That he did so now worried Harry just a little. Still, he nodded slowly. Now they were getting somewhere. Where, he had no idea. But he wanted those memories back. Needed them. And, short of killing someone, he'd do just about anything to get them back. "All right. What do I have to do?"

Severus almost smiled. The Boy Who Discombobulated Ghosts certainly didn't lack for gumption. He wondered, again, why Potter hadn't been sorted into Gryffindor . . . although his essay proved in several ways that he certainly fit in very well in Slytherin. Severus had not been telling the Baron the truth, completely, when he said the boy had no sense of self-preservation. He did, as shown in how he prioritized the requirements of others so as to make his own life livable. He used a rather sophisticated system, too, though Severus would never admit it.

This week, he decided, he was going to be paying that visit to the Dursleys, and woe to them if he could not make them see reason in their dealings with the child given to their care.

But Potter was waiting -- as was the Bloody Baron -- and Severus put out his hand. "Give me your wand."

Potter hesitated, then reached into a pocket and pulled out eleven inches of holly. Severus wrapped his potion stained fingers around it, but Potter did not let go until Severus lifted an eyebrow in his general direction. The boy dropped his end of the wand with a scowl.

"Clean this up, then come and sit there," Severus said and pointed at the nearest chair. He prepared his mind for the spellwork while the boy cleared up the rest of the unsliced murtlap, covered the vat and cleaned his knives and the table expertly before returning to sit down. "Now. Look me in the eyes, Potter, and continue to do so. I am going to search for your memories of that night. First, I'll attempt to reverse the Obliviate, and if that doesn't do it, I'll use Legilimency to go into your mind and look for the memories and perhaps draw them forward. Do you understand?"

"No." The boy gave him a rueful smile. "But it's kind of above my level, so I'm not likely to, am I?"

"Not really," Severus admitted, once more impressed with Potter's readiness to proceed anyway.

"I'm ready," he said, bracing his arms on the table.

Severus very much doubted that was really the case, but he would take what he could get. "Try and relax, but keep your eyes open as much as possible, if you would. This may . . . feel a bit strange." The boy nodded, and held his gaze, and Severus had no further reason to delay. "Restutio Facultas."

Piecing back together a memory after it had been Obliviated was never easy, and was not always possible. Using the original wand made success far likelier. A willing subject, even more so. All the same, Severus had always likened the process to simultaneously preparing a hundred minutely different potions, each with a series of overlapping instructions. He had to grab each ingredient by touch, add it at the right time to the right potion, and move on to the next cauldron fast enough to keep them all going. There was no room for error.

Likewise, inside the boy's mind, he had to grab this image, that gesture, this reflection of light, and that fraction of sound, all with a similar magical signature to them which denoted their attachment to a particular specific Obliviated memory, and then assemble them in order, at the right time, so the memory flowed into a cohesive whole. Error could mean anything from erasing more memories, to causing the mind to be stuck in the one memory being restored, running on a loop through it, forever, to a virtual lobotomization of the subject's mind.

It was exhausting and laborious work, and yet, when it worked, the end result was very satisfying. Throughout, the temptation was there to explore others of Potter's memories while he had been given unfettered access, but he did not actually have the time or energy for such liberty, and kept his focus on repairing the Baron's handiwork.

Breathing heavy and with a headache a mile long when he withdrew at last from the boy's mind and dropped the spell, Severus loosened his grip on the holly wand. His hands had grown cramped around it; his nails a pale blue.

And Potter . . . Potter was slumped back in the chair, slack jawed and looking for all the world like Severus had rendered him completely mindless. A thread of drool ran from the corner of his mouth.

Damn!

Severus rushed toward him, and lifted one of his bruised looking eyelids, then the other, finding his pupils dilated, but still responsive. He reached for a pulse and said, "Potter. Harry! Can you hear me?" as the boy's throat swallowed reflexively against his fingers. Say something, damn you.

The muttered, "Hurts," was likely the best word he'd ever heard.

"I imagine so," Severus murmured. "It will get better." Though he had tried to be gentle, due to Potter's age if nothing else, the procedure, in his own experience of being on the other end, was not unlike like having very sharp razors applied to one's brain, slicing bits off here and there before they were glued back together.

"Accio Solamen Venenum," he said and held out the hand that had been lifting eyelids and pulse checking. He caught the pain relief potion easily, uncorked it with his thumb and index finger and held it to Potter's lips. "Drink this."

"Wazzit?" he asked, turning his head away.

"A potion for the pain, Mr. Potter. I assure you, I do not have poisoning you on today's itinerary."

"Like the frogs," the boy said, and Severus frowned. Had he messed up after all?

"No, like a pain potion," he said. "Now drink it, and then we'll have a chat," unless I have inadvertently thrown a Flagrante Curse into the middle of your ability to reason and form sentences.

Potter's face screwed up, but he let the potion bottle come to his lips this time, and even drank it all down. Severus waited a few minutes, for it to take affect. At one point, feeling a set of judgmental eyes surveying him, he glared at the Bloody Baron. If not for his bloody Obliviate, this would have been far simpler. The Baron merely leant -- rather casually, and in obvious disregard for laws of ectoplasmic beings -- against the wall nearest the door, his face as blank as Severus on his best days. His eyes, though . . . haunted didn't begin to describe it.

Finally, the boy in the chair straightened up, though he rubbed his hand across his scar a few times as if it pained him, and his eyes were squinting more than usual behind his ill fitting glasses.

