Erasmus wakes in the dark, gasping against the night demons. The lingering sense of failure almost overwhelms him: he knows, with bitter certainty, that somewhere in his lost past he has failed so utterly that the shadow of it haunts him even here where he is groping in the mists of lost memory. “It was just a nightmare,” someone whispers, and there is the touch of a hand on his cheek. Erasmus relaxes a little as Mrs Granger gently smoothes his hair, sitting on the bed beside him and looking down at him, but he knows that it wasn’t just a nightmare. That somewhere in the depths of his amnesiac mind some small part of him holds onto secrets of who he was and what he was. That he has failed, failed so bitterly that maybe he deserves to be here, lost and confused and hurting.
Some instinct turns his eyes to Harry. Hermione is in the other boy’s bed, pressed up against his side, using his chest as a pillow with her arm over his waist while he holds onto her like a security blanket, both of them asleep but clutching onto each other desperately even so.
Erasmus casts a wary look at Mrs Granger, for he knows parents as angry figures that children have to be careful not to enrage. She reads his silent Don’t you mind? and sighs, though she continues to run her hand through his hair. “No, I’m not angry. Sometimes it’s the only way they can sleep. I don’t pretend to understand what they’ve been through, what any of you have been through. All I can do is be here for you and pray that it’s enough. But I hope, Erasmus, you never have to understand the terrible experience of being a parent who knows her child is in pain and yet is unable to do anything to help.”
You do help, he almost says. You and Mr Granger, this place... It’s like the one safe place in the whole world.
But he doesn’t know how to say any of that, so he just clutches at her hand and holds onto it the way Harry holds Hermione, and falls asleep with her at his side.
-
Harry has no real objection to the regimen of study Hermione finds necessary. Firstly because it’s Hermione asking him to do it, yes. But also because he will never be found weak again.
The TriWizard Tournament found him wanting, then Voldemort found him wanting. There is strength in knowledge, protection in knowledge. Harry would rather never have anything to do with magic again, knowing in too much detail just what magic is capable of, but he also knows too well that magic is a part of who he is and he can never truly escape it. If he can’t escape then the only thing for him to do is to learn everything he can so that he can protect himself and Hermione. Ignorance is weakness. Harry can’t afford weakness.
He stares at a Potions textbook, looking unseeingly at a list of ingredients while the rustle of Hermione’s page-turning seems to fill the world. “Where do you think he is?” There are two people in his world he has to protect above all others and yet he can only protect Hermione. He can’t even find Snape.
Hermione lifts her eyes from her book and watches him, biro paused on paper. “I don’t know. But Dumbledore says he’s safe and he has yet to actually lie to you.”
“He lies to Erasmus.”
The words hang between them. Hermione drops her eyes to her book and silence reigns. “Yes,” she says finally. “He does. But he doesn’t lie to you and you’re the one he told.”
“Erasmus knows he does it, you know.”
Silence again. Out in the garden a pair of blackbirds bicker briefly. “I know,” she says quietly.
“What are we going to do?”
Hermione drops her pen and sits back in her chair, shoulders slumping in unwilling defeat. She meets his eyes squarely. “I don’t know.”
-
Erasmus remembers dementors. Why? Why should he remember dementors? He’s only fourteen, he couldn’t have been in prison. But maybe he was, maybe he’s a terrible, terrible person. Maybe he’s a murderer and that’s why Dumbledore won’t tell him the truth. He tried to kill himself, after all; why couldn’t he have killed someone else?
He tries to remember that Professor McGonagall thinks she knows who he is, that she seems to like him anyway, but he doesn’t remember it very well. That is only one small thought that is buried under all his fears, under the knowledge that his mum didn’t like him, under the certainty that he failed at something important, under the fact that he has no memory.
“I’m scared,” he whispers into the darkness one night.
“Scared of what?” He has his eyes closed, so Harry’s voice is a whisper out of the shadows, not attached to a real person. He doesn’t have to fear what a voice thinks of him.
