Harry pushes his way into the tunnel. It isn’t very spacious, so he must squeeze through on his belly. He wriggles forward like a snake, muck and grime wetly sticking to him. The only sound is his panting, ragged breath, and he focuses on it, blocking everything else out so he doesn’t become claustrophobic in this muddy tube. To his relief, the tunnel gradually becomes wider, and Harry gets on his hands and knees. He awkwardly lumbers forwards, the stone scraping his shins, dust swirling around him. The air in here is disgusting, and soon Harry’s eyes are watering. Finally he stops, tears a strip off his shirt, and wraps it around his nose and mouth like a bandanna. It’s no Bubblehead Charm, but it will have to do.

Harry closes his red-rimmed eyes—they aren’t much use here anyways—and blindly gropes his way onwards. He goes on like this for awhile, until gradually his head stops scraping the ceiling. He pauses, wiping the sweat off his brow, and squints upwards. The tunnel has gotten considerably larger, and Harry gets to his feet, stretching his aching back. He feels like he’s just undergone evolution.

Harry stops long enough only to loosen the kinks in his muscles. He has to keep moving, fast as he can, or else his thoughts will catch up with him. And they cannot catch up with him, because when they do, Harry knows he will break into a thousand pieces. So he breaks into a run, skidding on the damp stone and bumping into the walls.

A rat bangs into Harry’s leg, and Harry yelps in surprise, which in turn leads to a coughing fit. He slows down, wheezing, watching the rat waddle off. Hedwig loves rats. Well, she loves eating them, which is not quite the same thing. Harry’s eyes water again, and he wipes away the wetness, telling himself sternly that it is only the foul air. He doesn’t miss Hedwig that badly, and he certainly isn’t wishing he could bury his head into her feathers right now. Really.

Finally a door swims into his view. Harry quickens his pace even more, stopping only when he spies the sword of Gryffindor. Harry picks it up and uses the sword to push the door open. To his utter relief, it easily swings open.

Harry darts inside, slamming the door behind him. He takes several deep, refreshing breaths. The air in here is much cleaner, and his poor red eyes are practically singing in relief. He rubs at them and then squints blurrily around the room. He’s in a small, circular sort of place. The ceiling is very high and everything is made of stone. No windows or anything. He certainly hasn’t been here before, but he supposes he could be inside one of the small towers. The room is empty except for a big stone basin set on a sturdy pedestal. Harry frowns, searching for the way out, before his eyes land on a small door hidden in the shadows. Excellent.

Harry strides across the room, determined to ignore whatever is inside the basin. He doesn’t want to play Dumbledore’s games any more, either. He has that in common with Snape.

But he’s not going to think about Snape. Or about the prophecy. He’s not going to think about any of it.

Harry sees something familiar out of the corner of his eye, though, and slows down in front of the basin. “My wand!” he exclaims, sticking his hand into the water before he can stop himself. His fingers slide comfortingly over the wood, and he tries to pull his wand out of the water. The basin has other ideas, however, and Harry’s entire body plunges into the liquid, the tower room spinning away into darkness.

Oh, hell.

He’s really starting to hate Pensieves.

Harry lands with an uncomfortable thump. He wearily gets to his feet, wondering in whose memory he has landed. He certainly doesn’t recognize the room. It’s a cozy nursery, empty of inhabitants except for a chubby cat snoring in the corner. There are voices coming from the hallway, though, so Harry pokes his head out of the doorway.

James and Lily are sitting on their sofa, a red and gold quilt draped over their legs, playing with a sturdy toddler. He has a mop of black hair and deep green eyes.

Harry stops short, his breath catching in his throat. His parents both have soppy looks of adoration on their faces, gasping and exclaiming as the baby sticks his hand in his mouth and drools. It’s probably the same look every parent—every good parent—has for his child, but to Harry it is a rare thing, exquisite to behold. Remember this, he tells himself sternly. Remember that they adored you.

He gets closer, kneeling so he can look his baby self in the eye. It’s incredibly weird to see his forehead without the scar on it. Man, he’s glad Snape isn’t here for this particular trip down memory lane. He’d never hear the end of how stupidly besotted James Potter was with his little clone.

