What Is Reality?

By: Me

"Potter, are you awake? Potter!"

A sharp poke to his arm. Someone is violently shaking him awake.

Awake? Had he been asleep then...? He´d been having the loveliest dream...

He opens his eyes a fraction. Blurred shapes are swimming in and out of focus. Bright light is pounding painfully in his eyes. He tries to sit up and becomes even more aware of his throbbing head.

"Ron...Ron? Hermi-" Harry hears himself mumble vaguely. He blinks and squints up.

"What´re you talking about, boy?" comes a disgruntled voice that sounds familiar.

Harry gets up, shading his eyes against the blazing artificial light. Dizziness is gathering at the edges of his brain; he still feels dangerously likely to topple over.

"Uncle-Uncle Vernon...?" he falters. "But...but what-what´s going on? Where´re...Ron and Hermione? The end of year feast...we defeated Voldemort..."

"Having delusions, are you?" smirks Dudley, who looks as fat and abominable as ever.

Is this a joke? Are they only pretending they don´t understand lest a nurse hear? He knows they don´t like the mention of his strangeness...

"What´re you on about, Potter?" growls Uncle Vernon, peering at Harry with a very ugly look as if he is deliberately trying to waste his time.

"Hogwarts!" exclaims Harry frantically. Right now, he doesn´t care if the Dursleys punish him for saying the name aloud. "My parents! They were a witch and wizard, don´t you remember? Voldemort murdered them!"

"Didn´t we tell you, or are you deaf?" snarls Uncle Vernon. "Your parents died in a car crash! Leaving us to bloody well take care of you and your massive hospital bill," he grumbles. "You were in a coma for months."

"NO, I WASN´T!" Harry explodes. "I went to Hogwarts! I´m a wizard!"

He can see a nurse rush past and press a button, which buzzes loudly. He hears her saying urgently into an intercom, "Problem in Room 201."

"But...but..." Harry says desperately. He feels his forehead. Trembling fingers search wildly over his skin.

He bolts up; the nurse tries to seize him, but he wrests himself away. He looks into his hazy reflection in the window.

"Where is it?" he cries. "Where´s it gone?"

Aunt Petunia is tugging Dudley back a pace, away from him.

The door bursts open, and a doctor and three nurses in white uniforms march toward him.

"Where´s it gone?" Harry yells at them.

"Come on, now...don´t want to hurt yourself..." says the doctor in a jovial voice.

Behind his back he gestures to the nurses, who grab Harry by the arms and haul him away from the window. Harry is struggling tooth and nail to get free.

"Hold him down while I...hold him down! Securely! Don´t let him get away!"

A syringe appears at the corner of Harry´s vision. The needle plunges into his flesh.

"Where´s my scar?" Harry is screaming. "Where´s my scar?"

The Dursleys can still hear his frenzied voice even as the nurses drag him out of the room and down the corridor. Gradually, his voice fades as the drug begins to take effect.

Petunia and Vernon exchange glances. "What scar?"