The door to the antechamber opened slowly. Potter walked in with a resigned expression on his face. Discreetly, Snape checked the clock. The boy had been locked in that room for nearly two hours.

“I’m finished, sir,” Potter said, his fists clenched tightly around the leather bound book as if in fear that Snape might take it from him.

Snape merely raised an eyebrow and studied him, assessing the honesty of that statement. When he was satisfied he nodded once. “I expect you to see you tomorrow evening promptly at 6pm,” he said, dismissing the boy.

“One more thing,” Snape breathed, and watched as Harry stopped and waited, turning around very slowly.

Snape rolled a stoppered bottle of clear, aquamarine liquid in his fingers and met Harry’s eyes. “How have you been sleeping?”

Potter’s green eyes lit with suspicion and his lips compressed. “Fine, sir.”

“I think you’re lying,” Snape said.

“What’s it to you anyway?” Potter retorted. Snape watched as Potter thought better of the remark, and then added “sir” as an afterthought.

“Unless you want to spend the rest of the term in detention with me,” Snape replied, “I suggest you sleep in the evenings like your classmates.”

Harry said nothing.

Snape rolled his eyes. “Take this,” he said, holding the vial out to the boy.

Reluctantly, Harry reached for it.

“It’s dreamless sleep potion. Take it 30 minutes before bed. There’s enough to last you two weeks.”

When Potter’s gaze met Snape’s, Snape noted that the boy’s eyes were glassy. Snape quickly dismissed the aberration as exhaustion rather than emotion.

Activities in the Gryffindor common room were still in full swing when Harry returned near 8pm. Harry felt even more exhausted than he had the night before. He waved Hermione and Ron off, claiming that he had a headache.

“No wonder, mate. Snape’s enough to give anyone a headache,” Ron commented.

Harry merely nodded, again ignoring the troubled look Hermione gave him. “See you at breakfast,” he said, turning away to climb the stairs to the dormitory.

Once again he found a spread of food awaiting him; roasted chicken and potatoes, kidney pie, and lemon cookies. The smell of them raised his appetite. He had mentioned the food to Ron the night before, but Ron claimed he’d had nothing to do with it.

“Dobby?” Harry called around a mouthful of kidney pie.

A crack heralded the arrival of Harry’s favorite house-elf.

“Yes, Harry Potter, sir. You called, sir.”

“Dobby, did you bring this food for me?”

“Yes, sir, Harry Potter. Harry Potter needs to eat more, sir.”

“Yes, thank you Dobby. It’s very good. And I really appreciate it.”

Dobby swayed with pleasure at Harry’s compliment.

“Dobby, did someone ask you to bring me this food?”

“Yes, Harry Potter, sir. It was Professor Snape, sir. He says you not be eating enough. He says you need feeding up. He says I should bring you some food each night if you don’t eat your dinner, sir.”

Harry sat their completely gob smacked for a moment. “Thanks, Dobby.”

He was still at a loss when he finally finished eating. The dreamless sleep potion glittered on the nightstand beside him, and he tipped it down his throat, feeling like the world as he knew it was turning on end. As he waited for the potion to take effect, he read his Transfiguration text. The next thing he knew, Ron was shaking him awake.

“Harry, you alive over there? You’re going to miss breakfast if you don’t hurry.”

Harry stretched and signed. It was his first solid night’s sleep in well over a month.

The third night’s detention was much the same as the second’s. Only this time, Snape had assigned him to write about his feelings in that damnable book. After locking himself into the desolate antechamber, he studied the texture of the stone walls, looking for anything of interest. He found nothing, not even a bug scrabbling about or a spider building a web.

Feelings. What the hell did Snape know about feelings, and what kind of assignment was that? The only expansion Snape had made, other than once again requiring that Harry be both complete and honest in his writing lest Snape would make Harry read it aloud to him, was that if he didn’t know what to write, he should start with “I feel…”

I feel like I hate you, Snape.

That was a bad idea, he realized. What if Snape made him read that aloud? Well, it would serve him right.

You are a right git. Where do you get off making me do this? I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t even want your help. Who the hell are you to be talking about feelings? As Hermione once said of Ron, you have the emotional capacity of a teaspoon. Probably even less than that.

Harry angrily dipped the quill in the ink well. In for a penny, in for a pound.

You had no right to enter my mind in the first place. I hate you, you miserable old bat. And after everything you saw in my mind, you…

What had Snape done, Harry thought, and felt his stomach turn over. Snape may have been his cruel, usual self, but Harry would have to be an idiot not to notice that Snape had not chastised him for what had happened, had not even teased or goaded or insulted him. Instead he’d forced him to visit a healer. Harry had to admit that for the first time in a month, he wasn’t in constant pain of one form or another. What these writing assignments were about, though, Harry had no idea.

Fine, okay, so in your own deranged way, I think maybe you are trying to help me. I still didn’t ask for it though.

Harry took a deep breath and studied the page before him.

You wanted me to write about what I feel about that night. Well how would you feel? Harry wrote with a spurt of anger. Sighing, he rubbed his eyes and continued.

I feel… humiliated, angry, stupid. I felt like a fool for falling for Dudley’s trap. I felt sick for letting them do that to me. I felt weak for, I don’t know, not ‘taking it like a man,’ I guess.

Harry squirmed with the emotions that swamped him. He didn’t want to keep writing, but he knew he had to.

I screamed like a girl, dammit! I screamed for them to stop. Not at first. At first I screamed in rage, and I fought them for all I was worth. But they where holding me down and I couldn’t reach my wand. I felt so damn helpless. Why the hell hadn’t I practiced non-verbal spells? I tried to use them, screamed spells in my mind, but then…

Harry paused to blink back the tears.

Then I was in too much pain to think straight. Then I just begged them to stop. I couldn’t think of anything else.

Harry hunched his shoulders and hung his head in shame.

I was such a fool.

The nausea had returned. He swallowed hard and tried to think of something else, anything else. His skin prickled and burned. He swallowed again.

And now Snape knows. Of all people to find out, why him? He already hates me, and now he must think I’m weak on top of being stupid.

Just the thought of Snape actually seeing what had happened to him had him wanting to howl in embarrassment. Damn you, Snape, for prying into my mind!

The flash of rage washed through him with surprising strength, obliterating the tears.

I just want to kill them. All of them. I want to tear them to pieces with my bare hands. I want them to go through what I did, only I wouldn’t be the one to do it. Maybe I could magic it to happen to them, or at least how it *feels*. Let them know what it’s like to be held down and…

He couldn’t write the word. He couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t commit it to paper for all eternity. Some corner of his mind warned that he blamed himself for what had happened, for not seeing it coming, for not being strong enough to fight it, to get away.

He scrunched his eyes shut, willing the pain and humiliation to vanish. He wanted to bolt for the door and run as far away as he could. But where could he go? And if he didn’t finish, Snape would know, and Snape would humiliate him even further by making him read his meager words aloud.

And so he bent to the task, forced himself to finish what he’d started. Words flowed from him in halting waves, crashing against the barriers of his internal resistance.

I felt like I wanted to die.