Harry nodded along as Ron emphatically explained why he believed that this season would be the one where the Chudley Cannons finally won a match.

They were walking to the Room of Requirement with Eli, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville. The rest of the group had pulled ahead of Harry and Ron, because Ron’s insistence on gesturing as he talked had slowed them down, and no one else was interested enough in Ron’s Quidditch opinions to match his pace.

Harry was happy to listen, because he knew Ron cared a lot about what he was talking about. And, more selfishly, it was nice to have a break from his own thoughts. His past two nights had been spent wandering through Voldemort’s mind. Harry was still shaken and exhausted from having to face the horrors of Voldemort’s mind two nights in a row.

He had taken the opportunity to look for memories relating to the locket, but all that had resulted in was Harry witnessing the creation of a hoard of Inferi– a process so horrifying that when Harry had woken up, he’d barely had the energy to lean over the side of his bed before he’d lost his dinner. He desperately wished he could go back to the time before he had even known what Inferi were.

And the next night, he’d known he ought to try and keep digging around for more information related to the locket, but he hadn’t been able to stomach being trapped in the Inferi memory again, so he’d instead hid in a benign memory of Riddle studying.

Harry had woken up the next morning slightly better rested than the night before, but feeling guilty for wasting the opportunity to further the war effort.

It was now Saturday after lunch, the only time they were all simultaneously free, and they were headed to the Room of Requirement to practice some spells Harry was considering teaching to the DA.

Harry didn’t think it was time yet to admit that he had intimate knowledge of how Death Eaters fought and trained, and subsequently, knowledge of how best to fight them. The idea of it might make some of the students afraid of him. Mostly because it was difficult to believe, and could even reignite the rumors that Harry was insane. There could even be students with Death Eater ties that could leak information about what Harry was doing to Voldemort.

And Voldemort was smart enough everything together to figure out what Harry was doing– and that was the last thing Harry needed.

So for now, Harry planned to continue doing what he’d done at the first lesson: teach everyone spells that would be useful against Death Eaters, without sharing where he’d gotten the ideas.

The only problem was that Harry couldn’t easily gauge how difficult the spells he learned from Voldemort’s mind were, because whenever he experienced a spell being used, it became stored in his memory, and this memory of casting it was what enabled him to cast the spell correctly the first time, every time. So that’s why he had asked his friends to help him today– they’d be a good measure of whether a spell was reasonable to teach the club.

When Harry and Ron finally caught up to everyone, Neville was nearly done doing the honors of calling up the room. On Neville’s third time passing by the door, he suddenly faltered mid-step. Once he was done summoning the door, the door appeared, and then he said, “Ah crap, I had a stray thought about Felix Felicis, y’know, from the last time we were all together. Hope that didn’t mess up the room I was calling.”

“Guess there’s only one way to find out,” Ginny said.

Hermione shrugged and walked over to push the door open, “And if it’s not right, we can just all leave and try it again.”

Harry was the last one through the door, and since everyone filed in without saying anything, he assumed that the Room had been set up as they had wanted it to be. He had been behind Ron, but as soon as he managed to see around Ron and into the room beyond, he realized that he could not have been more wrong.

He stared around, numbly taking in the vast cavern containing massive piles of things that were so numerous they faded into the distance.

Then, after several more long moments of simply standing and staring, Harry’s eyes caught on what appeared to be a gold necklace tossed casually on a dresser. And he realized, now, what the Room had interpreted Neville’s stray thought as.

“Guess we didn’t need to sort through the stuff from Grimmauld Place,” Ron said faintly.

“Uh huh,” Harry agreed, walking over to get a better look at the necklace.

“So… is this stuff just… can we just take it?” Ginny said.

“Hey!” Neville exclaimed, clearly distracted from what Ginny had said. “I lost this book years ago… Gran was so mad at me...” He trailed off again.

“This must be some kind of lost and found,” Hermione said in amazement, still standing where she’d come to a stop at when she entered the room. “I guess… that means we can just take it? Some of this stuff looks like it’s been here for decades, if not centuries. I mean, look at those robes! They look like they’re from the 1800’s.”