"Better?"

"Yessir," Potter said, slurring the words a little, still.

"Do you remember your name?"

"Bo . . . Harry Potter, sir."

What had he been about to say? "And do you remember where you are?"

Potter scrubbed his eyes with his fingers and nodded. "Classroom. Dungeons."

"That's right. Now, do you remember what we were just doing, you, the Bloody Baron and I?"

"Trying . . ." Potter sounded rather tired. "To get memories."

"Yes. And do you have them now?"

"I . . ." Lines formed in Potter's forehead, and he rubbed at his scar again.

"Does your scar hurt?"

A nod. "Like in my nightmare."

"The one I found you awakened from?"

"Yessir."

Severus' frown deepened. Surely such dreams couldn't be connected to the curse scar. Could they? He glanced at the Baron, and was surprised to see him closer now, floating almost alongside the Brat. Keeping his eyes on the ghost, he said, "What do you remember about the nightmare?

"Green . . . green light. And . . . and the snake-face man. . . . Laughing."

Severus' gaze snapped to the boy's face, a dawning sense of horror taking his breath away. Surely Potter had been too young to have remembered that. Did he even know what the dream meant? And yet, if his scar hurt afterwards, and the two were connected . . .

The boy was shivering, and Severus took out his own wand and cast a simple warming charm on the immediate area, though he knew at least part of Potter's shivering was not due to cold. "Do you remember the fight in the dungeons now?" he asked quietly.

With a quick jerk of his head, Potter said, "Yes, sir," through gritted teeth.

Leaning forward, the Bloody Baron reached toward Harry's face with one silvery hand. "Tell me, child, who attacked us?"

Potter pulled back from the near contact, his eyes wide and focussed completely for the first time since Severus left his mind. He wrapped his arms around his stomach, a classic attempt at self-protection. "I . . . I can't tell, r-really. It was d-d-dark, where he was. But not just like no torches. Real dark."

"Magically?" Severus wondered aloud. "Obscuro or Ignotos?"

"Perhaps." The Bloody Baron shrugged eloquently. He moved closer, still, to the boy. "Did you hear his voice?"

"H-he was like a snake," Potter said, the trembling in his limbs more pronounced. "All hissing and slithery sounding."

Gaping, Severus sat back in his chair. Had it been Parseltongue? Had the Dark Lord actually, finally returned? His insides turned to ice at the very idea. Slowly, showing none of the dread or revulsion he felt, he said, "He sounded like a snake. . . . Could you understand what he was saying?"

Potter nodded. "It was just with all extra esses and stuff."

Not Parseltongue then, for he could not imagine the boy was a Parselmouth. Maybe an imitator? Someone who wanted Potter to think he was the Dark Lord? That possibility was nearly as bad, for that meant a Death Eater had gotten past the wards on the school, since Severus hoped that he was the only actual Death Eater on staff.

As the boy shivered some more, Severus called up a House-elf and ordered the creature to bring them cocoa and something for the boy to nibble on. Once it had arrived, and Potter had a cup of the hot drink in his hands, helping to warm him, Severus said, "Tell me what you do remember."

And so he did. Potter's story matched evenly with what the Baron said, and he had a good recall of what spells had been used against him, and what he and the ghost had cast together, but he didn't have any more solid clues about the attacker's identity than the Baron had. His voice became stronger and more sure as he spoke, and the shaking stopped after only a couple minutes. "I'm not sure if I could do the spells again so well, but I think I have the basic wand movement, even for the last couple," he admitted as he finished up.

"That will work to your advantage if you are so accosted again," Severus said. He still had a number of questions, but it was late. "I would still like to view the memory, Mr. Potter," he said as the boy took the last sip from his third cup of cocoa. "I believe it will help me piece together who your attacker was. I may recognize the voice." Though, by Merlin, he hoped not.

"Um, okay." Potter set the mug down on the table and took a long breath, his gaze wary but resigned as he looked into Severus' eyes.

"Not tonight," Severus said, suppressing a grimace at Potter's willingness to undergo another procedure so soon. "Tomorrow during your detention will be soon enough. It's after curfew already, and you're tired, as am I. I will walk you back to your room."

The relief that passed over Potter's face would have been hard for anyone to miss, but he nodded and rose. "Yes, sir. Thank you."

"It . . ." Severus paused, trying to figure out why exactly he though he needed to reassure the boy, but then gave the self-reflection up as a bad job and said, "My viewing the memory will not be as painful as tonight's search was. We should not have to do that again."

"Oh, good."

With one of his less ferocious sneers, Severus rose from the chair he had taken across from the boy, and nodded at the Bloody Baron on the way out of the classroom. The Baron inclined his head, and there was a promise in that dark gaze; the ghost would protect his Slytherin child as much as possible until they discovered the assassin.

Just outside the portrait to the Snake Pit, Severus stopped the boy with a hand on his arm. "Potter . . . don't mention to anyone the content of those memories . . . or the Bloody Baron's apparent involvement in the attack."

Potter's lips turned up slightly. "I know, sir. I'm not as stupid as I look, remember?"

Severus snorted lightly and shook his head. "Cheeky brat. Go to bed, no side trips. And try not to get killed tomorrow at Quidditch tryouts."

Potter actually smiled at him. "Yes, sir. Good night."

The portrait had closed behind the boy before Severus answered him. "Good night, Harry."