Fragments of sharp, broken glass stand out against the fathomless, dark abyss encompassing them. Their surfaces glisten with distorted scenes of people, landscapes and objects. A deep mist swirls around each of them—feelings that are felt for mere seconds before they are quelled by a powerful thrust of wild magic. Sounds are inconsistent too, coming from strata of the mind that are at odds with the retention of memory. Voices, melodies, even the gushing of the wind and the pelting of rain are amalgamated into one huge, indecipherable vibration that is devoid of comprehension yet not of meaning.

Snape treads carefully amongst these broken fragments of Harry’s memories, which seem in that moment chaotic beyond repair. He doesn’t want to cause even more damage, but he is determined to find the cause of the boy’s distress.

Suddenly, a powerful gush of wind attacks him from all directions and he feels an undeniable surge of anguish. It is not his own, though.

Do not fight me, Harry.

The deep voice is soothing and soon enough the gushing wind ceases and Snape is able to navigate further into Harry’s psyche. Yet as soon as he tries to approach the fragments of broken glass, they crack and disintegrate into several new pieces, rendering the moving images within them indecipherable. Frowning, Snape tries to quell his irritation as he kneels down and picks up a particularly sharp piece of glass. Before he can distinguish the pattern of the memory, however, the glass fragment starts to crumble until he is holding nothing more than sand.  

Let me in, Harry.

This time it is weariness he feels. Again, not his own. But he doesn’t force his way through as he would have done a few months ago when the boy’s countless failures to shield his mind would have only heightened his scorn.

And for once, his patience bears fruit. Slowly, the fragments of glass start wiggling, levitating and then coming together to from a large, cracked mirror. With an inquiring arch of the eyebrow, Snape walks up to it and gently lays his palm on its surface, his dark eyes resting for a moment on the distorted man looking back at him.

At first, nothing happens, but then the surface of the mirror starts vibrating, then undulating until it is no longer solid and Snape is able to walk through it as easily as if he would through a curtain.

Suddenly, he finds himself inside a dark, circular room surrounded by tall stone pillars. The first thing he notices is the pungent smell of rotting flesh. It is almost overbearing in its intensity, and yet there is nothing in sight to point to its source.

The second is the rune-engraved stone Pensieve resting in the centre of the room. Frowning, Snape walks towards it, his boots clicking on the granite, and once he finds himself before it, he does not hesitate to lower his face in its misty vapours and be dragged down to witness Harry Potter’s worst memory.

The cemetery he finds himself in is too familiar for comfort. Even in the all-encompassing darkness, he knows exactly where to find her grave. But tonight, another visitor has taken his place, so Snape remains in the shadows, studying the scrawny teenager kneeling before his parents’ grave, his eyebrows ominously drawn together as he registers the countless injuries obstructing the boy’s usually pallid and emaciated body.

Behind him, a tall hooded figure digs his claw-like hand in his bony shoulder, like a master pulling the strings of his puppet with the aim of causing pain. Yet even from the distance, Snape can see Harry attempting to shake the hand off, to resist the sadistic game Voldemort seems to have instigated.

It is all in vain, though.

With a gesture of his hand, the hooded figure makes the entire graveyard shake from its foundations. It is a debilitating, portentous vibration that makes Harry cover his ears and gnash his teeth.

“My gift to you, Harry Potter,” Voldemort hisses, the cold wind carrying his voice around the cemetery in a menacing way. Without another word, the hooded figure disappears into thin air, leaving Harry alone with his silent, unseen observer.

The vibration ceases almost immediately after, but the stillness that follows is almost worse, the silence foreboding, and the twisted branches of the bare trees sinister in the sudden listlessness.

Harry stands up on uncertain legs, looking around his surroundings with guarded weariness. His face is not devoid of fear, but Snape observes resignation in the piercing green eyes. The boy knows there is no way out, knows that he must endure whatever sadistic scheme Voldemort has concocted. And yet he is not crying or screaming, and nor is he trying to hide. He is simply waiting. The uncomfortable respect he started feeling for the boy is abruptly magnified and Snape feels suddenly angry at his powerlessness within Harry’s mind, at being able to do nothing but observe his torment.

