Harry Potter and the Well-Remembered Dream

by Setcheti

 

 

Written after a rather silly discussion about whether or not J.K. Rowling was going to kill Harry off in the last book, and about what might result if she did.  She could do it if she wanted to, of course, because she owns Harry and his universe and can do with them as she pleases.  This is just…idle and entirely profitless speculation.

 

Readers familiar with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone may notice that a few bits of this story are word-for-word out of the book.  That was completely  intentional, and done for effect.

 

Harry woke up and blinked into the dark, brushing away an inquisitive spider without really thinking about it and picking up a splinter off the wooden wall in the back of his hand for his trouble.  The air was hot and close, it was hard to breathe, but he didn’t panic – he’d woken up this way on multiple occasions in his short lifetime and so had grown used to it.  Enclosed spaces, and their attendant dirt, dust and bugs, had ceased to bother him long ago.

 

He hadn’t thought to wake up in this condition now, though…

 

A harsh thumping near his head shook the wooden walls and dislodged a few more spiders.  Harry sat up quickly, brushing himself off as best he could in the dark.  A screech of metal on metal sounded above his head as a bolt was drawn back, and then a crack of light appeared and abruptly became a blinding flood that made him blink and shield his eyes as the door to his cupboard was thrown wide.  “No funny business, now!” his Aunt Petunia snapped at him. “I’m only letting you out because I’ve things to do and you need to get the breakfast.  And after you’re done with the washing up you’re going straight back in here, understand?  No one wants to look at you today.”

 

Harry nodded, fumbled for his glasses and put them on.  The last dregs of the dream he’d had were melting away.  He was home, the only home he’d ever known, the home so grudgingly opened to him in his babyhood by his mother’s sister and her husband.  He wasn’t just home for summer vacation, eagerly looking forward to leaving again in a month or two; for Harry Potter, the Dursley house and his upcoming entrance to Stonewall High, the local public school, were all there was.  Most likely all there was ever going to be, too.

 

In the dream he had died, though.  It gave Harry pause that he actually had to wonder if that death – and it had been a horrible one – would have been better than the grim, mean life he currently had.  Was death really better than having no hope?

 

In spite of being distracted by his dream, Harry made a pan of bacon and a plate of toast without burning anything and had them on the table by the time his Uncle Vernon came thudding down the stairs with Dudley at his heels.  They both had knobbly sticks with them, part of the uniform from Dudley’s new school and Uncle Vernon’s alma mater, Smeltings.  Harry couldn’t think what the sticks might be for, other than for hitting other students when the teachers weren’t looking, but something about having them was supposed to be good training for later life.

 

Uncle Vernon settled into his chair at the table with a groan that was echoed by the chair itself and picked up his morning paper, enduring a rap on the arm from Dudley while his arm was still extended.  He just grunted, “Mind the paper,” though, and then vanished behind it.  His voice rose over the crisp newsprint to lash out at Harry.  “Three eggs, and mind you don’t break them.”

 

Harry went back to the stove and made three eggs for his uncle and four for his cousin, trying to ignore the fact that Dudley was eating all the bacon already.  He made a single egg for himself, then did his best to dodge several blows from Dudley’s stick while he was getting it all on the table.  A few more trips back and forth for juice and coffee and a second jar of marmalade – and a few more bruises besides, from not dodging fast enough – and Harry was finally able to sit down at the table and start eating his own breakfast.

 

He’d barely taken his second bite of egg when he heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.  "Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

 

"Make Harry get it,” Dudley mumbled around a mouthful of toast, egg and marmalade.

 

"Get the mail, Harry."

 

Harry knew what would happen if he left the table – and if Aunt Petunia decided to keep him in the cupboard all day again, he couldn’t afford to lose his meager breakfast to his cousin.  He shoveled in another bite.  "Make Dudley get it."

 

The paper rustled warningly.  "Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley."

 

Harry slid out of his chair, toast in hand, dodged the Smelting stick again and went to get the mail, seeing Dudley already reaching for his place as he left the kitchen. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and… a letter for Harry.

 

Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? In spite of the dream he’d had, the dream of school and friends and magic, he had no friends, no other relatives – he didn't even belong to the library. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

 

Mr. H. Potter

The Cupboard under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

 

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.  Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.  And it looked familiar…

 

"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen.

 

Harry started to obey…and then he stopped, staring at the letter.  More bits of his dream came back to him, bits about his uncle destroying hundreds of letters just like this one, about a giant and a werewolf, about dragons and goblins and ghosts and wizards.  In his dream, Harry had been a wizard.  A wizard who could talk to snakes.

 

Just like he’d talked to the snake at the zoo on Dudley’s birthday – the very incident which had landed him locked in his cupboard for days on end instead of just going in it to sleep at night, in fact.

 

The parchment envelope all but tingled against his fingers, heavy in his hands.  It had all started with a letter.  This letter, he was sure of it.

 

Was death really better?

 

Harry shoved the letter under the baggy shirt he was wearing, thankful for once that he’d always been given his cousin’s oversized old clothes.  He didn’t want to die…but he didn’t want to live with no hope, either.  And if he kept this letter safe, hid it from the Dursley’s, read it and answered it in secret and didn’t let himself forget his dream…

 

Maybe, just maybe, things would turn out different.