"Why do you hate me so much?" Harry asked, moving the food around on his plate. After the nightmares last night, food really wasn’t appealing. All that blood . . .

Snape didn’t answer, and Harry looked up from playing with his food to see that Snape was diligently ignoring him, causing Harry to get angry. Every time Harry had decided to ignore Snape during the past five days, he would get in trouble. Harry asked him a simple question, and Snape had the nerve to ignore him!

"Well?" Harry asked. "And don’t say it’s because I’m an ‘unsufferable brat’ or whatever you’ve been calling me for the past few days. I’ve been good for the past two days! But really! You’ve hated me even before you met me. Is it because of my father? Or because of my fame? Because I never knew my father, so that’s not really a reason. And I don’t want to be famous. Or is it just because you have to hate everyone?"

Snape put his mug down hard onto the table, glaring hard at the boy sitting across from him. How he had ever agreed to take the boy into him home until the wards were ready!

"You, Potter, are extremely unappreciative and entirely unable to understand how much you are given! You choose to risk your life foolishly despite the fact that everyone has been risking their lives for you to stay alive. You regularly disobey simple rules because you think yourself above them! You react with absolutely no consideration for others! There are many, many wizards who deserve what you have, who would love and appreciate it much more than you are even capable of. With how you act, you don’t deserve any of it," Snape spat at him.

Harry looked at Snape blankly before standing up and walking away, leaving his plate of food uneaten. Snape merely sneered after him, convinced that the brat couldn’t handle being called on his selfish personality.

Four hours later, Harry was laying on the bed he had used for almost a week now, staring at the blank ceiling and hoping that Dumbledore would hurry up and get the wards updated on Privet Drive soon. He didn’t think he could handle being with Snape for much longer.

Was that really how people saw him, though? Those that weren’t so blinded by his fame? Was he really the spoiled brat that Snape pictured him to be? He didn’t want to believe it. He wasn’t anything like his cousin. Or even Malfoy. He did appreciate what he was given. Didn’t he?

The more Harry thought about it, he really wasn’t so sure anymore. He was given a lot. Dumbledore never gave him detention or took of points for being out of the common room after curfew, and he was always risking his life.

Did everyone really risk their lives for him? It was just for the war, right? He really wasn’t that important. There was the prophecy, but that was more Voldemort’s reaction to it than anything, right? Dumbledore didn’t actually expect Harry to be able to kill Voldemort, who was a much more powerful wizard than he was.

Right?

By dinner, Harry had argued himself into an extremely depressive mood, and he didn’t bother going down to eat. It wasn’t as if he was hungry, anyway. Anytime he thought of food, he thought of all those bodies being picked at by the crows . . .

All around him was dark, and the smell of blood was thick in the air. He could make out the Dark Mark above the field he was in, but even that was hard to see.

"Even if you are sulking, Potter, you still are required at meals," a voice said harshly, waking a grateful Harry from his dream. Reality soon fell back down, though, and he realized it was Snape who was talking to him. Closing his eyes once again, Harry willed himself to let everything go. He didn’t realize when Snape started yelling at him again.

". . . again!"

"Everything would be better if I didn’t exist, wouldn’t it?" Harry asked aloud. "If I weren’t alive?"

Snape stopped his ranting when he heard that. Harry, of course, hadn’t noticed.

"Potter, answer me!" Snape shouted for about the fifth time, finally gaining Harry’s attention.

"Huh?" he asked, not bothering to open his eyes yet.

"What did you mean by that?"

"You said I didn’t deserve to live . . ." Harry answered in monotone, and Snape closed his eyes, sighing inwardly.

"That is not what I said. I was merely stating that you take advantage of situations without realizing how much you are given in comparison to others."

"But I don’t," Harry continued. "I’m really not important. Many more people would live if I didn’t," he said, remembering his latest nightmare. "Voldemort wouldn’t be killing people to get to me anymore . . ."

"Do not speak his name! He would find other reasons to kill, then," Severus stated flatly, then stopped to think. "I believe you are in a stage of . . . something. When was the last time you actually ate more than a few bites?"

"I don’t know," Harry answered, wishing Snape would just leave so he didn’t have to worry about it.

"Why haven’t you been eating?"

"Not hungry."

"Why not? You haven’t been eating. You should be hungry."

"Can’t. Dreams . . ."

It then fell together for Snape. Why Potter hadn’t been eating (he thought it was just Potter sulking at first) and why he was currently crying. Possibly even this new, depressed mood that he was going though.

"And what do these dreams entail?" Snape asked. Harry didn’t answer at first, and Snape was about to catch the boy for not paying attention when he started to speak.

The dreams that Harry told Snape disturbed him to no end. Dead bodies, the sacrificial, suicidal manner to them . . .

Snape cursed Dumbledore for throwing an emotionally disturbed boy at him to take care of.

"Potter, they are nothing but dreams. Merely your subconscious mind incorrectly interpreting situations. I will get you some Dreamless sleep which you may use for the next two nights, but no longer. If often helps to deal with dreams while you are not running on a tired mind to begin with."

And so Harry slept well for the first time in three weeks.