Just then, a rumbling noise becomes audible from the ground and the Potions Master watches aghast as the soil on top of the Potter’s grave begins moving. It is subtle at first, and then suddenly turns so violent that the entire vicinity seems to shake and moan. His eyes widen in shock as a pale hand emerges from the soil, grabbing at the earth in an attempt to crawl out.

Harry’s legs buckle and he falls straight down to the floor. The impact rocks through his knees, but he feels hardly any pain. Not in his legs, at least. His heart is another matter altogether; it pounds so harshly against his ribcage that for a moment he wonders if the pale hand creeping out of the soil has somehow latched on to his chest in an attempt to tear his heart out.

This is not real, he tries to remind himself. This can’t be real. He’s just playing with my mind. This is not real.

Yet he cannot move; he doesn’t even blink as he watches the mother he only got to know from photographs crawl out of her grave and look straight at him, her green eyes hard and cold. He tries to blink his surprise away, but his whole body feels like it has been set in stone. He is unable to do anything but stare at her as she stands and walks to him, her footsteps steady, her dark blue robes bearing no crease or stain.

She is perfect.

Her red hair glistens in the darkness, her skin is pale and healthy and youthful and Harry can’t help it when he whispers: “Mum?”

Lily kneels before Harry and cups his face, a gesture that is at odds with the harshness of her face. “Look at me,” she eventually says, her voice so punitive that it makes Harry wince. “Look at what you did to me!”

“Mum—“

“I SAID LOOK AT ME!” she screams, her eyes pointing in sudden rage, her hands clutching onto Harry’s face so tight it hurts.

And he does look, partly because he wants to see her, to drink in every last detail before dying, but also because he doesn’t understand her rage. He takes in the auburn eyebrows drawn in aversion, the tumultuous green eyes, and the freckles on her face.

And then it all begins to disintegrate; her skin sinks in, her hair starts falling, her eyes turn completely black and begin shrinking until they disappear altogether, leaving behind empty eye sockets covered by scabs. She lets go of him as she suddenly levitates into the air, her skin abruptly turning a ghoulish shade of grey, her petite stature growing in length until she is at least three meters tall.

Yet it is the morphing of her mouth that freezes the blood in Harry’s veins. The plump, rosy lips whither and fall like the petals of a dying flower, leaving behind a ghoulish, gaping hole. Her breathing suddenly sounds rattling and the smell of decomposing flesh hits Harry full force. He has no time to run because, in the next instance, she swoops down like a bird of prey, her bony fingers emerging from the folds of her ragged robe, and fiercely curling around his shoulders.

From the shadows, Snape can do nothing but watch in unmasked horror as Lily morphs into a Dementor who is ready to devour her own son’s soul. He knows it is not real, that it is merely a twisted display Voldemort has concocted in order to break Harry’s resolve, but this does not stop him from drawing his wand out in an involuntary gesture to conjure his Patronus.

He knows it is futile, though, so he quells his outrage as he continues watching the macabre scene unfolding in the graveyard.

Harry goes slack in his mother’s arms as his feet start twitching spasmodically. The Dementor begins caressing his face with tenderness akin to that of a lover before the claws grab onto his face once more and the terrible, gaping mouth goes wider still. Snape is surprised to see that its slurping lips are not drawing the familiar white wisps of Harry’s soul—indeed, it appears to suck nothing out of the boy at all. Instead, the wraith-like creature starts regurgitating a dark, vaporous sludge straight into Harry’s mouth.

All of a sudden, the entire memory freezes over. Harry remains trapped in the Dementor’s relentless arms, but he’s not moving at all, not even breathing. The trees stop swishing in the wind, and the air itself becomes seemingly solid as if the entire scene has been captured by a muggle camera. Intrigued, Snape begins treading towards Harry.

The first thing he notices, upon reaching the boy, is that his eyes are completely black, almost resembling finely polished obsidian mirrors. The veins around Harry’s eyes are swollen and purple, making him resemble a freshly made Inferius. Snape also notices that the boy is not as bruised and bloody as he remembers him being in the Hospital Wing, and wonders how much more bodily torture he had to endure after Voldemort’s pensieve broke his resolve.

As if the living nightmare of Lily turning into a Dementor wasn’t enough for the boy to surmount, Snape bitterly thinks.

