keep on missing large parts of the story."

"Good, glad to hear that. I don't think he would last through it, anyway." Harry gave a the mother a wink, knowing that he'd just guaranteed for her that her son would try to read it. He smiled to himself, and rang up the books after glancing at their inside covers for the price. She handed over her money, picked up her books, and left. As the door of the shop closed behind her, Harry pulled out the werewolf book again.

"Happy Christmas, Harry!" Mrs. Whelton called happily as she poked her head into Harry's room. Harry groaned and turned over, pulling the pillow over his head. Mrs. Whelton, however, was not going to be put off that easily. She bounced over to the bed and pulled the pillow off of Harry's head. He glared at her.

"It is my belief that no one should be that bouncy in the morning," he stated, and made a grab for his pillow. He was unsuccessful.

"Oh, but it's Christmas, Harry! Can't you just feel the excitement building up in you?" She danced around the room in circles with his pillow.

"You're not going to leave me alone until I get up, are you?"

"Nope! Come on, they're going to read Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' aloud over at the library. They do it every year, and if you get there early enough, they sometimes let you pick out a character to read." She and his pillow danced out of the room.

Deciding that there was little chance he would get back to sleep now, Harry threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed, shoving his feet into his slippers. He felt around on the night stand for a moment, searching for his glasses, put them on, and groggily made his way out into the hall, and finally to the kitchen.

Apparently Mrs. Whelton had been up for some time before she'd decided it was time to wake him, since there was already a big stack of pancakes sitting on the table, and she was currently finishing up frying some bacon. Harry walked over and carefully took the fork from her hand, "I can do that, you go enjoy one of those delicious looking cakes, okay?"

Clasping her hands together in front of her chest, Mrs. Whelton attempted to look starry-eyed. "Finally, a man who can cook! My prayers have been answered! My dreams have come true! At long last-" Harry was quite sure that she would have continued if he'd allowed her to. Instead, he threatened to poke her with the fork and she eeped and grabbed a plate from the cupboard as well as some cutlery. "Oh, you're no fun anymore," she pouted as she slid into the breakfast nook and pulled a pancake onto her plate.

"I still let you pun, so you're in no position to complain," Harry said genially as he slid the bacon out of the pan and onto a plate. Turning off the burner, Harry grabbed a plate for himself, and went over to sit across from Mrs. Whelton in the nook.

Christmas morning passed in a happy sort of lull. Mrs. Whelton and Harry eventually got dressed and went over to the library, where Mrs. Whelton was typecast as Mrs. Cratchet and Harry managed to successfully evade Alice's efforts to get him to also read a part. He ended up sitting back with his eyes closed, letting the words flow around him in the peace of the library. When the story was finally finished, Mrs. Whelton gathered up Harry and Alice, and the three of them went back to her flat for Christmas dinner.

As they scrunched together in the nook, happily finishing off the apple pie that Mrs. Whelton had produced from the oven at the end of the meal, Alice turned to Harry with a strange look in her eye. "Harry, I've been meaning to ask you - did you ever manage to set things right with that friend of yours? You know, the one you called from the library during the summer."

Harry froze for a moment, then shook his head as he licked the sticky off his fork. "No... I don't think we're really friends anymore. I mean... Well, just too much has happened since school ended." He avoided the gazes of both women and took a sip of his hot cocoa.

Leaning back against the kitchen wall with a mug of coffee in her hand, Mrs. Whelton gave Harry a forlorn look, "You two broke up, didn't you, dear? Oh, it must have been very hard for you... just out of school, all on your own, and your girlfriend breaks up with you."

Nearly choking on his cocoa, Harry gasped, "Hermione?! My girlfriend? Don't tell me you've actually thought for five months that-" He broke off as he saw the looks on both Mrs. Whelton and Alice's faces. "Oh. You did. Um, sorry. No, Hermione and I never dated. That would be like... I don't know, incest. We were really close," he explained quietly, looking down into his mug, "Ron, Hermione, and me. Like siblings, only with less rivalry."

