Fic: How to Disappear Completely
Harry woke up with a gasp and a shudder, his body cold with sweat, and couldn’t remember when he tried what he’d been dreaming about. In recent weeks the nightmares he’d been having since childhood had seemed to be subsiding, which made this one, lost to him as it was, even more unsettling. It seemed like forever since he’d woken in such a blind panic and clawed at the sheets.
Harry reminded himself to breathe, and squinted into the dark, trying to see the numbers on the clock without his glasses. It was 3 am, as near as he could tell. Draco was curled up beside him, which was surprising; not so much that he was there, as he’d crawled into Harry’s bed after the lights went out and demanded to be attended to, but that he’d stayed to sleep, instead of tiptoeing back to his own four-poster as he usually did after they’d fooled around. His pale hair was almost glowing in the thin streams of moonlight the blinds let through, and his brow was furrowed as if in deep concentration. Also, he snored. Harry wanted to lean over and kiss him, to wake him so that Draco’s hands could roam over his body, chasing away the rest of his anxiety.
It wouldn’t be fair, he decided. Draco had strength training first thing in the morning, and however fond he usually was of impromptu sex, Harry had a feeling that Draco would rather have the sleep so he could do well in his tests. Harry himself had no small number of important things to do during the upcoming day, and he thought that he might try to go back to sleep himself. He tried counting sheep for a while, but just kept imagining house elves with bulging eyes hopping over croquet wickets, and turned his thoughts to happy memories - the few snatches of his mother’s face that lingered in his mind; all the mischief he’d gotten up to with Ron and Hermione; his first kiss with Ginny; his first kiss with Draco….
Sighing, Harry settled back against his pillows, tugging the blankets back over his body. He allowed himself to drop the lightest of kisses on Draco’s brow before he closed his eyes and sunk back into sleep.
*
When Harry woke again, Draco was freshly showered and getting dressed in his training clothes. The fitted black trousers really showed off his bum quite well, and Harry pretended to be asleep for a few more moments to appreciate his uninterrupted view. Draco wasn’t fooled.
“Don’t you have things you need to be doing,” he asked crisply, pulling his t-shirt over his head. “Didn’t they schedule you for a practice mission today?”
Harry stretched and yawned, making a show of just having regained consciousness. “Hmm? Oh, yeah, what time is it?” He blinked, peeking at Draco’s stomach in the process.
“It’s eight thirty, you lazy arse, and your instructor has you down for nine, so if I was you - which, thank all that is good and holy, I am not - I would get said arse out of bed and stop ogling mine!”
“Shit,” said Harry, scrambling out from under the covers and searching for his own trousers. As he dressed he mumbled, “I wasn’t ogling, I was appreciating.”
“Yes, well,” said Draco, lacing up his trainers, “you’re still a pervert.” But as Harry rushed out the door Draco slowed him long enough to give him a quick, stealthy kiss, which kept Harry smiling all the way to the portkey where his instructor waited.
“Took you long enough,” sniffed Kelly. “Another minute and I’d have gone. Dark wizards don’t wait, you know.”
“I know,” said Harry, belatedly remembering that he hadn’t even tried to comb his hair that in his haste, and reflecting that he probably looked as if he’d been shagged all night. “I had a late start. Long night. Sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Kelly muttered, but her blue eyes twinkled, and Harry momentarily blushed as he wondered what she knew. “Get on with you, then,” she said, jerking her head toward the enchanted handbag that was to serve as their transportation, “one, two, three…,” and on three she and Harry both grabbed for the portkey, which whirled them away to a designated spot at the edge of a forest a mile or two outside of Bath,
*
It would, Harry later thought, probably have gone better if he hadn’t slept in that morning, if he hadn’t been tired and his reflexes slow. It would have been better if he’d actually taken a moment to brush his hair, because it might have been more unruly than ever, and he would have been late, and missed the portkey - he would have had a moment to tie his shoes properly, so that he didn’t trip over them dodging a hex and catch a curse right between the shoulderblades. If he hadn’t woken in the night he would have been able to remember a shield spell, or a counter-curse, or responded with a hex of his own, or done any number of things that would have ended with him being anywhere but here…wherever here was.