He is weary to further legilimize Harry, but he knows whatever else he endured took place inside his head. With a disgusted look towards the black sludge coming out of the Dementor’s frozen mouth, Snape pierces Harry’s eyes with a steady, fathomless gaze that instantly transports him deeper in the boy’s damaged psyche.

The cottage is just as he remembers it, only the roof is not yet blasted.

And she is still alive.

It is a detail that freezes the blood in his veins because he has not steeled himself for this.

Yet he must.

The Potions Master follows the hooded figure further up the stairs, giving James Potter’s dead body sprawled on the floor a cursory look before stepping over him and continuing down a darkened hallway. He can hear the murmurs of a soft voice coming from behind the closed door at the end. Harry’s room, the wooden plaque says in colourful writing as a painted snitch playfully weaves in and out of the letters in a continuous loop.

Snape nearly stops, then, the prospect of withdrawing from the boy’s mind becoming suddenly appealing. Because he doesn’t want to see this, he doesn’t want to see her die. The dire consequence of his past mistakes is suddenly more real than ever, more real even than the heart frantically beating against his ribcage.

The scene is hardly altered from when he crept into the same cottage fourteen years ago and held her dead body to his chest while her baby wept, ignored in his cot.

But he goes on, his footsteps steady, his features schooled into a hard, stone mask that is at odds with the tumultuous storm inside his chest. Because this time, he cannot ignore her child, he cannot allow another chance at redemption to pass him by. 

So when the door is blasted open, Snape forces himself to follow the hooded figure inside the nursery.

Harry feels trapped. His body is moving up the stairs inside a cottage he does not recognise, but the more he thinks about it, the more he starts doubting it is his body at all. The limbs are too long, the height is not right. He has no control over it as if he is merely a non-corporeal entity trapped within somebody else’s form.

But then he sees him and his breath hitches in his throat.

His father sprawled dead on the stairs, his eyed wide, his mouth slightly ajar. Wearing his night robes. Harry imagines how minutes before he was merely getting ready for bed and now…now he’s dead. He feels like screaming, but the mouth he feels does not respond to his mental command.

No control.

He steps over his father’s corpse as though he is merely an inconsequential dead fly, and walks up the creaking stairs and down a semi-dark hallway. He stops before a pale locked door with a colourful sign hanging in its centre. Harry’s room. A lopsided grin he cannot control spreads over his face, happiness, elation, anger that is not his own.

Suddenly, his wand is pointed and the door gets blasted off its hinges. He does not hesitate to go inside.

A red haired girl is cradling a baby in her arms, her eyes wet with tears but wild with the resolve to protect him. She places him inside the crib, tries to shield him with her body. She turns to face Voldemort, hurt, fear and wrath radiating from her every pore.

All in vain.

“Stand aside,” he says, but the voice is not his own. His heart bleeds with the look on her face. The hatred, not directed at Voldemort, but directed at him. (*)

Murderer.

“Not Harry,” she pleads, her voice barely above a whisper at all. “Please, not Harry. I’ll do anything, just leave my baby alone.” (8)

“Stand aside, you stupid girl, or you will die!” he says, the rage within spreading even further, Voldemort’s anger making him gnash his teeth in an attempt to fight it. (*)

All in vain.

From deep within him, a malevolent voice slithers through is mind as it commands: “do it, Harry. Kill her.”

And just like that, he is filled with mad rage at the red haired mudblood before him. He wants to obliterate her, he relishes in the hate within her eyes, in her fear. He can’t stop himself from laughing.

A bone-chilling, sadistic sound. It is a natural motion when he raises his wand and shouts “Avada Kedavra!”

And the satisfaction of seeing her lifeless body fall to the floor surmounts the gut-twisting guilt and horror he feels within.

Murderer.

He closes his eyes in an attempt to block the scene out, and as soon as he does so, everything around him disintegrates into a black mist as he begins swirling upwards, higher and higher until he feels his feet hitting the solid ground once more. He opens his eyes, expecting to be back inside the circular room, with Nagini feeding in the corner and Voldemort towering over him.  

But he doesn’t find himself there, and when he registers the implications of his location, his blood freezes in his veins and he suddenly longs to be in his damp cell, he longs for Lucius Malfoy to curse and torture him into unconsciousness.

