The magical adults have gone, leaving the shell-shocked inhabitants of the Granger house to deal with the aftermath of their invasion. Mr Granger puts on a kettle for tea and Harry holds onto Hermione and whispers stupid reassurances with the desperation of someone who wants to believe them but doesn’t. This is their home, their place of safety, and now there’s an intruder in their midst. And it doesn’t matter if they took him in of their own free will, all that matters is that he’s here. That everything is different now.

As the kettle whistles Mrs Granger comes into the kitchen. “He’s settled in,” she says, but that’s all she says. And so they sit around the table, the four of them with their steaming cups of tea in their hands and the silence sitting heavy on their shoulders. From upstairs there comes no noise; there might as well be no one else in the house. But he’s there, that stranger boy with angry scowls and hurting eyes, and everything is different now. Suddenly home doesn’t quite feel like home any more. It feels dangerous, uncertain.

Harry holds onto Hermione’s hand and tells himself that it will be okay. Everything will be fine.

He wonders when he lost the ability to lie to himself.

-

Erasmus spends most of his first day in someone else’s house hiding in the bedroom he is to share with the other boy. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with those people. Probably they’re laughing to each other at how feeble he is, how pathetic he is. Or maybe they’re making up new lies to tell him; after all, no one ever tells him the truth so why should he expect these new people to do so? But he’s not scared of them. Not even the adults. In his memories are worse things than anything these people could do to him and he’s not scared at all.

He’s angry and lost and hurt and terrified of the blanks in his memories, but he’s not scared. It’s about the only thing he has going for him.

Mrs Granger checks in on him every couple of hours – pity, he snarls into his pillow, and ignores her – and brings him up some sandwiches and a glass of juice for lunch. Those he eats, but only because there’s no way he’s starving himself here. If he gets sick he’ll have to deal with them and he doesn’t want to deal with them. He just wants the whole world to go away and leave him alone.

When he refuses to go down to dinner Mrs Granger’s eyes narrow in a way that reminds him of Professor McGonagall, but she says nothing and goes away, only to bring up a plate of food for him. Erasmus eats alone in silence and pretends he doesn’t hear the distant sounds of muted conversation. Tells himself he doesn’t want anything to do with them and he’s glad they’re far away. Glad they’re ignoring him.

But when she comes to take the plate away she says, “Erasmus, we’re going to watch a movie if you want to join us. But you don’t have to.”

She doesn’t want him to. She’s hoping he’ll say no. That irks him. It’s one thing to want nothing to do with them but if they want nothing to do with him it’s something else entirely and so perversely he sits up. “Okay.”

She’s surprised, but takes it in her stride and leads him downstairs to where the rest of the family are gathered in the sitting room. Erasmus stops in the doorway as all eyes turn to him, three people, a cat, and an owl – and dear Merlin, this was a bad idea, he doesn’t want all these eyes watching him, he should have stayed where he was, stayed safe and out of the way—

Then Mrs Granger gently pushes him toward a seat and people and animals stop looking at him. There’s an argument over to what to watch, which Erasmus watches wide-eyed, but then Mrs Granger rules, “We’ll watch Stargate. Erasmus, you’re closest, you put it in.”

He stands, because he’s too proud to admit he doesn’t know what to do, and he stares at the blocky black videotape hoping the knowledge will magically appear in his brain. And knows his pale cheeks give away his blush when Mrs Granger gives him directions.

He takes the tape from the case, aware of the suspicious eyes on his back.

“I thought you were Muggleborn,” Mr Granger says.

“I don’t know,” he snarls, jamming the tape into the machine and hoping it breaks. “I have no idea.” He drops the case on the floor and stumps back to his seat, folding his arms and pushing himself down into the cushions.

He doesn’t know anything.

-

Erasmus is the angriest kid Harry’s ever met. He throws things on the floor at the least hint of frustration, he slams doors, and he scowls fiercely at anyone who dares to be in the same room as him, let alone say something to him. He radiates anger and his temper snaps at the slightest thing. And all the while his eyes scream pain-pain-pain.

And okay, Harry actually gets why, since the other boy has lost his memories and doesn’t even know who he is. That would be bad enough on its own without throwing in the whole Death Eater prisoner thing. So, really, he does understand. He just doesn’t see why Erasmus has to take it all out on them. It isn’t their fault, they haven’t done anything to him. Harry is tired of people hating him for things that aren’t his fault.

Dumbledore thinks Harry can help this kid? He really doesn’t think so. He wants to, honest he does, but... he doesn’t have the energy to deal with this. He doesn’t want to deal with this.

“We’ll just give him some space,” Mrs Granger said after the third time Erasmus slammed a door on them.

