Harry watched Eli walk off and returned to poking at his breakfast. The longer he managed to sit at the table, the more he would be able to get down, and the sooner he would be able to regain the weight he’d lost over the summer.

He felt bad that he’d been the one to tell Eli about the whole mess in England, especially since Eli had just moved here from the States and didn’t know his blood status for certain. He hoped Professor McGonagall would be able to give Eli better advice.

Thoughts of the war and the prophecy were so intimately connected that Harry felt himself almost reflexively begin to turn the phrasing of the prophecy over in his head.

He had long since acknowledged that that this wasn’t productive and that he’d be better off not thinking about it. So, he pulled his thoughts away from the pit they were falling into it by forcefully turning his thoughts back to the other things he and Eli had talked about.

He was looking forward to- probably- having someone in his classes who also wanted to be an auror, and he was sure that Ron would be too, if Harry remembered to tell him when they finally saw each other again.

Once more, Harry wondered how long this period of Ron and Hermione only wanting to be around each other would last. He missed his friends and it felt like he had hardly seen them at all this year.

He sighed and looked down at his plate. He decided that he had eaten enough and picked up his bag to leave.

This morning he’d risen with the sun after another night spent wandering through Voldemort’s mind. This was more sleep than he usually managed to get on these nights. He could never fall back asleep after that particular ordeal.

Unlike most of these nights, Harry had had a plan and a goal that he’d vaguely planned out the previous afternoon that he had intended to be implemented at the earliest opportunity. He just hadn't expected that opportunity to be so soon. With the decision to restart the D.A., Harry had spent his time in Voldemort’s mind searching for memories from his school days. He was sure that there must have been a time where Voldemort had tutored other students, and he had been right.

As with everything else Voldemort did, he was good at teaching other students. Harry had only managed to find two memories before he’d woken up, but he had to admit, this was a vast improvement from when he’d first begun to enter Voldemort’s mind.

Even once he’d generally gotten a feeling for the layout of Voldemort’s mind, finding a specific memory was incredibly difficult. The labyrinth of doors and hallways was, so far, impossible to reduce to a simple organization scheme. Every time Harry had thought he had finally discovered the pattern and tried to use his theory to predict the next memory, he was inevitably disappointed.

He knew that it was not organized chronologically or by location. He supposed that it could be organized alphabetically, but he hadn’t figured out what aspect of the memory was being used to categorize it, if this was even the case.

This difficulty, almost puzzle-like aspect, of Voldemort’s mind gradually drew him further and further in. After he’d discovered that touching Voldemort would force him into his mind and his myriad horrifying memories, he'd started doing his best to avoid letting that happen.

But then as he was drawn back into Tom’s mindscape, another piece of the puzzle would- well, not fall into place, exactly, but make itself known- giving him a better view of the overall picture. And then the next time, it took less to drive Harry into Voldemort’s mind.

Because the memories Harry stumbled upon, even when they were as graphic or horrible as whatever Voldemort was currently up to, had an element of surrealism to them. Mostly due to them taking place in times that Harry had not existed for. Not surreal enough to stop Harry from being sick after he woke up, not enough to stop him from having nightmares of what he’d seen on the nights he stayed in his own head.

But enough that, when combined with Harry’s interest in solving the puzzle of Voldemort’s mind, it was increasingly worth it as an escape from the vivid and painful reality of the scenes he was forced to witness otherwise.

Harry had known from the start that access to Voldemort’s memories would be useful and he had, in fact, already done his best to record interesting spells and techniques he saw him use. At least, he had done so on the occasions that the memories had not been too terrible or when he was simply so numb that he was able to operate on autopilot.

Thinking of autopilot, Harry was startled to realize that he was sitting in his favorite study nook in the library with his books out and quill and parchment ready to go on the table in front of him.

He hadn’t noticed even a moment of the walk through the castle.

Harry idly wondered if his tendency to use Voldemort’s mindscape as an escape mechanism was making him more prone to introspection and almost losing touch with his body, in a way.

Because when he was in Voldemort’s mind, he was bodiless, and had no need to attend to things like walking around or carrying his things. Whether Harry chose to witness Voldemort’s activities in real time or explore his memories, he was invariably bodiless and empty-handed.

It could also have to do with the isolation and increased violence from his summer with his relatives-

“Hey Harry,” Ginny said, startling him out of his train of thought. He looked up from the parchment he’d been vaguely staring at, and saw that Ginny was standing just inside his nook.

“Hey Ginny,” Harry returned, “How’d you find me? Oh, and you can sit down- if you want to.”

Ginny slid into the seat across from him and said, “Thanks Harry, and as the twins would say,” here she affected a mysterious and mischievous tone, “I have my ways.”

Harry thought for a moment and tried to pinpoint where, exactly, he’d left the Marauder’s Map. It’d been a while since he’d needed it for something, so he wasn’t quite sure where he’d left it. It was probably in his dorm room though, not exactly somewhere Ginny had regular access to, but maybe he’d left it in the common room?

“Your ways don’t have anything to do with a certain Map, do they?” Harry asked.