He yearns to die, he wills it all to be over.

Anything but this.

Voldemort’s laugh echoes through his mind, an eerie sound that sets everything in motion like a machine fueled by hatred and blood.

And Harry begins climbing the rickety staircase once more, stepping over the inconsequential corpse of his father, making his way down the dark corridor towards the nursery.

Ready to murder her again. And again.

And again.

And again.

Trapped inside Voldemort’s Pensieve, a looped oubliette of death and torture aimed at breaking him with the knowledge that their death was precipitated by his birth.

Making him understand that he is a murderer.

That he, alone, has their blood on his hands.  

By the time Snape withdraws from his mind, Harry has already embraced the sweet arms of unconsciousness, remaining dimly aware of the throbbing pain growing in his head.

The first thing Harry becomes aware of is the smell of nutmeg, close alongside him. It is a faint, muted scent that is overlaid with other things, but it still manages to evoke vague feelings of safety and familiarity. Sometimes, the scent grows stronger and at other times it fades until Harry begins twisting and turning in bed just to find it. That is when he realises how much his head hurts; a throbbing, dull ache concentrated in his temples and radiating throughout his entire body as he moves. The longer he focuses on it, the worse it hurts until finally, he lets out a soft whimper.

The scent of nutmeg comes closer then, and his lips are parted by the feel of smooth, cold glass. “Drink,” a deep voice urges and Harry obeys because somehow he trusts that it is safe to do so.  His eyelids flicker for a moment, but he is too drained, too exhausted to open them fully. A warm hand touches his forehead for a moment and it is all it takes for him to sink back into deep sleep.

His peacefulness does not last.

He wakes several hours later, his whole body feeling as if it is on fire. He begins tossing and turning until a heavy hand descends on his forehead. Harry panics and opens his eyes in a frantic attempt to make something—anything—out, but his vision is dark and blurred. Images of Lucius Malfoy raising his wand suddenly send his body into fight-or-flight mode and he recoils, thrashes, attempts to strike out at the dark, looming figure before him, until strong hands catch his wrists, holding him in place, telling him to calm himself.

He feels a cool, minty liquid running down his throat. It is strange, for he does not remember drinking it, but suddenly, magic seems to pour through him, the feel of it sweet and numbing. A tingling sensation begins at the top of his head and by the time it spreads to his toes, he is asleep once more.

“You didn’t knead your lacewing larvae enough,” Snape says and Harry nods before beginning to dig his hands more ferociously into the green sludge. It is not long until it starts looking more like a fine paste and less like clumps of clay; he chances a quick look at the Potions Master and is satisfied to see him give a curt, approbatory nod before averting his eyes back to his own brewing.

Harry slowly lowers the green paste into his cauldron and starts stirring, three times clockwise and once anticlockwise as instructed. Soon enough, the colour of his potion transforms from faded yellow to orange, and then finally, to the rusty, reddish colour, indicative of the desired potency. Extinguishing the fire, Harry allows his potion to cool for a moment or two before placing it in the appropriate flask for short term storage. With adroit hands, he clears his workspace before beginning to gather the ingredient needed for the next brew on the list, completely unaware of Snape’s probing gaze as he does so.

Snape supposes he ought not to be surprised at the boy’s sudden proclivity for potion making. After all, his mother had had a natural talent from the onset. Yet it is still somewhat strange to witness Potter being so attentive to the written instructions before him, measuring each ingredient with exactness akin to that of a devoted Potions apprentice. There is no trace of the obnoxious child who used to copy Granger’s steps when he thought Snape wasn’t looking, and he doesn’t quite know how to react to a Harry Potter who is not only willing to brew but also manages to successfully complete rather advanced potions.

It was a few days after the boy’s recovery from his Legilimency-induced convalescence that Snape realised Harry could not stand to be alone. At first, he lingered on the stairs leading to his basement lab, pretending to be reading some book or another. But Snape could feel those blasted green eyes on him when he brewed and one day he chanced to demand the boy’s assistance with the kneading, pressing and cutting of ingredients.

Harry, happy to keep his mind occupied from the troubling thoughts that kept surfacing when he least expected, readily agreed, the need for methodical concentration suddenly becoming exceedingly appealing to him. And soon enough, the brewing routine in which they fell grew increasingly long with each passing day, and Harry readily advanced from preparing ingredients to brewing potions of his own. From morning until mid-afternoon, save for the soft simmering of cauldrons and the chopping of ingredients, not much could be heard from either of them.

