In which new attempts are made to help Harry.

Hello, good morning, how you been?

Yesterday left my head kicked in

I never, never thought that

I would fall like that

Never knew that I could hurt this bad

--from the song Learning to Breathe, by Switchfoot

Harry woke to hear a row taking place right outside his door, judging by the volume. “I warned him that he would wake up in the Hospital Wing if he continued resisting, and now he has attacked me!” came Madam Pomfrey’s shrill voice. “We need to—“

She was cut off by two other voices. “I hardly think that it was on purpose!” protested Tonks.

“May I remind you that students have not been allowed to remain at Hogwarts during the summer months for several centuries—“ was Dumbledore’s weary reply.

“Clearly he has become unhinged following the death of that mangy mutt—“

“Severus!” Mrs. Weasley interjected indignantly.

“—and he should be transferred to St. Mungo’s immediately,” Snape finished smoothly, as though he had never been interrupted.

“He’s no more cracked than you are!” Ginny replied brashly, causing a brief moment of silence to fall over the group.

Dumbledore chuckled softly, finally. “I think Miss Weasley is correct in saying that Harry’s sanity is still intact; he is quite emotional, but not mad. I also would not wish to put the staff of St. Mungo’s at risk by putting Harry unwillingly into their care.”

“But sir,” Snape replied plaintively, “how will we control him. You cannot simply allow him to do whatever he wishes!”

“Indeed, Severus. I believe the how is what we are attempting to decide at the moment.”

“May we talk to him when he wakes?” Hermione interjected meekly, revealing her presence to Harry for the first time.

“A calming potion is in order before anyone speaks with him, to assist him in controlling his temper. After that, however, I will make certain that you are the first to see him. He needs his friends in a time like this.”

How nice, Harry thought sarcastically. Everyone I know gathering together to decide my fate. He wondered if there was any way for him to escape before they came in. But with them standing right outside the door, he knew almost without consideration that it was impossible.

He heard no more conversation, and two minutes later Snape and Dumbledore entered, Snape carrying a vial of some potion. Harry glared at them.

“Sure you don’t want to lock me up in St. Mungo’s?” he asked sarcastically. “Why didn’t you think of it years ago? Everyone knows I’m just a crazy freak, right?” he asked rhetorically, with a special glare reserved for Snape. Having made his little speech, he then noticed that both Dumbledore and Snape looked surprised, though whether it was that he was awake or because he had heard their entire conversation he was not certain.

Within a minute they had both recovered, though. Of course, he could have expected no less, with their shared ability to keep their equilibrium in any situation, or at least regain it quickly. Absently he wondered if Dumbledore had once been a spy, in his youth, or if there were something else that the two shared in common.

“Drink this,” Snape ordered stiffly, holding out the potion. Harry stared at him for a moment, then burst out in a humorless laugh. “Do you think I’m stupid enough to drink anything you give me, especially now?”

“Don’t be absurd, Potter, this is for your own good as much as ours. It’s a simple Calming Draught.”

“Funny, that’s what I was told the last potion I took was.” He allowed his voice to take on a lecturing tone that he knew would infuriate his potions professor. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

“Need you be so paranoid, Potter?!”

“Well, let’s see. A dark lord has wanted me dead for fifteen out of my sixteen years, the wizarding world still seems to be deciding whether I’m a hero, the next ‘Dark Lord-in-training,’ or simply insane, and not five minutes ago I heard you expressing a sincere interest in locking me up in St. Mungo’s. Not to mention that I have been betrayed by people I thought I could trust no fewer than three times in the past two weeks. You tell me—should I be paranoid?”

Suddenly, he felt his body stiffen. All he could do was move his eyes. He darted them to the left and saw Albus Dumbledore standing over him, vial in hand.

“Can you hear yourself, Harry? You’re getting yourself worked up again, and once you are we can’t stop you. If you don’t let us help you, you’re going to end up doing something you’ll regret.”

“Leave… me… alone…” he managed through stiff but not quite immobile muscles. Dumbledore didn’t respond; he just upended the vial into Harry’s mouth. The angle of his head assured that he couldn’t spit it back out.

