Harry found himself at a loss of speech at his aunt’s crude words.

”The symptoms are intermittent,” he finally choked out with a sinking heart. 

You knew it from start. She never wished you well. What did you expect? 

Harry rose from his seat. His instincts told him that he must end this at an early stage, because he had a feeling that Aunt Petunia had just got started.

”You’d better go now, Aunt,” he said tonelessly. ”I’ll show you the way back to the Entrance Hall.” Under the circumstances, Harry didn’t care one wit about Mme Pomfrey’s restrictions to keep him inside the ward. He only wanted to end this awkward meeting that just now threatened to become downright foul.

”I’ll tell you what, Harry Potter,” his aunt hissed. ”I came here… I consented to visit this place… only to see with my own eyes, finally, what it was all about. This… this… absurd… fuss! ” 

Although not unfamiliar, Harry was puzzled by the vehemence in Aunt Petunia’s voice. 

”It has gone on for years… It has been like a thorn in my flesh ever since my little sister found out that she was - magical.”  Aunt Petunia spat out the word with scorn. ”It all revolved around this, didn’t it? The famous school of magic. The fabulous magical castle. Hogwarts - that repelling, yet fascinating name. Lily and that vermin of a friend of hers, who lived at Spinners End, could not stop talking about it. I wanted… I acknowledge that it arose my curiosity. ” Aunt Petunia’s confession came out stiffly. ”And now, after twenty-five years, I decided to grab the bull by its horns and get that… that unhealthy obsession out of my system.” 

Again, Harry felt that regretful stab of pity for his aunt, along with a disheartening conviction that he would get nothing in return for his compassion. Aunt Petunia scrutinised Harry coldly from head to feet.

”I wanted closure,” she said haughtily. ”Nothing else. Don’t for a moment imagine that I came for you.”

Obviously she hadn’t! Harry clenched his teeth. It was just that, just that… Harry turned his head away. A triumphant expression crossed his aunt’s face. 

”I came to see Hogwarts for real, and when that is done I will stay away from the magical world for the rest of my life. I don’t intend - ever - to visit you again, Potter, get that into your head.”

”Good, let’s leave it at that and get you down to the Hall, then…” Harry cut quickly with a tight voice and revolved in direction of the door.

”Tell you what… Wait! Let me tell you, I say.” Petunia stopped Harry by a rough pull on the sleeve, forcing him to look down at her, because he was almost a head taller than his aunt now.  She narrowed her eyes maliciously. ”Hogwarts is nothing but an old hideous ruin. I haven’t even seen anything remotely magical since I arrived - except that ugly creature that served the tea,” she amended reluctantly. ”A freak. You’re obviously good at collecting them.”

”The castle is damaged from the battle,” Harry retorted with a frown. ”We were under siege and then attacked. The reparations only start next week.” 

”It’s a wreck,” said Petunia disdainfully. ”My guess is that the greatness was all in your people’s imaginations and that the magical world is just some kind of insanity. That boy, long ago, lured Lily into believing his fantasies and it led to her destruction, just as… just as…” Aunt Petunias’s voice crackled the least little bit. 

Harry felt his jaws tighten again to the point where a  peculiar sensation spread over his scalp, as if someone was pushing a cold helmet of steel heavily over his head. He moved on quickly, with a hammering heart, out of the ward and along the corridor leading to the stairs. I know where you’re heading, Aunt Petunia, and don’t go there. Just don’t. Don’t speak about it. Merlin, this has to come to an end. She needs to leave. Now!

”Or, perhaps it’s just you!” his aunt cried out as she ran after him.

Harry cast her a quick glance over the shoulder without slowing down.

”The nurse who brought me here said that you had vanquished that dark wizard at long last.  At what cost, I’m starting to wonder?” The shrill voice echoed among the cracked stonewalls.

Harry, who had not been outside the ward since the day of victory, was shocked by the state of the castle’s interior. Obviously, the hospital wing was the only exception to the general devastation. 

”You ruin everything, don’t you, Harry Potter?” Aunt Petunia nagged on unrelentingly.  ”If it weren’t for you, Vernon and I could have had a quiet family life at Little Winging. Dudley could have enjoyed a normal childhood, without an unwelcome, usurping changeling disrupting his family environment and upsetting his development. You did so much harm to him. And to myself. If I had not had you to concern myself with, I would no doubt have been able to support Dudley, and give him a totally different kind of attention…”

Harry clenched his teeth and glared at his aunt as he started to descend the stairs. She more or less constantly tugged at his arm by now, wanting him to stop and listen to her vicious words . That he refused to slow down did not stop her from pouring her venom out - tendrils of poison finding its way into Harry’s ears, whips of accusations hitting sore spots of his conscience.