A hand came into his view, resting lightly on his arm, and Harry looked up to see Alice staring at him. "Can you tell us what happened?" She suddenly became flustered and looked away, adding with pink-flushed face, "That is, if you want to talk about it."

"I guess... when you don't see people every day, you sort of forget them. I guess that's what happened with the three of us. Sometimes..." Harry trailed off, searching for the right words to explain what had happened. "Sometimes it seems like I made it all up in my head and it never really happened." He'd never talked to either woman about his amnesia. Well, he'd told Alice that one time, but she probably didn't even remember it anymore. /Were we ever really friends,/ he wondered, not for the first time, /if I'm the only one who remembers it? Or if I just made it up so that I wouldn't be alone any more?/

"Well!" Mrs. Whelton set her coffee mug down on the counter and clapped her hands together, "It's that time, people! Presents!" Hitching up her skirt, she ran out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, making a sort of gleeful maniacal chuckle as she went.

Turning to look at Alice, Harry made his eyes large and mournful, asking the librarian in a pleading voice, "Has she always been like this?"

"Every holiday that I can remember, and I've known her since I was six," Alice confided. "She and her husband were friends of my parents." She scooted out of the nook, and extended a hand to Harry. He took it, allowing himself to be drawn up from the table and into the sitting room, where brightly wrapped packages lay under a small tree.

Mrs. Whelton was sitting on the long couch and had a Santa hat stuck on her head. In her lap she held a box with red and white stripes on it. She held it up to Harry. "Happy Christmas, dear."

"Thank you," said Harry, smiling. It wasn't the same as the Christmases at Hogwarts or the one Christmas at 12 Grimmauld Place that he "remembered", and probably nothing would be ever like them, but it was still special in its own way.

"You know, if you would just stop buying more books, I wouldn't have to build you new shelves, Mrs. Whelton," Harry commented as he put in the last screw that would hold up the shelf that now ran the length of the shop front of the shop, high above the windows. "Last time I checked, the whole point of owning a book store was to sell books, not buy them."

"See, your problem, Harry, is that you don't understand why I opened a used book shop in the first place. I really like to read books, so I buy a lot of them. Unfortunately, I've never had enough shelf space. Thus, voilá - book shop. I get shelf space and I have a way to get rid of my books once I'm tired of them," Mrs. Whelton explained, ticking points off on her fingers.

"Ah, so you're a compulsive reader."

"Damn straight!"

He stared at her for a moment, then rolled his eyes. "You know, I was under the impression that little old ladies were supposed to act elderly."

"Hell, man, I'm not old - I've yet to turn eighty!"

"'Yet' being the operative word in that sentence," said Harry sardonically. Climbing down the ladder, he stepped back to look at the shelf he had just installed. It was simple in design, but sturdy enough to hold the thick volumes that Mrs. Whelton wanted to keep there. Stretching his arms and back, Harry leaned against one of the stand-alone bookshelves for a bit, then pushed off and headed toward the storeroom at the back of the store. However, before he could reach the door of the storeroom, Mrs. Whelton had stepped in front of him and blocked his way.

"And just where do you think you're going, hmm?"

"Um. To get the books that are supposed to go up there," Harry said, pointing to the new shelf, "so that I can shelve them and make more room in the storeroom so that you'll be able to buy more books."

"You will absolutely no such thing. It's a beautiful spring Sunday, so we're going to go out, find a pleasant outdoor café, and have a nice little chat."

/Uh oh. Why did I get a shiver down my spine when she said the word "chat"?/ Harry wondered. "Why?" he asked plaintively.

"Partly because I feel like it, but mostly because you look like you need to talk," she said softly, rest a hand on his arm, and Harry had to concede to her point. He did need to talk to someone about this amnesia thing, but he wasn't sure whether he should, or that Mrs. Whelton was the one to speak to if he did. /Part of me really wants to,/ he admitted to himself, /but at the same time I feel the same way I did in second year, when I was "hearing voices in the walls." I don't want Mrs. Whelton to think I'm... unbalanced./

He relaxed under her touch, and allowed her to lead him out the door, "All right then, but you're paying for lunch, since it was your idea in the first place." She agreed, and they walked out of the store, locking the door behind them, and down the street.