Harry refused to swallow. Snape appeared on his other side and pinched his nose closed. He began to get lightheaded from lack of air, and Snape ran his hand along Harry’s throat once, causing his muscles to jump into action against his will. He felt the potion slither into his stomach, and then the Body Bind was gone. He began to cough, and nearly managed to regurgitate the contents of his stomach when the potion kicked in and his muscles relaxed. He fell back against the pillow, and heard both wizards breathe sighs of relief.

“Your friends want to see you, Harry,” said Dumbledore with a relieved smile. “Shall I let them in?” Harry shrugged apathetically, lacking the energy to do anything else, and Dumbledore beamed. “I’ll just go tell them to come right in.” He walked from the room, and Snape followed with a short glance over his shoulder at Harry. He tried to interpret the expression that he had seen on Snape’s face, but other than the fact that it had been lacking its usual sneer, he hadn’t seen enough to decide what emotion, if any, the bitter man had been experiencing.

Then Hermione, Ron, and Ginny bounced into the room. Actually, they all seemed subdued, Ginny most of all, but they were obviously trying to act cheerful.

“Professor Dumbledore said you’d been hit by two stunners, Harry; are you alright?” Hermione jumped straight to the point. Harry shrugged in response.

“Yeah mate, what happened?!” blurted Ron, and he was immediately hit by an elbow from Hermione at the same time as Ginny stepped on his foot. Harry managed a half smile at their antics.

“Harry?” Ginny called his name, worried that he had yet to give a vocal response. Harry sighed heavily.

“’m fine,” he mumbled.

Hermione launched into a description of what she had learned about wandless magic to fill the silence. From what she said, it was rare that magic could be properly focused without a wand, and the results of unfocused magic could be disastrous once a witch or wizard had entered adolescence and had full control over their magic. This as apparently why most wandless magic was entirely accidental, and more common among children.

When the silence fell, Harry looked away to hide the fact that his eyes were watering. Why couldn’t he be normal, and just worry about stupid things like what wandless magic was or whether his favorite quidditch team would win this year? And better yet, why couldn’t the three standing by his bedside be normal? Turning back to face them, he forced himself to be convincing.

“’m sorry, guys, but I’m tired and I have a headache from those stunners… Could you find something fun to do around this dusty old house, for me?”

“Sure mate,” answered Ron, and the three of them left reluctantly. Harry, however, barely got a moment to himself before Remus entered.

The werewolf looked weary and worried. He immediately took a seat on the edge of Harry’s bed and just watched him, not saying a word. Harry avoided meeting his gaze, choosing to stare at the ceiling instead.

Finally, Lupin sighed. “Sometimes I like to imagine that your life would have been better if your parents had lived to help you through it. The worst part of it is that I know that even if Peter hadn’t betrayed you and Lily and James, Voldemort would have still been around, hurting others and possibly you three as well. So I can’t even just wish that they were still here.” He paused. “Everything is so messed up—“

“I’m still mad at you for tricking me,” Harry informed him dully, turning his head with an effort to looka t the man’s face. “Why couldn’t you have just left me at Privet Drive? None of you can ‘fix’ me; I’m unfixable. I’ll never be the person you all want me to be.”

Remus was obviously hurt by his words, and attempted to defend their motives. “We just want you to be whole, Harry. We want you to have the life you deserve.”

“Maybe this is the life I deserve,” Harry shrugged. “Besides, you can’t manipulate me into wholeness. None of you seems to understand that this isn’t something you can fix—and I’m not sure I want you to, if it means I have to try to be someone I’m not.”

“What can we do?” Remus asked desperately.

“You could stop trying to ‘help’ me.” He paused. “Why do you need to do anything anyway? You’re not my parents.”

“We care about you, Harry. We can’t stand to see you destroying yourself this way.”

Harry began to try to sit up, but his arms shook so much at the attempted effort that he quickly gave up. He gave a short, choking laugh that bore a striking resemblance to a sob. “I can’t even sit up!”

Remus held out his hand to offer Harry the help that he needed, but Harry just shook his head, barking another short choke of laughter. “Don’t you see? You win. You all win. I can’t hurt myself, or anyone else. I can’t even sit up.” He gave a true sob this time, but held himself back from releasing his emotions completely. “You win. You win. Just leave me alone, please, leave me alone.”

