Angry voices fill the house and Erasmus flees the top floor for the safety of the living room. It’s not free of them down here, but at least it’s further away from Hermione’s room where the argument rages. Erasmus curls up on the sofa and puts his arms over his head, trying to pretend he doesn’t hear them. Anger is dangerous, bad, hurting. Dangerous.

“Dammit, Harry, I was there too! Don’t you dare try telling me I wouldn’t understand!”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you anything!” Harry yells back. “That would involve talking to you!”

“And what do you call this!”

“Telling you I’m never talking to you again!”

Somebody slams a door. Then, like an echo, a second door slams. Erasmus winces and curls into a tighter ball. There was a time he would have been glad to have Harry and Hermione at each other’s throats just to prove they aren’t perfect, to make them feel as miserable as he does, but now he just feels sick. Angry magic hangs thick in the air, pressing down on him.

“It will be over soon.” Mr Granger sits down beside him. Erasmus cautiously uncurls enough to point on eye in his direction. “Neither of them is very good at holding on to anger. Even as a toddler Hermione’s tantrums never lasted long.”

“They do this often?” he whispers.

“Not as often as I would have expected. I think both of them shout at Mrs Carter and that helps. Usually they don’t get angry at the same time, which helps too. Just our bad luck today, I suppose. Buck up, it won’t last long. Considering what you lot’ve been through, the occasional temper tantrum shouldn’t be too much to put up with.” He reaches forward and picks up the book Harry left on the coffee table. “Come on, you can explain this Quidditch thing to me again.”

-

Harry throws himself angrily onto his bed, boiling with rage, and howls into his pillow. If even Hermione is against him what does he have left? Nothing. No one. He’s furious at her and furious at himself for believing in her. How could he have been so stupid? There’s no one in the world worth trusting, the only person he can trust is himself.

He is a fool. A stupid, gullible fool.

He punches the pillow. Only it isn’t as simple as that, because his magic is furious along with him and so his punch doesn’t dent the pillow, it goes right through it, throwing pillow-stuffing into the air to be wafted about by angry magical currents. Harry stares at the ruined pillow, stuffing floating into his face and catching on his glasses, settling in his hair.

And then he bursts into tears.

He cries because he’s furious, he cries because he doesn’t want Hermione to leave, he cries because he has no one, he cries because what Voldemort did to him is still so close and recent even after nearly two months, he cries because he can’t even control his own magic. He cries.

When the bout of crying is done his face is stiff and sore with weeping, his eyes aching and gritty, his cheeks sticky with tears. His head aches ferociously and his clothes are damp with sweat and tears, bits of stuffing clinging to them like synthetic snow. Harry lies there for a long time, aching all over, but finally summons the strength to turn over. His stiff limbs creak as he moves them for the first time in quite a while and he whimpers. He’s so tired of hurting. So tired of pain. So tired of all of it.

A few exhausted tears slip out of his eyes despite his attempts to stop them and Harry wraps an arm across his eyes, blacking out the world, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Then there are arms around him, pulling him into a familiar lap, wrapping him in a familiar embrace, surrounding him with a familiar scent. “I’m sorry,” he sobs into Hermione’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She echoes his words back at him, crying into his hair, and they hold onto each other and cry and apologise. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t even remember why he was angry. Doesn’t remember what could make him hate Hermione of all people, Hermione who is everything in the world. He hates Voldemort. Hates him for bringing him to this, uncertain temper and fear and hurt. He’d thought it would get better. He doesn’t know if it ever will.

-

Erasmus remains fascinated by the telly. It doesn’t feel familiar, the way most Muggle things do, and he likes losing himself in someone else’s world. Even soap operas, as illogical and melodramatic as they are, are good to watch because the problems are all someone else’s problems. Erasmus doesn’t mind problems when they don’t weigh down his shoulders. Harry and Hermione turn their noses up at soap operas, though they always come to watch cartoons, so Erasmus gets the tv to himself in the mornings. Even the ads are interesting because some of them are funny and because some of the inventions Muggles come up with to replace magic are fascinating (Hermione’s already sold him on exercise books instead of scrolls and he’ll take a torch over a Lumos spell any day because the torch doesn’t need magic).

This day his turning on the telly wakes up Crookshanks, curled up in the two-seater, and the cat sits up and eyes him contemplatively. Forgetting the tv, Erasmus holds his breath. Oh please, oh please, oh please. He doesn’t move a muscle, scared that one air molecule shifted in the wrong direction will scare the cat away. Crookshanks licks a paw thoughtfully and glances around the room, but Erasmus is the only human about. Then, just before Erasmus passes out from lack of oxygen, his lungs burning, the cat condescends to step onto his lap and curl up. Erasmus remembers how to breathe and cautiously pats his head with one finger. Crookshanks bunts the finger with his nose and then tucks his nose under his tail and begins to purr quietly.

Emboldened, Erasmus dares to pat him properly, running his hand down from head to tail. Crookshanks may be an ugly cat, dispassionately considered, but his fur is soft and his purr is soul-warming and to Erasmus he is the most beautiful animal in the world.

“I nearly kicked you once,” he whispers. “I’m glad I didn’t. Ow!” For Crookshanks dug his claws into Erasmus’s knee, not enough to draw blood but enough to make it obvious it was no accident. “I didn’t actually do it!” One green eye opens to glare at him, as if to say even thinking it is a crime. Then the cat flicks an ear and closes his eye again – and Erasmus realises he’s never stopped purring.

“I’m sorry I thought it,” he says. “I was just really angry but it wasn’t your fault. But I didn’t do it, I couldn’t. I’ve been kicked too many times; I couldn’t do it to you.”