It wasn’t a place he recognized, he was at least certain of that. He’d never been anywhere remotely like it before - incredibly flat land purple with heather and gorse as far as they eye could see, dotted with strange black stone monoliths that seemed to have arisen spontaneously from the ground to poke at the sky, which itself was like nothing he’d ever seen; it was the soft, shifting blue of the sky he was used to, but it seemed to be perpetually rolling and heaving, and to have the texture of soft hills, or of waves, and was dotted with pinpricks of light that reminded Harry of stars. It occurred to Harry that he’d somehow stumbled out of the world when that curse hit him, and that what he was seeing was, impossibly, the other side of the atmosphere.
“Oh, fuck me,” he said softly, and sank down onto his knees, not sure whether he should laugh or cry, or start looking for an escape hatch as soon as possible.
“I would,” said a voice from behind him (a familiar voice, said the part of Harry’s mind that wasn’t currently reeling in awe), “but I don’t really play for that team, if you catch my meaning.”
“Seamus?” Harry breathed, feeling if all his blood had just up and left his body. He felt dizzy. He made to sit down but realized he was already sitting.
“In the flesh,” said Seamus cheerfully, “but not really. I’m not even here.” He pulled a cigarette and a silver lighter from his pocket and lit up, exhaling as if the very act caused him great pleasure. “I’m just a figment of your imagination.”
“Are - are you…?” Harry ventured, finding he choked on the word dead.
Seamus took another thoughtful drag. “Hard to say. Maybe. But what do I know? It’s not as if us figments have minds of our own, now do we?”
“I…,” said Harry, barely able to wrap his mind around the idea, “…you smoke?”
“Nah. But I always wanted to. Not like it hurts me here.” He chuckled. “It’s kind of hard for something to kill ya when you don’t even exist.”
Harry thought about that a moment more, and then gave up. “Am I….dead?” Seamus shrugged.
“Again, hard to say. But probably not. You’ve got the smell of life about you. Pretty easy to pick out in this place.”
Harry watched him smoke for a while, and was reminded, with a pang, of Draco, and the relaxed way he held his face when he smoked his stupid cigarettes. He put his head down on his knees and closed his eyes as hard as he could, praying that this was just one of his nightmares, and he was going to wake up any minute now.
“Any minute now,” said Harry aloud. He wasn’t much surprised when nothing happened. He pounded the ground with his fists, and only succeeded in making them hurt. Belatedly, he wondered what had happened to Kelly, if she was okay, or if their assailants had killed her, or if something similar had happened to her, and if he walked long enough he would find her sitting at the base of one of the strange tall stones, just as bloody confused as he was.
Harry turned around to say something to Seamus, but the other boy - figment, dream, whatever he was - had wandered away, and Harry could see his silhouette in the distance. He thought about shouting, but it seemed futile.
After a while, he just lay back against the ground and watched the not-sky turn orange and then white, bubbling as if boiling. He wondered who else he would see while he was here and how long he’d have to stay; he wondered if this was the sort of situation anyone had ever got out of. He wondered if this was real, or if he was in a coma somewhere and having a very unsettling dream. His stomach growled, and he thought about finding something to eat.
“This,” said Harry to himself, “is probably why Aunt Petunia always told me not to take drugs.”
*
He woke up again and the world had changed. Harry was disappointed not to see the forest he’d flickered out of, but he was at least relieved not to see miles and miles of empty land. Instead he was staring into a warm, crackling fire in a very cosy sitting room painted green. It appeared he was lying on a squashy brown couch, and someone (he assumed), had tucked a very soft knitted blanket around him.
“Last time I saw you, that blanket seemed rather larger,” Lily said softly. Harry jerked his head around to look, and saw that his mother was indeed sitting in an armchair opposite, looking very beautiful, and smiling as though it pained her.