From time to time, Snape observes how the boy’s face enchants vivid pantomimes of the memories that run through his head and his face contracts in a paroxysm of fear, pain, sometimes even disbelief. But then he closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again, they are once more glossed over with taciturnity. It is like this every day: a constant battle with his own mind, the monumental effort it takes to remain in the present moment, to not give in to his wild magic. And it is only during brewing that Harry is able and willing to do so.

Potter’s unwitting aptitude in Occlumency is a strange thing to behold and as far as twists of fate go, this development does not lack in irony. Especially when he thinks back to the debacle that was Potter’s study of mind magic a few months earlier.   

Sometimes Snape gets the impression that the boy hardly knows he is occluding, that even the most innocent of memories are suppressed by his wild magic: he forgets the names of his friends as easily as he suppresses recollections of Lucius Malfoy’s torture sessions. It is almost as if the boy’s compass for filtering pleasant from unpleasant memories has been completely knocked out of whack. When he is unable to deal with the contents of his mind, everything is suppressed because everything is dangerous, and even the most inane recollection can morph into a minefield of triggers.

It is a somewhat paradoxical development, Snape thinks, that the more the boy represses, the more functional he becomes. His speech comes back, ragged at first, but then stronger every day, until he no longer gives solely non-verbatim answers. Not that he ever speaks unless he’s ever spoken to, but it still a marked improvement from the silence that plagued Spinner’s End when the boy first arrived. Nevertheless, Snape senses a void behind Potter’s words, as if his speech is simply a reflex action, like the beating of his heart, or the expansion of his lungs when breathing.

As a short-term solution, Potter’s involuntary Occlumency has its advantages. The boy’s physical injuries are given the time they need to fully heal; the scars on his arm become faint lines, the dark circles underneath his eyes recede, and his legs no longer wobble from the weight of his body.

There have been no more triggers either; the Potions Master swiftly removed anything that might prove a mental hazard for Harry, wishing to instigate feelings of safety within him. And as he becomes less threatened by his surroundings, Snape observes that the boy’s disposition becomes less and less skittish, until he grows confident enough rummage the kitchen for midnight snacks, like any other normal teenage boy.

But as Harry grows stronger, his resolve to overcome his trauma grows weaker and then falters altogether. He is happy in his blissful ignorance, having constructed a completely new world inside his head, one in which Voldemort does not exist and in which he is not suffering.

Yet it is also a world that is not real. And, like the Mirror of Erised, its blissfulness becomes increasingly dangerous with each passing day.

Snape watches as Harry hunches over his work-desk in absolute concentration, from time to time pushing his sliding spectacles up his nose. He seems to be quickly scribbling something on a label in that abysmal handwriting of his, before sticking it onto a small jar.

“That will be enough brewing for today, Mr Potter,” says Snape after a moment, noticing how the suddenness of his words makes him jump a little. The boy looks up at him confusedly for a moment. “But it’s only four o’clock, sir,” he quietly says.

“There are a few things we have to discuss.”

“What things?” Harry asks as he turns away from Snape and begins placing beetle carapaces into a medium-sized pestle.

“I think you know,” Snape says simply as he leans against his desk and folds his arms, his dark eyes not leaving the back of Harry’s head. He does not expect this to be easy.

For his part, Harry gives no indication of having heard him; he even begins to crush the glimmering carapaces with the mortar, in preparation for the base of the next potion on his list. “I’d rather do this, sir,” he says after a moment.

“That is not an option,” Snape intones, his lips momentarily twitching with burgeoning amusement at the boy’s sudden show of affection for potion making. “Stop mortaring.”

“If I don’t add these in the next few minutes, the entire base will scorch,” Harry says, his hands suddenly grouting the carapaces with more force than absolutely necessary.

“Be that as it may, you will have to start over tomorrow.”

“Sir, I can’t, the carapaces—“

“Will surely survive another night in storage. The successful completion of you Muffling Draught is not exactly the most salient point at issue this summer.” Snape’s voice contains deliberate hints of irritation, but still, Harry does not turn to face him. Nor does he stop mortaring.

