Parallel

He’s walking through the Common Room, he’s sure he’s walking through the Common Room; yet he can barely move his legs at all — although he’s clearly walking through the Common Room, he thinks and lets out a frustrated growl at the effort of pushing himself through the thick empty space in front of him — he feels like he’s wading through water. The subtle movement of heads turning his way keeps flickering in his peripheral, but when he glances over they all look away again. 

At the far end of the room he can see his friends and Draco, his platinum blonde hair standing out like a beacon in the fog, guiding Harry forward. With each step, the air in front of Harry seems to grow thicker and thicker, and he has to put his whole weight into each push forward and still he only manages to push himself an inch or so forward. It gets harder and harder to suck it into his lungs as well, his heart hammering desperately at the lack of oxygen. 

His friends and Draco all turn their heads to look at him suddenly, and Harry staggers forward another step. But then, as one, they all stand up and turn their backs to him instead and no matter how much he pushes himself forward now, Harry can’t get anywhere. He’s stuck in the middle of the floor, staring in confusion as people scatter in every direction, clearing a large space all around him, and turning their backs. 

The invisible force holding Harry in place suddenly gives way and he stumbles forward, nearly falling flat on his face. He manages to right himself and steady his legs under him, spinning around to try and get his bearings back. It’s dark, almost too dark to see anything. Scrambling for his wand, Harry fires off a Lumos and keeps turning around, expecting to see the faces of his fellow Slytherins staring back at him in the darkness, but there’s no-one there. He’s all alone. 

And not in the Common Room anymore, he realises with a sinking feeling. He’s not quite sure where he is, but he’s definitely not in the Common Room. Judging by the chill in the air and smell of damp, he hasn’t left the dungeons. But it’s a part of the dungeons he’s fairly certain he’s never been in before. 

He holds his lit wand out in front of him and begins to inch his way forward, further into the darkness, searching with his eyes for a sign of a wall, or a statue, or something. Even if this isn’t a corridor, the rooms in the dungeons aren’t normally very big. As far as Harry is aware, the Slytherin Common Room is the largest and all other rooms that he’s been in — the Potions classroom, Professor Snape’s office, the Quidditch cave — are all much smaller and narrower. And even if he’d been in the Common Room, he should have reached the wall by now, he thinks. But, despite having been inching forward for what feels like forever, he hasn’t encountered anything but darkness. 

Unless… Harry suddenly remembers another room, not technically in the dungeons, but definitely cold and damp like the dungeons, which was much larger than the Common Room. He feels his heart pinch at the memory, and holds his wand higher above his head, squinting into the darkness, half-expecting half-dreading to see the outline of stone pillars, maybe a massive stone face… 

What was that? Harry’s heart jumps in his chest and he spins around on his heel, searching the darkness frantically with his eyes. He’d heard something. He could have sworn —

”Zzzzz…”

There it is again! It almost sounds like —

”Zzzzz…. Zzzzz…”

Someone snoring, Harry lets out a huff. 

The snoring stops with a sudden snort. 

”What — what —?” a voice mumbles groggily. 

Harry follows the sound and walks over, holding his wand aloft. In moments, the shimmering outline of a ghost appears in the darkness in front of him. It’s the ghost of a man, and a very portly man at that, Harry thinks. 

The ghost blinks sleepily and looks around, clearly bemused, even as he lets out a face-stretching yawn. 

”Is the party over?”

Harry frowns. 

”Harry?” 

Spinning around, Harry searches the darkness for the second voice. But there’s no-one there. He turns back to the ghost to ask him where they are, but now the ghost is gone too. 

”Harry?”

Annoyed, Harry spins around again and walks with purpose straight forward into the darkness. Barking, Yes, hello, at the shadows and receiving no reply. 

”What”, he snaps loudly, turning this way and that, slashing the darkness with his wand. ”What do you want? Where are you? Show yourself!”

Suddenly, the light from his wand lands on something pale white in the darkness and he nearly drops it as he startles. 

Draco’s face and blonde hair floats towards him, almost as if he were a ghost as well. 

No, Harry thinks desperately. No, he’s not!

”Where are you?” Draco demands. 

”Wh-what?”

”Show yourself!”