“Mum….” Harry croaked. There was an enormous lump in his throat. “Mum, I -“
“Of course,” she continued with a little chuckle, getting up to come sit beside her son, “you were rather smaller last time I saw you.” Lily put her hand out to ruffle his already messy hair, then seemed to pause a moment, before she drew him into a bone-crushing hug.
“Shit,” said Harry. “Shit shit shit shit.” He tried to ignore the hot tears that spilled into the shoulder of his mother’s jumper.
“You should watch your language,” said James behind him. Harry took a deep breath and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Hi, Dad,” said Harry.
*
In a bright, cramped little kitchen, they made him tea, which didn’t really taste like any tea he’d had before, and fixed him sandwiches that made him feel, if anything, hungrier than ever. But Harry ate everything they put in front of him, and was glad for the sight and sound and smell of them, and their idly snarky conversation with each other, and was almost thrilled, for a moment, than he’d been hit by a curse and landed wherever this was, and began to feel like he couldn’t stay too long, and couldn’t give a damn if none of it was real.
Which was why it hurt, just a little more than it should have, despite the fact that he’d known she was going to say it, when Lily fixed him with her level green gaze and told him, “you can’t stay here forever, Harry.”
“I know,” said Harry, swallowing his mouthful of ham and cheese.
They all paused for a few moments, and then James cleared his throat and said, “I bet you’re wondering how you got here, Harry.”
“Got hit by a curse,” Harry replied, suddenly fascinated by the wood grain of the table.
“Fair enough. But I bet you’re wondering what kind of curse it was, and how - and if - you’re ever going to get out.” When Harry didn’t reply, James went on. “It’s a spell called Insideo Invertus,; basically it works by swapping your mental world for the physical one. You - you aren’t on earth, exactly, but you aren’t quite off it, either. It’s an archaic bit of magic, but it’s been used a lot lately by dark wizards, so sooner or later someone’s bound to recognize what’s happened to you, and they’ll work out a way to pull you back to the real world.”
“And….in the meantime?” Harry asked.
“And in the meantime you wait,” Lilly told him, leaning over to fix his collar. Harry sighed. He rested his cheek on the table.
“Mum, Dad,” he said, apropos of nothing, “I’m gay.”
Unexpectedly, they chuckled. And then, even more unexpectedly, James patted Harry on the back and said, “we know.”
“You know?”
“Of course we know,” laughed Lily, “this is your mind, remember? You made it our business to know.”
“Oh.” Harry thought for a second, then wrinkled his nose. “Does that mean you’re watching when we - “
“Oh Merlin, no,” said James, looking vaguely nauseous. “Even figments of the imagination can avert their eyes.”
Lily shot James a disapproving glance. “For what it’s worth, Harry, we approve of him.” Harry gave a bark of laughter.
“Of Draco?” He squeaked, trying to keep the note of incredulity out of his voice. His parents looked at each other and chuckled again.
“Well,” said James, “he does look rather too much like his father for my taste. And I’ve met dragons with better attitudes, but he does seem to love you, Harry.”
“Oh,” said Harry. “Yeah, I suppose.”
*
Later in the evening, when the sky had begun to pale again, and boil as if the earth below was on fire, Harry took himself out to the back garden and lay in the cool grass, trying to find shapes in the clouds. The smell of his mother’s roses hung thick in the air, and somewhere in the dense flowerbed off to his left he could hear bees buzzing. All at once a wave of sadness rose up and broke over him, and he fisted his hands in the long grass, willing gravity to hold him there. He missed Draco, and Ron, and Hermione, but he wasn’t sure if he could live his normal life having been here, having known what it felt like to have his mother’s hand stroke his face. He knew he couldn’t stay, but he wanted to more desperately than anything.