But he’s not thinking about Snape.

“That’s enough,” Lily says, poking James in the ribs. “Stop making faces at him. The idea is to make him sleepy, remember?”

“Read him one of your sister’s letters,” James replies, waggling his eyebrows and puffing out his cheeks. “That ought to do the trick.”

His dad’s voice is much deeper than Harry remembers from the other memory. Will his own voice sound the same one day?

Lily laughs. “Her letters aren’t that bad.”

“Oh, yes they are,” James retorts, aiming a red puff of smoke out of his wand. It erupts in the baby’s face, and he giggles hysterically, swatting at the already fading wisps.

His father doesn’t look like a jerk.

A door creaks behind them, and Lily carelessly looks up.

Oh.

“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him off!”

Lily scoops the baby up and bolts up the stairs. Harry runs after her. She plops the baby in the crib and starts to shove the dresser against the door. Harry hears a laugh from downstairs and darts to the hallway. Voldemort is laughing, actually laughing, at his father.

Voldemort sneers and aims his wand. “Avada Kedavra!”

And, just like that, Harry’s father is dead. James crumples to the ground. His glasses fall off, and Harry watches them fall to the ground and shatter. His eyes close, and the lines in his face smooth out. James suddenly looks much younger, like a teenager.

Is this what Harry will look like when he dies?

Harry blinks, shaking his head back and forth, desperate to forget the look in his father’s eyes before they closed for the last time. Terror—that’s what it was. Haunted, desperate, animal terror.

Voldemort sweeps past him, and Harry shrinks back, disgusted. Part of him wants to stay in the hallway—but another part wants to bear witness to what comes next. This is the reason, right here, that his life is so effed up.

Voldemort tries to keep his promise to Snape. He tells Lily once, twice, three times to get out the way, but she refuses, her hair a wild halo around her face. She turns her back on Voldemort, draping herself over her child, comforting him. And Voldemort, coward that he is, aims his wand at her back. “Avada Kadavra!”

Lily freezes, exchanging one horrified look of despair with her green-eyed son as she dies. She starts to fall to the ground, and the baby grabs at her red hair. But the strands slide through his grasp just as easily as smoke from his dad’s wand.

And, really, that’s what had happened. His parents had slid through his fingers like water.

The baby plants his hands on the bars of the crib, looking wearily at Voldemort. Harry has to stop himself from lunging in front of the child, to try and protect him from the wand pointing at his face.

“Avadra Kedavra!” Voldemort says for a third time, the slightest trace of fear in his voice.

But this time it doesn’t work. There is a huge, fiery explosion, Voldemort is thrown backwards, and a rip of red appears on the baby’s forehead. The child starts to howl like an animal, banging his fists against the crib, staring at his dead mother. Finally, his gasps slow to a hiccup, and the child is silent.

Everything is quiet now. Voldemort is gone. The house has stopped shuddering, most of the flames have died out, and everything seems frozen in time, waiting for something to happen.

That’s when Hagrid arrives, his great roaring motorbike smashing through the silence. He’s sobbing when he scoops the baby up, sobbing when he puts him in the motorbike, sobbing as they fly away. The baby has finished his sobbing, though. He stopped crying when the flames began to lick at Lily’s body.

Now they are flying through the starry night, Hagrid whispering broken words of comfort to the wide-eyed child. Harry cranes his head downwards, looking at the remains of the house at Godric’s Hallow. The ruin is flecked with gold as the last embers of the explosion fade away.

They land with a screech in front of Number 4, Privet Drive. McGonagall and Dumbledore are both there, the former talking worriedly to the latter. They stop abruptly when they see Hagrid and his tiny charge. Dumbledore gently takes the baby from Hagrid, and the big man collapses into McGonagall’s arms.

