Harry didn't know where he was standing.
He didn't know whether he was standing or sitting, or whether he had his eyes open or closed. There was no other breathing or sound around him. He seemed to be alone, but he seemed not to be. He felt that the weight around him was very light, a bit like feathers, a bit like a ghost, but his feet were really stepping on the ground, and he could feel this.
Maybe I'd better open my eyes. When he thought this, he saw something, as if his eyelids were really trembling. But this trembling time required a process, it seemed like a second, it seemed like ten hours, before Harry could confirm that he had opened his eyes, and the concept of time disappeared at that moment.
Harry found himself surrounded by a layer of... fog. Semi-circular, thin-looking fog. It sticks to the ground like a butter ball on pudding, but it's not as mellow and sweet.
Yes, that's fog. Physics knowledge actually helped him judge this earlier than common sense. It's not air conditioning, because Harry can't feel any coldness. It's not water vapor, because the field of vision in front of him is not directly covered by large areas, but it is partially penetrating, which transmits some scenery layer by layer, and the color is light. They are shallow and seem to be illusory, but people know that they actually exist.
Harry looked around blankly, then touched his face, raised his hand to think, and found that he was not wearing glasses, and he was wearing a pair of clothes. He had no clothes, which made him think, maybe I should wear some clothes.
The moment he finished speaking, he had clothes on his body——
——It's not the kind of "having" that comes with a complete set, but the kind of "having" where the fairy godmother puts Sindurilla into a snow-white dance dress in Disney animation. There is no need to stretch his legs or raise his hands. He is already a neatly dressed person, still in his favorite outfit: Captain America commemorative T-shirt, soft white shorts, clean white socks and leather shoes, and even his glasses have been replaced. Putting weight on the bridge of his nose - only now it only brought him a slightly distorted world, so Harry rubbed his heated glasses and took them off, and the glasses disappeared in a puff of smoke.
He took a few tentative steps, and the scenery through the surrounding fog became clearer and clearer. He could see a clear, white hemispherical roof, and the place where he sat was bright and warm, with sunlight filtering in from the glass window. , not dazzling but making him unable to see what was outside the glass window.
Harry quietly approached the glass window, wanting to see more things clearly, and just as he wished, he really saw more things clearly. At least he saw a mannequin appearing next to him so suddenly, but he didn't feel intimidated. Instead, he smiled easily and nodded towards the mannequin wearing a white robe.
"Hello," he said, feeling very relaxed and comfortable.
To his right was a pot of very tall vegetation, with vines winding out of it and hanging lantern-like pure white fruits. When you stretched out your hand, you could feel a warm feeling. Harry found it from his memory. Its origin: a kind of magical plant used for decoration. Many people call it fire lantern fruit, but fire lantern fruit is usually red in color. This pot is very different. It is the same as flower pots and mannequins. White, pure white with no flaws at all.
When Harry looked out through the window, he realized that it was a shop in Diagon Alley, because the two or three shops he could see across the street had the same window display structure as this room.
His thoughts gradually became clearer, his perceptions gradually slowed down, and the number of things he thought about increased by the dozen.
——Only Diagon Alley is so narrow, and there are so many similar multi-panel display windows, as well as semi-curved display windows... Harry did some research and found that many of the shops in Diagon Alley have the same appearance. Structure, this identical structure can be said to be a requirement to save space and avoid the need for major adjustments when the store changes owners. At least the new store owner does not need to make too many adjustments. Such a window is enough for any store. , of course, if you want to change it, you are welcome to pay for the change yourself.
But they are all white. Different from the medieval Diagon Alley that Harry remembered, everything here was pure white, and when Harry walked to the left, he could even touch the white curtain. The fabric was soft in texture, trimmed with complicated white lace, and the embroidered patterns seemed familiar.
The world seemed to be all white, with Harry's black hair, green eyes, fair complexion, red lips, and colorful clothes being the only colors.
"Like a hospital," he muttered, turning to look behind him.
There was a void just now, but now there is a counter. Some fabrics are gesturing back and forth on some identical mannequins. Needles and tape measures are floating next to one of the mannequins, automatically gesturing at work. A rare black piece The robe looked almost ready to be sewn. Of course, the robe looked very familiar. The school emblem of Hogwarts was clearly visible, and the four-color animals had been put together with a big h.
A little bit of women's perfume wafts out from a flower made of gauze. The smell is very sweet. Many of Harry's senior students have used such perfume, and the gauze flowers placed on the counter all look like real ones. It even stretches out its petals, like a girl combing her long hair.