Harry blinked the tears out of his eyes and looked at the pinpricks of light in the whiteness, and wished he could see through them. On the other side of them the camp had probably raised a huge search, and was even now tromping through the wood, looking for him. Draco was more than likely sick with worry, though he’d be keeping a brave face, and here Harry lay, in a garden that didn’t exist, in a world that existed only in his head, and nothing to do but wait.
he says I know you have to go
you have gone before
we are fighting on two different fronts
of the same war
but no matter what else
I will do
I will wait for you
*lyrics from The Waiting Song by Ani DiFranco
Harry reminded himself to breathe, and squinted into the dark, trying to see the numbers on the clock without his glasses. It was 3 am, as near as he could tell. Draco was curled up beside him, which was surprising; not so much that he was there, as he’d crawled into Harry’s bed after the lights went out and demanded to be attended to, but that he’d stayed to sleep, instead of tiptoeing back to his own four-poster as he usually did after they’d fooled around. His pale hair was almost glowing in the thin streams of moonlight the blinds let through, and his brow was furrowed as if in deep concentration. Also, he snored. Harry wanted to lean over and kiss him, to wake him so that Draco’s hands could roam over his body, chasing away the rest of his anxiety.
It wouldn’t be fair, he decided. Draco had strength training first thing in the morning, and however fond he usually was of impromptu sex, Harry had a feeling that Draco would rather have the sleep so he could do well in his tests. Harry himself had no small number of important things to do during the upcoming day, and he thought that he might try to go back to sleep himself. He tried counting sheep for a while, but just kept imagining house elves with bulging eyes hopping over croquet wickets, and turned his thoughts to happy memories - the few snatches of his mother’s face that lingered in his mind; all the mischief he’d gotten up to with Ron and Hermione; his first kiss with Ginny; his first kiss with Draco….
Sighing, Harry settled back against his pillows, tugging the blankets back over his body. He allowed himself to drop the lightest of kisses on Draco’s brow before he closed his eyes and sunk back into sleep.
*
When Harry woke again, Draco was freshly showered and getting dressed in his training clothes. The fitted black trousers really showed off his bum quite well, and Harry pretended to be asleep for a few more moments to appreciate his uninterrupted view. Draco wasn’t fooled.
“Don’t you have things you need to be doing,” he asked crisply, pulling his t-shirt over his head. “Didn’t they schedule you for a practice mission today?”
Harry stretched and yawned, making a show of just having regained consciousness. “Hmm? Oh, yeah, what time is it?” He blinked, peeking at Draco’s stomach in the process.
“It’s eight thirty, you lazy arse, and your instructor has you down for nine, so if I was you - which, thank all that is good and holy, I am not - I would get said arse out of bed and stop ogling mine!”
“Shit,” said Harry, scrambling out from under the covers and searching for his own trousers. As he dressed he mumbled, “I wasn’t ogling, I was appreciating.”
“Yes, well,” said Draco, lacing up his trainers, “you’re still a pervert.” But as Harry rushed out the door Draco slowed him long enough to give him a quick, stealthy kiss, which kept Harry smiling all the way to the portkey where his instructor waited.
“Took you long enough,” sniffed Kelly. “Another minute and I’d have gone. Dark wizards don’t wait, you know.”
“I know,” said Harry, belatedly remembering that he hadn’t even tried to comb his hair that in his haste, and reflecting that he probably looked as if he’d been shagged all night. “I had a late start. Long night. Sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Kelly muttered, but her blue eyes twinkled, and Harry momentarily blushed as he wondered what she knew. “Get on with you, then,” she said, jerking her head toward the enchanted handbag that was to serve as their transportation, “one, two, three…,” and on three she and Harry both grabbed for the portkey, which whirled them away to a designated spot at the edge of a forest a mile or two outside of Bath,
*
It would, Harry later thought, probably have gone better if he hadn’t slept in that morning, if he hadn’t been tired and his reflexes slow. It would have been better if he’d actually taken a moment to brush his hair, because it might have been more unruly than ever, and he would have been late, and missed the portkey - he would have had a moment to tie his shoes properly, so that he didn’t trip over them dodging a hex and catch a curse right between the shoulderblades. If he hadn’t woken in the night he would have been able to remember a shield spell, or a counter-curse, or responded with a hex of his own, or done any number of things that would have ended with him being anywhere but here…wherever here was.