“All the things I don’t know. Am I a murderer, am I a demon, did I do something bad? Did I deserve to be hurt? Maybe I deserve all this, I just don’t remember it.”
“No one deserves this. No one.”
He rolls over to look at him. “But what if I do?”
Harry stares at the ceiling. “You can’t have done anything worse than me.”
A familiar flare of anger burns inside him. “How would you know?”
Harry looks at him and in his eyes are Avada Kedavras and death. “I’m only fourteen and I’ve killed three people.”
Erasmus flinches. Not from fear of Harry but from the horror embedded in the other boy’s voice. From the pain and the aching loss of innocence in his face. From hurt for Harry.
Even when he closes his eyes Harry’s words echo in his head and he curls into a ball because he’s so tired of all this hurt all around him. I’m only fourteen and I’ve killed three people.
They’re only fourteen. The world shouldn’t hurt this much.
-
It’s almost disturbing, Harry thinks, the way Dumbledore watches Erasmus. Like a hunger, a desperate need for something undefined. Erasmus doesn’t notice, intent on just getting out of the room before Dumbledore can speak to him. But Hermione sees it and she exchanges a look with Harry before she follows silently after Erasmus.
“You should tell him the truth,” Harry says. Dumbledore doesn’t flinch, just meets Harry’s eyes with a look of innocence as if he has no idea what Harry could possibly be talking about. “You should.”
“This is best for him.”
“Says who?” Harry asks fiercely. “Him? Or you?”
“He is in no fit state to make these judgements, Harry.”
“Can’t you give him the chance?”
But Dumbledore’s face is set and Harry knows there are no words he can possibly say that will change the man’s mind. “I will not fail him. Not this time. Never again.”
Harry files the words away for future consultation with Hermione and moves on. He knows he won’t change Dumbledore’s mind but fights on anyway. He has always fought impossible battles – Voldemort would still be alive had he not. “He’s the same age as me. It seems like you respect me a whole lot more than you do him.”
“You are you.” Harry stiffens but Dumbledore continues, “Not the Boy Who Lived, not Voldemort’s Bane, but Harry Potter. Despite my earlier reluctance to admit it, you are no longer a child.”
“And Erasmus?”
“He is fourteen years old, with no memory, no family, and no home. Would you have me put his life in his hands? I have no desire to control him, Harry, but I cannot in good conscience leave him to make the decisions which will affect the rest of his life when he is in no condition to make sensible choices.”
Harry can only think it’s a really really good thing Dumbledore doesn’t know about the whole suicide episode. “What about us? We can help him.”
“You do not have all the facts.”
“Then tell him! Tell us! Tell someone!”
But he won’t, Harry can see that. He thinks he’s right and Harry doesn’t know enough to be able to tell him he’s wrong and have him actually believe it. He feels sick, because he knows how much Erasmus hates not knowing who he is, he suspects how scary it is to not know who you are. There is a wrong here that Harry wants to right, but he doesn’t have the power. He’s failing again, too weak again. Found wanting. Again.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says quietly.
“So do I, Harry.” Dumbledore looks weary and beaten down. “So do I.”
The conversation is over and Harry stands up. But he looks down at Dumbledore, sitting old and tired and strangely unmagical on the Granger’s Muggle couch, and he says, “I won’t let you do to him what you did to me.”
-
It is Hermione who convinces Erasmus to at least hear what Dumbledore wants him to say, very reluctantly and against his will. He doesn’t sit down, he stays at the door, ready to run, ready to escape, and Dumbledore watches him like a hunter would watch a wild animal, very careful not to make sudden moves and scare him away.
“I know my presence brings you no pleasure,” the man says gently, “but I thought you should like this. Harry’s antipathy to magic notwithstanding, you will require one in the future.”