Harry had been half listening as he picked up the necklace he’d spotted. And a closer inspection revealed little more than what he’d had already seen: it was a simple necklace that may or may not have been made out of gold.

“Hey Hermione, could you test this to see if it’s real gold?” Harry asked, holding it up for her to see.

Hermione finally shook off her own shock, threw a longing look at a pile of books, then made her way over to Harry. “Of course I can,” she said as she came up next to him. She took hold of the necklace with one hand and waved her wand with the other to cast, “Hoc Aurum.”

The necklace shone with a radiant light for a brief moment, then faded back to normal. Hermione raised her eyebrows in surprise and handed the necklace back to Harry. “That is some pure gold,” she said. And as she walked off to look through the pile of textbooks she’d eyed earlier, she said, “And it looks old enough that no one should miss it if we sell it.”

Harry nodded absently in agreement and turned to survey the piles more closely, searching for valuables amid all the seemingly worthless crap. He really did not have the knowledge or experience to actually find things to sell, let alone things that were old enough not to be missed. Then he remembered how helpful Kreacher had been in sorting through the things from Grimmauld Place, and how he hadn’t seemed pleased about the eventual loss of Black belongings.

“Kreacher!” Harry called out into the room. He heard his voice echo for a beat or two before the loud pop of Kreacher’s apparition drowned it out.

“Harry!” Hermione said, whirling around from the pile of textbooks she’d been going through.

Harry grimaced. He’d forgotten that Hermione was likely to object to him calling on Kreacher.

Kreacher said, “Master called?”

So Harry plunged ahead anyways and said, “Hey Kreacher, I was wondering if you could help us search this room for stuff to sell so we don’t have to sell the Black Family heirlooms.”

Hermione quietly said, “Oh.”

Harry hoped that meant she’d realized that Harry hadn’t just called Kreacher because Harry was lazy.

And Kreacher gave Harry a long, slow look before he said, “Kreacher would be happy to help you, sir.” He turned to the nearest pile and stared at it for a long moment before he turned back to Harry again. He said, “What should Kreacher do with the things to sell?”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected him to agree so easily, for some reason. Then Harry said, “Back to Grimmauld Place, if you think there’s room?”

Kreacher turned back to the pile.

“Oh, and Kreacher,” Harry said, causing Kreacher to turn back to him, “could you try and only take things that look like they’ve been here for a while? We think this is a lost and found, and don’t want to take things people could miss.”

“Kreacher can do that,” Kreacher said. Then he turned back to the pile once again.

As Harry watched, an item would occasionally disappear, sometimes causing the pile to shift.

Then, to his friends who were mostly still just looking around, Harry said, “I guess we can just spread out and keep an eye out for anything interesting.”

Hermione gave him a thumbs up from where she was still deep in a pile of textbooks, and everyone else began to fan out from the door. Harry flashed a smile at Hermione, then started taking his time to wind through the piles, occasionally casting the spell to detect if something was real gold.

“What do you think of this coat?” he heard Luna ask from somewhere in the room. Harry skirted around a particularly tall pile towards her voice, curious to see what she’d found. Once he’d gotten around the pile, he was able to see that Luna was modelling a massive dusty-looking fur coat for Ginny, who was a couple of piles over.

Harry quickly muffled a laugh with the back of his hand. The coat was so large on her that it crossed the line into comically large, but he didn’t want Luna to think he was laughing at her.

She looked over at him and gave him an airy smile, then turned back to Ginny.

As he turned back to look through the massive pile he’d skirted around, he heard Ginny say, “I think it’s very nice, but not very practical, tragically.”

Harry smiled and tugged a trunk out of the pile. He vaguely remembered that the nicer trunks could go for a lot of money, so he thought it was worth it to check it out.

He bent over and buried his head and arms in the trunk. He was looking for the bottom of the clearly-expanded trunk when Ron exclaimed, “Look at this!” Harry hurriedly pulled himself out of the trunk; Ron sounded close by, and it only took Harry a moment to find him.