Leave him alone they did. He stared apathetically at the ceiling for hours, then let Madam Pomfrey help him to a sitting position and feed him an entire bowl of soup. At the end of his meal Snape appeared with a vial and Harry took the potion without protest, though his hands shook so much that Madam Pomfrey nearly took it from him to do it for him. He stared at the ceiling for several more hours, and he didn’t bother to wipe the wetness from his cheeks before rolling onto his side and falling asleep.

Despite the fact that he was so ‘relaxed,’ Harry found it hard to sleep. He slipped in and out of consciousness, usually not waking enough to do anything but wonder why he was finding it so difficult to stay asleep. Until his eyes fluttered open to glimpse Snape standing near his door. Harry could barely see the outline of his frame in the light of the waning moon, but then the light caught his face to reveal what looked like—concern? Sadness?

“Professor?” he rasped, startling Snape out of his reverie. “What?”

“Nothing, Potter,” he replied expressionlessly. “Nothing at all.” And the dark man turned and swept from the room.

Once he had truly awoken in the morning, Harry was given precious few minutes to stare at the ceiling before Remus entered with a bowl full of hot cereal. Hungry and still too tired and weak to do it himself, Harry let the werewolf feed him despite his embarrassment.

When Snape entered with yet another vial of the Calming Draught, though, he sank back into the pillow as if trying to make himself one with the bed. He waited until Snape had left as quickly as he had come, and then turned back to Lupin to see him holding out the Calming Draught with an apologetic expression on his face.

He shrank back further, and appealed to Lupin’s sentimental side. “Please don’t make me take any more, Moony. I can’t think, I can’t move, I can’t even feed myself! Please, Moony, I promise, I’ll be good. I can keep control, and I’ll do whatever you ask me to do!”

But Remus was shaking his head nonetheless. “Don’t ask me this, Harry,” he pleaded. “It’s not my decision. I know you hate it; I do too. But it’s only temporary, so that you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else.” He held the vial out to Harry again, but upon seeing how the younger wizard’s arm shook as he reached for it, he said, “Maybe I’d better do it.”

Harry knew what they were doing. Every time they made certain that his new dose overlapped at least slightly with the one before it. That way he never had enough energy to put up a real fight like he had the first time. Knowing what was happening didn’t make him feel any better, though; on the contrary, he was beginning to wonder how much difference it would make if he were in St. Mungo’s.

Then Remus left and his friends entered, and that train of thought went temporarily from his head. He smiled wanly and made a half-hearted effort to sit up, before laying back in disgust. Ron rushed over to help him but he sighed and shook his head. Already the new dose was taking effect and making him even weaker, at least temporarily.

“Sorry… they’ve got me so drugged up…” he whispered, and held out his hand to show them how it shook. Both Hermione and Ginny gasped, and Ron looked faintly sick. “Can… can you guys help me with something?”

“Sure mate!” Ron answered enthusiastically, and Ginny nodded quickly in agreement. Hermione, however, seemed a bit more hesitant; it was almost as if she suspected she knew what he was about to ask. He watched her for a moment, then decided that he would have to make do with Ginny and Ron’s help in convincing her.

“Can you three making an antidote to the Calming Draught for me?” he looked at Hermione steadily through this request, knowing that she would be the one to have to do the work.

“Oh, Harry,” she sighed unhappily. “I want to help you, but we can’t do that!”

Harry felt himself getting mildly angry, and knew that if he weren’t under the influence of the Calming Draught he would be furious. His voice, however, came out sounding whiny more than anything. “You don’t understand… I can’t think, and I can’t move… I just need to show the adults that I can control myself without being drugged up, but they won’t give me a chance!” He sank back into the pillow in exhaustion after getting all of this out quickly.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Hermione certainly didn’t look happy, especially considering both Ginny and Ron looked decidedly displeased with her answer. “But you have to understand, we’ve only learned one variant of the Calming Draught, and never the antidote. There’s a reason for that—there are many, many variations of the Calming Draught, and as many antidotes. The wrong antidote can have disastrous results, which is why everyone just waits for a Calming Draught to wear off, if they didn’t want it in the first place.”

