Erasmus's new wand disappears without reference to him. He doesn't care; in fact he's glad. Let someone else take responsibility for the horrid thing. It's hard enough being here and being alive. He doesn't need more problems. Life provides enough of its own...

He just wants a sandwich. That’s all.

But the jam jar lid refuses to come off and Erasmus’s frustration grows in startling leaps. Everything is wrong in his life and now a stupid lid chooses to defy him? He smashes the jar on the floor in sudden rage and jumps at the sound of shattering glass. Then he stares at the mess he’s made, feeling sick to his stomach. He’s done it again, let everything overwhelm him, given in. How can he expect to control his world if he can’t control himself?

He crouches on the floor, staring at the broken jar, watching the light dance over the sharp corners on thick-soled feet, watching the oozing red strawberry jam slide down the glass like thick blood dripping off a glass knife. He reaches out slowly and picks up a large shard of glass, holding it close to his skin, watching the play of light, aware of the pulse beating in his wrist. Wouldn’t it be better if he just—

“Erasmus?”

He starts, drops the glass with a clatter, and tries to swallow, licking suddenly dry lips. He tries to say “Hello, Hermione,” but his voice won’t work.

“Here, let me help.” She goes on her knees beside him and begins to clean up his mess.

“I’m stupid!” he blurts out. “An idiot!” He shakes, he trembles, with the thought of what he could have done if she hadn’t come in. He doesn’t want to die, he really doesn’t want to die. It’s just that it would be so easy, so much easier than this. Than the fear and loss and pain and empty echoing halls in his head where there should be memories. He’s shamefully glad she came in but he hates her for seeing him like this.

She sits back on her haunches and studies him silently. He can’t meet her eyes and pretends to be fascinated by the task of picking up glass.

“You need to stop holding on to what you’ve lost and start realising what you’ve got.” It’s possibly the longest sentence she’s ever said to him.

He laughs, harshly. “What, like you do?” She’s as lost as he is. He’s seen her fear, he knows she hardly leaves the house. He’s a mess but he’s not the only one. That’s not as comforting as it used to be.

She blinks, nothing more. “I have Harry and my parents. I’m alive.”

“And what have I got?” he demands, jealous. And for all he’s bitter and biting he wants a real answer, is desperate for a real answer – but believes there is none.

“You’re alive. You’re safe. And you’ve got us. Maybe you don’t want us but you’ve got us all the same.”

He looks at her. “It’s not that easy.”

She shrugs, and for a moment she looks like Harry. “Nothing worthwhile ever is.”

-

 “Bye, Mizz Carter.” Harry closes the door behind her and heaves a sigh of relief.

“You don’t trust her, do you?” Mrs Granger says, and he spins, startled and raising his hands defensively before hastily lowering them. “No, you trust her not to attack you,” she acknowledges before he can protest. “But you’re only willing to talk to her because she doesn’t know ‘Harry Potter’ means anything more than a teenage boy with issues. And you’d never tell her the truth.”

Harry shrugs. It’s true enough.

She sighs. “I wish your life had been easier,” she says softly. He holds very still and looks at her. In her eyes he sees her regret at his lack of trust and her knowledge that it can’t be helped. “I am afraid,” she whispers, “that you will never be able to trust anyone new again.”

Most of Hogwarts hated him for being champion and only Hermione believed he hadn’t put his own name in the Goblet. Ron wasn’t speaking to him. Moody, whom he trusted, sent him to Voldemort and wasn’t even really Moody. Harry’s trust has always been a desperate sort because he’s never been loved, he’s never had anyone to trust. He wanted to, so he put up with the Heir of Slytherin nonsense, he put up with being hated for being champion, he’s never objected while the wizarding world oscillates between loving him and loathing him. But this is too much. He risked everything to trust them and they betrayed him: he will not give them that power over him ever again. In his most desperate hour only two people stood by him. Only two.

Tears wink in Mrs Granger’s eyes and she pulls him into a hug, holding onto him with some of that desperation Harry remembers too well. “Why do you trust us?” she whispers.

