Chapter 2
Harry’s eyes drifted open slowly and he stretched luxuriously in the large four poster bed on which he lay. That was a really weird dream, he mused to himself as he finally sat up. He shook his head a few times to rid it of the nightmarish images that wanted to linger before heading to the en suite bathroom. He could hear his mum’s tuneless singing as she prepared breakfast and Harry inhaled deeply, mouth watering at the scents of bacon, blueberry pancakes and waffles that drifted up the stairs. He rushed his bathroom routine, dressing quickly and vaulting down the stairs. For some strange reason he wanted to make sure that his mum and dad and dad were still here. That nothing horrible had happened to any of his parents.
“Ah,” said Severus Potter-Snape, one corner of the triad that included James Snape-Potter and Lily Potter-Snape. Harry elected to go with Harcourt Snape-Potter, just to even things out. “Here’s the birthday boy, finally emerged from his cocoon. Happy birthday, Harcourt.”
“Thanks, Dad,” the teen answered with a wrinkled nose. Severus was the only one to call him Harcourt; everyone else called him Harry, and that was how he liked it. He sat down at the table, grinning widely at all the food on the table. Everything was his favorite, and he looked forward to sampling all the delicacies. The three adults watched in astonishment as their son ate as if he’d been starved for a very long time.
“Slow down, son,” James said gently. “You’ll end up choking if you keep on like that.”
“Sorry,” Harry murmured through a mouthful of food, swallowing with difficulty before shooting a sheepish grin. “I had the weirdest dream and it just won’t go away.”
“Maybe if you tell us about it, that’ll take its power away,” Lily told her son reasonably. Harry set down his cutlery and took a long swallow of the orange juice before he settled in to regale his family with his borderline out of body experience.
“Well, I was in Hogwarts, only I was an orphan. Mum, you and Father were killed, and Dad was the potions professor at the school.” He turned to his dad, eyes unaccountably sad. “You were so mean to me. You picked on me and bullied me relentlessly. You docked points and assigned detentions if I breathed wrong. I hated and feared you the entire time I was at Hogwarts. That finally stopped when I realized that you'd spent most of my life there protecting me.” Shocked, Severus stood and wrapped his son in a smothering hug, trying to soothe away the lingering terror in his boy’s emerald eyes.
“You know that I love you more than anything else in the world, right?” the Potions Master murmured in his child’s ear, hoping that the reassurance would chase away the terror he’d seen in eyes so like his beloved’s.
“I know,” Harry whispered, leaning up to brush a kiss to his dad’s cheek. Satisfied that his son was all right for the moment, Severus retook his seat and settled in for what would obviously be a rather disturbing nightmare.
“Albus Dumbledore abandoned me on aunt Petunia’s doorstep in the middle of the night on November third,” he continued softly, eyes distant as he recalled the dream.
“Dumbledore?!” James barked loudly, startling the hell out of his son. “What is the Dark Lord doing abandoning my son anywhere?!”
“That doesn’t matter, James,” Lily said sternly. “You need to focus.” She turned back to her son, sorrow in her eyes. “How do you know it was Petunia’s house, Harry? Petunia and Vernon are dead, remember? They and their ten month old son died in an automobile accident. They swerved to avoid a deer and rolled the car over an embankment. It burst into flames on impact.”
“Because I grew up in it,” he replied sadly. “They were so cruel to me. They beat me and starved me and locked me up in a tiny boot cupboard underneath their front stairs. I didn’t know anything about you until I was brought to the wizarding world by Rubeus Hagrid.”
“Hagrid!!” It was Severus’ turn to exclaim in shock. “He’s been in Azkaban ever since his vicious pet acromantula mauled a couple of students. It was only sheer luck that Tom Riddle survived the spider’s poison, but he’s been disfigured because of it.”
“Can we get back to the dream, please,” the redhead snarled loudly, startling her husbands with her venom. Suitably cowed, both men settled back into their chairs and looked like unruly school boys who had been caught pulling girls’ pigtails.
“The Weasleys were my surrogate family, and I was best friends with most of their boys as well as a strange, bushy haired muggleborn named Hermione,” Harry continued quietly. “G-Ginevra was in l-love with me and stalked me all over the school. I h-hated Draco and was a b-bastard to the Slytherins. Dumbledore set up a bunch of tests through the years to see if I could kill Tom. Apparently, in that world Tom was the Dark Lord while Albus and the Order were the good guys. I was finally able to eliminate all of the soul containers that Lord Voldemort,” Harry snorted loudly, chuckling for a moment at the ridiculous name before continuing, “created to become immortal. On the battlefield, my friends slaughtered all of the Slytherins that Voldemort didn’t kill, and then they murdered Draco right in front of me. By that time he and I had fallen in love and they killed him!” Harry wailed, covering his face with his hands as he sobbed out his overwhelming grief. Severus, James and Lily pulled him from his seat and guided him into the living room, where they all settled on a gigantic, deep-cushioned sofa where they snuggled him between them and soothed his pain as only parents could.
It took some time, but Harry finally calmed down and continued his tale, eyes puffy and red from the force of his sobs. “I watched Dumbledore behead Dad with the sword of Gryffindor, and by that time I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted to die. So I went up to Voldemort and blasted him into pieces, and then I died.” Silence greeted the end of the tale as Harcourt’s parents pondered all that they’d been told.
