"Is there something wrong, Mr. Potter? Are you in any pain?"
"Just leave me alone," Harry rasped tiredly, his heart in far too much pain to deal with what he was certain was nothing but another piece of stupid code.
The woman pursed her lips at the rudeness before her gaze filled with pity and regret and Harry just stared at her apathetically while the tears continued to course down his face. Eventually, she took the hint and backed out of the room and Harry gave into the despair, loneliness, and grief as he curled up on the bed and bawled his eyes out. Hours later, after he'd finally cried himself dry; he just lay there staring at the stone wall without really seeing it as the memory of his world ending played over and over again in his mind. It wasn't that he really cared that Aincrad was gone at this point, home though it had been to him for two years.
No, it was the loss of his friends and his self-claimed father that tore at him.
He'd give anything to be back in Algade helping Agil with the shop.
After a while, his solitude was intruded upon once more by the same nurse and an ancient old man with a white beard that looked nearly long enough for him to trip over. Harry flicked his eyes up to determine the man's classification before he returned his eyes to the wall once he realized that the man was also an NPC in the new game and studiously ignored both man and woman; they were not important.
"It does this old heart good to see you awake at last, my boy," the old man stated as he sat down in the chair that was positioned beside the bed.
Harry flicked his gaze to the old man once more before he simply rolled over and ignored the NPC and the spike of pain that his new position sent through his injured shoulder. The man sighed and Harry hoped that that meant that he would leave. Unfortunately, it didn't as Harry soon learned when the man began speaking again.
"Allow me to introduce myself, I am Albus Dumbledore and I owe you an apology, Mr. Potter… Harry, I did you a great disservice…"
Harry bolted out of the bed in pure panic over the use of that name; he had still not registered the fact that the nurse had used his real last name several times earlier. Hearing this old man casually use his first name though, a name he'd never entered into the system at any point or even given to his friends really freaked him out.
"Who are you and how did you get that name?" Harry demanded as his back connected with the cold stone wall while he reached for the dirk that no longer hung from his right hip. Harry didn't even bother waiting for an answer as he opened up his Menu after he'd failed to find his weapon. Instead of equipping himself with the missing dirk though, he began rapidly shifting through the various pages in a desperate search for any clue as to how the server might have found that information to plug into whatever game it was that he'd been forced into.
As his fingers flew through the pages, he muttered under his breath in Japanese, "This isn't happening, this can't be happening. How can the system hack that information? Did they steal that information from my old school? Could whoever created this new game have gone to my aunt and uncle's house to take control of my body? Is that why I didn't wake up in my body? How did they know I would appear on this server though? Was I shunted here purposefully? That still doesn't rule out the possibility that I am dead either."
"Potter-kun, please calm down," Dumbledore urged in Japanese, making Harry's fingers freeze above his Menu as he peered over the semi-transparent page to meet the man's blue eyes. "You have nothing to be afraid of and you are most assuredly not dead. I had you brought here…"
"You had no right! Send me back! I have to find my father and the others, the game ended so they should have been released but with the system deleting itself, they might have gotten stuck and I can't just leave them to die. I won't."
"I am afraid that I am not following you, my boy. Your parents are dead; they have been gone for ten years now. This is not a game and I can not in good conscience send you back to the place you were before. As I had been saying earlier, I did you a great disservice in leaving you with your aunt's family but, in my defense, I had wrongly assumed that they would treat you like family because you were part of their family. I had you brought here so that you might heal and so that you can learn about your heritage."
"Oh, you're good, I'll give you that," Harry countered with a frown as he casually dismissed the man's words and returned to searching through the menu functions. "You have just enough information to make the story sound believable but that was probably the way you were programmed. Makes me wonder who it was that went to so much effort just to try and convince me that this is where I belong. You aren't fooling me though and you'll never keep me here; I won't allow it. All I have to do is find the backdoor to this stupid game and then I'm out of here."
"Mr. Potter, you are not trapped inside of any game. You are home now," Dumbledore insisted as he switched back to English as if to emphasize his point. "I understand that you have been through a trying ordeal and that it will take time for you to accept the changes that took place while you were gone, so I will give you some time to adjust before we sit down and discuss your future."
Harry watched the old man exit the room, not for a moment believing anything that the man had told him. Harry knew better; if he'd really returned to his body he would not still be in pain from his partially healed shoulder, he'd not still be covered in the scars he'd received in SAO (he could see the ones one his arms and wrist just as plain as day), there would be no Menu available, and he would either be locked inside of his cupboard under the stairs or he'd have woken up in a hospital with the Nerve Gear still strapped in place on his head.
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