Reality

I remember when I was told a story of crushed velvet, candle wax, and dried up flowers.

"Finite immortalis avada kedavra," he said - not shouted, not screamed - said. The force, the emotion he placed behind those words was enough to shake the earth. And it did.

The man in front of him - tall, pale, and snakelike - stopped all motion. His arm went stiff, and his wand clattered to the floor. The noise it made was uncannily loud. And his eyes - slit pupils and red iris - became...blank.

He closed his eyes, and dropped to his knees, not aware the echoing thud of a body had also been caused by his own weight hitting the ground. The resonation was deafening.

Sixteen years. It had been sixteen years since Harry had first faced this man. Sixteen years of hatred, of vengeance. Thrice had he defied the man before him, just as the prophecy had foretold.

Halloween night, 1981. The sounds of a door being forced off it's hinges, and a cold voice laughed mercilessly as James Potter shouted at his wife to run with their son. The nursery was the only place to go. Lily Potter's wand was far down the hall on her bedside table. There was no time to get it. Tears formed in her eyes as she laid little Harry down in his crib.

The figure on the bed, all dressed up in roses, calling, beckoning to sleep... offering a dream.

"Hush, my love," she whispered, gently, to the crying baby. One of her own stray tears dropped from her eyelashes, and landed purposefully onto the forehead of her only son. Lily knew it was coming. The room was growing colder by the second.

The words were as mystical as purring animals.

The lock on the door clicked. Lily's bright green eyes widened in horror. This was it. A cold wind swept the room, now. Swallowing, she whipped around, standing protectively in front of the crib, the heart of a mother beating proudly in her chest.

The circle of rage...the ghosts on the stage appeared.

"Move," he ordered, although his voice was quiet.

"Not Harry," she whispered, steadily gaining vocal strength. "Not Harry! NOT HARRY!"

The time was so tangible; I'll never let it go.

"Like mother, like daughter," he sneered. "She was quite as noisy as you are, do you know?"

His wand arm lifted from his side, Lily's eyes on it the entire time. It seemed a century before that wand actually pointed at her chest. Two words were spoken - two words of malice and chilling laughter.

"Avada kedavra!"

All life stopped behind those bright green eyes.

He turned to the baby boy, now sitting up, staring questioningly back at him. "Now, for you, my child... Avada kedavra!"

Harry Potter's forehead was still wet when a blinding shock of green light forced him against the back of his crib. A small sizzle on his skin created tears behind his eyes - his mother's eyes.

His tears blinded him, and little Harry saw no more of the world he would soon leave behind.

Ghost stories handed down, reached secret tunnels below.

"You're a wizard, Harry," a gruff voice said. For a second the sound of the storm raging against that little shack out on a rock in the sea was as real as the searing pain in his forehead.

No one could see me.

"Harry Potter," the face whispered. It stuck horribly from the backside of Professor Quirrell's head. "See what I have become? Mere shadow and vapor..."

His scar burned to no end. His head was splitting, surely. There was no escape.

"I killed your father first," it hissed. "He put up a courageous fight..."

I fell into yesterday.

"Kill him, fool! And be done!"

The echoes were horribly authentic.

"Kill him..."

Harry remembered no more of that night.

Our dreams seemed not far away.

"You're free," said his own voice.

"Yes..." Sirius's voice replied to him. "But I'm also - I don't know if anyone every told you - I'm your godfather. Once my name's cleared... if you wanted a... a different home..."

I want to stay.

"Come out, Harry... come out and play, then... it will be quick... it might even be painless... I would not know... I have never died..."

That same cold voice that had haunted his dreams was haunting his reality this time. Two spells were shouted in unison - and they connected. Power, strength, and fear coursed through the brother wands and into their owners. A bead of light was forced towards the older of the wands.

Shadowy figures began to emit from the tip. Cedric Diggory, an old Muggle man, Bertha Jorkins, and... the Potters.

The shock, strangely, numbed his white-hot fingers and forehead. It was as though he had gained back his sight from thirteen years past. And his hearing - it failed to acknowledge anything outside of the spidery dome. The voices of the Death Eaters were nothing, now.

Now, his parents' voices rang in his ears.

"Do it now. Be ready to run... do it now..."

I fell into fantasy.

Harry's emerald eyes searched frantically behind their lids for the rest of the memory, but all he found where blurred shapes and swirling colors. Somehow, it all seemed like a dream. His restless eyes calmed down, and he opened them to find himself on hands and knees, a puddle of water directly below his face. Only for a moment did he wonder where it had come from, for another drop of the liquid cascaded from his own face, breaking the surface.

Like a shattered mirror.

Mirror.

And, just as quickly as it had begun, it stopped. The pile of teardrops became glassy once more. Yet, it was almost uncanny how still they had become. A knife stabbed it's way into Harry's gut as he realized that it was not his tears that had made the puddle.

Nor was it his reflection that gazed back at him from beneath it.

The girl on the wall always waited for me, and she was always smiling.

The emerald eyes, so alike to his own, were, in fact, not his. Harry's jaw dropped open as a lock of red hair fell to obstruct his view of Lily Potter. He tried desperately to speak - to call for someone - or perhaps only to secure his own sanity.

No.

Hush, my love.

Harry nodded, never blinking. He didn't want to risk losing sight of her. But what about that memory? Where was the rest of it? Why did he only remember bits and pieces of everything? Was he truly going mad, this time?

Even as he looked at her, the image of Lily Potter began to dissipate beneath him. Her voice had long since faded from memory; but what if he couldn't remember her face? Harry's mind wandered away from the reality of what was happening, and further into the darkness that was slowly enveloping him.

The teenage death boys... and the teenage death girls...

The memories are just where you laid them.

Everyone was dancing.

It was him. The voice was quite unmistakable, as it was so close to his own. The room reverberated with each syllable. James Potter's soul was quite in the same room as his son's, now. Harry's head snapped up immediately. But he knew it would have done him no good. That voice was only a memory. That was all it had ever been, in Harry's mind. But the courage brought into the room by his father's spirit had entered into the next generation.

Harry stood.

But where did I lay them?

No one could see us, then.

He realized that the image of his mother was gone. But her face was still there. Fair skin, red hair, green eyes - the works. They were in his memory.

Memory.

No one could touch us, then.

Reality was key. It was the only way to regain what he himself had misplaced.

Tom Marvolo Riddle lay motionless on the other side of the room. Reality. He was gone. It was real this time. There was something about the aura of the room that was slowly deteriorating. The darkness was rising from the body at hand, yet there was no evil in the room. It was only illusion - all bark, and no bite. Never again would a darkness become so complete in the body of a single mortal man.

I fell into fantasy.