“Potter!”

“No!” Harry snaps after a moment, slamming the pestle on his desk and turning to face the Potions Master, his face contracted in sudden anger. “I won’t talk about it, okay?! Not today. Not ever!”

Snape looks at him appraisingly, one eyebrow raised in question. After a moment he sighs and when he next speaks, his words are no longer laced with irritation. “Ignorance may be bliss, but it is hardly conducive to true recovery.”

“I don’t want to recover,” Harry says coolly.

“No? And why is that?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” Harry says dejectedly as he turns towards his desk once more. He picks up his pestle and begins grinding so ferociously that several bits of black, glimmering shell are propelled from his mortar.

“On the contrary, Mr Potter.”

Harry doesn’t know why he finds it so easy to explain. Especially to Snape. Perhaps it is the undercurrents behind the Potions Master’s seemingly simple words that make him speak. Or maybe, it is the deeply buried longing within him to be understood by another human being. Either way by the time his lips are moving, he is only partially aware of the words that come out: “It’s easier to be like this…to choose to forget why I am who I am. I don’t feel guilty anymore, or responsible. I don’t think about the war…about him. I’m just…Harry.”

Throughout his speech, he keeps his face turned away from the Potions Master because admitting such weakness to another human being, and especially to one who previously relished in picking on him at every opportunity, is embarrassing. He feels his cheeks flush at the thought.

“You wish to divest yourself of the connotations of your name,” Snape intones after a moment of studying the boy. Harry gives a small nod but no further indication of wishing to continue the conversation. “Turn around and look at me,” Snape suddenly commands, his voice hard.  

“Why?” Harry asks, his gait suddenly defensive.

“Because you need to understand that you are labouring under a misapprehension.”

“No offence, sir, but I really don’t want to talk about it,” Harry says curtly.

“Nevertheless, you will turn around and treat me with respect, Mr Potter. If you do not wish to talk, that is your prerogative. You will, however, listen to what I have to say,” Snape orders in a tone that brooks no disobedience. 

With a huge force of will, Harry lays down the heavy stone pestle and turns to face the Potions Master, his face weary, his eyes hiding a hint defiance. If Snape notices it, he gives no indication. “You seem to be under the impression that you are merely a strategic asset in the war. But Potter, however unpalatable this may be for you, you cannot continue to discount your worth except as it relates to helping the Order. Your…mother did not die for this.”

“Don’t!”

“You are not responsible for their deaths,” Snape intones, taking a step towards the boy to reinforce his statement. “That is what he wants you to think!”

“Well he’s bloody right, isn’t he?!” Harry suddenly snaps, his eyes so frenzied that Snape is momentarily taken aback. “I told you I don’t want to talk about this! So leave me the hell alone!” Harry says, fighting the urge to throw something at the Potions Master.

Snape’s gaze abruptly sharpens. “No, Potter, he is most certainly not. Assigning yourself unwarranted blame is a weakness you can ill afford. And I will not, as you put it, leave you alone.”

“Why?” Harry asks, his voice suddenly frenzied. “You’ve always sort of hated me.”

“I did not sort-of-anything, Potter! Whilst it is true that you often infuriate me to the point of madness, I reserve my hatred for those who truly deserve it.”

“Like Sirius,” Harry says after a moment, his voice suddenly quiet.  

“Yes,” Snape admits remorselessly, his black gaze boring into him. Without meaning to, Harry shivers. “Unlike your father who grew out of his…penchant for picking on those he deemed uninteresting, Black relished in his hounding of others even after leaving Hogwarts.”

Harry did not need to be reminded of what he saw in Snape’s pensieve; how his father and Sirius bullied a young Snape without much cause. Not unlike Dudley, a little voice inside his head offers. Mortified at the comparison, Harry quickly adds: “But Sirius grew out of it! He was a good man in the end!” Harry isn’t completely sure if he is trying to convince Snape or himself.

To his surprise, Snape snorts; he doesn’t offer anything else on the topic, though, and Harry suddenly gets a sense of his own fragility. The Potions Master, he realises, is weary of besmirching his memory of Sirius. Like Voldemort tarnished that of his mother. Because there is something else hidden within the folds of his hesitancy, and Harry is suddenly hit by a monumental wave of guilt; all of his senses are flooded with it until Harry’s insides are twisted like pretzels. Sirius will never get the chance to make amends with Snape. Like he will never get the chance to eat, sleep, or laugh. Because Sirius is dead. Dead like his mother. Dead because of him.  