“Oh,” replied Harry lamely, his anger evaporating in an instant, to be replaced only by helplessness. That was his one hope for getting gout of this situation. He blinked quickly to force back the tears that were prickling warningly at the backs of his eyes. “They really have won,” he whispered under his breath.

Ginny stepped closer to his bed and comforted him quietly. “It’ll be okay, Harry. They won’t keep you like this much longer, you’ll see.” He grasped her hand like a lifeline and she stroked his comfortingly.

He closed his eyes against the onslaught of tears. “I can’t live like this, I just can’t,” he said.

Hermione finally spoke again. “I’m going to speak to Professor Snape the next time I see him. He’s obviously either ignoring your size or overestimating it, which means he’s giving you a much larger dose than you could possibly need. A Calming Draught is supposed to make you relax, not practically paralyze you.”

“Thanks, ‘mione,” he managed, though he could hear himself slur ever so slightly.

Obviously the others could tell that he was exhausted, but didn’t want to abandon him. Finally, Ginny had an idea. “Hey, Hermione, tell us a muggle pixie tale!” Harry opened his eyes long enough to see the blank expression on Hermione’s face, and laughed lightly.

“I think she means… a fairy tale, ‘mione,” he murmured just loud enough for the others to hear.

“Oh! Good idea, Ginny! Hmm…” Then she laughed. “I’ll tell you a story to show you what my impression of witches was.” She immediately launched into the story of Hansel and Gretel.

Somewhere near the beginning Harry began to drift in and out of consciousness. The story began to mutate—it wasn’t Hansel and Gretel being led out into the forest, it was he and Dudley, being kicked out because Harry was a freak. When they met the witch, she was none other than Umbridge, who proceeded to begin fattening Dudley up and letting him play video games while forcing Harry to do chores and write “I will not write lies,” over and over again. Then Voldemort showed up and tried to shove Harry into the furnace in order to eat him. Harry screamed and woke up sweating profusely under the multitude of covers, alone in his room as his friends had apparently left after he fell asleep.

He threw off the covers as best he could, which turned out to be not so well. He couldn’t believe how heavy they felt, as if they had weights embedded in them. Finally, though, he extracted himself from the cocoon he had been buried in, only to find that he was slightly chilly due to his dampened skin. He glared at the covers but couldn’t bring himself to attempt to bury himself within them again. He shivered a little but decided to stick it out.

The door creaked open and a complete stranger entered. Harry wrinkled his forehead. He thought he knew everyone who was staying in Grimmauld Place, and especially anyone who would be likely to visit him while he was drugged up on Calming Draughts.

“Hello! I’m Gordon,” the man introduced himself with a smile. He was rather tall, taller even than Ron, with short brown hair in a neat but unmemorable haircut, and deep chocolate brown eyes. He seemed cheerful enough but no recognition of who Harry was shown on his face.

Harry frowned. “Are you lost?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” he responded with a chuckle. “What’s your name?”

“Harry…” he answered slowly, suspicious. He watched with narrowed eyes, but never saw the customary flick of the man’s eyes to his forehead. “Is there something you need?” He was feeling unusually vulnerable, with no access to his wand (which had disappeared at some point during his many periods of unconsciousness) and the weakness he was quickly becoming accustomed to but did not appreciate any more.

“Just to talk to you. You have quite a few people worried about you, do you know that?”

Harry sighed. “Don’t waste your time.”

Gordon chuckled and shook his head. “I was told you would be a tough egg to crack. But I can be patient.” Harry just watched him silently. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Are you kidding me?” He didn’t have the energy just now to carry on a long conversation with a stranger who wanted to pretend like he didn’t know who Harry Potter was.

“No, I’m not kidding,” responded the man in the most serious tone yet. “But I can tell you about myself first if you’d like.” Harry shrugged, which the man apparently took as acquiescence.

“Let’s see. I’m an adolescent psychologist, because I really like working with teens. Even if you are as a group quite suspicious of psychologists.” He winked. “But to take this job I had to agree to drop everything and move in here,” he waved at the house vaguely, “wherever here is, in order to see you. In other words, I’m very serious about doing whatever I can to help you in whatever you need help about. Oh, and that’s something else you should know—aside from telling me that your first name is Harry and that you were a teen, I knew nothing about you before I came here, and I won’t know anything except what you choose to tell me. That’s how I work.”

