Harry’s eyes shot open and he looked around wildly to see a dark and empty dorm room.  Just a dream.  He willed his heart to slow and found an eerie feeling replacing the panic he’d woken in, the kind of feeling that made him wonder what he was late for, where he was meant to be.  It was only when he noticed just how dark it had become despite his curtains being open that he realised he had detention, two of them, and he was very late.  Crap.  Snape would have his head. 

Pulling himself laboriously to his feet, Harry swayed a moment, reflecting that he felt only the slightest bit better than he had earlier that day.  He told himself to suck it up as he trudged down the many stairs to the dungeon.  He didn’t see more than the odd straggler who took no more notice of him than he did of them and in the silence he still didn’t manage to lose the strange displaced feeling he’d woken with before he was standing before the heavy wooden door leading to his next few hours of hell.  Here again.  His fist wouldn’t rise to the wood this time; it was content to remain in a tight, white-knuckled ball at his side.  He could- would do this.  He was growing to truly dread the sound of his fist hitting the wood, enough so that his stomach turned at the sound and feel of the knock rebounding from the wood into his trembling hand.

“Enter.”  Do I have to?

Harry found it was almost worth the dread curling in his gut to see the expression on Snape’s face as he stood, framed in the doorway.  He’d certainly never seen the man look surprised before.  Unfortunately it didn’t last long and then the usual annoyance was twisting his features.

“Potter, what are you doing here?”

“Um, I have detention?”  It wasn’t until Harry asked that he realised he must really have been exhausted.  What sort of question was that?  Did he want a detention? 

“What part of ‘the next time you endanger lives using volatile substances, you will become one’ did you not understand?” Snape asked uninterestedly as he returned to the grading spread across his desk. 

“I’ll uh, just go then,” Harry said, already edging out the door but he was stopped when it shut in his face of its own accord.  When he turned Snape was tucking his wand back up his sleeve.

“Oh no, don’t let me deprive you,” Snape said in his quiet voice, gesturing to a pile of cauldrons in the corner even as he kept his eyes on his work, going so far as to write a comment in blood red ink as he spoke to show how very uninterested in Harry he was.  Harry had to wonder how someone developed the skill to concentrate so fully on two things at once, then scowled as he realised what he was thinking and how it was no doubt akin to Snape’s own thoughts.

Knowing it was more an order than a suggestion; Harry sighed quietly and went to work.  It didn’t take long for his back to start screaming as his position – slouched forward on his knees – reopened his wounds yet again.  No doubt the welts looked rather angry and raw by now but it was the scratch he was worried about.  He was still wearing his robes – the dungeons were cool enough that he wouldn’t have been able to comfortably work without wearing them despite the manual labour – and he was thankful for it because he could feel his shirt sticking to him and knew it wasn’t with sweat. 

He had barely finished his first cauldron when he realised Snape wasn’t sitting at his desk anymore.  His lack of concentration startled him as much as it had the other day when Malfoy had confronted him and he looked around the room a little desperately in search of his teacher but Snape wasn’t there.  Despite feeling incredibly ill at ease, Harry took the opportunity to straighten his back and had to bite his lip hard to keep in any noises he would have made otherwise.  His back was on fire!  He was so sure of it he put his hand to the small of his back but only felt damp fabric.  When he brought it back to continue cleaning – there was no such thing as a good reason to anger Snape and angered he would definitely be if he returned and found Harry not working – he saw his fingertips were tinged red and realised he’d bled through his robe. 

He almost started panicking before he pulled the material around to examine it and saw that, because it was black, the stain wasn’t visible - especially not down here where light was sparse.  Upstairs it would be a different story but even then he could pass the darker patch of fabric as water.  He suddenly felt a lot tireder than he could ever remember being.  He just wanted this to be over, all of it.  It was too much like hiding things from teachers when he was younger to cover the best efforts of the Dursleys except back then the teachers hadn’t been particularly perceptive.  With friends like Hermione and Ron this was just proving exhausting.  He was so sick of detentions with evil gits and toads – not that Snape could really compare to Umbridge – and he was sick of feeling... pointless.  Like he was a waste of space.  Wasn’t it enough that he had to feel like that through the holidays?

