Harry was in a dark place. All around him were stones with names written on them. He wasn’t alone. He looked down to see that he was trapped – tied to a stone which somewhere in the back of his mind he knew to read Thomas Riddle. In front of him was a steaming cauldron; acrid smoke curled up from it to make demon shaped clouds that glowed eerily in the light provided by a new crescent moon. Harry’s hand throbbed with searing pain as drops of blood dripped onto the trampled grass.

Further in front of him were a circle of masked men and woman on their knees; only their glittering eyes and pale hands were visible. To one side, was the body of his friend – Cedric Diggory. A painful bolt of lightening passed right through Harry’s heart as he suddenly remembered where he was and why.

Just as things became clear, an unearthly Voldemort, skin as taut and unblemished as a newborn baby, turned slitted eyes towards Harry, raising his wand in a mesmerising, smooth, circular gesture, as though the years spent in a decrepit half-life had been taken-up planning his new body and its movement to perfection.

Harry closed his eyes, knowing that the scene before him was a dream – remembering that his parents, Lily and James Potter, and their loving protection, had gotten him away. A comforting vision passed through his mind – his mother and father dancing at their wedding.

Even so, as he woke Harry could not contain the scream that escaped his lips …

Severus Snape clicked his fingers and immediately the lanterns hanging from the stone walls of his quarters burned with a dim candlelight. He had become vaguely aware of Harry’s cries minutes before but had been hoping that they would stop as suddenly as they had started. He was beginning to regret that he had moved Harry into the room where he slept and that he not gone with his original plan of placing an age-line round the bars of the cot.

“Stop grizzling, Potter,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

Harry immediately fell silent. In truth he hadn’t even realised that he had been crying. All at once he remembered exactly who he was and exactly why he was in Snape’s private rooms.

Harry thought guiltily of that afternoon. Snape had been showing him pictures of his mother and father and all he had been worried about was the Quidditch book that Hermione had given him for his birthday. In fact he had been so eager to turn the pages that he had made a small rip in one of the corners.

Still, Harry reasoned, it hadn’t been his fault. The curse that Draco had sent at him on the Quidditch pitch had somehow obliviated his memory as well as reducing him to a baby.

A baby?

Harry’s cheeks flamed as he thought quickly over the last day or two. He didn’t know how he was ever going to live it down. Not only had he been constantly clutching a stuffed canary and throwing a tantrum at the drop of a hat, but he was also wearing a nappy – and had had it changed by Snape! The only consolation to Harry was that he had, on one occasion, weed right in his potions teachers face – that had actually been very amusing.

Harry looked down and found to his embarrassment that he was dressed in a head-to-toe romper suit complete with bobble hood. It was red and gold and had a picture of a lion on it which looked suspiciously like the stuffed one that Ron kept under (and sometimes in) his bed. In fact, thought Harry wryly, it probably was one of the Weasley children’s cast-offs as he remembered seeing Mrs Weasley the day before.

Harry also knew that he was trying very hard to quash his childish urges. For example, the thought which kept popping in his head was how desperately he wanted to put that stupid canary (Cheep-Cheep?) in his mouth to chew. He kicked his blue baby blanket from his body in frustration. Why couldn’t he just have a normal life like Ron or Hermione? Why did things like this always happen to him? At this thought it was all Harry could do to stop his small, trembling bottom lip from parting with the upper one to let forth another round of bawling.

Perhaps the worst thing about his sudden memory, however, was the more harrowing things it brought back. In his oblivious baby state he had been able to forget that his parents had been murdered by Voldemort; it felt like a cruel, breathtaking, punch in the stomach to have it thrust on him all over again. Though he was glad he could now remember the mum and dad that he had lost, and would certainly not have it any other way, he couldn’t help think a little fondly about how safe he had felt when his biggest worry was the next game he was going to play with Hermione.

Perhaps thankfully, however, just as suddenly as Harry was having these thoughts they seemed to drop as rapidly from his mind. It was as though his head was an overflowing bag of marbles and he was unable to keep some of them from falling with a clatter to the floor. He tried desperately to cling to the image of his mother and father dancing at their wedding, and he seemed unable to rid himself of vision of the risen Voldemort, but everything else spun rapidly away and no matter how hard Harry struggled he was unable to prevent the memories of his life leave his brain like they had never been there to begin with.

“I thought I told you to go to sleep, Potter,” a familiar voice sneered.

The world suddenly got darker as Snape’s head, complete with hook-nose and oily black hair, cast a shadow over Harry’s cot.