Dumbledore peers sorrowfully at the baby over his glasses. He nods once to himself. “Yes,” he murmurs, “I believe it would be prudent.” He takes out his wand and conjures a little goblet. “Don’t worry,” he says softly. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

Dumbledore lifts his wand to the child’s ear and mutters a long, soft incantation of syllables. A silvery thread attaches itself to the wand, and the headmaster draws it away from the child’s ear. The baby reaches out his fist, scrunching up his face as the strand is pulled out. And now the memory is beginning to flicker in and out, in and out, in and out…

The last thing Harry sees is Dumbledore, pocketing the goblet and winking at the toddler.

Harry tumbles to the ground, still clutching his wand. For a moment he just sits there, stunned. Shakily, he gets to his feet.

Then the anger hits.

Harry staggers to the basin. The silver strand of memory floats gently on top of the liquid. Harry whips his wand out, but before he can say any words, the thread shoots out of the water, immediately and forcefully attaching itself to Harry’s wand. Harry raises his wand, opens his mouth and swallows the memory like a bird does a worm. The memory tastes like apple cider and honey and slides oddly down his throat, almost eagerly, like it is anxious to be home. Harry gasps, hunching over, as a flame of agony rips through his stomach.

Perhaps memories aren’t meant to be eaten.

Harry groans, sinking to the ground, writhing. He clamps his hands over his mouth, determined to keep his memory inside of his body, where it should have been all along! Gradually, the urge to vomit passes, and Harry dizzily sits up. The images of his parents dying swirl in his head, finding places to land, where Harry knows they will remain forever.

The Dementors were wrong. They didn’t show him everything.

The Dementors didn’t show him how his father died with a frown on his face. They didn’t show him the sound of Lily’s last breath, or the way Voldemort’s tongue slithered over his teeth as he killed them, or the smell of their burning flesh.

It must be different when you take memories from a baby. Because, apparently, something has remained with Harry—flashes of green light, his mother’s plea for mercy—even after Dumbledore removed the memory.

Some things are engrained too deeply.

Harry blinks back tears. He has so many questions for the headmaster. Why did he remove the memory? Why is he giving it back now? What is he supposed to do with this?

What would Snape think?

Harry sighs and stands up. He picks up the sword and walks wearily to the door. He feels about a thousand years old.

He knows who he will dream about tonight.

And, for a change, it won’t be Cedric who dies.

Harry puts his ear against the door. Soft voices mutter to each other, and he can just pick out the high, reedy voice of Phineas Nigellus. “Be quiet, Fawkes,” the man snaps. “You’re giving me a headache.”

Harry freezes. So. This door leads to Dumbledore’s office.

Harry takes his hand off the knob.

Dumbledore probably expects Harry to walk in, all shaken up over the memory, burning with renewed desire to kill Voldemort. He’ll probably give Harry a very good explanation for everything, and tell him about the prophecy, and maybe even apologize. The headmaster will have Harry all to himself, without any bitter potions professor to interrupt or interfere.

Is this why Dumbledore maneuvered Snape into telling Harry about the prophecy? So he could get Harry alone, right when he’s feeling so raw and shaky?

Harry looks back at the tunnel. He’s got his wand now. He could go back and get Snape. If he wanted to. They could face Dumbledore together.

He’d thought, staggering out of the Room, that what Snape had done was unforgivable.

He’d thought he’d never speak to Snape again. He’d thought he could never overlook the man’s stupid, stupid mistake of blurting out the prophecy to the first dark lord he ran across. Or the fact that Snape had been just fine with Voldemort killing his baby self. Or the fact that Snape has been such a git to him, all these years, even knowing the part he played in orphaning him.

Harry steps away from the door. The fumes from that tunnel must be getting to him, because what he’s about to do makes no sense. Snape is the one who got his parents killed. Not Dumbledore. Snape is the Death Eater, the bully, the selfish man who has only cared about one person his whole stupid life. Not Dumbledore.

And yet.

His parents flash through his mind again—eyes round with anguish, the cat sniffing at their corpses—and something shifts inside of Harry.

He didn’t need to see that memory. That was supposed to have been the one advantage of being so young when his parents died—he was too young to remember their deaths. And now Dumbledore has removed even this paltry consolation.

