Last time:
He made his decision soon after seeing that flame.
"Yes." he said simply, his features as calm as ever.
"I understand if you don't want...did you say yes?" was Professor Snape's reply. Harry had to keep from chuckling at the look on his Professor's face. The man normally seemed so calm and ordered that it was a bit of a surprise to see a near dumbfounded look upon the dour man's features. Indeed, had he not possessed a high amount of self-control, Harry was sure his jaw would have dropped.
Harry nodded, and reiterated "Yes, I would like you to adopt me." There was no hesitation, fear or uncertainty. He was usually firm in his decisions once he made them, though this was the first time he had ever made such a life-changing decision with such speed. Still, he would rather be taken in by someone he knew, and mostly trusted, than someone he had no guarantees of trusting at all.
*-*-*
Severus gazed at the boy in front of him with wonder. He had never expected the child to agree, much less with such speed. Indeed, if Harry had agreed, Severus had fully expected it to have taken a day or two. Yet there was no doubt in his good eye, bright and shining like an emerald; his mother's color.
Severus, with slow but competent movements, pulled out the adoption forms. His name, and Lucius as witness, was already at the bottom. He pointed to the place where Harry's signature would go, and held out a self-inking quill. He would take care of the Dursley's signatures after the important name was on the document.
*-*-*
Harry gazed briefly at the adoption form, taking it in as fast as possible. There was nothing strange or dangerous to the form that he could tell. Taking the quill, he sighed mentally. He had yet to fully develop an adequate efficiency with the tricky writing utensil. Deciding there was nothing for it, he carefully signed his name on the line he was supposed to.
Harry James Potter
The rest of that day went as a blur to Harry. He barely remembered saying good bye to Professor Snape, who had left him to his thoughts. He did remember lunch and dinner simply because it was the one time that day that he refused to allow himself to drift.
Dreams are the product of our mind as it processes the day's events. However, sometimes unresolved memories intrude when momentous events occur, especially when one's past is riddled with varying degrees of abuse. Thus it was, with no real surprise to Harry, that his gentler dreams were intruded upon by the horror he suffered five years ago on Christmas day.
~ Harry, age 6, was a scrawny shrimp of a boy. This was both a help and a hinderance to him, as it exposed him to his peers' hateful sneers but allowed him to squirm into tight places to avoid them when it went from teasing, to outright physical bullying. However, it did him no good on winter break when he was cooped up with his relatives.
This winter had been particularly vicious, as Harry had committed the worst sin: he had told, inadvertently, to his teacher of how he had come by his bruise the day before winter break. Social services had been called in to examine the case and, unable to see through the Dursley's carefully constructed lie, had found nothing amiss and gone away, leaving Harry to the Dursley's mercy.
At first Vernon had kept it minor: a hit now and again, impossible chores in the cold, and two small meals a day. But for some reason Christmas dinner had not been to his specifications that year. He had snapped, and after the guests had left, he had dragged his nephew down to the basement to receive a beating.
Normally he would have used his belt, a switch, or a paddle to beat his nephew. However, there were a bunch of sharpened poles meant for beans, corn and tomatoes during the summer season, piled up in a convenient palisade of points. Vernon had taken one of these poles, and proceeded to beat Harry about the head with it, not caring if the sharp point caused many deep scratches.
Whether it was an accident or not, Harry never knew. All he knew was his carefully controlled stoicism was destroyed with a piercing scream of pain as his eye was literally ripped from him by the pole. Vernon, desperate to shut him up, had hit him across the neck with the pole, not realizing, or not caring, that the sharpened end was what hit his nephew.
Harry's screams had stopped abruptly as the pole cut into his neck, damaging vessels, vocal chords and arteries. He lost consciousness almost immediately, so never knew that his Aunt berated Vernon before calling the hospital. He never had to go through the agonizing wait as the doctors tried to save his life, wrapped up in blackness as he was. His next memory came when he was awakening, and the doctor told him not to go back down into the basement alone, less he trip again.
He never understood the bafflement of the doctors, or the renewed hatred of his relatives, until he met Hagrid. Then he came to the conclusion that his magic had kept him from bleeding to death until the doctors could save him. ~
Harry woke with a violent start, an inarticulate cry barely sounding from his throat. Curling into a ball, he sniffled slightly, allowing himself to express the hurt he hadn't been able to so long ago. As wrapped up in his emotions as he was, he never suspected that Professor Snape was at the Dursley's just then, getting their signatures and fully understanding something he would rather have kept to the limited knowledge he had learned by knowing Harry.
The End.