“I killed him,” Harry suddenly says to no one in particular. His shoulders slouch, his eyes glaze over. The momentary spark of anger he felt earlier is completely gone, only to be replaced by a gut-twisting, acidic, bitterness.

“Bellatrix Lestrange killed Black. Not you,” Snape’s deep voice is not enough to break through Harry’s reverie. Over and over and over again, Sirius falls through the veil; a sadistic replay of what Harry’s precipitous rush to the Ministry reaped.

“If it weren’t for me…if I hadn’t rushed off to the Ministry—“

“Voldemort would have found another way to lure you into his trap. Black’s actions were his alone. You meant to do only good towards him.”

“I killed him,” Harry persists, shaking his head. “I killed Sirius. Like I killed mum. I killed her…I’m a murderer…I killed her, I was there, she was looking at me and I didn’t lower my wand, I didn’t…”

Suddenly, Snape’s hands descend to grab Harry’s narrow shoulders, and startled green eyes look up at him in confusion. “You are not a murderer! Voldemort killed Lily, not you.”

“Don’t—don’t say her name! I can’t bear it,” Harry cries, becoming more and more agitated until Snape’s grip turns almost painful on his shoulders. He can’t feel the pain, though, and he falls deeper and deeper into his own mind, the walls of wild magic coming up full force until he can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is not. The fragile sense of normalcy with which he enveloped himself in the past few days shatters around him and a million memories start whirling through his head.

“You can bear it, Harry.”

“She’s there, she’s there! She has come to kill me! Let me go!” He tries to shake out of the Potions Master’s grip, his eyes glossed over and focusing on a spot in the far corner of Snape’s lab.

“It’s not real!” Snape harshly whispers, his grip on the boy’s shoulders implacable. “She’s not here, you’re imagining things!”  

Harry blinks a few times and then goes suddenly still; he looks up at Snape and for a moment, his eyes blank over completely. Then, a small glint of recognition appears deep within the pupil, growing in intensity until a small grin spreads on Harry’s face. “Padfoot!” he says, taking momentary advantage of Snape’s loosened grip on his shoulders to latch onto the man’s torso and squeeze him into a bone crushing hug. “You’re alive!” he says, his voice muffled by the soft black fabric pressed against his face. “I thought I killed you! But it was just a nightmare! I know that now,” says Harry emphatically before un-plastering his face from the man’s chest and looking up at him. He doesn’t register the surprise that splashes across the usually stoic features.

But then, just as suddenly, his face falls. The grin falters, then dies altogether, the eyes gloss over with confusion and then widen with recognition. He abruptly lets go of Snape and takes a few steps away from him, bowing his head almost as if he expects to be struck. “Sorry Uncle Vernon.”

A flash of something Harry has never seen before filters across Snape’s face, but before he can verify it is concern, the Professor’s body stiffens and his face regains its customary stoicism. “I’m not your uncle, Harry.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t finish weeding the garden…please don’t lock me in my cupboard, sir.”

“Lock you in your cupboard.”

An abstract image of a small niche underneath the stairs suddenly flashes across Snape’s mind; he remembers seeing it during their Occlumency lessons the previous year and he curses himself for not having paid attention to the boy’s inexplicable fear of it. It all makes sense now. A surge of anger starts coursing through his veins at the thought of Lily’s child being locked away by his oafish uncle and his horse-faced wife. Because now that he thinks back, there had been other signs too; he never once stopped to consider why Potter returned to school each year looking thinner, or why his body language had always been so defensive. He relished in his vindictiveness, keeping his distance from the boy because it was somehow simpler that way. And his selective indifference ensured that the boy returned to an abusive home each summer.

By the time Snape realises that his anger is seeping through his usually placid demeanour, he finally registers that Harry is standing timidly next to his work-table, his messy black fringe obscuring frightened green eyes. He isn’t crying, but his skittish body language suggests that he has been in this position before—possibly on numerous occasions. There is nothing cerebral in his reaction; the instinct to protect his core by ducking having been inculcated in him from an early age.