It wasn’t a place he recognized, he was at least certain of that. He’d never been anywhere remotely like it before - incredibly flat land purple with heather and gorse as far as they eye could see, dotted with strange black stone monoliths that seemed to have arisen spontaneously from the ground to poke at the sky, which itself was like nothing he’d ever seen; it was the soft, shifting blue of the sky he was used to, but it seemed to be perpetually rolling and heaving, and to have the texture of soft hills, or of waves, and was dotted with pinpricks of light that reminded Harry of stars. It occurred to Harry that he’d somehow stumbled out of the world when that curse hit him, and that what he was seeing was, impossibly, the other side of the atmosphere.
“Oh, fuck me,” he said softly, and sank down onto his knees, not sure whether he should laugh or cry, or start looking for an escape hatch as soon as possible.
“I would,” said a voice from behind him (a familiar voice, said the part of Harry’s mind that wasn’t currently reeling in awe), “but I don’t really play for that team, if you catch my meaning.”
“Seamus?” Harry breathed, feeling if all his blood had just up and left his body. He felt dizzy. He made to sit down but realized he was already sitting.
“In the flesh,” said Seamus cheerfully, “but not really. I’m not even here.” He pulled a cigarette and a silver lighter from his pocket and lit up, exhaling as if the very act caused him great pleasure. “I’m just a figment of your imagination.”
“Are - are you…?” Harry ventured, finding he choked on the word dead.
Seamus took another thoughtful drag. “Hard to say. Maybe. But what do I know? It’s not as if us figments have minds of our own, now do we?”
“I…,” said Harry, barely able to wrap his mind around the idea, “…you smoke?”
“Nah. But I always wanted to. Not like it hurts me here.” He chuckled. “It’s kind of hard for something to kill ya when you don’t even exist.”
Harry thought about that a moment more, and then gave up. “Am I….dead?” Seamus shrugged.
“Again, hard to say. But probably not. You’ve got the smell of life about you. Pretty easy to pick out in this place.”
Harry watched him smoke for a while, and was reminded, with a pang, of Draco, and the relaxed way he held his face when he smoked his stupid cigarettes. He put his head down on his knees and closed his eyes as hard as he could, praying that this was just one of his nightmares, and he was going to wake up any minute now.
“Any minute now,” said Harry aloud. He wasn’t much surprised when nothing happened. He pounded the ground with his fists, and only succeeded in making them hurt. Belatedly, he wondered what had happened to Kelly, if she was okay, or if their assailants had killed her, or if something similar had happened to her, and if he walked long enough he would find her sitting at the base of one of the strange tall stones, just as bloody confused as he was.
Harry turned around to say something to Seamus, but the other boy - figment, dream, whatever he was - had wandered away, and Harry could see his silhouette in the distance. He thought about shouting, but it seemed futile.
After a while, he just lay back against the ground and watched the not-sky turn orange and then white, bubbling as if boiling. He wondered who else he would see while he was here and how long he’d have to stay; he wondered if this was the sort of situation anyone had ever got out of. He wondered if this was real, or if he was in a coma somewhere and having a very unsettling dream. His stomach growled, and he thought about finding something to eat.
“This,” said Harry to himself, “is probably why Aunt Petunia always told me not to take drugs.”
*
He woke up again and the world had changed. Harry was disappointed not to see the forest he’d flickered out of, but he was at least relieved not to see miles and miles of empty land. Instead he was staring into a warm, crackling fire in a very cosy sitting room painted green. It appeared he was lying on a squashy brown couch, and someone (he assumed), had tucked a very soft knitted blanket around him.
“Last time I saw you, that blanket seemed rather larger,” Lily said softly. Harry jerked his head around to look, and saw that his mother was indeed sitting in an armchair opposite, looking very beautiful, and smiling as though it pained her.
“Mum….” Harry croaked. There was an enormous lump in his throat. “Mum, I -“
“Of course,” she continued with a little chuckle, getting up to come sit beside her son, “you were rather smaller last time I saw you.” Lily put her hand out to ruffle his already messy hair, then seemed to pause a moment, before she drew him into a bone-crushing hug.