Harry’ll happily give him all the space in Siberia.

-

Erasmus hates it here. The Grangers don’t want him here and he doesn’t want to be here. Nobody wants him. There’s nowhere for him to be. They don’t like him and they don’t want him and that’s just fine with him because he doesn’t care, honestly he doesn’t, and he doesn’t like them either. He doesn’t. He wishes he was back at Hogwarts. At least at Hogwarts even if there was all the magic and the adults and the fear, he had a room to himself. Here he has to share with Harry and if Harry doesn’t like him, well, who cares. That’s Harry’s problem, not Erasmus’s. But it means there’s nowhere to hide.

He wrenches himself out of a nightmare in the middle of the night with a gasp, and looks worriedly over to the other bed hoping he hasn’t woken Harry because he doesn’t want Harry to know about his weaknesses, he doesn’t want anyone to know. No one would care, and even if they did they wouldn’t help him. Other people knowing about your weaknesses just gives them a weapon, Erasmus knows that. Doesn’t remember how he knows, but knows it anyway.

Harry’s gone, though, and it doesn’t even occur to him to wonder why the other boy is out of bed at two in the morning, he just heaves a sigh of relief and turns his back on the room, tugging the blankets over his head and burrowing down under the warmth of the bedclothes as if they can hide him from all the bad things in the world.

Maybe it works, because he sleeps again, without nightmares enough to wake him.

It’s fairly early when he wakes up, only seven, and dark outside, but he doesn’t sleep much these days (he doesn’t know if he ever did) because being awake is better than being asleep. Fewer night demons. Funny thing about this household, he’s noticed, is that the kids are way more likely to get up early than the adults. He’s sure that’s not normal. He’d wonder what it meant, but actually he doesn’t care.

No one else in the house is stirring as he pads down the hall towards the bathroom. But Hermione’s bedroom door is open and through the doorway Erasmus can see Harry sitting in the chair by Hermione’s bed. She’s in bed asleep, face turned towards Harry, and Harry is slumped on the side of the bed, using his arm for a pillow, as asleep as she is. Erasmus pauses, surprised. And not worried, of course not, even though it looks like a scene from a hospital, the visitor fallen asleep at the side of a critically-ill patient. He wouldn’t worry about them, even if he thought there was reason to be worried. But it’s strange. And weird.

And in his sleep Harry is clutching Hermione’s hand like he thinks she’ll disappear if he lets go.

-

Above his head skeletal trees denuded of leaves reach fingers made of bare branches to the sky. Harry doesn’t look at them more than he has to because those long, bony fingers remind him too much of Voldemort. Better to keep his head down and focus on the soil under his hands and not look too closely at the trees lest he start imagining their malevolent eyes fixed on him. Trees don’t have red, angry eyes, Harry knows that. But his imagination doesn’t care.

“There,” Mrs Granger says, sketching out a rectangle in the air above an empty flowerbed. Harry nods and picks up the spade.

He likes gardening with Mrs Granger. It’s not like at school, all lessons and tests and you must remember. And it’s certainly nothing like gardening for Aunt Petunia, who snaps out orders, refuses to get dirt on her hands, and expects him to know everything instinctively and then shouts at him when he doesn’t. This is just him and Mrs Granger, while Mr Granger is inside giving Hermione piano lessons and Erasmus is hiding upstairs on his bed. Him and Mrs Granger in peace and quiet, while she explains what she’s doing and why, telling him her experiences and thoughts and plans, the reasons for her choices. He likes to watch her, dirt on her cheek under her yellow woolly hat, coaxing the winter-flowering pansies into life, planning what plants to shift to where, teasing weeds out of the cold soil with a rueful acknowledgement of the necessity but sorry for them too.

He likes knowing that what he does here matters to the plants, that he is helping them. He likes knowing that Mrs Granger likes him and is pleased with his help. He likes having somewhere he can belong. Crookshanks gambols past, batting along a fallen leaf like a hoop, whiskers forward and eyes bright, and Harry smiles.

“How far do I need to dig?” he asks, gently turning over the earth to reveal the bulbs that need to be split up and replanted for spring. It’s good to do real work, to have something to concentrate on, to pretend he can forget the things he can never quite forget. But Mrs Granger doesn’t answer and he looks up from the flowerbed to see tears cold and glittering on her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping hastily at the tears only to have them swiftly replaced, so that all she accomplishes is to smear dirt across her face.  “I’m sorry, it’s just—You’re all so young and all so hurt. And I can’t help you, I can’t make it better. I want to, Harry, I want to so badly.”

Awkwardly Harry puts his arms around her, initiating a hug for the first time in his life, and lets her cry.