Ron was holding up a set of bright, neon orange Quidditch robes. Harry’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t fathom how a set of Chudley Cannon Quidditch robes had found their way into the room, but there they were. And now Ron was pulling them over his head.

Once they were over his head, Ron’s head perked up and he swung his head around, clearly looking for someone. Then he spotted Harry and grinned. “Check it out! The robes fit,” he broke off, waving a hand completely enveloped in a sleeve and causing the sleeve to flop around a bit, “Well, mostly, anyways. I have to keep these!”

“That’s great, Ron!” Harry said and gave him a double thumbs up. Ron shoved the sleeves up to his elbows and returned the gesture. Then they both went back to searching through piles.

And so it went: occasionally, someone would exclaim over one find or another and someone else would respond, and then they’d all go back to the search.

They had been at it for quite a while when Luna said, from somewhere far away from Harry, “Oh my. I think this is Ravenclaw’s lost diadem.”

“Ravenclaw’s what?” Ron called from somewhere else. Harry started making his way over to Luna to see what she was talking about, and saw that the others had, too.

“There’s just no way Ravenclaw’s diadem, that’s been lost for centuries, just so happens to be right here,” Hermione said.

“This is the lost and found, though,” Ron said, also closing in on Luna.

“But it’s been lost for centuries,” Hermione insisted. “There’s no way it could’ve been right here at Hogwarts this whole time. There just isn’t.”

Neville said, “Ron’s right though. This is probably the lost and found, and it’s a founder’s lost diadem. It would make a lot of sense for it to be here, I think.”

They had all grouped together around Luna to get a look at the diadem. Harry thought it just looked like a tiara, but he supposed that a diadem must be another type of tiara, or something. Luna was holding it with both hands out in front of her, so they could all easily see the blue sapphire mounted in the middle. Harry thought there was an inscription on it too, but he couldn’t be sure what it said.

Then, a few moments after everyone got close enough to have had a good look at the diadem, Luna said, “I think I will try this on and see if it works like Ravenclaw’s diadem does.” Then she placed the diadem down on her head, as though she were crowning herself.

And as soon as she did, her posture went ramrod stiff. She surveyed the group of them gathered in front of her, rotating her head slowly, and when her eyes met Harry’s, he finally noticed that her eyes were large and scarlet, with only slits for pupils: exactly how Harry remembered Voldemort’s eyes to be.

Harry felt an icy thrill of fear run down his back.

When she finished surveying the group, her head straightened on her neck so she was looking straight ahead, off into the distance. In a distant and cold voice, she said, “I have seen all your minds, your hearts, and your souls. I know who you are and I know what you have done and I know what you will be.”

Then Luna made eye contact with Ginny, who was closest to her. Ginny leaned back slightly, her eyes still wide open with shock.

“You will never be free of me.”

Ginny staggered back a step and froze. Then a moment later, she narrowed her eyes at Luna and turned and ran towards the entrance to the room.

Luna’s voice had sounded nothing like her own. It was harsh and cruel and meant to hurt. Harry had never heard her sound like that before, and it sounded desperately wrong to be coming from her. But Harry was frozen. He had no plan of action, no idea of how to save Luna without hurting her. And he had no idea where Ginny had even gone.

Then Luna turned to Eli next and he merely stood there, unreactive.

“You will never do enough to be forgiven.”

Eli blinked slowly in response, but he otherwise did not respond.

Luna’s head turned– in stiff, stuttery jerks– to face Hermione.

Harry felt like he was watching this all play out on a television screen. It all felt so far away; he was so terribly frozen and helpless.

And Hermione brought her hands up to cover her mouth, her eyes wide.

“You will wallow in your ignorance and everyone will see you for what you are: a failure.”

Then Luna’s eyes found Harry’s, and he took a half-step back. Suddenly, he could feel his awareness crash back into his body, just in time for him to be pinned in place by the malice of Luna’s gaze.

“You will always be the lonely and unloved boy in the cupboard.”

Harry staggered back another step, the words echoing through his mind. Because they were true. Horribly, painfully true. He felt as though he’d been flung back through time, back into the cupboard under the stairs, back to being completely, utterly alone in the world. How long did he have until he lost the remaining people who cared about him?