“What has you so stressed, darling?” Lily finally asked. When the other two men looked at her in confusion, she elaborated. “There’s something that’s bothering Harry, and it’s manifesting in that ridiculous nightmare.”
“I-I don’t know, Mum,” the teen answered slowly. “I feel like this life is the lie, and that the one I’d dreamed about is real.”
“How long have you been feeling like this, sport?” James queried, hazel eyes worried.
“Off and on for most of my life,” Harry replied softly. He flinched at the gasps and quickly reassured his parents. “Don’t get me wrong; I love you all so much. Everything has been perfect. Maybe too perfect. I keep expecting the other shoe to drop.”
“It’s not unusual for you to feel as if your life is a play, and that your real existence is beyond the stage lights,” Lily said, sinking into psychologist mode easily. "Have you had that nightmare often?”
“Every year on my birthday since I was ten,” Harcourt confessed sheepishly.
“And you didn’t tell anyone?” Severus asked incredulously.
“I didn’t think anything of it, and I never really remembered it. It was just, last night it all seemed so real and it made me remember all the other times I had the same dream.” Harry looked at his parents, a low grade panic in his eyes. “Am I going insane?” he whispered fearfully.
“No darling,” Lily replied, pulling Harry into a soothing hug. “I think it stems from the attack we suffered when you were three. It was just after your birthday party when Dumbledore’s Order of the Dragon broke through the wards. If it weren’t for Lucius, Narcissa, Barty, Bella, Rudo and Rab, we all would have died.”
“Why did they attack us, Mum?” her son asked curiously. “You never did tell me the reasoning behind the assault on our home.”
“Albus Dumbledore heard a prophecy that foretold of a child with the power of Merlin being born as the seventh month dies,” James answered for his mum. “This child will lead the wizarding world into everlasting peace by vanquishing the Dark Lord Dumbledore. He was afraid of you, so he thought to assassinate us unexpectedly.”
“I was three for fuck’s sake,” Harry barked angrily. “What the bloody hell could I do at three?!”
“Language,” Lily hissed, making Harcourt duck his head, ashamed of his loss of control.
“It’s the potential of you that he fears,” Severus picked up the narrative. “It’s the reason we broke away from him and hid before you were born. He kept going on and on about taking the ‘prophecy child’ and training him to be a soldier for the Dark. I couldn’t let that stand, so I told your mother and father about the old man’s plans and we hid away in Godric’s Hollow. Unfortunately, our secret keeper for the fidelius was a spy for Dumbledore and that’s how he got past the wards.”
“That’swhy Lupin and Black stopped coming around,” Harry said as a light dawned in his brain. “They were the ones to sell you out, weren’t they?”
“They were,” Lily replied angrily. “It was only by sheer luck that Peter Pettigrew learned of their plans and was able to alert us so we could watch out for the attack. That the old bastard did it on your birthday...”
“Language, mum,” Harcourt murmured with a wry grin. She blushed and nodded sheepishly, accepting the gentle rebuke for what it was.
“We’re now in an unplottable manor house on the border of Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire,” James told his son happily. “The ancient wards that the Malfoys had been layering on their property for centuries are impenetrable. They graciously offered to let us purchase a plot of land far enough away from their manor that we’re not up in each others’ business all the time. It’s been a godsend to be able to go outside and garden or fly without worrying if we’ll be spotted.”
“I like it because I’m near Draco and I can see him whenever I want,” Harry chimed in with a sappy grin.
“I’m very glad to hear that, Harry,” came a voice from the doorway. Everyone turned to see the blond standing just inside the room, smiling at his fiancé with love in his silver eyes.
“Draco!” Harry yelped as he leaped to his feet. He charged over to the other teen and wrapped him in a squeezing hug, murmuring his love and devotion in the blond’s ear and making him blush.
“What’s going on, Harry?” the Malfoy heir asked softly, wrapping his arms around the trembling form and trying to soothe him.
“He had a rather upsetting nightmare,” Lily told the blond quietly. “We were just hashing it out, trying to see where the roots of the thing started. It seems the memories of that attack so many years ago have burrowed deeply into his psyche and they only come out on his birthday.”
“How bad is the nightmare, love?” the older teen asked softly.
“I watch you die,” Harry whispered, eyes down. “I watch Dad die before I have to kill Tom. I’m betrayed by all of my friends, who are the ones to kill you and the Slytherins, while Dumbledore killed Dad.”
“Oh, Harry,” Draco murmured on a sigh, “I’m so sorry that you’ve suffered with this nightmare for so long. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will go away until Dumbledore and his sycophants are finally gone for good.”
“You wanna know what the worst part was?” Harry asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes. Draco’s brow furrowed; he thought his own death would have been the worst part. “I was friends with Weasleys.”
“Oh, well then I can consider my death a mercy,” the blond said dramatically, hand clutching his chest over his heart. “That you would willingly consort with the lowest of the low...Have you no shame?” Harry laughed and everyone in the room let out quiet sighs of relief that the worst was finally past. Emerald eyes met hazel and ebon and communicated a commitment to try and help Harcourt work through the anxieties he seemed to have from the attack and the betrayal of his once-godfather and honorary uncle.