Harry was beginning to get a strange suspicion… but they wouldn’t have done that, would they have? He decided to test his theory. He rolled over on his side to get a better view of the man without having to crane his neck, and said, “Well, I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but… I’m not sure there’s anything you can do to help me, unless you know of a quick way to get rid of Voldemort…” Nothing. Not a flinch from the man, only a look of vague confusion.

“What is Voldemort?”

“Are you a muggle?” exclaimed Harry, truly surprised.

Gordon frowned. “Hey, now, there’s no need to insult. And anyway, what does mu—“ He paused midsentence. “Oh, yeah, I seem to remember Albus saying something about this… That’s what you call people like me who can’t use magic, huh?”

Harry nodded slowly. “So you are a muggle.” Then he added, “No offense intended.”

Gordon didn’t appear to need the apology, as he was smiling and nodding already. “Yes, I am indeed a muggle. Can’t do a scrap of magic.”

Harry frowned. “And how exactly do they think you can help me?”

“I got the impression that they thought you needed someone with no biases to talk to.”

Harry suddenly felt a flush of gratitude. He couldn’t have put words to it, but there was a yearning in him to be able to talk to someone who didn’t think of him as a hero—there always had been. If he chose, this man could know him as Harry, just Harry. Not Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, hero of the wizarding world, but the confused 16-year-old that was the real Harry.

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “And you won’t find out anything from anyone else about me?”

Gordon shook his head firmly. “I’ve made everyone in the house promise not to tell me a thing about you. We can talk about anything else, but nothing that borders on you.”

Harry frowned. “Did Professor Dumbledore say anything about a prophecy? I don’t know if I can tell you… I don’t want him to have to Obliviate you…”

Gordon jumped. “I don’t think I want that either… Sounds rather painful.”

Harry laughed weakly, and then shook his head. “No… that just means taking parts of your memory away…” He frowned at how quiet his voice was. “Sorry,” he nearly whispered. “They’ve given me so much Calming Draught…” He sighed.

As if responding to Harry’s comment, Snape suddenly burst into the room. He scowled at the presence of the muggle and pointed him to the door, then moved to Harry’s bedside immediately. He held out a vial of what was obviously the Calming Draught (whose appearance and smell Harry now knew intimately). “Time for your next dose,” he said gruffly.

Nothing could be worse than this, even the extremely degrading experience of pleading with his most hated teacher. “Professor Snape, please…” He said, weakly trying to push the potion away. “I can barely move… it’s hard to think… There has to be some better way…”

Snape sneered. “It is not my fault, Potter, that you couldn’t control yourself. Now you are reaping the consequences of your actions.” He pushed the potion forward firmly. “You will drink this voluntarily, or I will force-feed it to you.”

Knowing that he didn’t have the energy for any kind of protest, he reached out for the vial, focusing all his efforts on keeping his hands steady. The result was pitiful at best, but Snape didn’t want to feed Harry any more than Harry wanted to be fed by him, so he let him take the glass container despite the fact that the liquid was nearly sloshing out, even though it was only half full. He poured it down his throat as quickly as he could to hide his weakness, then weakly held out the vial for Snape to take.

“I also need to speak with you regarding your O.W.L. results. A me—“

Harry interrupted him weakly, already feeling that in a moment he would be unable to even speak comprehensibly. “’aven’ read ‘em,” he slurred.

“You haven’t read your own O.W.L. results yet?” Snape responded incredulously. “I know you care little for the school or its rules, but I was certain that know-it-all—“

“Forgot…” He yawned reflexively. “’m tired…”

“How much do you weigh, Potter?” Snape asked suspiciously. Without waiting for an answer from the nearly unconscious teen, he cast a spell and then gaped at whatever he saw. “You said those muggles fed you sometimes, Potter!” he spat out, obviously upset. Then he swore under his breath. “Of course the stupid know-it-all had to be right.” He changed his voice to imitate Hermione’s higher pitched voice, “You’re giving him too large a dose, Professor Snape. He’s obviously far under the average weight for someone his age!” He swore again. “Just relax and don’t fight it, Potter, and I’ll go brew the antidote.”