He could see it all so clearly now. He’d never really left the cupboard, had he? It was only a temporary fluke that he’d found people that cared about him– they would leave him eventually, just like everyone else in his life.

Then he was knocked to the side by Ginny as she flew past him to tackle Luna to the ground. Harry landed heavily and was slightly dazed as he watched Ginny rip the diadem off of Luna’s head. It was then that Harry finally noticed the basilisk fang Ginny was clutching in her hand. She rolled away from Luna, shielding the diadem from Luna’s desperate attempts to retrieve it, and then stabbed it with the fang.

The diadem screeched for one terrible, ear-shattering moment, and gave one last gurgle. Then all was silent again.

Harry slowly climbed to his feet then stood frozen with the others for a long moment. Then Luna said, in her normal airy voice, “Does anyone know why I’m lying on the ground?”

Ron muttered, “Bloody hell.”

Ginny got to her feet and shoved both the fang and the broken diadem into Harry’s hands. “You should probably give those to Kreacher for safe storage,” she said to Harry, before turning to Luna. “And you’re on the ground because decided to wear Ravenclaw’s diadem, which was, apparently, enchanted a bit like the diary had been.”

Harry had taken a couple steps away from the group when Ginny had given him the diadem and the fang. He quietly called Kreacher, trying not to disturb the others, and asked Kreacher to put the diadem with the locket. Kreacher agreed, then they both turned their attention back to where everyone’s attention was riveted on Ginny.

“–so I reacted kinda instinctively. The diadem’s words were meant to hurt, so it felt natural to refuse to let them. The twins always backed off that much faster if I pretended they hadn’t gotten to me, and once the diadem moved on, I was able to break free and run towards where I’d last seen Kreacher. I didn’t want to risk the diadem figuring out what I was up to, so I quietly asked Kreacher to get me another basilisk fang. He didn’t want to abandon what he was doing, so I had to explain that the diadem was like the locket and that Harry would probably be in danger if we didn’t manage to destroy it soon. And that was enough to convince him.

“He was able to just summon the fang from the basilisk this time, and I immediately grabbed it and ran back towards everyone. Then you guys know the rest– I tackled Luna to get the diadem off of her and stabbed it with the fang,” she concluded with a proud look on her face.

Harry gave her a broad smile as Luna reached out to grasp Ginny’s hand and said, “Thank you for saving me.”

Ginny shrugged slightly and said, “It was no big deal, I was just the only one able to break the trance of horror.”

“Merlin, I’d forgotten we used to call it that,” Ron said faintly. Then, in a louder voice, he said, “Trance of horror is what we used to call it when Fred and George pulled a prank that left us frozen in shock.”

“Kreacher is wondering if this will be all, because Kreacher has things to do, and master and his friends have already collected many galleons worth of things.”

Honestly, Harry had nearly completely forgotten about what they’d come here to do. He was still feeling raw and exposed after what the diadem had said about him, and he didn’t really feel like he was all the way back in the present yet. He really hoped the others had been too distracted by everything else that had happened to pay too much attention to what the diadem had said to him.

Then Harry realized that he still needed to respond to Kreacher and said, “Oh, uh, I think we have enough for now, so feel free to go back to whatever you were doing. And thank you again for your help.”

“Kreacher was happy to help,” Kreacher said, then apparated away.

Harry heard Hermione cast Tempus in the next moment. Then she said, “As long as everyone’s alright, we ought to head down to dinner now.”

I’m glad she mostly means physically alright, he thought as he glanced over the others. He didn’t think any of them were wholly unscathed by what had happened. Ginny and Luna were the ones who could be physically hurt, but they were both standing with the others and seemed mostly unharmed. Ginny glanced over at Luna, who took a moment to react to what Hermione had said.

Then Luna said, “I do not think I am alright at the moment. But I am physically fine and very hungry. So I think we ought to go to dinner. I’m sure I’ll be alright with time.”

Ginny took one of her hands as Neville took the other. Neville said, “And we’ll be here for you every step of the way.”