Harry blinked and finally understood where he was.
He walked to where the store door should be, and the door opened with a creak. Harry walked out and looked at the house number and store name above. A big scissor proved that he was right.
"Mrs. Malkin's Robe Store..." he read out the words. "It's strange, why am I here?"
With the mentality of standing still if he got lost, he walked back to Madam Malkin's robe store. This time, the store seemed to treat him as a customer, and the tape measures flew towards him. He came over, wrapped his arms around his waist, hooked his shoulders, and was so enthusiastic that Harry couldn't help but laugh, but he couldn't drive away the tape measures. He was helplessly lifted up a corner of his T-shirt by them.
Before the start of his first year, Draco took him to make clothes. Even though the tape measurers used their hands and feet, they were very obedient when he tapped their tails. After quickly measuring him, the needle and thread moved the robe under the command of Mrs. Malkin. They had been changed from a standard fit to a size that fit his body, and these were so over the top that he couldn't even get rid of them.
"Go away."
While he was worrying, a magic wand stretched out and pushed away the tape measures. They all fell from the air like flying insects sprayed with insecticide, making a pinging sound on the ground.
"...Professor Felton?" Harry looked at the owner of the wand and said uncertainly.
Because the man who appeared in front of him was not that tall, and he was not wearing a full-length black cloak. On the contrary, he was just a head taller than Harry. He looked about fifteen or sixteen years old, and his long white hair was neatly tied with a green headband. The ground is tied behind the back. The reason why Harry recognized this person as Felton was because of the wand, the voice, and the feeling that he was Professor Felton at first glance.
Harry's intuition has always been accurate, but at this time he was a little unsure - after all, he had never seen Felton's face, and he was very curious for a time. He looked at the badge on the man's chest - no doubt a snake, so it was a slytherin.
Draco seems to have seen it before. He remembered this.
Looking at this face now, Harry didn't feel any surprise. What should I say? That's a... very pleasing to the eye.
Yes, Harry had thought that Felton would have a cold and mature face under the cloak. This was almost a scene from a TV series, and what kind of person has a face with different feelings, and Felton definitely didn't feel gentle anymore. But now when Harry looked at that face, he felt that it was not as hungry and cold as he imagined.
Well, on the contrary, it's a bit amiable. Maybe it's because he looks a bit like Draco - they both have standard British looks.
"Why have you shrunk...well." Ah, no, I asked the rude question in my heart. Harry covered his mouth and looked at Felton awkwardly.
felton flicked the non-existent dust on his sleeves and ignored his failure. He sat back, and a double sofa appeared right behind him. It took up a bit of space in front of the counter of the clothing store, but he was calm.
"What am I wearing?" he asked, and Harry noticed that the thumb of his left hand was inadvertently rubbing a ring on the finger of his right hand. The obsidian and gold base matched the black school uniform robe very well, "If you You shouldn’t ask me this question if you know the answer. Sit down.”
He said it simply, and Harry sat down very simply.
"So this is what you looked like when you were young?" the student asked the teacher sincerely.
"Not really." Harry secretly turned his face to look, and found that Felton's face was indeed what countless people thought. The word expressionless seemed to be written on it. A pair of gray-blue eyes are very light in color, like a blue gem the size of a thumb dropped into the sea water. The reflected color is thin and shallow. Even the pupils are lighter than ordinary people, as if there is not enough color ink when printing. Apart from his long white hair, even his eyelashes are white, which makes his eyes even more unreal.
Harry didn't know if this was Felton's personal characteristic, or some kind of racial characteristic of wizards that he didn't know about, but such a pair of eyes seemed very strange to him.
"You're going to die now, you know." Felton said calmly without a pause, "But you won't die."
This seemed to indicate that Harry was seriously injured. Harry recalled something through Felton's words, just like falling into a dream. His memory was very shallow. He had no idea what happened before, but now a little bit of consciousness emerged.
Oh, I'm hurt badly. He remembered this vaguely.
He rubbed Harry's messy hair with one hand. The latter was so frightened by this move that he could only twist it into a bird's nest.
Very cold. Harry thought.
But the movement was very gentle. Apart from ruffling the hair, it would not make people dizzy at all.
"The Potter family always has the messiest and most stubborn hair in the entire college," Felton's voice softened, "I can't imagine that you even have an ancestor who made huge profits by making hair-related medicines... Let me think about it, It seems to be your great-grandfather? Or grandfather?"