Harry felt a presence behind him and started badly, the movement wrenching his back painfully though he only allowed a small hiss past his clenched teeth as he turned and found Snape standing not three feet behind him.  Holding a potion.  What now? Uh, even in his head he sounded whiny.  Harry didn’t know what to think when Snape bent and thrust the vial he held into Harry’s hand that was closest.

“Potter, clearly you are still ill.  Did you decide to disobey me yet again?” Snape’s voice was filled more with a tired sort of exasperation than anything else as he rose to his full height again and looked away as though bored by the exchange and it took Harry by surprise.  There was no malice.

“No sir, Madam Pomfrey said I was fine.”  One of Snape’s eyebrows arched and he waited a moment for Harry to backtrack before he spoke himself, his voice heavy with doubt.

“She said you were fine,” he repeated, his eyes scanning Harry’s face slowly before purposely lingering on the shadows beneath Harry’s eyes and his pale, shadowed cheeks.  Harry realised then that he probably should have given himself a once over in a bathroom before coming to detention.

“Well, she didn’t say I was sick.”

“Potter,” Snape pinched the bridge of his nose briefly as though willing his patience to return. “If you do not see the difference between the two...” he trailed off as he examined Harry’s rather blank expression before sighing again.  “Never mind.  Drink that, I will not have you fainting in my classroom.”  Harry opened his mouth to argue that he wasn’t about to faint but closed it with a snap as Snape looked at him as though he expected the retort and had already prepared a punishment for it.  With a sigh of his own Harry examined the vial he held.

“What is it?  Sir?”  Snape was already on his way back to his desk and didn’t turn as he answered.

“A mild calming potion.  I assume Madame Pomfrey gave you a Pepper-Up Potion?” Snape continued before Harry could answer, “If you still look that way after a Pepper-Up another will do you no good, clearly your current condition is due more to stress than anything else.  That should help as well as a good night’s sleep.”

Raising his own brows and examining the potion again, Harry had to admit – grudgingly – that Snape was probably right, though why Snape thought he would get a good night’s sleep anytime soon was perplexing when the man knew he had detentions with Umbridge after each of his own every night this week.  After a minute’s more hesitation he emptied the vial.  He instantly felt his weariness hit him like a wave but also a relaxed sort of peacefulness and despite Snape being nearby couldn’t help feeling as though he would like nothing more than to curl up on the floor and sleep, his eyes closing without his permission before he forced them back open.  Knowing Snape was nearby however propelled Harry into action and with arms like cooked noodles he continued cleaning cauldrons. 

He worked slowly – very, very slowly – but Snape didn’t say a word.  Even when nine o’clock came and Harry had only cleaned one other cauldron Snape said nothing and dismissed him without a single taunt.  Harry didn’t see his professor lower his quill as the door closed, or when he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger tiredly, as though wearied by the child he had sworn to protect being so clearly sick and seemingly uninclined to do anything about it.  Something was just so obviously... wrong.

Waking up on Wednesday morning was an ordeal in itself.  His nightmares were getting worse.  A mixture of emotions assaulted him in waves through the night and usually reached their crescendo in a vision or a nightmare he himself somehow concocted, usually only a few hours after he had fallen asleep.  That morning – he assumed it was morning considering the time he had returned to his dorm – he had awoken and immediately thrown himself over the side of his bed to vomit.  A dizzying mix of Dursleys, Voldemort and Umbridge wafted through his head as he slept and the images had just become too violent to sleep through anymore.  So much so that his stomach rebelled upon awakening as he recalled in vivid pictures what he had somehow managed to sleep through for hours.  But that wasn’t the worst of it.  As soon as he was aware of himself enough to recall where he was and recent events he couldn’t get last night out of his head.

The evening before had to have been one of the worst of Harry’s life.  He couldn’t remember much of Umbridge’s detention now just as he couldn’t when he found himself stumbling out of her room with no idea of what had happened for the last few hours.  He reasoned that he must have been too exhausted and Snape’s calming potion must have only made him drowsier.

Upon leaving the hated office he had gone straight to the same bathroom he had used the night before to clean himself up, knowing he needed it and unsure why except for the increased pain in his back.  He must have removed his robes when he first entered Umbridge’s office, the heavy black fabric had been uncomfortably heavy with half-dried blood and the cleaning solution he had been kneeling in when he had been elbow-deep in cauldron grime and Umbridge’s office was always the wrong side of warm, especially after the chill of the dungeons.  He only realised he had to have left it behind when he came back to himself to the sound of rain on glass and his own pale reflection staring back at him from the mirror over the sink he was braced against. 