By the time that they finally arrived at a café that met Mrs. Whelton's approval, Harry was beginning to truly dread the talk he knew was coming. After pulling out a chair for the old woman, he sat down across from her and proceeded to examine his hands with great intensity. "So, tell me, dear, what is it that's bothering you?" she asked him kindly.

Running his fingers through his bangs, Harry sighed, "I... well. See, the thing is..." He really didn't know how to go about this. /"Well, Mrs. Whelton, I was told when I turned eleven years old that I was a wizard. I spent the next seven years attending a school where I was taught how to do magic and also had to keep defeating the same Dark wizard over and over again. Only it seems that none of that was true, I made it all up, and I can't remember any part of my schooling past grammar school."/ Yeah, like that would go down well. He would probably get fired and also lose a place to live. Luckily, Mrs. Whelton decided to take matters into her own hands.

"It's about your friends from school, isn't it? What were their names again..."

"Ron and Hermione."

"Right, Ron and Hermione. You said at Christmas that the three of you were as close as siblings, but I've never seen you call either one of them. Did you all have some sort of fight right before you graduated?"

"I... I don't know. I can't remember most of last June or any of last July, so I guess we might have. But at the same time, I don't think it's that. I think it's something much more complicated." /Do you know how hard it is to have friendships with people you've created in your head?/ One of the science fiction books he'd found in the store had something like that, except in the book the main character had managed to fall in love with one of the people he'd created out of loneliness with his mind.

Mrs. Whelton was studying him. "You don't remember June or July? That is strange. Maybe you were hit on the head and now have selective amnesia? Or you could have been in a coma!" Her eyes were bright with excitement. Once again, Harry remembered that Mrs. Whelton read way too many books and was rather fond of romanticizing things.

"Something tells me that it probably wasn't a coma, Mrs. Whelton, so you can get that starry look out of your eyes. If it had been a coma, my aunt and uncle would have complained and blamed it on me."

She frowned. "For some reason I get the distinct feeling that I would not like your relatives," she said distastefully.

"Oh, I'm sure that the feeling would be mutual. They'd probably find you too... excitable, I guess." Harry grinned charmingly at her, inwardly congratulating himself on having steered her to a safer topic. He really didn't want to even think about either Ron or Hermione... it made him uncomfortable.

Hearing the jingle of the bells that indicated when someone entered the shop, Harry looked down from where he was standing at the top of the shop's rolling ladder, seeing the back of the head of an elderly man, if his hair was any indication of his age. Perched on the ladder, Harry watched for a moment as the potential customer wandered over to the first set of bookshelves and started looking at the titles, before turning his attention back to the books he was shelving. Mrs. Whelton was out for the day, shopping and running other errands, so Harry was all by himself in the shop. When a voice spoke from behind him some time later, Harry almost fell off the ladder, he had so completely forgotten the other person's presence in the store.

"Excuse me?" asked a polite voice.

"Yes sir, how may I help you?"

"I'd like to get a look at one of the books under the countertop, if I may. Someone told me that you had first edition of 'History of a Pack' - I've been looking for a copy for ages," the man admitted with a soft chuckle.

"Oh, you don't want that, it's horribly inaccurate," Harry told the man before he could stop himself. He then proceeded to softly swear to himself under his breath. 'History of a Pack' was the treatise on werewolves. Of course it was inaccurate, it was about mythical creatures. /Remember, Harry old boy, werewolves are fictional. Not fact. If you keep on thinking of things like that as fact, you're going to get some very strange looks./

"Is that so? I had the impression that most people believed werewolves to be fictitious; monsters originating from the tendency of humans to believe that there are people capable of turning into the most fearsome animal in the area."

"Exactly. The book talks of werewolves as if they are actual creatures, which is, of course, absolute nonsense," Harry replied as he descended the ladder, hoping he had suitably covered for his slip of tongue. He let go of the ladder as he reached the floor, opening his mouth about to speak again as he turned to face the customer. Whatever Harry had been intending to ask, the question died on his lips as he stared at the man in front of him.

"James...?" an equally shocked Remus Lupin asked in a quavery voice.