-

Harry has nightmares too, it turns out. Erasmus can’t help but notice, sharing a room with him. The first time it happens he lies there, frozen, with no idea what to do about it, while Harry thrashes about in his bed. He has no idea how to help, no idea how he feels about Harry lying there in the other bed, tossing and turning in obvious fear and pain and horror. But not screaming. Not screaming, just uttering a thin keening whimper that goes on and on and never stops even as it raises the hairs on the back of Erasmus’s neck with its note of pure, unadulterated panic.

And he just lies there, like he’s been turned to stone, hands clenched at his sides, staring up into the dark of the ceiling. Pretending he doesn’t see Hedwig’s accusing eyes. Pretending he’s asleep when Hermione rushes into the room and takes charge. Pretending he’s not relieved she’s there. But she is there and she has everything under control, calming Harry down, whispering reassurances, making everything okay.

Erasmus closes his eyes as Harry stops that awful keening, and anger boils somewhere down in his stomach. Why should Harry have nightmares? Nightmares are for people like Erasmus, not people like Harry. Harry is safe and protected and loved, he doesn’t deserve nightmares. It’s like he’s taken some mark of distinction from Erasmus, some prize that might have been unwanted but was at least his, fully and completely. And now it’s been taken from him.

There’s an old grief that hangs over this house, wretchedly familiar in its pain; there are shadows in the eyes of the inhabitants even when they should have nothing to hurt over. Why? What can they possibly have to hurt about, these happy people with family and memories and everything good? He’s the one who was dragged out of a Death Eater prison.

It’s not fair.

-

A spell caught Harry up midflight, before he’d gotten more than half a dozen gravestones away. And when the magic, gripping him roughly and unkindly, brought him back to throw him to the ground he lifted up his grazed face to see Hermione had been caught too. She gave him a look of anguished apology. It was his fault they were here and she was apologising?

“Bold,” Voldemort purred, and it might have been a statement of pleasure or disgust.

Slowly, dreading it but unable to resist, they looked up. Voldemort sat in a conjured chair, like the emperor of the graveyard. Harry hastily regained his feet, unwilling to let Voldemort treat him like a slave, and glared defiantly at him, wiping blood off his cheek onto his sleeve. Hermione was with him, standing close enough that he could feel her trembling but still with her chin high and her eyes narrowed. Harry took comfort from her nearness, from her own refusal to  be intimidated.

“Peter.” At the sharp command Pettigrew winced and scuttled forward, offering Voldemort his arm with a reluctance that would have been comical if it hadn’t been Voldemort. The man stood. The dark wizard Harry had unwittingly defeated once might have been returned to a body, but he was clearly weak and Pettigrew had to hold him upright. But that didn’t matter, he was still Voldemort.

He smiled. “Welcome, Harry Potter,” he said. “Our guest of honour.” His face was pasty white, like some creature pulled out from under a rock, and his eyes were red and hating. His nose was flat, with wide, flared nostrils like a snake and his fingers were inhumanly long as they played with Harry’s wand. And despite this, despite his twisted, revolting form, he exuded the same charisma that had marked the sixteen-year-old memory of Tom Riddle, that something about him that drew in followers even against their will.

Even when he was weak, leaning against Pettigrew (who sweated and fidgeted and looked horrified by the honour), he radiated power. Being weak, you knew, was only a temporary event and if you took advantage of his weakness now then he would make you pay fourfold when he retrieved his strength. Even when he was weak and trembling and couldn’t stand upright on his own, Harry was scared of him.

“And this one?” Harry’s wand was pointed at Hermione. Pettigrew mumbled something. “Ah, yes.”

Harry lifted his chin defiantly, felt Hermione stiff and determined beside him. Voldemort smiled. “I suppose you are wondering why you are here. Or perhaps how I am here. Do you know what important magical event happened recently, children?” They stood silent. “Come now, surely you are not fools.”

“Samhain,” Hermione whispered.

Voldemort’s smile deepened. “Samhain. When the boundaries between the world of the living and the dead are thin and the balance of life and death is so easily pushed towards life if one has the power and the knowledge. And so I am alive. With the bone of my unknowing father and the flesh of my faithful servant.” His hand tightened on Pettigrew’s shoulder and the smaller man winced, cradling his hand protectively. Harry caught the glint of silver and felt sick. “And now I will take the blood of my enemy and I will be strong again. In fact...” He studied them, looking pleased. “Both old enough, yet still young enough to be chaste. I will have blood from you both and grow even stronger.”

Harry was the only one who could feel the shudder run through Hermione. She, of course, understood what was going on better than he did. All he knew was that it was going to be very very bad.