He looked terrible.  Far more tired than usual – as if that was somehow possible – whiter than ever, shaking, though he hadn’t noticed, and his clothes hung off of him more than they usually did upon his return to school.  He didn’t know if it was his hunched shoulders but he looked smaller somehow.  Great, not only am I not growing, I’m actually shrinking.  The stray thought was barely there, his focus fixed on the odd, vague picture he made in the dusty glass. 

Lifting his shirt over his head tore something; he felt the uncomfortable pull of taut skin and the sudden snap before a torrent of warmth that seeped down his back.  There was no increase in pain, there was already too much; so much that he felt as though he was losing sensation in his back as it felt numb, not as though there was no pain, more like the nerve endings couldn’t stand it anymore and were in overload.  In fact, he realised dazedly, there was almost no pain at all anymore.  Almost. 

Naked from the waist up and shivering from the cool night air, much cooler for the rain pounding against the thick glass windows, Harry balled up his shirt and used it to wipe over the dusty bathroom mirror before him, having to lean over the ancient porcelain fixtures to do so and feeling his back protest.  The mirror reflected the world much clearer after a few moments of wiping his utterly ruined shirt over it and Harry almost regretted doing so as the blurry spectre he had been looking at materialised looking that much worse in the clear glass.  There was very little light as clouds blanketed the sky so thoroughly but there was enough for Harry; if he leaned forward and concentrated he could see his face clearly in the mirror.  His eyes.  His puffy, swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks.  He’d cried.  He didn’t remember crying.  What the hell did she do?

He continued to lean forward, turning on the tap and waiting for the old pipes to creak and whine before a jet of cool water exploded into the sink.  Harry slowed the flow of water to little more than a trickle and cupped his hands, filling them with water, icy cold and stinging his palms, before splashing his face a few times; hoping to rid himself of the exhausted look in his eyes and the evidence of tears on his face.  Bracing his hands on the sink again he looked back into his reflection, noting the way his ribs were visible beneath his pale skin even in this position, their shadows giving them away in stark contrast to their luminous protrusion.  He saw with a little relief how the skin of his face and neck had momentarily pinkened from the water and how he no longer looked like he had been crying.  Not really. 

He examined himself carefully, millimetre by millimetre, looking for clues even though he didn’t really think he wanted to know, staring at his reflection as he examined his thoughts and memories thoroughly.  The evening ended for him at the point he had entered Umbridge’s office.  The following few hours, while still in his mind, was confused and jumbled enough that he really couldn’t get any sense out of it beyond disjointed feelings and reactions; her face and blood.  Why blood?  If his back was hurting why would he be remembering blood?  He froze, eyes widening as he wondered if it had been someone else’s.  Had she hurt someone else as well?  Had he?  No...

Feeling a twinge in his back again and realising the blood had begun to dry in his leaning position as it cracked when he stood straight, he knew something more must have happened there and he thoroughly wetted his shirt.  Not willing to use his wand to remove the blood he began to wipe it from the small of his back in small circles.  He couldn’t have said why, he just needed to do this himself, the muggle way.  There was something comforting in it, self-soothing.  Like hugging oneself, holding oneself together with one’s own arms; something else he’d done often, though not always consciously.  He was actually briefly thankful for his small frame as the lack of weight allowed him to reach most of his back if he stretched his arms as much as he could, the cool water from the wadded shirt dripping down his back and making him shiver, reaching his waist and staining the hem of his trousers pink.

He had to rinse the ball of ruined shirt twice in the sink – so much blood – and he washed his back slowly while facing the mirror, not willing to see the damage.  When he felt the warmth starting to trickle down his spine again, contrasting with the iciness of the water he was cleaning it with and making him shiver and feel faintly nauseous, he had to turn to see where it was coming from; bracing himself and taking a deep breath before he could bring himself to turn his body and not his head to look over his shoulder at his reflection. 

He wasn’t able to move when he saw it, unable to fully comprehend what he was seeing and struck dumb by it.  He just stood and stared.  His eyes were wide and frozen and his body taut but he couldn’t feel any of it because he was so transfixed by the sight of his own ravaged skin.  There, gouged deep into flesh already flayed open, were the weeping words, ‘I will not attempt to close my mind’.