Harry Potter and the Cyberpunk Nightmare

Chapter One. The Boy Who Escaped.

"The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games," said the voice-over, "in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks."

- "Neuromancer".

He looked into the distance, the fading light from the sun going down, half of it already gone behind the horizon... Two months ago he was just a normal wizard teenager, and what he was now... An escaped criminal, running from everybody - both the law and the law-breakers. And he was not alone in his trouble.

He heard her walking behind him, but didn't move.

"Harry, stop staring at the sun. You're gonna waste your eyes away like that. You wanna wear glasses again?"

He wondered when her accent changed. She was now talking in pure American, with a bit of the Sprawl's dialect thrown in. Things were so different now, different from what he was used to, from what he was born to, from what he left behind willingly two months ago...

*****

Exactly two moths ago, he was sitting in the middle of Charms when a small thing out of the ordinary attracted his attention - a small-sized greenish glimmer in a corner of the classroom. He told himself it was just a hallucination from all the Confundus-class charms they were experimenting with on the lesson, yet somehow did not believe it.

"Harry, snap out of it, you're going to miss the whole show!" his best friend Ron Weasley whispered as he elbowed Harry rudely.

Harry stopped staring at the green light, telling himself that getting prepared for his N.E.W.T.S. was a better thing to do, and turned towards professor Flitwick, who was now explaining the concept of making people think that they were other people.

"... And now Miss Granger, try it yourself!" he said merrily.

Hermione Granger, the Muggle-born witch, top of the class in everything but Potions (since the Potions Master, Severus Snape did not want anybody not from his House to be top of his class), had repeated the incantation, and Neville Longbottom, who had volunteered to be the object of the spell, started acting as if he was not himself but Harry Potter.

Harry himself though of this as an unreal dream, thinking that he would wake up any moment now, but he did not wake up the next moment, and the moment after that too. As Neville went on complaining about how much he (being Harry) hates Draco Malfoy, that Slytherin prefect, for being an insult not only to prefects but to the whole of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The real Harry, however was not paying much attention to what his 'double' was saying or doing, he was more engrossed in watching the green light again. Suddenly, the light started flickering and disappeared.

Harry blinked. The light wasn't there. Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The light still wasn't there. Feeling somewhat down from that, he turned back to look at Hermione, who had just removed the spell from Neville and was now glowing with pride for herself as Flitwick commented on her outstanding performance.

Harry was 'officially' 'single', not occupied, in other words - without a girlfriend, as he and his last girl, Lavender Brown, split up a week or so ago when Harry caught her making it out with the aforementioned Draco Malfoy.

Hermione was also quite 'single', as she and Ron split up in the end of last year, they were still good friends, but the way she told him off for his mistakes or failures every time made Ron think that being her boyfriend would mean willingly putting oneself through a living nightmare. Now that they split up, she was still telling him off, but at least he could shout at her in self-defense, not keep it in himself since she was sleeping with him.

Lately, Harry had started noticing that there were quite a lot of details to Hermione that he did not notice before. The way she smiled whenever someone made her a compliment (mainly it were only the teachers, but Harry did that occasionally as well). The way she crossed her arms whenever she was angry at something, and the way her face changed then. Deep down inside he was slowly realising that this is what they really called love, but he never allowed himself to accept it, not entirely at least.

He never talked to her about it, as if he was sure that doing so would be pointless. He never slept with her, which was a rare thing for most of the seventh-years at Hogwarts. Well, actually he never even kissed her for real; the only kiss they ever shared was that time when she kissed him on the cheek in his fourth year. But he still felt some kind of unexplainable attraction towards her.

He was going to talk to her about it today; he had already assured himself of the importance of that action...

*****

"Hermione..." he said as she was going to run off to the library, as usual.

She stopped in her tracks, slowly turned around, looking for the person that called her, and, upon seeing that it was him, she came up to him, giving him one of those warm smiles of hers.

"Yes, Harry?" she said. He suddenly felt warmth, as if her smile radiated it.