It is a wand, dark-wooded and slender. Darker stains mar the wood, making him shiver in unexplained horror as he lifts his hand to his nose as if he thinks it is bleeding. There is no blood and he can’t remember why he thought there would be. No blood, just that wand, still and silent and watching. Erasmus looks at it sitting in Dumbledore’s hand and makes no attempt to reach out. “Where did you get it?”
“It was entrusted to me at one point for safe-keeping. But I believe it may suit you.”
He remembers wands. He remembers bright lights and bright pains. No faces, just the light and the pain. And the wands. An explosion, bright and fierce; he lifts his hand to cover a scar that isn’t on his cheek. He remembers wands. Wands only bring pain. Harry knows that, Hermione knows that, Erasmus knows that. Dumbledore doesn’t know it. But Dumbledore doesn’t know anything. “I don’t want it.”
The expression on Dumbledore’s face is unreadable. Erasmus would like him better if he showed his anger, like Harry does. Just once, to prove that he’s human. So that Erasmus isn’t left waiting for the bomb to explode. “Then I shall leave it with Mrs Granger until such time as you feel you do want it.”
“I don’t want it!” Erasmus shouts at him. Why doesn’t he ever listen? “I don’t want it, I’ll never want it!”
He knows what wands can do. He doesn’t want that power. He doesn’t want that pain.
-
“Crucio!”
Harry’s attempt at a shield of course made no difference – the curse struck Snape in the chest. He staggered and went down to his knees with a strangled scream, but Voldemort lifted the curse so swiftly that he didn’t actually fall.
“Stop it!” Harry shrieked.
“Remember that pain, Severus? You’ve tasted it often enough before. And yet you betray me!” Several Death Eaters stepped forward as if expecting to share in the blood and Voldemort snapped, “Back! I will deal with him!”
Harry tried to step in front of the next curse but Snape shoved him back into Hermione and took it. He held out against the pain better than either Harry or Hermione, but even so he gave way to a full-throated scream that made Harry’s hair stand on end. “Leave him alone!” He and Hermione tugged at Snape, trying to pull him away.
Voldemort didn’t even seem to notice them, but he lifted the curse. “What do you have to say for yourself, Severus?” he demanded of the man lying sprawled on the ground.
Snape stared up at him. “I hate you,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. Harry shoved Hermione’s wand at her and picked up Snape’s, then the pair of them helped Snape shakily to his feet, Harry leaving damp bloodstains on his sleeve.
Voldemort absently shot a Crucio at Harry, and for a moment he spasmed in incredible pain. “You betray me for this boy, this brat cowering on his knees before me in fear and snivelling terror.”
Snape’s face was pale and wan but the word ‘snivelling’ jerked his backbone. “Yes,” he said, head high, without remorse.
“Hold them!” Voldemort snarled, and hands gripped onto Harry and Hermione, holding them in place even as they fought desperately. While Snape was cursed. Cursed and cursed and cursed.
“You’re killing him!” Hermione shouted. “Leave him alone!”
“Stop it!” Harry yelled.
Nobody listened. Voldemort glared and cursed. The Death Eaters laughed. Snape spasmed and screamed until the blood tricked from his nose and ears, dribbled out of his lips from his bitten tongue.
“Look at your protector, Harry,” Voldemort sneered. “Weak. Pathetic. And he thought he could save you from me.”
Harry didn’t understand why his most-hated teacher had tried to save his life. But the ball Snape had given him bounced against his leg in his pocket and Snape’s wand was still gripped in his sticky, bloody hand.
Snape lifted his head weakly off the ground. “I... will not... bow to... you.”
“You will beg me for life,” Voldemort promised him.
“You will not have the boy.”
“I already have him.” Voldemort smiled and turned his wand toward Harry. “I have him. Crucio!”
Harry braced himself for the unbraceable. But Snape was there. Snape was in front of him, taking the curse, knocking him out of the hands that held him as people shouted in confusion. Snape snarled “Run!”