He took his hand away, and before Harry could react, he started on what he wanted to say.
"This is the realm between life and death." He spoke in a smooth voice, as if he was telling a bedtime story. "When you walk out of this store and this street, you will never be able to open your eyes from this world again - —Because your soul has gone elsewhere.”
Harry opened his mouth, but he didn't expect that he could escape the disaster just by following the basic method of getting lost: "...Um, but, here is..."
"Usually only the dead come here, and the scenery they see may be different, but they are uniformly pure white," Felton said. "According to a person who went back from here, what he saw was King's Cross. Station, and the dead teacher stayed with him, answering his questions and sending him back to the living world."
Harry wanted to say, "Are you going to do the same thing," but he closed his mouth after realizing the meaning. He sat silently next to his teacher, the relaxation on his face disappearing little by little.
"Are you going to send me back to this world here too?" he said. "Will I still see you when I return to this world?"
"I have been here once." Felton did not answer his question directly, but instead talked about his previous experience, "I was very young at that time and had no desire to live. I felt that I was timid and cowardly and had no one to rely on. I can’t live on my own, I have to live alone in the inheritance left by my relatives every day, and have nightmares every day that shouldn’t be mine—maybe they deserve to be mine.”
That must be lonely. Harry thought.
"Later I started to study magic. Once the movement was too much, and here came Madam Malkin." Felton took off the obsidian ring and played with it in his hand, "I was going to walk out of this street. , but I saw my godfather at the door of the potion ingredients store. He slapped me hard and kicked me back here. He asked me what I saw. I told the truth, but he thought I was a Freak, because when everyone comes to the realm between life and death, he will see the place that is regarded as the starting point in his heart. As one of the people who know me best, he doesn’t know why I am so weird. What he sees is here. .”
"But I know why," Felton said. "I first met a guy here...don't laugh."
Harry was so innocent, pointing at himself in confusion. He swore he really wasn't laughing. Why did Felton think he was smiling?
When felton saw the 'what did you say' expression on his face, he sighed and rubbed the boy's head again, feeling the warm and fluffy touch, before continuing.
"I told the truth to my godfather, and he looked at me like a madman." He said, "Because according to my description, that person and I couldn't even write letters to communicate during the holidays. We had a relationship when we were studying. It’s so bad that the whole school knows about it.”
"But I think this is the right place." He said, "If you make the right move at the beginning, the mistakes you make later will no longer exist. This is the meaning of the existence of the starting point."
"But it's a pity that life is not about rolling dice. You can do it again if you mess around." Felton held the wand and tapped it gently in front of him. A pure white table appeared in front of them, and just as Harry was touched by its four corners When attracted by the mermaid carved on the table, a pot of hot tea appeared from scratch. Two plates of chocolate cakes exuding a strong aroma of wine and heat also fell on the table. The flowers themselves sang a relaxing song in the bottle. It was almost like a tea party. The teacup was like the teacup boy in "Beauty and the Beast". He brought the rim of the cup to Harry's mouth.
Felton shook out some golden crumbs from the tip of the stick, fell on the two plates of chocolate cake, and then pushed them all to Harry.
"Maybe it's bitter, maybe it's sweet," Felton said. "I originally planned to give you one piece and one piece to Draco Malfoy, but now I'm giving them both to you. Do you like bitter or sweet?"
"Is Draco coming here?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Do you like bitter or sweet?"
"...I can eat it all." Harry pursed his lips and whispered, pondering over the cake for a moment, wondering if eating cake at this time was in line with the current situation. But eventually he picked up a plate of cake and pointed at the gold flakes: "What is this?"
"Good and useful stuff," Felton said.
Harry gently took out a piece of rich-looking chocolate cream with a fork and put it in his mouth. This feels wonderful. Chocolate cream is usually very sweet, but the chocolate cream on this cake has no other taste except a slight bitterness. It is light and soft, and melts easily in the mouth. It is not so much chocolate cream as it is chocolate cream. Say it is a cloud stained with bitterness.
felton crossed his arms and asked him: "What does it smell like?"
"Bitter." Harry said, "Why is chocolate cream bitter?"
"Because everything in the world has its bitter side, and cream and chocolate are not immune." Felton pushed the other piece forward and took the bitter plate out of Harry's hand, "You eat the sweet piece, it tastes bitter. That should be left to Draco Malfoy."
Harry blinked at this statement, shook his head and took back the plate of bitter ones.