"Listen, I... Er... I've been thinking... I might need your help... N.E.W.T.S. and all..." he suddenly found himself stammering, stammering even more than he was a year or so ago, when asked Cho Chang out for the first time. His relationship with Cho was a wonderful experience, but there was one thing that nearly broke his heart back then - when the end of his sixth year came, that was the end of her seventh and final year, and when he asked her if they could still be a couple after that, she smiled, not like Hermione did, Cho's smiles were lighter, as if the emotion behind them was not as strong, if there was any. She smiled then and said that he is a nice guy and all, but no, they can't still be a couple. After that, in his seventh year already, he started being hasty about changing girlfriends. First it was Ginny Weasley, then Parvati Patil, then her sister Padma, and then Lavender, and then he started noticing Hermione, for real this time.

"So, you want me to help with your exams, eh?" she asked, a glint of disbelief in her eyes. Harry already earned himself a reputation of a guy that keeps changing girls with a tremendous speed.

"Honestly," was all he could force out of himself as a response.

"Alright," she said, the disbelief still there, "When do you want to start?"

"Well, the exams are just two months away, so..."

"Would tomorrow suit you? I'm a bit occupied for today - Animagus training and all."

She was now an officially registered Animagus apprentice, slowly mastering this fine art, the only student that signed up for in from the entire year. Harry himself tried the tests, but found out that he was not willful enough to overcome the excruciating pain that accompanied the first two weeks of practice. Actually, he had resumed these trainings illegally, under tutoring from his godfather, Sirius Black, who was cleared of all charges against him this summer, who learned to be an Animagus illegally as well, along with Harry's father.

"Yeah, it'll be alright. When?"

"After Potions we have a revise and study period, so... We're going to be revising and studying!"

"The library then?"

"Yeah, meet you at the library, tomorrow, after Potions. Got it?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Good. Now if you excuse me..." and, having said this, she ran off.

*****

In the evening Harry sat around in the Common Room, still wondering about that green light. What was it? A hallucination? An apparition? A green gem someone dropped? Something out of a world beyond his understanding?

He had thought about this for a while, his thoughts slowly returning to her. She agreed, that was good. Now he had to take it low and slow, refraining from haste, or she will think of his attempts at being a bit more friendly with her as just a way of getting yet another notch into the infamous "The girls that Harry Potter shagged" list. And that would mean he'd lose her. He somehow felt that then he would feel even worse than the way he did after losing Cho, and doubted that he'll live over that.

*****

Tomorrow brought new wonders and new worries as well. Potions was extremely difficult as Snape seemed to have put the goal of not letting as much Gryffindors as possible graduate properly due to having very bad marks, since the highest one Hermione had, and it was still lower than the lowest mark of the Slytherins.

The Gryffindors, and Harry above all loathed Snape and he loathed them back. The only hatred of all that Harry experienced that was bigger than the one towards Snape was the one towards Draco Malfoy, Snape's favourite student.

*****

Malfoy had all that the girls liked - the looks, the acts, the style. He lacked only one important thing - the soul. He could be going out with a girl, he could be kissing her, even making love to her, but all the girls he dropped unanimously claimed that he was just acting it, satisfying his natural need of sex and dropping them.

Unlike him, Harry, while being almost as much of a girl-dropper as Malfoy, split up with girls only after they asked for it (Like Cho and Ginny, who was now going out with Seamus Finnigan), or he caught them cheating on him (like the Patil twins and Lavender). Whenever asked about their relationship with him all of his ex-girlfriends unanimously claimed that he was tender, caring and loving, yet ruthless if a girl was cheating on him.

*****

He arrived at the library a bit late, as he accidentally ran into Malfoy in one of the hallways and they had yet another verbal confrontation. They were resorting to that way of setting their affairs since the last time they hexed each other, professor McGonagall said that they will be both expelled, and, knowing her, she was speaking the truth. The last time their fight was a physical one, Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse, refused to mend their wounds and broken bones, so that they had to heal naturally. Not the most pleasant feeling Harry ever had, that was.

Hermione was already there, sitting over a large book, reading something.

"Sorry, I'm late, it was Malfoy again," he said. She looked up at him with her usual "Aren't you tired of that yet?" gaze (that was the only thing he did not like in her, but she gave it to him so infrequently that he agreed with himself to tolerate its existence).

"Come on, give me a break, he was calling you that word again."

Her face darkened, the accusing glare gone.

"Really?"

"Yes. I wonder when he will start using 'half-blood' as an insult as well," said Harry, who was only three-quarters magical as his mother was Muggle-born, like Hermione, "Don't worry; I gave him hell as well."

"Still, Harry, don't you think it's a bit childish to still be going on with that rivalry?" she said, now with the "You know I'm right, I always am" look in her eyes.