”…considering that we never wanted you in our family in the first place…”

”…always a reminder…”

”…freaky things… could never relax…”

”…always worried about what the neighbours would think…”

”…needed to protect Dudley…”

”And the worst part was that you had the nerve to almost make us feel guilty about it.”

The last words reached Harry like a bucket of cold water in the face and he swirled around to stare at his aunt at last. They had arrived at the bottom of the stairs in the Entrance Hall that was more devastated than any other part of the building.

Aunt Petunia’s torrent of accusations had triggered a fine tremor in Harry’s entire body - something between shivers and thrills. By now, he had developed multiple numb spots on his skin - he was not even able to count them, and at the same time sharp sparkles of pain were running from his neck under the scalp. Moreover, the peripheral parts of his extremities were not entirely under his control, because it strangely felt like he was walking on cushions and not on a hard floor made of scratched stone, and it all made him incredibly wobbly. 

He had a moment of overwhelming dizziness and wondered vaguely if, perhaps, he was slowly turning into a ghost, because that numbness must be what it felt like to have no body. I must remember to ask Mme Pomfrey about that hypothesis, Harry thought with detachment, before his emotions returned to him and he opened his mouth to answer his aunt, who, however, advanced him.

”You had nothing for those manipulating, pitiful looks, though” Aunt Petunia went on. ”I have never been duped by your sort, not since that Snape boy hoodwinked my sister with embellished tales of the magical world and its implicit superiority to ours.” 

Harry sighed and shuddered at his aunt’s hateful words. Was there no way of making her see his side? he wondered. Of pleading only the tiniest bit of understanding?

”I was only a small child when I came to you,” he said and forced himself to sound reasonable. ”I understand that it meant a lot of extra work for you, but to say that I ruined…”

”But you did!” his aunt shrieked. ”I only wanted to spend time with Dudley, with my son, and you disrupted that harmony. You were a hindrance!”

”Well, you only put me in the cupboard under the stairs, anyway, and locked the door, whenever you wanted me out of the way, didn’t you?” Harry snapped. 

Aunt Petunia looked mutinous and not the least regretful, so Harry relented with a dejected sigh. 

”Look, why did you not just return me to D… to D… to the Wizarding world, once you found out how you felt about me being there?” he said. 

”Do you think we had any connections with your kind? Or wanted to?” snubbed Aunt Petunia.

”I know for a fact that you wrote to Hogwarts once - and that you got an answer, and a kind answer at that,” replied Harry. ”Of course you could have written again if you wanted to.” His aunt blanched and narrowed her eyes. 

”How did you know about my letter? Did the headmaster tell you? Or have you met that boy? Have you come across that freak wizard named Severus Snape who lived in the neighbourhood of my parents’ house? Has he been blithering to you about our childhood? What has he said? Is he still alive? In that case, I have a thing or two that I want to tell him. If it weren’t for him, you see…”

Harry started to feel light-headed at his aunt’s repeated references to Snape. He didn’t want to… He needed to steer the topic away from his late teacher - from his former… his former Professor, that was. Late. Dead. Resurrected. Harry swayed and put his hand guardedly on a pillar that was askew, but that still seemed to hold up. 

”Was it… was it the money?” he asked bravely, although a little breathless. ”Was that why you kept me? To have the allowances?” Aunt Petunia stiffened. 

”How dare you?” she thundered, and Harry closed his eyes briefly. ”How dare you suggest that we acted like some common… some common usurpers? Do you have any idea of how penniless we were at the time, with Vernon only at the beginning of his career, with mortgages on the house and me confined to being a house-wife to look after you children? Don’t you think that I’d wanted a job of my own? Do you have an inkling about to what extent you ruined not only my family, but also my professional life?”

Harry let out a small puff of air that he had held. He was wavering. He had never given a thought about his aunt’s and uncle’s economical situation at the time they took him in. He struggled to get his bearings back and said:

”All the more reason to return me to…”

”Don’t you think we had any pride?” bellowed Petunia. ”Do you think that we wanted to give in to our difficulties? No, we fought and worked hard to manage everything. It was a matter of principle to succeed, a matter of pride to show those around us that we managed, even with the extra burden of a child like you. But now… now, in retrospect, I realise that we were too stubborn, too brave. I should have put my own family first, because it would have prevented what happened later. But how was I to know? Not a day goes by without me wondering what would have happened had I rejected you from the beginning. It would have saved…”

Harry inhaled sharply. No, damn it, there was no need to launch into such speculations as where Aunt Petunia was heading. The what-ifs in the course of war were something that could drive you crazy. There were events he’d rather not be reminded of. The past was the past. It wasn’t exactly Aunt Petunia’s fault. But it wasn’t only about her husband and son either. Not exclusively. If she’d only leave it alone. Harry’s gaze pleaded mutely with his aunt not to go any further in her line of thoughts.