“I don’t. I mean I didn’t. But Hermione did. Does. And I trust Hermione.” He pats her back awkwardly. “Hermione is my family. That makes you my family.”

-

The dementors close around Erasmus, ragged cloaks dragging shadow in their wake, sucking all the warmth out of the air, all the goodness out of his world, drowning him in despair. He’s holding a wand and he points it at them and splutters “Expecto... expect... patron...” But his voice dies under the weight of horror pressing down on him and the wand falls from his hand. His knees buckle and the dementors swarm around him, giants in soul-destroying black. He stares up as the nearest dementor reaches down to him in parody of a sweet embrace, and it pushes back its cowl to administer the Kiss and Erasmus screams.

The dementor wears his face.

He wakes from fear into fear, knowing someone else is in his bed. There is presence and warmth and the feel of a body lying beside him. He knows it. He knows too that it is Harry, for Harry is unmistakeable.

So Erasmus lies there, still and stiff and afraid because every instinct, every faded memory, tells him that things strange and unusual lead only to pain. But Harry only whimpers in echo of Erasmus’s own nightmare and twists his fingers into the bedspread. There is comfort in Harry’s weakness, because it lessens Erasmus’s own. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay, Harry.”

Harry stiffens, then his eyes half-open; Erasmus can see the faint gleam of them in the dark. “ ‘Rasmus?”

“You were having a nightmare.”

Harry nods absently. “So were you,” he says sleepily.

Erasmus doesn’t know anything about brothers. But he thinks this is what having a brother must be like. He smiles; slowly, as if he’s forgotten how to do it because it’s been so long. But he smiles.

So they sleep back to back as if defending each other from the world and Erasmus’s dreams are calm and quiet and restful.

-

The kitchen is empty but the red glow of sunrise diffusing through the window tells Harry all he needs to know. He makes a pot of tea and pours two cups, taking them out to the front door. Outside, on the step, Hermione sits. She takes the cup with a grateful murmur and Harry sits down beside her.

They can’t see the actual sunrise from where they sit, too many buildings and trees in the way, but low clouds fill the sky and make the whole world glow with rosy hue, like a rose-coloured filter on his glasses, burnishing Hermione’s hair and waking warmth in the concrete and turning the bare tree limbs to fire. It’s too like blood for Harry’s taste. He’s had enough of blood.

He and Hermione sit there as the sun rises, as the red turns to a gold just as vivid, just as world-filling, as if the whole world is alight with molten gold, as if King Midas has been let loose in it. Hermione’s skin glows with it as if she’s made of living gold and Crookshanks’s fur blazes orange.

“Mum used to wake me up for sunrise,” Hermione says quietly. “She always said a sunrise is a new beginning. That a whole new day lay ahead of us filled with adventure and interest and the unknown. She made it something magical. I’m trying to believe that, Harry, I’m trying to remember how it felt. I don’t think I can.”

In the oak behind the house a thrush sings his heart out in greeting to the morning. They sit in silence.

The door opens and Mr Granger looks down at them. “You two do realise teenagers are supposed to stay in bed until noon, I trust?” They both shrug. “Never mind. Come in, Mum’s cooking breakfast.”

Harry slides his fingers into Hermione’s as they stand and she looks at him. “Maybe we can’t believe in today,” he says. “But maybe we can believe in tomorrow.”

She looks at him. Looks at him, as the golden glow fades out of the world and leaves them lost in reality. She almost smiles. “I might be able to do that.”

-

The rain pounds down onto the pavements as if trying to drown the world. Erasmus doesn’t like it. Hermione does, to his surprise; she actually smiles. Harry doesn’t care about the rain, as if so long as it's not a dangerous environment it isn’t important enough for him to care. As if he’s too used to discomfort to complain. As if he doesn’t even see that there could be a reason for complain.