Snape lowers his arms to his side and schools his features into perfect passivity, a deliberate gesture on his part, one which is modulated for maximum impact. “I’m not going to hurt you, Harry.”

The green eyes gloss over once more.

“I know, Sirius.” Harry’s body language changes once more, from skittish and submissive to laconic. He straightens up, slowly and then looks Snape in the eye. “I’m sorry I killed you. But at least now I’m dead too,” he says sadly. “Everyone’s dead because of me. Now I can finally rest.”

“You are not dead,” Snape says, taking a step towards the boy and placing a tentative hand on his shoulder. He is pleased to see that Harry doesn’t flinch. “Black—I didn’t die because of you. You must not blame yourself.”

Harry doesn’t have time to respond. In the next instance, he looks behind Snape and his eyes widen and he pales beyond recognition as his face contracts in complete and utter terror. “She’s here,” he says, his voice ragged and barely above a whisper. “Sirius, please…don’t let her get me…”

“There is no one else here. You are safe,” Snape insists, his eyes gleaming, his expression rapt. He resists the urge to shake him.

Harry’s breathing turns shallow, beads of sweat begin to glisten on his forehead. And then all hell breaks loose. Abruptly, various jars, cauldrons, boxes and chopping utensils start levitating in midair, held in place by an abrupt burst of wild magic.

“I’m sorry…mum please, I didn’t mean to kill you, he made me…please don’t…NO!” Jars begin to burst, others begin to rattle until Snape’s entire lab is animated to life by a myriad of countless sounds, movements and explosions.

“No!” Snape harshly whispers, grabbing Harry and pressing his face against his chest in a fierce embrace that Harry is unable to shake off no matter how hard he begins trashing. “It isn’t real,” he intones in a soothing, firm voice from somewhere above him. “It isn’t her! Do not give him the satisfaction….don’t renege a mother who died loving you! Calm yourself, Harry.”

It doesn’t happen straight away, but after a while, Harry stops fighting and goes still in Snape’s embrace; the jars, utensils, and cauldrons cease levitating and fall to the stone floor. Some shatter on impact, sending glass, seeds and powders flying across the room, whilst others make loud clanking noises that reverberate through the entire lab, rolling away until they bump into something and stop. Through it all, Snape does not move. He keeps Harry firmly in his arms until the vibrations radiating from the boy’s magical core lessen and then cease altogether. Only when he is certain that Harry will not lash out again, does he let go.

Harry feels drained. His limbs feel suddenly twice as big and heavy and his knees begin to shake with the weight of his body. Snape is saying something to him, but his mind cannot match the sounds coming out of the man’s mouth with actual words. Everything around him is a haze, the whole lab seems to have a sinister aura of light that radiates from every surface and hurts his head. He quickly drifts his eyes to the far right corner where only a moment ago his dead mother stood, looking at him with such intense hatred that Harry felt his insides crumble to pieces. He then looks up at the darkly clad man before him, half expecting to find Sirius, but in his stead he finds Snape. He doesn’t have the energy to be disappointed anymore.

His knees finally buckle and he starts falling, but he doesn’t reach the floor; strong arms suddenly catch him and in the next moment Harry finds himself up in Snape’s arms. Part of him is deeply embarrassed to find himself in this predicament, but it doesn’t matter anymore, not when he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. He hardly registers when he leans his head against the man’s chest. “I’m tired,” he says, his voice raspy, not quite certain why he felt the need to say it out loud.

“Close your eyes,” the silky voice orders and Harry is only too happy to obey.

He remains dimly aware of being carried up the stairs and then gently deposited on top of a bed. A mere moment later, his lips are parted by the feel of cold glass and a deep voice urges him to drink. He does so because he has learned to trust that voice and the strange tasting liquids that usually accompany its silky commands. As the familiar tang of Dreamless Sleep begins flowing through him, the corrosive hole within his chest suddenly disappears, taking with it the angry face of his mother and the paralysing guilt that such a sight induces. Harry falls deeper and deeper into a solid, undisturbed sleep, remaining completely insensate to the piercing pain that precipitously erupts in his scar.

He is also completely unaware that at the same time, Snape clutches his left arm and hisses in pain.