"I don't care if it's sweet or bitter, just give me this plate." Harry said, "It doesn't matter." He put the sweet plate on the table, "If Draco really - unfortunately - comes Here, leave the sweet ones to him. He can’t bear the bitter ones, and he doesn’t even like dark chocolate or coffee.”
"Indulge him in every flaw," Felton said. "I don't see the benefit of that. He's been spoiled."
"Exaggerating every one of his flaws," Harry said, looking at Felton and raising his chin unconsciously, "I don't see the benefits of this, Professor. Including taking him out of school, taking him to Cairo, treating him Saying a lot of mean things...I'm sorry, Professor, but...you know you were really unusually subtle with him, right?"
felton's expression could even be called subtle for a moment. But when Harry saw himself in the other person's light gray-blue eyes, he realized that Felton didn't actually take his words seriously. Instead, he seemed to be very interested in what he said.
"I thought you had no problem with my behavior and could see clearly why I did what I did." Felton said, "Is your IQ lower than I expected?"
"I'm not that smart," Harry said as he swung his legs on the sofa. "I thought at first that you were treating him like Snape was treating me - but Snape generally didn't bother to touch a finger on me. He could only deduct a few points from me. , said a few outrageous words, tried every means to belittle me, or else considered how to secretly poison my godfather."
A strange laugh escaped from Felton's mouth, startling Harry. He looked at Felton suspiciously, and the latter held back his laughter very well, with a strange curve at the corner of his mouth.
"Go on." Felton said with a half-smile.
"...Okay." Harry knew that this was what he didn't want to say, and continued to express his thoughts, "But you almost want to take him with you every day, say everything you can, and teach him everything you need to teach him. "Giving him something, I just started to think that you really fancy him, and I also know that many teachers will be very strict," such as Erik, Harry said in his heart, although he is not called a teacher in school, he is called "our professor" 's lover', but the students are still afraid of him, and he is also very strict with them, "But no teacher would... take immature students to dangerous places in emergencies, and people like you are even less likely to You will tolerate students messing around. And you will not praise him. Snape will also say, 'You have already done this, why don't you help your classmates?', you will only——"
"Praise is his favorite." Felton said, his light gray-blue eyes took in everything in this store, and seemed to be looking away. "I wanted to prevent him from becoming a useless person. I know such a person. , very similar to him. So do you know what he will become if you leave him alone?"
"If you walk out of this white Diagon Alley now and never open your eyes, he will cry his eyes into walnuts for you at hogwarts, and then do the same when the next person leaves him. No one will tell him how to change. He will become a brave person, but he will be at a loss when things happen, and he will do everything wrong, but others will be the worst. He will become a person who does not leave his surname, and even a gust of wind can scare him under the evil force. A person with a pale face, and even if you put a knife in his hand, he would not dare to stab anyone to death, even if it is just a person destined to die, he would not dare to bear the debt of life." He said.
Harry actually thought seriously about the meaning of these words. But in the end, while denying these words, he also felt a little angry.
"You are definitely not talking about Draco. I don't think he is similar to the person you are talking about at all." Harry put the cake plate down heavily and said, reaching out to count, "He was saving the life with Hermione during our first flying lesson. I, when he was at St. Mungo's, he refused his father's request for me, and now he is alone... Oh," Harry's memory gradually provided him with the part he needed, like a squeeze of lemon, squeezing out the rest. juice, and finally he said seriously: "If it hadn't been for him this time - I would have been killed by Kevin. Draco helped me a lot, and he is by no means a coward, professor."
"...Oh, you're right, they don't look like that."
What made Harry feel weird was that Felton immediately refuted his own words. He even showed an expression called a smile, "It's not like that at all."
He reached out his hand and suddenly pinched Harry's face hard and twisted it.
The twelve-year-old boy's face was still soft and tender, but he was also more sensitive to pain than adults. Harry screamed in disbelief when he was pinched, and quickly covered his face, using a kind of "Are you you? Are you pretending to be someone else who drank polyjuice potion?" He looked at Felton with an expression.
felton let out that sarcastic, or humming, strange laugh again. Apart from his appearance, he was so out of place in this pure white dream-like world.
It's like an actor who sneaked into another studio.
"It feels good," he said. "It can be said that I earned a little hard money - but why are you still so thin?"
Harry: "………………"
Scissors and tape measures quietly walked around them. One or two robes rubbed their sleeves against the boy very distressedly, and then flew away under Felton's cold gaze.
"Then why are you pinching me?" Harry asked accusingly.
"Because you haven't been pinched enough, because I want to pinch you."
"…………"