Erasmus pulls his yellow raincoat close around his neck but Harry and Hermione let their hoods fall back and spin around laughing like children, letting the rain splash onto their faces and soak their hair. He watches them spin and feels a pang of envy. Envy? For their childish stunts? But he does, he envies them. He wishes he could let go like that, relax like that. But he doesn’t know how to join them, so he just trudges along behind them and smiles faintly when Harry stomps in a puddle and splashes Hermione so that she squeals.

It’s almost... fun.

The concept is alien, but intriguing. Welcome.

Still, it’s good to get back to the house, get out of the rain. It’s good to be home.

Erasmus freezes in the act of hanging up his raincoat. Home? Since when? Okay, so this house is the closest he has to a place to belong, but still, home? In his confusion Harry and Hermione get ahead of him, leave him alone in the cold, empty hallway. Slowly, confused, he goes to change out of his wet things, and when he finishes, pulling on dry socks, he’s no less confused but a bit more accepting.

When he comes out of his room the house is silent even though it’s Mr Granger’s day to be home early. Where is everybody? Erasmus searches the house, growing more confused and maybe a little scared. Have they abandoned him? Have they decided he’s too much trouble and they don’t want anything more to do with him?

But behind the door he’s never been through at the back of the house he hears a strange noise, almost like a motor. A whirring sound, a clackety-clack. What could it possibly be? And dare he investigate? Maybe this is home now, but it’s not his house. The soft sound of Mr Granger’s chuckle decides him and he pushes the door open – and enters Wonderland. It’s a Lilliputian world, every detail perfect – and miniature. He stops and stares.

A train like the Hogwarts Express, only in rifleman green instead of red, chugs its way through rolling green hills while Harry, Hermione, and Mr Granger watch over it custodially. Or at least they were watching before Erasmus entered. Now they’re looking at him, and he flinches. But they’re not upset at him for intruding; they drag him around, pointing out details, showing off their little world. And he’s not angry, not resentful, no, he’s fascinated. This miniature reality awes him.

“It’s magic!” he says spontaneously.

Harry, for the first time, gives him a real and genuine smile. “Yes, it is.”

-

So close, so close. But so far.

Magic captured him, held him down. Beside him Hermione sobbed just once in pure despair. Harry struggled weakly against the restraining magic but it only gripped tighter. Painfully tighter. Harry choked on a sob of his own and thought wildly that he would never like magic again.

“Bring them!” Voldemort snapped and the Death Eaters gleefully dragged the three of them back through the graveyard towards their master.

“Sanctuary,” Harry mumbled desperately in a froth of snot and tears and blood, trying to grip the ball in his pocket. “Sanctuary, sanctuary.” But nothing happened.

If he said it often enough would it work, would he be safe?

“Sanctuary.”

He just wanted to be safe.

“Sanctuary.”

Snape bobbed into his vision, blood-matted hair, blood-streaked face. Fear and anger warred in his eyes.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Professor,” Harry said through bloodied lips. He didn’t want Snape to die too.

“I promised,” Snape hissed angrily and then they were separated again.

And dumped in front of Voldemort. Who smiled deeply and scarily so that Harry trembled. Anything that made him that pleased had to be bad.

Harry was still – somehow – gripping Snape’s wand and no one bothered to take it from him. That was how little he mattered. He held on to it, though. Mostly because he’d forgotten how to let go. By this point Harry was clinging to his defiance with his fingertips. He was so tired, so hurting, so scared. If Voldemort had said “Let me kill you now and Hermione goes free” Harry would have been grateful for the offer of death. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

“Did you think you could escape?” Voldemort demanded. “No one escapes Lord Voldemort.” His red eyes narrowed. “No one.”

I have. Harry was too tired to say the words but he looked at Voldemort with that knowledge in his eyes and Voldemort glared and grimaced and turned on another victim.

“Why did you betray me, Severus?”

“Because you betrayed me.”

Anger lit Voldemort’s eyes. “Crucio!”

Snape spat up blood. “You betrayed the dream,” he insisted through gritted teeth. “There is no glorious new world under your rule, only blood and death and suffering.”

“Silence!”

Snape coughed, rattling in his chest, but his voice went on, weak and insistent. “You betrayed the dream.”