He likes to think the cat’s purr increases in volume. He’s almost sure it does.

Erasmus falls asleep with a cat purring on his lap and even if he wakes with a crick in his neck and stiff knees it’s worth it. There are no nightmares.

-

Harry will always think of the day Erasmus came into the kitchen for lunch holding Crookshanks and actually smiling as the day when things turned around. Maybe it wasn’t really that day. Maybe it was an earlier day or a later day, or maybe there wasn’t any day at all but just a slow progression. But that is the day he’ll think of as the day when things turned around. After that there are fewer outbursts, there is more willingness to participate. That is what an animal can do. Harry knows. That’s what Hedwig always did for him, his one friend at the Dursleys, his second friend ever, right after Hagrid, the first person who would listen to his problems and not judge him for them.

Hedwig is happy here at the Grangers. They don’t insist she stays locked in her cage, they’re happy for her to wander around the house and satisfy her curiosity. Harry sometimes wonders – very briefly because it hurts to think of it – what it would have been like to grow up in a house like this. To grow up knowing he was loved, knowing he was appreciated, knowing he was a part of the family. To not be the shame of the family, the black sheep, the unwanted one. He would have grown up with confidence, without loneliness. Hedwig would never have been shut away in her cage like a carrier of the plague.

If his parents had lived—

But no, that’s too painful, so he doesn’t think about it. He just thinks about Hedwig being happy now. About Crookshanks in Erasmus’s arms and the wide smile on the boy’s face as he experiences, as if for the first time, the unconditional acceptance of an animal. It’s better to think about the good things. Sometimes, he almost thinks that he’s finding that easier and easier to do.

But he doesn’t think it too loud in case someone decides to take it all away.

-

Mrs Carter doesn’t sigh as they sit in silence. She looks perfectly willing to go on sitting here in silence all day. Erasmus is the one who finally breaks.

“What do you want?”

“I want to help you.”

“You can’t.”

“No. But maybe I can help you help yourself.”

He snarls but says nothing. The only help he needs is his memories back. The old familiar ache thrums through him. Who am I? What have I forgotten? What was I before this?

Silence falls again. Lingers. Breaks.

“Sometimes I hate him,” Erasmus admits lowly.

“Who?”

“Harry.”

Mrs Carter looks surprised and not surprised. “Why?”

“Because he has memories. Because he’s important to people. Because he’s everything I’m not.” He contemplates the tabletop, studying the grain of the wood. “Because I want him to like me and I don’t see why he should.”

-

Hermione worked out later that Voldemort probably only tortured them for an hour then, playing with one or the other, revelling in his strength and power and showing off to his Death Eaters, but if that was true – and it was Hermione, so it must be – then it was the longest hour of Harry’s life. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had lasted a week. But finally Voldemort got tired of playing cat and mouse with them. Harry wasn’t relieved, because he was pretty sure this only meant worse to come.

If there could be worse. But one thing Harry had learned was that there could always be worse.

So there Harry stood, fighting for Hermione who was bound once again to the gravestone, yet knowing he was going to fail, standing opposite the Dark Lord who had oppressed his parents’ generation. Sweat slicked his grip on his wand and fear made his knees knock. But his wand stayed in his hand and his hand stayed steady.

 “And now, Harry, we duel.”

“Accio wand!” he shouted, the last spell he’d learnt still vivid in his mind. But at the same time Voldemort said, “Caedo!” The spells met. Strange things happened.

Priori Incantatum, Hermione told him much later and they wondered why Ollivander had never mentioned the possibility despite knowing what wand Harry had. At the time all he knew was that somehow he was still alive and that even Voldemort was scared by the strange beam of light that connected their wands, by the singing phoenix song and the shimmering golden shield.

Harry bent his mind to forcing those beads of light toward Voldemort, desperately sure that whatever would happen when one hit a wand could not be good. Voldemort, for the first time, looked uncertain of his own power. “Lucius!” he shouted. “Your wand!” At his wobble in concentration Harry got the beads a good deal closer to him, but Mr Malfoy’s wand came soaring through the strange gold field and Voldemort caught it. He aimed it.

Despite his efforts (and he tried, oh he tried), the vicious burning hex was enough distraction that Harry lost control. The first bead hit his wand. It exploded. Harry shrieked, his world blood and pain and splinters, as the magic drove his wand into his skin. He beat the pain back and found himself on his knees, aching, bleeding hands held out in front of him, blood dripping down his face, and Voldemort smiling down at him triumphantly. “So ends the boy hero.”

“No!” Hermione shrieked from somewhere beyond the glittering shield. Harry raised his hands in futile defence.

 “Potter!” came a desperate shout in an unexpected voice as Voldemort snarled a curse. “Catch!”

The wand Snape threw sailed through the shield and Harry instinctively reached out to catch it, closing his fingers around it with a spasm of pain but holding onto it grimly, knowing this was his only chance. “Protego!” The shield blazed in front of him, turning back Voldemort’s spell, but only just. It bounced onto the golden field which shattered in a splatter of phoenix notes and left Harry and Voldemort once more exposed. Hermione darted forward. Voldemort’s eyes narrowed.

Spinning wildly as the Death Eaters closed in, Harry pointed Hermione’s wand at them, Hermione at his back, holding onto it with both hands to prevent the blood from loosening his grip, waiting for the first attack.

“So, Severus,” Voldemort snarled. “It is true, then. Dumbledore’s spy is truly Dumbledore’s man.”

Snape threw his white mask to the ground and trod on it. The snapping of it sounded frighteningly clear in the sudden stillness. “Yes,” he said simply, and came to stand beside Harry.