"Yeah, I suppose so, but what do I have to do when he comes up from behind and starts insulting me, you or Ron?" he said, the "I never doubted that" look in his eyes as a response.

"Well, you tell him what you are supposed to - next time you catch him at that..."

"... Take him to McGonagall. He will claim that I am having hallucinations from my scar and she will let him go, just like the last time."

"Alright, you have me convinced. What will we start with?" she said, jumping to the topic of studies instantly.

"Transfiguration," he said, "I have trouble with the half-animated one."

She went into a lengthy explanation on how to properly transfigure something into a partially-animate, partially-inanimate being and he, despite that he knew this topic fairly well, it was the practical part he was bad at, was listening with all his might, catching her every word, just looking at her talk...

*****

"And that's it," said Hermione after Harry finally manage to do the spell properly three times in a row, "You're doing much better!"

"I have a very good teacher!" he said, nodding at her. She blushed.

"It still depends on the student," she replied.

*****

About a week later they were walking to their Common Room after all the other classes of that day, talking animatedly about various Charms they could use to achieve the simple goal of lifting a heavy object without using the levitation spell.

"So Harry, want to tell me the truth?" she asked suddenly.

"What?" he said. He was quite surprised to hear that question.

"Why did you ask me to help you with the N.E.W.T.S. revision?"

"Because I wouldn't succeed on my own..." he started.

"... Or because you are trying to get to me now?" she interrupted.

"Excuse me?"

"Harry, you're a good guy and all, but you have a not-really-good reputation with girls in this school, in case you did not notice."

"Listen, Hermione, I may be 'free' and I may have a bad reputation, but I am not doing this to shag you in the end."

"Oh, really? And how will you prove your point?" she stopped, letting her bag drop onto the floor, her hands resting on her hips.

"We've been studying together for a whole week, and can you list anything that speaks against me?"

"Not yet. You may have behaved well, but remember Cho - it took you three months of dating to kiss her!"

"How'd you know anyway? Besides, she left me because she graduated and thought that I am but a little boy," it looked like the end he was so afraid of was so near... He swallowed nervously.

"Alright, then why are you looking at me like that during all the lessons and the studies and even at breakfast and dinner?"

"You saw me?"

"What do you think I am, blind?"

This was going nowhere, very fast. Harry mentally told himself to stay calm, took a deep breath in and said the words that were on his tongue for the last two weeks.

"Hermione, I... I think... that... I... love you."

She looked genuinely shocked, if not to say more. Without saying another word, she picked up her bag and ran off down the hallway.

"Hermione, wait!" he yelled as he ran after her.

*****

He caught up with her only at the portrait hole that was the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. She was standing there, trying hard to catch her breath, her cheeks red, and at that moment Harry thought that she looked even more beautiful then he had ever thought of her.

"Listen... I... am not... lying!" he said, also fighting to catch his breath.

"Why should I believe you?" Hermione asked.

"Because you want to, because deep down inside you feel empty. You loved Ron, you may still love him, but he does not agree with this way of things, and there's an empty space in your heart. Believe me, I know how it feels, I felt exactly the same way when Cho dropped me," his eyes did not have the usual Harry Potter^TM super-hero look. They were full of pleading, genuine need of her.

"Harry, I..." she started, but stopped, as she felt that she had no more words to say...

*****

The kiss was a long one, and, when they finally parted, Harry looked shining with happiness. Actually, so was Hermione.

But then the thing that stopped bugging Harry for the last week popped up again as he saw the all-too-familiar green light, this time in the corner of the hallway wall.

"What is it?" she asked, seeing the strange expression his face took every time he looked at this green light.

"Am I hallucinating or there is a green light over there?" he asked, pointing. She turned to see it and then nodded.

"It is there," she said.

Harry walked up to the light, peering closer at it. It was not a light, but a neon-like glowing grid showing from under a small indent in the wall, as if a part of the wall was blasted away and this was what the wall was actually made of. Harry touched the wall. It was solid. He reached out for the grid, hearing, but not comprehending, what Hermione was saying behind him...

**********

"He's gonna be okay," one voice said. A man's voice.

"And the girl?" asked another voice. A female one this time.

"She was a bit more difficult, but she'll be alright as well. This is the moment we've been waiting for, as these two will be known as the Boy and the Girl That Escaped the matrix."