Harry pasted a smile onto his face and nodded.

They filed out of the room as a single group, and walked to the Great Hall.

Severus was wandering through the hallways of Hogwarts. He had gone to dinner with Harry and his friends, and sat with them as they’d unpacked the events of the Room of Requirement. They had all seemed incredibly unsettled by what had happened, and Severus certainly didn’t blame them.

He himself was decidedly unsettled by the events of what should have been an ordinary and downright boring afternoon.

Unlike what he would have assumed, he hadn’t minded sitting and listening to the teenagers’ conversations. And it had, in fact, been far superior to any of the dinners he could remember having at the Slytherin table. Despite his reluctance to actively participate in the conversation, they’d made sure to include him. And as annoyed as Severus had wanted to be at not being left alone, their pestering had so obviously been borne of concern that he couldn’t quite manage it.

Thankfully, after dinner he’d managed to slip away on his own. He needed to decompress and sort through his own thoughts without an audience.

So now he was wandering through the hallways aimlessly.

He turned his thoughts towards the words that the diadem-possessed Lovegood had said to him, Severus. Their targeted nature had proven that the diadem had some ability to see through to their deepest fears. Of course, Severus’s fears haunted him nearly every day, so it had hardly made a difference to hear his own thoughts come from Lovegood rather than from his own mind. It hadn’t been difficult, therefore, for him to remain mostly stoic in front of the others.

And as further evidence of the diadem’s ability, Granger’s personalized taunt had been razor sharp and accurately aimed– at least, he was reasonably sure that it was, based on what he knew from having her in class and, of course, from her reaction to the diadem.

This, then, essentially confirmed that Harry’s message had been similarly pointed. And after concluding this, Severus could feel the implications looming over him, and a thrill of foreboding ran down his spine.

He shook it off and plowed on with his thoughts.

“You will always be the lonely and unloved boy in the cupboard,” Lovegood had said.

Severus hardly knew where to start with deciphering this. He simply lacked the necessary context to understand what Lovegood had been referencing. After another moment’s thought, he realized that the use of the word ‘boy’ strongly suggested that Lovegood was referencing something from Harry’s childhood. The problem was, again, that Severus had no context for how Harry had been raised.

Or, at least, he didn’t yet. Because he’d certainly been given bits and pieces of information about Harry’s life before Hogwarts. He’d simply never cared to put them together– until now.

Severus knew for a fact that Harry had been raised in the muggle world, but he hadn’t given any thought as to who, precisely, had raised him.

But, he realized as he focused on his memories of Harry, he had been told who Harry had been placed with. He had already known that Harry had been given to Petunia. He had just never cared about the implications of Petunia raising a magical child. But now that he was considering them, it was abundantly clear that Harry’s childhood could not have been a very happy one.

Petunia might not have always been a spiteful bitch, but by the time Severus and Lily had left for Hogwarts, she was already well on her way to becoming one. Her jealousy had warped her into a cruel person.

She had been specifically and horribly jealous of Lily’s magic, lashing out every time Severus and Lily had practiced magic together, more than once driving Lily to tears over it.

And, if she’d been willing to do that to the little sister that she’d grown up with and once loved, then he shuddered to think of what she’d been willing to do to Harry. When Harry had been left with Petunia, he’d been a defenseless baby, and Severus was sure that Petunia had seen Harry as little more than a reminder of the sister she’d grown to hate.

Severus hated to compare himself to Petunia, but really, they had likely both reacted to Harry the same way.

They had both looked at Harry and only seen James. They’d both viewed James in a similar way– they’d both seen him as stealing Lily from them. For Petunia, James had been more of a symbol of the wizarding world at large. Severus had more personally resented Harry’s resemblance to James, but the end result was the same.

Or, well, he assumed it was.

Because now Severus was remembering all the little things about Harry that he’d noticed and then immediately brushed off as idiosyncrasies or accidents.

Like the time Severus had seen Harry’s bruised chest and arms, and how Harry’s clear discomfort with the situation that seemed to go beyond being seen fresh out of the shower by a near stranger. Severus had been so blind at the time that he’d believed Harry’s story about flying into a tree.