”I — I —”

”Where are you, Harry?” Draco all but screams into his face. 

”I’m — I’m here — I’m right here”, Harry stammers, but the other boy simply shakes his head, his eyes filling with some kind of emotion that makes Harry’s stomach churn. ”I am — I’m here!”

”You’ve left me…”

”I haven’t, I’m right here!” 

Draco slowly turns his face away and just like that, the darkness has swallowed him up again. Harry lurches forward, hoping to grab him before he disappears. But it’s useless. 

He’s alone in the dark once more. 

”Harry?”

”Nnnn…” Harry moans, tossing his head from side to side on his pillow. ”Nnnn… Noo… Draco…”

”Er — Harry, mate?”

Harry blinks his eyes open and looks around blearily.

”You awake?” The voice of Dean Thomas adds on the other side of his bed-hangings. 

”Er…” Harry croaks and sits up heavily, rubbing sleep from his eyes. 

Feeling around for his wand and pulling the bed-hangings aside with a flick, he reveals an owlishly blinking Dean Thomas standing next to his bed.

”Sorry to wake you, mate…” he says awkwardly. 

”… ’s alright…” Harry mumbles with a yawn, still rubbing at his eyes. 

”It’s just that we’re heading down to breakfast and thought you might be hungry too?”

Harry blinks and squints blearily at a figure hovering in the doorway behind Thomas and feels around for his glasses. 

”Ehm… No, not really — thanks — thanks, though — Thomas… And, er…”

Harry puts his glasses on and, unsurprisingly, the figure in the doorway turns out to be an anxious-looking Longbottom when it comes into focus. He and Thomas both look at him strangely. 

”… L-Longbottom”, Harry adds stiffly and gives the boy a small nod of acknowledgement, then turns back to Thomas and gives him a pinched smile. 

Thomas blinks at him again, but then returns the smile politely. 

Harry watches both Gryffindors scurry out of the dorm without a backward glance and slumps back against his pillows again. Staring up at the four-poster’s canopy, a thought suddenly strikes him; he never did get around to Sticking luminous balloons in the canopy of his bed — his actual bed, back in the Slytherin dorms — like Draco showed him. 

Not that he would need any here, he thinks, turning his head to squint into the bright sunlight streaming in through the window next to the bed.

Then another thought strikes him. There are five four poster beds in this dorm. Harry quickly counts the Fifth Year Gryffindor boys in his head — and it is quick, because there are only three of them — even with Harry as a temporary fourth one, that still leaves one spare bed. 

Am I missing someone? Harry thinks, frowning. No, there’s only the three of them. Ron, Longbottom and Thomas. Blaise is joking about it all the time, about how in their year, Gryffindor is the smallest House, with only three girls and three boys, and yet they still get all of the attention…

Well, Harry thinks bitterly. I guess there’s three girls and four boys now. 

He hadn’t noticed the night before, because it felt just like his own bed, but now with the sunlight streaming in through the window — way too bright for first thing in the morning, by the way — it’s glaringly obvious that he’s not in his own bed, that everything is wrong. The bed might feel the same, but it looks all wrong with its red and golden bedding. Harry kicks the duvets away from him with a disgruntled grunt and gets to his feet. Everything in the dorm is wrong. Bright and wrong. 

The feeling doesn’t go away all day, the wrongness of absolutely everything — and it’s not just the colour scheme and the natural light, it’s the other students and teachers he spots in the corridors and Great Hall when he finally ventures out of the dorm around lunch time, all familiar faces but not quite right—there’s something off about every single person he sees. Small, subtle things. So small and subtle that Harry can’t even pinpoint exactly what it is with half of them, but there is definitely something with all of them. Something off, and wrong, and the fact that they look and sound so familiar just highlights it and makes Harry feel uneasy. 

Professor Snape is the most obvious, but that’s only because he seems to be scowling darkly at Harry every time Harry glances over at him. After the sixth or so time, Harry stops. But he can still feel the Potions Master’s glare trying to burrow into the back of his head. 

He wolfs down his food as quickly as he can chew it, so he can get out of the Great Hall again. But since he’s in no hurry to get back to Gryffindor Tower, he walks outside and ambles around aimlessly until the sun begins to set behind the hill. 