His aunt was silent for a few seconds before she continued, in a slow voice of steel this time.

”I hold you responsible for their deaths, Potter. That’s the second reason I came here. I wanted to tell you to your face. You are responsible for the deaths of my son and husband, as you are probably responsible for the destruction of this place, and maybe for many more lives.”

An overwhelming nausea of guilt gushed through Harry who breathed hard. It wasn’t fair. What she said was not true. Not in the sense she meant, anyway. She had no idea… 

”They knew…” he said in a low voice. ”You all knew that Voldemort was out to kill me. That he had already killed my parents. He killed your own sister, for God’s sake! You knew that. Yet, Uncle Vernon chose to do business with Voldemort’s men. It was bound to end in a catastrophe. But it was his own mistake, not mine.”

”If we had not associated with your world in the first place…If you had not put us in danger by your mere presence in our family…”

”Vernon and Dudley did it for the money,” Harry said in a hard tone.

”We were innocent parties, caught up in the middle of a war between criminal gangs. In our mind your side was as bad the as the other! We were dragged into the conflict by the mere fact of housing you!”

”Vernon and Dudley made contact with the Death Eaters after I had turned of age and left Privet Drive for good. There was no longer any reason for Voldemort to attack you. You were out of it. Uncle Vernon had no business to…”

”Don’t  you dare try to throw this back at me,” hissed Aunt Petunia. ”Vernon did what he thought was necessary to protect us. If he tried to make a little money along the way, you cannot blame him.”

Something suddenly broke within Harry.

”Uncle Vernon’s greediness cost the life of two of my friends!” he shouted and his voice crackled. ”Dudley and he lured Lupin and Tonks into a trap by pretending that I had returned home to Little Whining. The Death Eaters caught them, kept them prisoners, torturing them in the hope that the rumour of their imprisonment would reach me and that I would attempt to save them. But it didn’t. I was completely cut off from society at that time. If I wasn’t, I would have… I would have tried to… But I was too late… I only learnt in retrospect what happened to them.” Time after time while speaking, Harry caught his breath from the lump in his throat that was threatening to strangle him.

”The murderers delivered the corpses of my son and husband on my doorstep,” Aunt Petunia whispered, resentful, caught up in her own memory of horror. ”I knew that they were executed by magic, because there was no trace of violence on their bodies and the forensics found no trace of poison in their blood. The police questioned me, and questioned me. What could I say?”

”Tonks was pregnant.” Harry stared unseeingly in front of himself, unable to sympathise with his aunt because of the ugly and wasted deaths of Vernon and Dudley. ”Lupin and her had just got married. I wasn’t even there for the wedding, but Bill told me that they wanted me to become the godfather of their child. They were tortured for weeks, the one having to watch the other suffer during all that time. I cannot imagine the horror of their last moments of life…”  

”You care more about some magical people, who obviously had a professional part in the war, than you do for your own uncle who raised you, and your own cousin who grew up at your side, letting you play with his toys, sharing his house and parents with you? You ungrateful, cold, miserable…” 

”I didn’t wish them dead!” Harry enforced hoarsely. ”But don’t… Don’t pretend that they ever cared for me. That’s just not true!”

Harry suddenly glimpsed Mme Pomfrey on the stairs, with a shocked expression on her face as her eyes went from his aunt back to him. The raised voices must have called her attention. She would be appalled to realise that for all her good intentions, bringing Harry Potter’s aunt to Hogwarts would only result in quarrels and shattered hopes. 

For a brief moment Harry was distracted by the overpowering shame of publicly displaying this pitiful relationship with the woman who should have been instead of his mother. There was no shaking off the guilty thought that somehow it was all his fault.

Harry also seemed to perceive a presence obliquely behind him, close to the stairs leading down to the dungeons, but did not bother to verify who it might be, because he suddenly felt so very exhausted, and it suddenly felt so important, so extremely important to obtain, if not his aunt’s absolution, nor even her acceptance of his side of things, at least some understanding. 

”Listen,” he said softly. ”We both suffered losses from the war. And we’re not the only ones. There are so many families who grieve.” He closed his eyes, picturing Mr and Mrs Weasley. ”We shouldn’t fight,” he went on with a silent plea in the eyes as he opened them again. ”We might learn to get along a bit better if we give it a try. We’re still family.” His aunt was silent for a while.