“Nah, that’s your way of knowing where people are, and I’d never be so unoriginal as to copy your method,” Ginny said loftily. “Seriously though, that’s yours and I wouldn’t touch it without asking you first.”

“I wasn’t certain I hadn’t left it around somewhere and maybe you’d picked it up for me, but I should’ve known you would assert your originality before stooping to copying your brothers,” Harry said.

“Oh, no, I haven’t seen it around. Anyways, do you mind if I join you?” Ginny asked, with something in her voice that Harry couldn’t quite identify.

“Definitely, as long as you don’t mind me interrupting you to ask your opinion on the lesson I’m writing for Tuesday,” Harry replied.

“Sounds great,” Ginny said and started pulling her books out of her bag.

They lapsed into a companionable silence, and Harry was suddenly really thankful that she had come. It was much easier to stay in the present with a friend around.

For the first time since he sat down, Harry shifted his grip on his quill and properly focused on the parchment in front of him.

He hadn’t witnessed all those horrors in Voldemort’s mind for nothing, and now he was going to do his best to write a lesson that used what he’d learned. He set his quill to the parchment and got started.

Severus checked the time and saw that it was nearing 11 o’clock and reluctantly started packing his books away. Minerva was generally free at this time, so it was as good a time as any to go and sort out his schedule.

As he walked through the corridors, he felt a shiver run down his spine, and he suddenly had a terrible feeling about how this meeting was going to go.

He reluctantly knocked on Professor McGonagall’s door and entered when told to do so.

“Ah, Sev- Alfonse, I was wondering if I would see you today,” McGonagall said, setting aside the paperwork she’d been working on.

“First, I’ve decided to go by Eli, and, wait, should you even be calling me by my first name?”

“That’s right, my apologies Mr. Hopkirk. I am assuming you’re here about your schedule?”

“Yes, I am, but if you knew I was going to come to you about it, why didn’t you just send it to me? I am sure you have got better things to do with your time.”

“I would have sent it to you, but as I am sure you have guessed, Albus was the one to plan out your schedule, and I decided to preempt you storming into my office over it by letting you come to me,” McGonagall said and that bad feeling Severus had had earlier slammed back into him.

“What. Did Al-Professor Dumbledore do,” Severus ground out, horrible visions of months spent in Trelawney’s incense filled tower and dodging Hagrid’s crimes against nature filling his mind.

“Here you are,” McGonagall said, handing him a standard student timetable.

Severus took a fortifying breath before scanning it.

“What was he thinking,” Severus demanded, looking over the schedule again, “Where’s Defense- and, why is Potions on here? Of all the classes to make me retake-“

McGonagall sighed. “I knew you were going to say that, I told Albus this was a terrible idea, but he insisted- you know how he is, and said that you were welcome to bring it up with him, if you wanted, but I think you know how that would go.”

Severus grumbled his agreement.

“As for his justification for those specific courses, he expressed his concern that taking Defense would put you in situations that would inevitably bring up your memories of being discovered as a spy,” Minerva paused for a moment.

Severus gestured impatiently, “And potions?” He prompted, when she didn’t resume immediately.

“You’re not going to like this, so I’d like to kindly remind you not to shoot the messenger,” McGonagall warned him with a stern look over her glasses. “He said a lot of things, but it boils down to two words: bonding and tutoring.”

Severus stared at her in shock. She couldn’t be- but she was. There was a smile lurking in the corners of her mouth. Oh, she was trying to squash it, but it was there, and she was enjoying this.

“You cannot be serious,” Severus finally said in response.

“Oh, but I am,” McGonagall said, and Severus could finally hear the humor in her voice and realized that it’d been there the whole time.

“This isn’t funny,” Severus burst out, “this is my life he’s mucking about with!”

“And that’s precisely why I am laughing. It’s certainly not my life he’s messing about with because I am not the one who was childish enough to make an enemy of the child figurehead of our cause.”

Severus spluttered, “But- he’s so- his father-“

“Let me stop you there,” Minerva interrupted him. She paused and fixed him with her stern look again.

“Listen and listen well. I have decided that Albus hasn’t given you enough guidance on this, so close your mouth for a moment and listen to me. If I hear you bring up Mr. Potter’s father in the context of disparaging Mr. Potter’s character again, I will have you in detention until next summer.”

“I will not be in this body-“ Severus started, trying to get the situation back under control.

“Does it look like I care which version of you I have in detention? Harry is not James. You have got to get that into your head if you’re ever going to fulfill this mission of Albus’s. James did not even raise Harry, and if you continue to conflate them, then it will be because you are being willfully ignorant.”

Severus sat in stunned silence as she finished speaking.

Finally, he recovered enough to say, “I do not confuse them, they’re just both remarkably similar spoiled brats.”

“I think if you would exercise that Occlumency that you’re so proud of and separate your memories of James from your memories of Harry and review those memories of Harry, you’ll find that he is remarkably less spoiled than you seem to think he is. I think you ought to go now and think about what I’ve said. Your books should come in the mail tomorrow morning,” Minerva said, turning back to her paperwork in clear dismissal.

Severus remained seated for a heartbeat before he tore out of his seat and out of her office. If this ridiculous body was good for anything, it was for making a quick escape.