Chapter Text
Harry stood, rather stiffly, in his white suit, greeting those that entered. Something was planned for the ball, but Harry had no doubt that he was just a pretty face so that the Dursleys could keep his inheritance.
Officially, it was his birthday party, an elegant ball with the best of high society to celebrate his sweet sixteenth. Unofficially, it meant his relatives had found a way to either get more money or to get rid of him without losing the money that was rightfully his.
Which left him stuck in stuffy white clothing, fake smiling and playing the pretty orphaned heir.
And, of course, public perception of him was wrong. They perceived him as rich and happy, with doting relatives, rather than a boy whose most treasured possession was the scraggly remains of his leather journal transformed into a necklace to hold the charm his parents had left him: a silver lightning bolt, with an emerald at the top and a ruby at the bottom.
But he had to pretend and go along with whatever charade they’d put on this time.
He smiled at Zacharias and waved at Cormac, let Lockhart drag him into conversation and spent a while avoiding Madame Umbridge. Madame Umbridge, who looked like a toad and had a personality like poisoned sugar, or her superior, Cornelius Fudge, who was incompetent and really rather fake.
Harry wished he could go back to the days when he dreamt of walking through a line of white roses, turning them red, talking and laughing with Albus and Tonks and Trelawney, laying down and cuddling with Voldemort, and giving roses to strangers who would gape at him like he’d given them gold.
But alas, he was stuck in the life he had been given when his parents were torn from him.
Harry startled slightly when his Aunt placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Listen, boy,” she hissed. “Don’t mess this up for us.”
What? What was she referring to?
“The Malfoys get half the money, we get the other half, and you get to live in Malfoy Manor as Draco takes a wife. Sound good?”
No, no it didn’t. He didn’t want to be stashed away in Malfoy Manor, all alone like a discarded toy, whilst his parents’ money went to others.
Petunia wiped her handkerchief across her clammy forehead. “Good. Now, remember, don’t forget to say yes.”
Harry watched her walk away and begin ushering everyone to their seats with a steadily growing feeling of dread rising within him, before walking over there himself, trying to portray the pretty orphaned heir on his sixteenth birthday.
Just what was his Aunt planning?
He walked up in front of the seating, but before he could sit down, Draco Malfoy stepped out in front of him, and, to Harry’s horror, got down on one knee.
“Harry James Potter,” he began. “The love of my life, will you marry me?”
Say yes, his mind yelled. Say yes!
Say yes and rot in Malfoy Manor for the rest of his life.
He stayed there, frozen, for a split second, before he bolted for the heavy doors.
Struggling with them, he almost thought they wouldn’t budge, that he would be trapped listening to the scandalised muttering of the guests, but, just as Aunt Petunia screeched, “Harry!”, the doors swung open and he fled into the night.
The Manor backed onto a large forest, and Harry was happy to say if he got ‘lost’ in it, it would take them several days to find him.
Undoing his top button and letting his necklace fall out, glad he didn’t have to hide it any longer, he ducked under tree branches and jumped over tree roots when, rather curiously, he found himself falling.
His necklace flew over his head, but despite his best attempts, it fell away without him.
He grasped at empty air and tried to swim through air as though he could catch it, but he was forced to watch it tumble further and further away, until he stood and watched in defeat as it disappeared.
Harry knew that, theoretically, the length of time he’d been falling already should mean he was falling at a ridiculously fast pace, but that, luckily, was not the case. He seemed to be falling at the same speed, and, with a little effort, he started to read the spines of the books he passed, or the labels on jars, just to pass the time.
A little later, he started to talk to himself, wondering when the fall would end.
It had been several hours by now, surely. He was exhausted, and sleep sounded like a great idea, eyelids drooping. He somehow doubted that he’d be able to find a way back up, or if there was even an end. He’d be in the centre of the Earth! He’d fall right out the other side!
Harry had to admit that he had slept a little, on that long fall down. He hadn’t slept for long, but he did sleep. Waking back up and finding himself still falling had been a disappointment, though, so when he finally hit the soft ground at the bottom, it was a huge improvement.
He blinked.
The grass was blue.
He broke a strand off – it was definitely grass; it was just… blue.
He looked up, confused, and discovered that the sky was green.
The only place Harry knew with a green sky and blue grass was his fantasy world he used to write about. It had been an escape, really, somewhere that was different from the dull monotony of reality. It had started out as smaller, pettier things, like blue grass and green skies, and had evolved. But he couldn’t possibly be there, could he?
He stared over the hills beseechingly but was far too low down to see across the land and decided to try and climb the nearby tree, clinging on to come desperate hope that he would be able to find a way out of this madhouse.
