“Um, I’ve never even heard of it,” answered Harry after a moment’s hesitation. He felt a twinge of disappointment at how incredibly anti-climatic his answer was. Dumbledore and Snape exchanged unreadable looks with each other, and then Dumbledore nodded his head again.

Snape stepped back away from him and Harry sighed in relief. Snape, in turn, huffed in frustration, and began rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, clearly annoyed.

“Did it ever occur to you,” mumbled Snape, sounding oddly weary, “that we have a library in this castle for a reason?” Harry looked away from him and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, knowing full well why he tended to avoid the library in the first place. The library was Hermione’s kind of thing; it was her place not Harrys. Harry would much rather sit in the common room and play wizards chess with Ron. Or go wandering around the castle looking for another great adventure with the Marauders map and his Dads invisibility cloak. “In fact,” he thought with humor, “the library is more for girls anyways.”

“Have you ever even been in a library before, do you even know what it is,” snapped Snape when Harry didn’t answer immediately. Harry opened his mouth in protest, face flushed red with anger. Dumbledore moved swiftly to Harry side and place a warm and comforting hand on his shoulder and look at Snape in warning.  

“Severus,” said Dumbledore reproachfully, a frown forming behind his beard, “do try to remember what it was like to be young. You forget so easily that you were once in young Harry’s place at one time or another,” he finished slowly looking deep into Snape’s eyes. Snape scowled and fumed silently, his joints stiff and unmoving. Dumbledore gave Snape one final, firm, glance that made Snape sniff and turn his head. Harry let Dumbledore steer him towards his hospital bed, feeling extremely happy to be away from Snape, even if it was only by a few feet. As Harry sat down, once again, and got comfortable, Dumbledore gave him a small smile. 

“Such an explanation, at least for something as complex and mind altering as Occlumency, is tiring. It’s so very late already as it is. Perhaps tomorrow, when you start your detentions with Professor Snape, he’ll be able, and more willing, to give you the details on what you’ll be learning,” said Dumbledore soothingly. Harry, who’d been gazing down at folded hands lying in his lap, jerked his head up to stare at his headmaster. An expression of incredulous disbelief had spread across his face in place of his confusion and anger.

“What,” he barked, before he had time to stop himself. Was Dumbledore for real!? Was the man actually going to make Harry spend the rest of the year in detention with Snape, of all people? Did Dumbledore think he had a death wish?

But from the stern look the headmaster was giving him, Harry realized that that was indeed exactly what Dumbledore had in mind. He was going to do such a thing to Harry. He gaped at the man, forgetting himself entirely. He felt more betrayed now than he had when his friends had left him to Dumbledore. 

It was one thing to leave him with someone who would most certainly protect him at all costs. Harry really couldn’t blame Ron and Hermione anyways; Dumbledore was the Headmaster of Hogwarts, for crying out loud. If Dumbledore felt like it, he could almost do whatever he wanted and no one could say otherwise. Dumbledore was also the most powerful wizard alive today, the only wizard that even Voldemort was afraid of. He was Harry’s, and many of the other students who attended school, and even some who didn’t, hero, always coming to save the day when he was most needed. Besides, Harry had never had any objections with spending time with the headmaster. Dumbledore was gentler than Hagrid, for peats sake. Dumbledore was everyone’s hero! 

“But Snape,” Harry thought with a mental gulp, “Snape would kill him.” If given the chance Harry knew without a doubt that Snape would tear him limb from limb, laughing all the while. 

As Harry’s thoughts focused more and more on Snape’s hatred of him, an intense and unreasonable fear bubbled deep down from somewhere he didn’t even know existed within himself. He went cold and felt his breath leave him. “Snape…Snape hated him,” thought Harry vehemently. Snape would stop at nothing to torture him because that was just what Snape did. It was like Snape had been born to continuously inflict damage on Harry’s person. Harry let his mind wander through the many memories he did have of Snape, surprised at how easily they came to him. In one memory Snape was yelling at him for something he didn’t do, in another Snape was cursing Harrys very existence, personally offended by Harry’s birth. In the next, Snape was making life more difficult than it already was, then Snape was focusing more on Harry parents than on Harry as a person, as per usual. And Harry didn’t even know why! 

Harry felt like he would explode with memories and thoughts of Snape. Snape was the only constant Harry had ever known at Hogwarts. He was the only person who had never surprised Harry, the only person who never changed attitude in favor of Harry’s newest disposition. 

Snape was a greasy git, an all around jerk, and…the most awfully frightening person Harry had ever had the displeasure of meeting, even more so than Voldemort. At least Harry knew why Voldemort hate him. 

Harry’s scar prickled, as if in answer to his thoughts. Before he had time to react, enmity towards Snape, that he knew was not his own, streaked through his body and scorched across his eyes like molten sulfuric acid. He flinched and looked up at Dumbledore, who had been hovering lightly over him. Dumbledore’s eyes widened only a fraction before he straighten faster than Harry would have thought possible for such an elderly man. As Harry looked down the end of Dumbledore’s abnormally long wand, a fear that was also not his own surged over him so suddenly that any anger he may have felt before vanished in an instant, leaving him cold and confused.  