“Do – ba – diddy – da,” Harry said confused. He knew that he had had a nasty dream with a very scary monster (Dol-dee-vor?), but no matter how much he screwed up his face he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it all meant, or who the big boy tied to the stone had been. He sat up in his cot, his green eyes wide, watching Snape carefully. Perhaps he knew what had happened.

“Da – Ba – Dee - Snape?”

Snape, of course, could not understand anything Potter was saying. The only reason he had left the comfort of his bed was because, for the first time since he had become a baby, Potter had shut up when he was told. Snape had the suspicion that a quiet Potter was a plotting Potter and he wanted to make sure he understood that the type of games he had played the day before would not be acceptable.

As he looked down upon the toddler now, however, he could see that something was different. Harry was sitting quietly, staring up at him with his eyes full of a passion that Snape had only ever seen from the teenage Harry.

Harry realised that he wanted to see the book that Snape had shown him again. He knew now that the smiley man and woman in it were his ‘Mamma’ and ‘Dadda’. He wrinkled his nose and tried to concentrate as hard as he could to make the words come.

“NO – BA – DOO – SNAPE!” he shouted, as though the volume which he garbled at might help.

Snape’s blank face, however, quickly told Harry that he wasn’t getting anywhere. Why didn’t the batman understand him? He wanted to se his little smiley mummy and daddy to make sure they were safe. He picked Cheep-Cheep up in is little fingers and mashed his head viciously before turning on his belly sadly and burying his head in his pillow.

“Potter,” Snape snapped, aware that the boy might be trying to tell him something, “I can’t speak baby. Look at me.”

As Harry turned slowly towards him, Snape found himself wishing that it was not too dangerous (not to mention illegal) to use Occlumency against toddlers. There was definitely something that Potter was trying to communicate.

This time Harry decided to really concentrate on what he wanted as he seemed to have Snape’s full attention. He furrowed up his little brow and balled his fists tightly. Finally he managed to get the word out of his mouth

“Mamma,”

A greasy eyebrow shot right up on Snape’s waxy forehead. When he was showing Potter the album earlier that day he had not informed him who the people were. It was obvious to him that Harry had had his first memory restored.

“What did you say Potter? Repeat yourself.”

Once he done it the first time Harry found it was easier to say the word again.

“Mamma, Mamma, Dadda,” he said happily – he was definitely on a roll now.

Snape bent down and hoisted Potter from his cot as the toddler to gurgled with satisfaction. Snape clicked his fingers again to brighten the lanterns to their full strength, ignoring the way Potter immediately snapped his eyes shut, and then placed him in his high chair so that he could retrieve the photo album. He flicked the pages straight to the Potter’s wedding.

“Who are these people, Potter?” he asked firmly.

Harry looked down at the picture of his loving parents. They were twirling and dancing in one picture and then waving up at him in the other. He suddenly remembered the feeling of being safe and warm in his mother’s arms.

“Mamma, Dadda,” he said, his pudgy hands jerking forward to lovingly smudge the images.

As he looked down at them, however, Harry suddenly began to whimper. They were his mummy and daddy, but he knew instinctively that he would never feel either of their safe embraces again. They were dead – killed by the thin black-cloaked beast with the green flash of light; the same man that had also been in the strange place in his dream.

This thought was enough to bewilder any grown-up, never mind a toddler.

“Dead-ie,” Harry said sadly.

Snape visibly flinched at the boy’s words. He noticed that Potter’s emerald eyes were full with the first genuine tears he had seen from the toddler. He didn’t quite know what to say – he had a strange feeling as he looked at Potter and (for the first time also) he knew his eyes were not filled with loathing but with a strange pity.

However, with an occlumency as natural as the regular filling of his lungs Snape shrugged off this feeling almost immediately. “Yes Potter,” he said. “Your mother and father were killed.”

Harry didn’t break into howls as Snape had expected he might – it seemed that even as a toddler Harry had developed a strong resilience to whatever had happened to him. He held out his arms.

“Up Snape,” he said, tired of thinking about so complicated and nasty things. “Sweepy.”

Both Snape and Harry seemed shocked at the way this sentence had been strung together. Snape regarded Harry closely for a few moments, checking for any changes. He made up his mind to borrow Madame Pomfrey’s ageing-curl in the morning.

“Very well Potter,” he said lifting Harry up onto his shoulder, “we will resume your lesson tomorrow.”

Before Snape put Harry down for the night, however, he filled and warmed a bottle of milk for him to drink in bed. And so with the soothing liquid from the nice batman trickling into his mouth Harry finally fell into a calm and dreamless sleep.