”No, we’re not. I wouldn’t dream of associating, in any possible way, with the person I consider the murderer of my family,” she finally said, staring coldly at Harry, who flinched.

”You can’t be serious,” he whispered disbelievingly, shaking his head. ”It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want any of this.”

”If you hadn’t been left with us…”

”I was a child who had lost my parents, only one year old. How can you possibly hold me responsible…” Harry no longer shouted his protests, he gasped the words in a barely audible voice. His aunt refused to be moved, however, and advanced towards him with narrowed eyes and a cruel quirk on her lips.

”How do you explain later on, then? After you entered Hogwarts? Why did you not stay away from us then? We made perfectly clear to you our view of magic. Every summer, I expected you to have made arrangements to spend it elsewhere, but every summer you kept coming back. Why?”

”I had to. And you accepted that I stayed the summers…”

His aunt gave up a hollow laugh. Mme Pomfrey seemed to be frozen on her position on the stairs, a look of horror on her face.

”We made you work for your summers, didn’t we, now, Potter? Tell me, why did you stay? Why didn’t you run away, like a normal teenager would have done? I hated you for putting up with everything,” hissed Aunt Petunia. Harry blinked a few times.

”I did run away second summer,” he whispered uncertainly.

”Hmph!” Petunia sneered. ”What about later? All those summers. I know that Vernon did his best to make you miserable. And I won’t pretend I didn’t do my share. But you always prevailed. Stupidly, doggedly, you prevailed. What on earth did you get out of it, huh? A normal teenager would have run away, or killed himself. But you didn’t.” Harry flinched.

”I thought about it, but didn’t think I had the right to do that because of my mother’s sacrifice,” he answered blandly. There was a muffled exclamation behind him, but again he ignored the source of it, too caught up in the altercation with his aunt. ”Maybe it was sheer cowardice…” he whispered. ”But… but… Every time I returned to Privet Drive, it renewed the magical protection. D… D…” Harry stumbled over the name. ”The old headmaster told me to stay because of the protective wards, so I did. But please, Aunt…”

”You admit that you used us, then. You callously used us for some magical ends that we never even understood. How can you even justify that to yourself? It led to the destruction of your uncle and cousin. It’s inexcusable.”

Thoughts swirled in Harry’s head.

”You’re speaking with such spite,” he murmured weakly. ”You’re still loyal to him, somehow, aren’t you? Uncle Vernon always hated me and never wanted me in the family - it was understandable in a way. I was an intruder. But I always told myself that you played along to appease him. Secretly, though, you did accept me, didn’t you? I was your nephew, you let me live with you. You didn’t really hate me when I grew up? That’s what I told myself, anyway. But now, you still sound so… Why don’t you relent at this point? We could find some kind of truce at last. I’m your nephew… Please, Aunt…”

A triumphant air lit the face of Harry’s aunt.

”Potter,” she said drawlingly, ”whatever I made a show of saying before, the truth is that I only took you in for the mo…”

”That’s enough said on your part, Petunia Evans Dursley!” a voice behind Harry thundered and something black whirled past his side. 

A tall figure loomed over Aunt Petunia who cowered with a little shriek. To Harry’s fogged mind, Professor Snape, whom he recognised perfectly after all, took the form of an avenging angel. Harry choked out something between a nervous laughter and a sob of relief as he watched the angry wizard grab Aunt Petunia by the elbow and roughly push her towards the exit door. Harry was vacillating and a ringing sound started to sing in his ears, but bribes of words still reached him.

”… outstayed…”

”… leave Mr Potter alone…”

”…not come back…” 

The door clacked. Aunt Petunia was finally gone and Harry’s legs buckled. On his fours, he looked up and stared at the black backside of the wizard’s robe that slowly turned around. Harry fought the by now familiar feeling of his body shutting down and struggled to keep conscious. He didn’t want to pass out. He was suddenly overwhelmed by gratitude. He wanted to thank the man for intervening, for putting his aunt in her place, for taking his side when he himself had wavered. Guilt was such a treachery feeling. Longing for love made you so pathetic, so vulnerable. The Snape he used to know would have laughed in his face, but instead… 

Severus Snape’s face was still taut with anger as he turned around, but the flare in his eyes subsided to concern as they met Harry’s. Harry opened his mouth in order to speak, but no sound would come out. He heard, as if from vey far away, the sound of feet running down the stairs. 

”Harry!” cried Mme Pomfrey, as Harry felt himself drift into unconsciousness, eyes riveted on the black ones of Severus Snape - with a fleeting uncertainty over who was really dying this time - until the world, predictably, went completely black.