Harry didn’t need that memory taken from him, and he didn’t need it returned to him.

And now it will haunt him until his dying day.

He cannot forgive Dumbledore this.

Harry mutters the incantation for a Bubblehead Charm.

---

Going through the tunnel is a whole lot easier now that he has his wand. Harry enlarges the tunnel as he goes, and shrinks the sword of Gryffindor so it fits in his pocket. He’s not letting the weapon out of his sight again.

Sooner than he would have liked, he reaches the other end of the tunnel. Harry takes a deep breath of nice, clean air within his fishbowl, and braces himself for another confrontation with Snape. He ducks his head and crawls out of the hole.

Silence.

Snape is curled up on the middle of the floor, his black robes pooled around him. The sunlight from the window eerily illuminates him, casting a halo-like glow around his body. He is clearly unconscious. Harry races over to him, dropping to the ground. Snape has torn off strips of his robes and tied them around his mouth and nose. Just like Harry did to combat the fumes in the tunnel…

Harry looks up. Ominous clouds of muddy black haze have drifted to the ceiling of the Room, bumping languidly into each other. “Evanesco!” Harry shouts, aiming his wand at a batch of them. The clouds disappear, and so Harry Vanishes the rest of them, berating himself for not coming back sooner. How thick could he get? Of course the foul tunnel air was going to drift into the Room! It’s not like there was a door to the tunnel on this end! Just a big hole! And Snape was just stuck in here without any help! And who knows how long he has been breathing the poisoned air?

Harry Vanishes the last of the haze. Then he rounds on the tunnel, sticks his head in, and yells the spell over and over until he is hoarse. He takes the Bubblehead Charm off and sniffs the air around him. It feels much cleaner

Then Harry races back to the still unconscious Snape. The man is pale as death, and just as still. Harry puts his head to the man’s chest, but he does not hear a heartbeat.

“Come on!” he yells frantically at Snape. “Wake up!” Fumbling his wand, he finally points it at Snape’s face. “Aguamenti!” Water spurts out of the wand, drenching Snape, but it does not revive him.

And now Harry grips Snape by his shoulders and shakes him in earnest, finally doing what he couldn’t do in the Pensieve. “Don’t die!” he screams, and he’s not sure who he’s talking about, they all die, it doesn’t matter, they all leave him alone. Harry puts his head on the man’s chest. “Don’t die!” he screams again. “Don’t die!”

The sobs wrench out of Harry’s body. He’s never cried this hard in his life. Finally his sobs peter out, and it helps, somehow to be able to hold the body. He couldn’t touch his parents in the memory, and he would have liked to. His father died alone, and his mother died staring into her baby’s eyes. He’s not sure which way was worse.

Harry cradles Snape’s head in his lap, not caring that his tears are dripping into the man’s hair. Nobody will destroy this corpse. He won’t let any rats near it, and if the Room tries to explode, he will throw his body over Snape’s and protect it from the flames. This body, like Cedric’s, will remain whole.

Then the body groans.

“Professor!” Harry gasps, shocked to his core. Nobody ever comes back! They never come back! No matter how hard he wishes it!

Snape seems to be trying to say something, and Harry leans his ear in close. “Heal…me.”

“How?” Harry squawks. He’s not a medi-wizard! And now Snape is going to die like everybody else, and it will be all Harry’s fault!

“Burned…hands.”

Harry stares dumbly at Snape before something clicks. He’s never thought to Heal anyone else before. He places his hands on Snape’s chest and focuses all his energy on imagining the bad air leaving Snape’s lungs. He usually imagines blisters shrinking, but this seems to do the trick, because in a few minutes Snape begins to breathe easier. Harry keeps his hands on his chest until finally Snape nods and motions for him to stop.

Harry takes a deep breath, exhausted. He’s never Healed for this long before, and it definitely takes more energy with someone else. He slumps forward, too tired to even sit up straight.

Snape blearily looks up at him, surprise etched in every line of his face. “You came back,” he whispers. “You came back for me.”

“I know.”

“You’re the first,” Snape whispers, closing his eyes.