It’s still fairly light out, but the air definitely gets chillier and since he left without his cloak or his jumper, he begins to feel cold. For a moment he considers staying out for a bit longer anyway, the thought of returning to the red and gold wrongness that now seems to be his life almost too miserable to bear. But halfway through the moment, a particularly vicious gust of wind whacks him in the face and sends his shirt flapping frantically around his body. He takes a deep breath and a subtle shiver accompanies it on the way out again. 

Fine, he grumbles to himself. I’ll go back. 

Once inside the castle, Harry is halfway across the Entrance Hall when he realises he’s walking towards Slughorn’s Stairs, the shortest route to the Slytherin Common Room from here, and is just about to veer back towards the marble staircase when a very familiar mop of blonde hair suddenly appears in the doorway to the dungeons and right in Harry’s line of sight. He stops dead. 

Draco stops in tracks as well, his eyes widening and his face going even paler. In the next second, Crabbe and Goyle bump into him and Harry is seized by an impulse to move forward. He’s not sure why, or what he means to do, but seeing the two brutish boys that close to his Draco makes his heart lurch, and not in a pleasant way. 

A very furious scowl distorts the blonde’s face and he marches right up to Harry and pins him with a dark look. 

Ah, yes, Harry thinks — not my Draco. 

”You’re dead, Potter…” Draco hisses and he’s standing so close to Harry that he can feel the warm gust of his breath as it hits him in the face. 

”Yeah?” Harry mutters. 

”Yeah…” the other boy growls. ”You’re going to pay. I’m going to make you pay for what you have done to my father…”

Harry frowns, momentarily distracted by the disconcerting sound of Crabbe cracking his knuckles. 

”What — what happened to your dad?”

”Is that meant to be funny?” Draco bites out. 

”No, I — I don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t do anything to your dad, okay? I—”

He’s suddenly cut off as Goyle hits him in the chest — not hard, just enough to make him stagger half a step back and stop talking. At the subtle sound of crinkling paper, Harry looks down and realises the other boy is in fact pressing a copy of the Prophet to his chest. Harry reaches up to take it, and Goyle quickly snaps his hand back before they accidentally touch each other. 

Giving the other three Slytherins a questioning look, and receiving nothing but menacing glares back, Harry swallows a sigh and unfolds the newspaper to look at the front page. 

”HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMES RETURNS”, the headline screams and underneath it is a photograph of  a boy collapsed on the floor, panting by the looks of it. When Albus Dumbledore appears in the photograph and puts an arm around the boy’s shoulder to gently guide him up to sitting, Harry realises who the boy is — it’s him. Or this world’s version of himself, at least. Swallowing thickly, he watches as the Harry in the photo turns his head to glare back at him tiredly. He’s dirty and sweaty, with several cuts and bruises on his face.

Harry quickly scans the text underneath the photograph, feeling oddly removed from his own body as he takes in the words; Fudge admitting that Voldemort is back and losing control of the Dementors; Voldemort and several Death Eaters breaking into the Ministry of Magic on Thursday night — Wait, Thursday night, that’s the same night Draco and I went there, to the Department of Mysteries! Voldemort was there as well? 

”I don’t… I don’t know what to say”, Harry mumbles, then looks up. ”What happened?”

”What?” Draco snaps. ”What do you mean ’what happened’? You were there!”

”I know, but…”

”You were there! You did this! My father is Azkaban and it’s all your fault—!” the blonde says, his voice steadily rising in volume and finally he gives Harry a rough shove in the chest. 

Harry staggers back. 

”They arrested him? But — he Disapparated — you both Disapp—”

”Didn’t you hear what I said?” Draco hollers. ”I am going to make you pay!”

He lurches forward again, fingers tense and stretched out like claws and reaching for Harry. 

”What is the meaning of this?” an all-too-familiar voice suddenly booms out. 

Draco immediately jumps back from Harry as though doused with cold water, arms falling back to his sides. Snape comes stalking up to them, the black curtains of his greasy hair flopping angrily around the dark scowl on his face and his black robes billowing menacingly behind him. Coming to an abrupt stop right next to them, he favours each boy with venomous glare. When none of them say anything, he inhales deeply through his nose and then whips his head around to glare at Harry and barks at him to ”Speak!”