Severus could remember what those bruises looked like, though, and they had looked rather more like Harry had been punched or kicked by someone, and more than once at that. After concentrating on the memory of their encounter, Severus realized that there had been some marks curling around to the front of Harry’s torso. Marks that looked suspiciously, horribly, like they’d been made by a belt.

Severus wandered through a couple corridors with this thought ringing through his head. Because even though he’d separated Harry and James in his mind, he had never imagined that Harry had not been safe at home.

And the more Severus thought about what Harry’s childhood had been like, the more he realized that he and Harry were horribly alike. Or, at least, their childhoods had been. Severus took a moment to let this sink in before he turned his thoughts back to where they had been.

Clearly someone had been hurting Harry, and while Severus had been so clearly focused on Petunia’s role in Harry’s childhood, Severus realized that he’d neglected to consider who Petunia had married.

He gave this mystery some consideration. After a few long moments, Severus came to the conclusion that while he had no idea who Petunia had married, he had no need to know. Because regardless of who had perpetrated the violence against Harry, be it Petunia or her spouse, Petunia was independently capable of creating an unsafe environment for Harry.

When Severus had known her, Petunia had been more than capable of getting to know a person with the sole intent of finding out what buttons to push to make them crumble. Eventually though, Lily had become less vulnerable to Petunia’s taunts. Severus could clearly remember several incidents where Petunia had physically lashed out– at both Lily and Severus.

And this was the woman that had raised Harry.

There was more than just the bruising though, Severus realized. At the same time that he’d seen Harry’s bruising, he’d also seen how very thin the boy was. His ribs were entirely too prominent on his chest, and his wrists almost appeared fragile in their thinness. Severus had now had several meals with Harry, who never seemed to eat that much. And half the time Harry only seemed to eat as much as he did because his friends– usually one of the Weasleys or Granger– piled his plate with food and urged him to eat more.

That was most definitely not normal behavior for a teenage boy. Most teenage boys were ravenous by the time they sat down to eat, and needed no encouragement to eat their way through absolutely absurd amounts of food.

Severus himself was evidence of this, because as soon as he’d taken the potion that’d forced him to become a teenager again, he’d started eating like one. His readings had told him that his body would now behave just like a proper teenagers would.

Which then begged the question: why did Harry not eat like a normal teenage boy? Unfortunately, Severus had a terrible feeling that he knew the answer to that question. It was all too likely that Petunia had not found it necessary to adequately feed Harry. Because if she was willing to physically harm Harry, then she would almost certainly be willing to restrict his food.

And, on the topic of ways that Harry had been neglected– Harry’s clothing was an obvious contender. Those rags that he had removed the stains from had not only been, well, ragged and stained, they’d also seemed entirely too large for a boy as small as Harry.

Obviously Severus had no way to be sure that Harry had had a deprived childhood, but beyond the big obvious things that should have aroused his suspicion when he’d first noticed them, there were other warning signs that he could now see. Signs he could no longer ignore.

Things like Harry’s obvious lack of self-worth. Severus could now tell that Harry had genuinely not expected Eli to apologize for saying terrible things to his face. And then there had been his belief that he would be replaced as the leader of the DA. And there was the fact that Harry was just generally quiet and unobtrusive.

While a couple of these things on their own would not be cause for concern, the picture they all painted together was horribly and painfully clear.

Severus had truly done Harry a disservice in assuming that his childhood had been just like James’s.It was now looking terribly, horribly, like Harry’s childhood had been like his own.

Severus now felt ill as he remembered how he’d treated Harry for the longest time. Harry had been a child when they’d finally met for the first time. And all Severus had been able to see was the face of his childhood nemesis.

But– Severus stopped himself. It wasn’t healthy to continue to obsess over the past. But he could plan for the future, so Severus added ‘interrogate Dumbledore about why he’d left another child in an abusive home’ to his list of things to speak with Dumbledore about when he eventually returned to Hogwarts.

His thoughts now organized, Severus turned and walked purposefully towards Gryffindor tower.