The Other Potter: Book One

Chapter Sixteen: Facades.

[Chapter Sixteen: Facades. Edited.]

I woke up from a nightmare – voices, laughter, crying, voices, cries, green light, green light. It was a memory, that much I knew, but it wasn't mine. It couldn't have been mine.

My room felt too small, too cold, too confined, so I made my way downstairs, took an armchair closest to the fire and hugged my bony knees to my chin.

It was not long before someone came downstairs from the boys' dormitory. It was Harry. He saw me, yawned, and walked the rest of the way over to sit with me in front of the dying embers of the fire.

"What are you doing up?" He asked.

"Nightmare. You?"

"Same here. I think... I think I just dreamt about my parents being murdered." He shook his head, as though trying to rid his head of the thought. There was a slight pause.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you," I said very quietly. "I know you'd give up being 'the boy who lived' in a heartbeat if it would bring them back. It's not fair."

He stared at me, "In all my life, no one has ever said they're sorry about it. I just get told I look like my parents a lot. I don't even know what they looked like."

"You've never seen a photo?"

"No. None. I doubt there's a photo of me anywhere, either. Not that it matters."

"Of course it matters. I didn't fully know what I looked like until I came here. I'd only seen glimpses. I'd never seen my face. These things are important, I think."

"I'd never spoken to anyone outside my family."

"I wasn't allowed to make eye-contact with mine."

"Willow, our lives have sucked. Hogwarts is my home. I've finally escaped from it all, you know?"

"I wish I knew, Harry. My life continues to suck. I can never escape it."

"Something happened to you recently, didn't it?"

"Don't ask me, because I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because then it becomes real."

"Everything is real."

I'm not, the words didn't quite escape my mind, but they were there. The words were real, the thought was real, even if I was not. I don't even make sense.

"I'm glad you talk more, now. I like hearing what you have to say," Harry bumped his head against mine, very gently, and wandered off to bed.

I couldn't help my thoughts.

Why would he want to spend time with you anyway?

You're just a waste of space.

Everybody hates you.

Hermione came back the day before term started and I gave her the world's biggest hug. She was torn between disappointment that we couldn't find Flamel, and dismay that Harry had been out of bed three nights in a row – apparently, he'd gotten an invisibility cloak for Christmas, and had been using it to read in the restricted section.

"I swear I have heard the name before," Harry kept mumbling. Hermione made us keep skimming through books during our breaks. Harry had less time than us because of Quidditch but he still tried. My bloodroot potion had arrived and was working. My nightmares were silent but getting worse. They were mostly about Christmas Eve, but with slight alterations.