Up and up he went, hand over hand, but found he could see no further than before. He reached out another hand and found someone pulling him up onto the branch they were sitting on.
“Hello,” Harry said.
The woman smiled, moving her red dress slightly, before speaking in a heavy Scottish accent. “I am Minerva, the Red Queen.”
“Minerva, like the Goddess of wisdom?”
“Well done, Potter.”
“I–” he began, biting his lip. “Could you tell me where we are?”
Minerva laughed. “Why, Wonderland, of course!”
“It doesn’t look like the Wonderland I know.”
She shook her head. “You only saw a small portion. You never saw the rest of Wonderland, but here it is!”
Harry frowned. “I can’t even climb the damn tree! What a great Wonderland this is, huh!”
“Perhaps you simply weren’t climbing fast enough.”
And with that, Minerva began to climb at a speed that Harry hadn’t thought possible, and he had no choice but to follow, climbing far past the height of the tree, until Harry couldn’t go any further.
She turned and pulled him onto a branch which looked exactly like the branch they’d been sitting on before, and said, “Oh, your poor dear, you must be thirsty! Have a dry biscuit.”
Warily, he plucked it from her hand and tucked it into his pocket. “We still haven’t made any progress.”
“Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards.”
Then she shoved him off the branch, and he fell.
Luckily for Harry, it was as if he’d fallen a metre or two, and it didn’t hurt at all, although it was frustrating because now he’d have to climb all over again so he could see the chessboard landscape– wait a second.
He could see across the hills that had blocked his vision only a second ago rather easily, and all of Wonderland was spread out before him.
Turning around, shocked, he called, “Minerva? Hello?”
Harry was about to start climbing again when a voice from behind him made him jump.
“You won’t find her, you know.”
His eyes flickered across the area he was at, but only saw four flowers and the tree behind him, when, to his shock, the flowers started to speak.
“Honestly, it’s pretty rude to stare, you know.” The flower closest to him would be rolling her eyes if she could. “I’m Cho and the lovely flower next to me is Cedric, and the exuberant one is Colin.”
Harry blinked. “I’ve never seen flowers talk before.”
“You wouldn’t have, their ground is far too soft, and they all fall asleep.”
“We stay awake, because it means we have more time to bask in each other’s beauty,” Cedric added from beside her.
The much smaller and far bouncier, for lack of a better word, flower that seemed to have almost fainted upon his arrival now yelled, “I’m your biggest fan!”
“Well, that’d be a first!”
Harry looked at the even smaller, wrinkled and half withered one, and asked, “And who are you?”
Cho seized the split second before it answered him and said, “Oh- don’t mind him- he’s a bit of an oddball-”
“I is Dobby!” Dobby said, and Harry smiled.
“Hello, Dobby.”
Harry got the impression that the flower was blinking at him with wide eyes or would be if it had eyes. “The Red King wants you dead.”
The Red King?! But last time he checked the Red King was… no. It must be a mistake, right?
“Dobby’s opinion is that yous should snaps your necks so the Red Kingie won’t kill you.”
He gave them an awkward smile, then Colin called out, “Don’t forget your necklace! It’s almost as famous as you are!”
And, sure enough, his necklace was right there, the base of the charm buried into the ground, and Harry gave a little cry and pulled it out, brushing the dirt away from the ruby.
Then he jumped back as the stalk of a rather large mushroom grew out of the centre, going up and up and taller than him, the cap large and smooth and looking all too edible.
Harry blinked.
He then promptly screamed, as a large caterpillar now seemed to be resting upon the surface.
“Hello, Harry,” he said. “I am Severus.”
“Hello Severus.”
Severus peered down at him from his place on the mushroom. “You have pretty eyes. They remind me of someone I used to know.”
Something of his tone caught Harry off guard.
“You were in love,” he realised.
The Caterpillar glared at him. “Perhaps,” he sniffed.
“I’m sorry.”
Harry nearly thought that he was going to be ignored, but then Severus let out a long-suffering sigh. “You look imbecilic enough to end up in trouble. Take a piece of this mushroom for when you need it most.”
Harry let a tiny smile creep across his face and stood on tiptoes to break a bit off. “Thank you, Severus.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Harry laughed. “Of course.”
Cedric let out a low sigh. “The worst thing about being a flower is that I can’t get married to Cho…”
Harry paused, and looked back at the flowers, who looked so forlorn he didn’t think he could leave them.
“Wait a minute,” he muttered, and started pulling out strands of grass, weaving it into a circle. He made two and placed one on Cedric’s head and one on Cho’s.
“I hope you don’t forget your anniversary next year!” he added and turned on his way.
“Don’t die, you dunderhead, or I’ll have wasted my mushroom!” Severus yelled, and Harry grinned.
“I won’t!”