“Leave him Severus, don’t touch him!” Snape, who‘d reached out to steady Harry when Dumbledore had straightened, snatched his hand back as though it had been burned. 

“His thoughts of you betray him,” Harry, looking up into Dumbledore’s narrowing eyes, felt fear flash through him. “They leave him weak to Lord Voldemort’s wrath.” Dumbledore’s soft voice was almost lost behind a loud moan. It took Harry several seconds to realize that it had been he who had made such a sound. 

Harry lowered his upper body backward onto the bed slowly and let his feet dangling off the edge. He looked up at the ceiling through dazed and tunneled eyes, barley feeling the scorch of hot brimstone spread across his skin. The smell invaded his nostrils’ and he felt hot metallic bile rise in his throat. 

Perhaps the familiarity of the situation made it less surprising this time. Perhaps, instead, he was simply getting used to it; all two times it had happened. Harry didn’t bother trying to understand why he was seemly acceptant of his fate. 

A push against his own mind had Harry rolling over to the edge of the bed to vomit, thick red liquid mixed with yellow spilled from deep within his intestines. He dry heaved for a couple minutes more, body trying fruitlessly to physically expel what he knew was only in his mind. He finished and, left unable to move, lay on his side panting in agony, hands clasped tightly over his sweltering head. He’d drawn his legs in all the way towards his thighs in attempt to curl into the smallest ball he could possibly make himself be. 

Harry squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to cool the burning that was there but opened them quickly because of the pressure behind them. Blinking rapidly, he tried unsuccessfully to see past the blood he knew would now be seeping past his tear ducts and onto the nice white bed sheets that Madam Pomfrey had just replaced for him earlier in the day. Gentle caressing hands rubbed at his back and Dumbledore’s voice rang clear through the fizzing pain in his head. 

“Oh Harry, fight him. I know it hurts, I know you’re in pain, but you must push back. There is little I can do for you at the moment.” Dumbledore paused and Harry cringed, feeling the sheer amount of Voldemorts fear and anger. It was washing over him again and again, like waves in the sea, drowning him in red, gold, and green star lights of pain. 

Harry wanted, more than anything he’d ever wanted before in his life, to beg Dumbledore to speak again. Dumbledore was real; he was safety and sanity all in one. 

Harry grasped weakly at the string of reality that was Dumbledore’s voice. He turned to face Dumbledore, feeling sick at the sudden movement, removed his hands from his ears, reached up and grabbed at Dumbledore’s robs to pull him closer. Dumbledore rested his hands gently on the bloody ones that clutched at his robs and leaned down closer, his ear near Harrys mouth, his face drawn with worry. Harry choked back a sob of pain and forced himself to concentrate on the words he needed to form. He briefly focused on Snapes presence standing stiffly next to the headmaster. Snape’s arms were crossed and face was surprisingly pale. Even still he looked ready, more than Harry had ever seen him, to jump into action at a moment’s notice. Harry turned his attention back to the headmaster. 

“Dis-tract….m-me,” gurgled Harry thickly around the blood in his mouth. He felt a brief flash of annoyance at being so unable to perform such a simple task and uncurled his hands from Dumbledore robs. Flexing them briefly and feeling a moment’s relief at his accomplishment, he listened as Dumbledore began speaking again. He lay back on his bed and attempted to relax a little hoping that it was almost all over. 

And regretted it the moment he did. 

Dumbledore’s words of comfort were drowned out as a fresh new wave of pain washed over Harry. He could almost see the cruciatus curse coursing through Voldemort into himself and he barely had a moment to widen his eyes at the sheer audacity of the man. Voldemort was cursing himself to curse Harry. Harry opened his mouth, sucked in more air than he’d ever thought he could possibly hold, and screamed. 

He felt his eyes roll back into his head. He twitched and fell sideway off the bed and onto the floor, no longer able to feel Dumbledore’s gentle hands. The sound of something tearing rang through the room and Harry, still screaming with the same breath, felt something warm and wet dribble down his face in thick streams. His scream cut off as abruptly as it had started. Voldemort, it seemed, could also feel the pain. Harry took a rattled breath and collapsed onto the floor in relief. He felt Voldemort pause in hesitation, weighing the positives and the negatives. Then, coming to a decision, he drove back into Harry’s mind more forcefully than before. Harry’s mouth, which had a mind of its own by now, opened wider still and the scream that came out was in a high pitch than before. His body jerked this way and that, completely out of his control, and Harry felt a small amount of admiration form somewhere deep within himself at Voldemorts handy work. That man never did anything half way.

“Well crap,” thought Harry, amazement rolling through him. He was bleeding more now that he’d ever bled before in his life. He didn’t even bother trying to think up what the extent of his injuries entailed. Perhaps he wouldn’t survive this one…but if he did Harry wasn’t so sure he’d be able to survive the next one.

Dumbledore’s voice broke through Harry’s thoughts and a strange sensation wrapped around Harry’s body, his mind going blissfully quiet and still. As his brain’s systems began to shut down he briefly entertained himself with thoughts of how Snape was reacting right now. His last thought, oddly enough, was that he hoped he hadn’t scared Madam Pomfrey out of her sleep with his screaming….