“Shit,” said Harry. “Shit shit shit shit.” He tried to ignore the hot tears that spilled into the shoulder of his mother’s jumper.
“You should watch your language,” said James behind him. Harry took a deep breath and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Hi, Dad,” said Harry.
*
In a bright, cramped little kitchen, they made him tea, which didn’t really taste like any tea he’d had before, and fixed him sandwiches that made him feel, if anything, hungrier than ever. But Harry ate everything they put in front of him, and was glad for the sight and sound and smell of them, and their idly snarky conversation with each other, and was almost thrilled, for a moment, than he’d been hit by a curse and landed wherever this was, and began to feel like he couldn’t stay too long, and couldn’t give a damn if none of it was real.
Which was why it hurt, just a little more than it should have, despite the fact that he’d known she was going to say it, when Lily fixed him with her level green gaze and told him, “you can’t stay here forever, Harry.”
“I know,” said Harry, swallowing his mouthful of ham and cheese.
They all paused for a few moments, and then James cleared his throat and said, “I bet you’re wondering how you got here, Harry.”
“Got hit by a curse,” Harry replied, suddenly fascinated by the wood grain of the table.
“Fair enough. But I bet you’re wondering what kind of curse it was, and how - and if - you’re ever going to get out.” When Harry didn’t reply, James went on. “It’s a spell called Insideo Invertus,; basically it works by swapping your mental world for the physical one. You - you aren’t on earth, exactly, but you aren’t quite off it, either. It’s an archaic bit of magic, but it’s been used a lot lately by dark wizards, so sooner or later someone’s bound to recognize what’s happened to you, and they’ll work out a way to pull you back to the real world.”
“And….in the meantime?” Harry asked.
“And in the meantime you wait,” Lilly told him, leaning over to fix his collar. Harry sighed. He rested his cheek on the table.
“Mum, Dad,” he said, apropos of nothing, “I’m gay.”
Unexpectedly, they chuckled. And then, even more unexpectedly, James patted Harry on the back and said, “we know.”
“You know?”
“Of course we know,” laughed Lily, “this is your mind, remember? You made it our business to know.”
“Oh.” Harry thought for a second, then wrinkled his nose. “Does that mean you’re watching when we - “
“Oh Merlin, no,” said James, looking vaguely nauseous. “Even figments of the imagination can avert their eyes.”
Lily shot James a disapproving glance. “For what it’s worth, Harry, we approve of him.” Harry gave a bark of laughter.
“Of Draco?” He squeaked, trying to keep the note of incredulity out of his voice. His parents looked at each other and chuckled again.
“Well,” said James, “he does look rather too much like his father for my taste. And I’ve met dragons with better attitudes, but he does seem to love you, Harry.”
“Oh,” said Harry. “Yeah, I suppose.”
*
Later in the evening, when the sky had begun to pale again, and boil as if the earth below was on fire, Harry took himself out to the back garden and lay in the cool grass, trying to find shapes in the clouds. The smell of his mother’s roses hung thick in the air, and somewhere in the dense flowerbed off to his left he could hear bees buzzing. All at once a wave of sadness rose up and broke over him, and he fisted his hands in the long grass, willing gravity to hold him there. He missed Draco, and Ron, and Hermione, but he wasn’t sure if he could live his normal life having been here, having known what it felt like to have his mother’s hand stroke his face. He knew he couldn’t stay, but he wanted to more desperately than anything.
Harry blinked the tears out of his eyes and looked at the pinpricks of light in the whiteness, and wished he could see through them. On the other side of them the camp had probably raised a huge search, and was even now tromping through the wood, looking for him. Draco was more than likely sick with worry, though he’d be keeping a brave face, and here Harry lay, in a garden that didn’t exist, in a world that existed only in his head, and nothing to do but wait.
he says I know you have to go
you have gone before
we are fighting on two different fronts
of the same war
but no matter what else
I will do
I will wait for you
*lyrics from The Waiting Song by Ani DiFranco