”Why don’t you ask Draco”, Harry snaps before he can stop himself. 

Snape drags another deep breath in through his nose, something that seems to cause him significant amounst of discomfort, if not pain, judging by the thin line of his mouth and the way his left eye twitches. Harry slumps back slightly, and mutters a sullen Sorry, Sir.

Snape inches slightly closer to him. Harry feels himself tensing and glances up at him warily. The older man reaches up to grab a hold of his robe front, curling each delicate finger slowly but surely, one at a time, until his whole hand is a tight fist and he pulls Harry closer, ever so slightly. 

”I don’t know what game you are playing, Potter… But rest assured, I am going to find out…”

”Y-yes, Sir—”

Harry is suddenly thrust backwards as Professor Snape unhands him again, rather violently. 

”Another impertinent word out of you and you will spend the rest of the school year scrubbing cauldrons”, Snape growls, pointing a trembling finger at his face. 

Harry opens his mouth to speak again, intent on explaining that his apology was sincere, but he quickly snaps it shut again. He won’t believe me, he thinks. 

”A wise move”, Snape murmurs. ”For once… Now get out of my sight.”

Harry nods hurriedly and walks around the other man, and the three Slytherin boys, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. He takes the marble stairs two at a time and by the time he reaches the second landing, most of his anger subsided. He keeps his eyes on the ground anyway, as he bypasses several smiling Gryffindors on his way up to Gryffindor Tower, just in case any accidental eye contact might encourage people to try and talk to him. 

It’s not that the Gryffindors are that bad, Harry tells himself — or rather his inner Draco when he pops into his mind with an infuriating smirk on his face — They’re not, Harry insists. That’s not why I want them to leave me alone. I just — I just want to be left alone, that’s all!

Also, he knoes that if he tried to talk to anyone, whether they be a Gryffindor or a Slytherin, it would only be a matter of seconds before he said something that would seem suspicious. Whoever this version of Harry is, whatever he’s like and no matter how similar to each other they are, they can’t be that similar — after all, this version of Harry ended up in Gryffindor. 

If his Sorting was anything like mine, the Hat would have given him a choice, Harry thinks. And he chose Gryffindor, the House of reckless bravery and pigheadedness —

His inner Draco smirks again. 

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with bravery and determination and nerve, Harry quickly backtracks. ButI would stick out like a sore thumb, because I’m not like that!

’Aren’t you?’ the imaginary Draco says. 

Oh, shove off, Harry thinks grimly. It’s just too much of a faff. Better to just keep to myself until I figure this out. 

He reaches the landing where the large portrait of a similarly large woman hangs and gives her a sour look. She glances at him, then goes back to chatting with whoever is just out of frame. 

”Excuse me”, Harry grouses. 

”One moment, Maud… Yes?” the fat lady snaps at Harry. 

”Can you you let me in to my Common Room”, Harry all but shouts back. 

”I don’t know, it depends”, the portrait says, matching his tone. ”Do you know the password?”

”Oh, for…” Harry thrusts his head back and glares at the ceiling. Password — what was it? — McGonagall said it last night — what was it?! 

”Well?”

”I’m thinking!” Harry snaps. 

”So rude…” another woman’s voice can be heard muttering from outside the portrait’s frame. 

”Something lion”, Harry says. 

”I beg your pardon?” the fat lady raises an eyebrow at him, looking anything but impressed. 

”It was two words — in Latin — something leonis, I can’t remember the first word, will you just let me in?”

”It’s Cauda—”

Harry spins on his heel and stagger back slightly. The Weasette — Ginny, he quickly corrects himself —  is standing just behind him, flanked by Longbottom and Thomas and, walking up just behind them, Harry is pleasantly surprised to see Seamus. 

”Hiya Harry”, he says, when he catches Harry staring at him.

”Hi… Sorry, what?” Harry turns back to the Weasley girl. 

”The password. It’s Cauda Leonis.”

”Correct”, the fat lady drones and in the next second, the whole portrait swings forward to reveal the hole behind it and nearly whacking Harry in the shoulder in the process. 

”How are you doing, Harry?” Ginny adds. 

”I’m fine”, he says shortly, climbing through the portrait hole.